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It is unlikely that anyone has ever experienced such joy outside a Sulabh Sauchalaya as Nandan Kumar did that night - when a film kicks off with these words after its middle-class hero finds cash stashed away at the entrance of a public toilet, it holds out a promise of the sort of impertinent humour Hindi cinema rarely does. Black comedy is a genre Bollywood has not often visited or had much success with. In that sense, for those looking for something out of the ordinary from this film industry, writer-director Rajesh Krishnan's  Lootcase  sets itself up well. Not that the opening plot point is novel: just last month, for instance, Netflix released director Anurag Kashyap's  Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai , that was about a middle-class housewife who finds bundles of cash floating up out of the drain below her kitchen sink. Still,  Lootcase  offers hope that it might have something new to say with the blend of laughter, suspense and menace in its early scenes. (Note:...

Telugu actor Allu Arjun on Friday, 31 July, announced his new film with director Koratala Siva. The film is tentatively titled AA21 and is expected to release in early 2022. The actor shared the news on Twitter with the poster of the new venture. In the poster, two men are seen standing on a shore watching at a distant village. Check it out here Very much elated to announce my next film #AA21 with Koratala Shiva garu . Been looking forward for this for quiet a while . My best wishes to Sudakar Garu for his 1st venture . Sandy , Swathi & Nutty this is my way of showing of my love for you guys . pic.twitter.com/uwOjtSAMJV — Allu Arjun (@alluarjun) July 31, 2020 According to a report by The Indian Express, the upcoming film marks Allu Arjun's first collaboration with Koratala Siva. The film is produced by Sudhakar Mikkilineni along with Sandy Swathi Nutty. Arjun is currently waiting for the shooting of Pushpa to resume. The production was halted due to the COVID-19 p...

Singer sensation Billie Eilish has dropped her new song My Future . The new song has been produced by her brother Finneas O'Connell, who often co-writes and produces Eilish's music. The dreamy song was accompanied by a video created by Australian artist Andrew Onorato, reported Rolling Stone . "We wrote this at the very beginning of quarantine. It's a song that's really, really personal and special to me. When we wrote this song, it was exactly where my head was at — hopeful, excited and a crazy amount of self-reflection and self-growth," the 18-year-old singer said. "But recently it has also taken on a lot of new meaning in the context of what's happening in the world now. I hope you can all find meaning in it for yourselves," she added. The song is her first release since the official track of the upcoming James Bond movie No Time to Die, which has been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Check out the post In January this year,...

Radhika Apte has described Nawazuddin Siddiqui, her co-star in Raat Akeli Hai , as "one of the finest actors in the country." The duo has earlier worked together in several projects, including  Manjhi: The Mountain Man , Badlapur , and Netflix series Sacred Games . "The good thing about Nawaz is that he is always present in the moment. He reacts to you. He doesn't come to the sets prepared. So we can just play along with our parts, improvise a lot, and see what comes along," she told the  Press Trust of India in an interview. Set in north India, the crime thriller follows a small-town cop, played by Siddiqui, who is summoned to investigate the death of a politician. Raat Akeli Hai marks the directorial debut of casting director Honey Trehan, known for films like Talvar, Udta Punjab  and Delhi Belly. Apte said the film, which released on Netflix on 31 July, is a "stunning debut" from Trehan. Radhika Apte. File image She further said she enjoy...

The new song featuring Sidharth Shukla and Neha Sharma ' Dil Ko Karaar Aaya ' is finally out and is getting a warm response from the audience. The romantic music video has raked up over 4 lakh views within two hours of its release on YouTube. Sidharth Shukla (of Bigg Boss fame) has been sharing snippets of the music video for several days now and the result is visually beautiful. Neha, who was last seen in Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior , also shared her excitement upon the release of the official music video on her social media account. Check out the post ' Dil Ko Karaar Aaya ' tells the story of two people falling in love and spending time with each other. The music video begins with Neha reading out of a book to Sidharth and he is enamoured with her presence. Slowly Sidharth starts to drift off and recalls how they fell in love. With the melodious voice of Yasser Desai in the background, the song takes viewers through a loving journey where the leads go on surpr...

Dear Harry, Many happy returns of the day! I really do hope you make the most of it, with your beautiful family. Congratulations on repairing your relationship with young Albus, by the way. It can be so difficult, having to earn your teenaged child’s trust all over again, knowing that you’ve hurt them. And that’s kind of the point of this letter: trust. Trust is precious, not least because it’s one of those rare things you cannot hope to gain through theft or coercion. And trust is what you and Jo are losing, globally. You’re 40 today, which makes you part of the first-ever batch of millennials to hit the big four-oh. This generation, which I am a part of, grew up with you — or at least a great many of us did, anyway. And you of all people know that as a generation, we just can’t seem to catch a break. Sure, we didn’t have a literal Dark Lord to fight during our formative years. But all those people you saw queuing up to see the last Fantastic Beasts movie (a real stinker, sorry)?...

When a casting director makes a film, the characters pop out like the fingers of an unclenched fist. And Honey Trehan's whodunnit,  Raat Akeli Hai,  which premiered on Netflix on 31 July, ticks all the right boxes. Stellar cast; a definitive murder-mystery crafted like a slow-burn thriller; notable characters; fantastically atmospheric visuals; a haunting background score and a twist you will not see coming. In the interest of murder-mystery aficionados, it's important to note that you may not be stumped by the climax, but I genuinely believe we've been spoilt by modern whodunnits that aim to hold you spellbound with the big reveal rather than take you on a cinematic journey. This is where  Raat Akeli   Hai  differs; it lets the story breathe, with no pressure to stun the audiences at every turning point in a bid to buy your interest. The film shares its vibe with Rian Jonson's sleeper hit  Knives Out ( 2019) in its ability to transport you to...

The country is observing the 40th death anniversary of legendary singer Mohammed Rafi on Thursday. He died on 31 July 1980 at the age of 55, but his songs remain immortal. He was known for singing different genres of songs ranging from sad to romantic, classical to patriotic numbers, as well as ghazals and bhajans. Rafi did playback singing for actors such as Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, and Dharmendra, among others. Rafi was also the recipient of Padma Shri, a National Award and six Filmfare awards, Hindustan Times reported . As per a report by The Indian Express , Mohammed Rafi was born in Punjab in 1924. His family moved to Lahore where he attained formal music training from the Ustads. He moved to Bombay in 1944 and started singing in the chorus. The report says that Rafi believed that singers could not be 'made' and it is the divine blessings that carved his destiny. Almost all songs of Mohammed Rafi are evergreen and are often sung by contestants at reality sho...

American actor Bryan Cranston recently took to Instagram to reveal that he'd donate his plasma after recovering from the coronavirus. The Breaking Bad actor talked about his symptoms, recovery, and future plan of action in a two-minute video. He announced that he has decided to donate plasma for helping with the research procedure. “I wanted to announce that I had COVID-19 a little while ago. Very lucky, very mild symptoms,” he said in the clip. Cranston was standing in front of the UCLA Blood and Platelet Center in Los Angeles, while recording the clip as he revealed that he was donating his plasma at the centre. "Hopefully the plasma donation can help some other people". Check out the post View this post on Instagram Hi. About now you’re probably feeling a little tied down, restricting your mobility and like me, you’re tired of this!! Well, I just want to encourage you to have a little more patience. I was pretty strict in adhering to the protocols and stil...

At the dawn of The Muppet Show in the late 1970s, a visit to the Muppet Labs consisted of watching its nebbish-y proprietor, Dr Bunsen Honeydew, demonstrate misbegotten inventions like an exploding hat or a self-destructing necktie with a brief burst of pyrotechnics, a canned explosion sound, and a puff of smoke. Today, a return visit to those labs on the Disney+ series Muppets Now features Honeydew and his agitated assistant, Beaker, using a homemade device called the Infern-O-Matic to reduce everyday items — a carton of eggs, a wall clock, a guitar — to smoldering piles of ashes. If this scene from Muppets Now feels manic and combustible — and even a bit familiar — that is by design: as Leigh Slaughter, vice president of the Muppets Studio, explained recently, she and her colleagues are hopeful that this series will conjure up “that true Muppet anarchy — that complete chaos.” She added: “If they’re going to take on real-world science, we thought, we have to burn things. We have...

When historians look back on the top films at the box office in the summer of 2020, they may feel like they’ve slipped into a time warp, or maybe Back to the Future. Over the second weekend in July, Empire Strikes Back — 40 years after it was first released — was again No 1. Ghostbusters claimed the July 4th weekend, 36 years after opening. Over the 19-21 June weekend and 27 years after it last led the box office, Jurassic Park again ruled theatres. In a pandemic that has resurrected all kinds of vintage pastimes, from puzzles to drive-ins, even the blockbusters are retro. That is much out of necessity. About 1,000 theaters in the US are currently open, just about a sixth of the nation’s cinemas. That includes the approximately 300 drive-ins that have, since the multiplexes shuttered in March, hosted the majority of moviegoing. With all major new releases postponed until at least Labour Day weekend , summer moviegoing has again belonged to the classics — the kinds of films that, ...

An infamous bus appears headed to a new home at a museum in Fairbanks after being removed from Alaska’s backcountry to deter people from making dangerous, sometimes deadly treks to visit the site where a young man documented his demise in 1992. The state Department of Natural Resources said Thursday that it intends to negotiate with the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North to display the bus, which was popularized by the book Into the Wild and a movie of the same name and flown from its location near Denali National Park and Preserve last month. “Of the many expressions of interest in the bus, the proposal from the UA Museum of the North best met the conditions we at DNR had established to ensure this historical and cultural object will be preserved in a safe location where the public could experience it fully, yet safely and respectfully, and without the specter of profiteering,” Natural Resources Commissioner Corri Feige said in a statement. The bus became a beacon for th...

Language: Hindi Shakuntala Devi is perhaps the most famous Indian about whom most Indians know so little. I remember her well from my childhood, but only as a near-fixture in classified ads in the papers and because Dad said the sassy-looking woman in the picture was known as a "human computer". Since watching writer-director Anu Menon's eponymous film on the late mathematical genius, I have pored over the Internet and  discovered considerable material on her,  ironically far more from abroad than her home country, India. Shakuntala Devi  the film, however, relies on detailed conversations Menon had with the subject's daughter. As with most Hindi films drawn from real life these days, the opening disclaimer states that it is "inspired by true events but does not claim to be a documentary/biography on any character depicted", with later text on screen adding that it is "based on a true story as seen through the eyes of a daughter, Anupama Banerji ...

It's been nearly three years since the Pandora's box opened on Harvey Weinstein, and his downfall fuelled a worldwide reckoning on sexual violence against women. The #MeToo and Time's Up movements sparked a paradigm shift, bringing some hope to the stories of survivors. In this two-part series, we look at documentary and fiction films which foregrounded the narratives of survivors while raising questions about the pervasive complicity machines that protected the Weinsteins of the world. *** In The Assistant , Kitty Green takes us away from the glamour of show business to a standard desk-and-cubicle production office. The film follows a day in the life of an assistant to a Weinstein-like studio mogul. Always the first to arrive and last to leave, Jane (Julia Garner) is tasked with everything, from photocopying documents to doing the dishes to cleaning the boss's office — the boring and routine tasks her colleagues refuse to do. While cleaning her boss's office, she...

It’s raining nominations for Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s ' Rain on Me '  at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards (VMA), which will present new categories focused on live performances and music videos created at home during the coronavirus pandemic. Gaga and Grande both scored nine nominations each, including video of the year for their No 1 dance hit. ' Rain on Me' is also competing for song of the year, best collaboration, best pop, best cinematography, best visual effects, and best choreography. Billie Eilish and The Weeknd, the second-most nominated acts with six, are also up for video of the year with  ' everything i wanted '  and ' Blinding Lights. '  Others nominated for the top prize include  Taylor Swift’s ' The Man ',  Future and Drake’s ' Life Is Good ', and  Eminem’s ' Godzilla' ,  which features late rapper Juice WRLD. The VMAs will air live on 30 August from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and New York Governor Andre...