Amaze on and on and on: Matka King, Dupahiya, Snakes and Ladders  and The Rana Connection In the third part of my report, here’s the lowdown on four more shows that Amazon has lined-up, in various languages. Matka King (Hindi) In this fictional tale set in 1960s Mumbai, an enterprising cotton trader who craves legitimacy and respect, starts a new gambling game, dubbed ‘Matka’, which takes the city by storm and democratises a terrain previously reserved for the rich ...

Prime Video’s first original film, Maja Ma, Trailer launch: Mad about Madhuri One afternoon in 1984, I was invited to the Natraj Hotel, Marine Drive, Bombay, to the release get-together of Rajshri Productions’ Abodh. My benefactor, writer-director Gobind Moonis, who had wanted to cast me as the blind boy in Dosti, had now discovered a girl with a very pretty face who had learnt kathak too. But the star of the day was Gyan Shivpuri, an actor who came with a reputation. When I trie...

Badhaai Ho, Review: No age to have a baby What if you discover that your mother is pregnant when you are 25 and in a steady relationship? Should you be happy? Sad? Feel outraged? Would you become the butt of jokes day in and day out? How would you deal with the development? Such is the off-beat premise of Badhaai Ho (Congratulations). [This review has been delayed for so many days due to serious issues with my computer, but the film, which was seen 10 days ago, deserves to be reviewed, and we...

Budhia Singh—Born to Run, alias Duronto, Review: Marathon gone Running is good for health. Making films on running and runners is not a bad ploy for a production house to get a run for their money, or money for your run. Milking the genre without substantial innovation might not be such good idea, though, and the box-office run might be as short-lived as, or, in fact, much shorter than, the apparently aborted career of India’s child wonder, Budhia Singh. Based on a true story, Bu...

Talvar, Review: Whodunit? Doesn’t matter! Like the 1950 Japanese cult film Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa and often rated as one of the greatest films ever made, remade n number of times in India, Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar (sword) presents three contradictory accounts of a nation-rocking real life double murder, which variously portray the prime accused as guilty or innocent. It fictionalises names and dates, amalgamates some characters into a single entity and does not take a ...