Deepika Padukone in MFF 21 Movie Mela: Pre-festival feast of conversations with stars, directors For the last few years, Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) has been holding Movie Mela as a forerunner to the Mumbai Film Festival (MFF). They skipped it last year because some of the likely male panellists were facing groping and molestation charges, but it came back this year with renewed vigour. Mela is Hindi/Urdu for feast/carnival. It is held in the shape of interviews/interactions between...

Aamir, Nasir, Tahir, Tariq, Mansoor, Amjad: Movies, Masti, Modernity, Flashback 6 To remind you, Aamir is indeed Aamir Khan, Amjad is definitely Gabbar Singh, and the triple M above is to acknowledge that it was Akshay Manwani’s biographical book on the cinema of Nasir Hussain that got me delving into the period of about 15 years, when I interacted with the Hussain Khans (first five) and the bare Khan (last, but the most imposing personality). Actually, Mansoor did not use his middle na...

Roy, Review: ROYters’ block, alias ‘balle t balle t’ Papa Anupam Kher thinks it is something to do with a woman. Son Arjun Rampal calls it writers’ block. Both are right. Grewal Senior was referring to writer-director Kabir Grewal’s predicament in the film, while Rampal was explaining to the viewers why this film was going nowhere! Casanova Grewal has fallen in love with a documentary film-maker named Ayesha Aamir, from London, while shooting his film Guns III in...