In our The Toast series today, we pay homage to one of Hollywood’s longest living actors in 2020, Olivia de Havilland, who left behind a history and a legacy of roles to be treasured for generations to come. Picture it: July 26, 2020. A flurry of TV news alerts. Followed by a flurry of Twitter and Instagram tributes. The legendary, talented, ...
Marvel has closed the book on a few major characters. The future looks bright for characters like Doctor Strange, Black Panther and so on. Upon its release, Avengers: Endgame had shaken up the MCU with drastic and seemingly irreversible consequences. But what truly rounded up the INFINITY SAGA is Spider-Man: Far From Home. The film ...
We already know what Disney has planned for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with a variety of shows to be streamed on their upcoming service, Disney+, along with the list of movies for the next 3 years. With Disney’s recent acquisition of 21st Century Fox, they now have access to some of Marvel’s most popular superheroes, ...
From The Devil’s Backbone (2001) to Hereditary (2018), here are the best horror movies of the 21st century. Horror movies reflect and provoke pop culture discourse, offering us a fictional space in which we can evaluate our collective fears. The first-ever horror film came in 1898, complete with animated skeletons, ghosts, and transforming bats. The 1900-20s saw creators ...
Indian film industry, one of the largest in the world, is currently valued at a whopping $183 billion. We churn out close to 800 films in a year. That’s 2 films a day! An overwhelming number compared to Hollywood, which produces 475 films in a year. So, it can be hard to keep track of ...
Hollywood’s biggest night has concluded. The much delayed 93rd Academy Awards were finally held across two venues, The Dolby Theatre and Los Angeles’ Union Station. The year marked a landmark move by the Academy, which decided to make films automatically eligible for consideration even if they first premiered on a digital platform. This decision came ...
In our The Toast series today, we celebrate an actor par excellence, who embodies the spirit of creative brilliance and is a league of her own. Meryl Streep. A record 21 nominations. A beyond impressive 3 wins. It’s hard to talk Oscars and not talk Meryl Streep. And if we do talk Streep, what more can be said? She’s well-trodden ...
It’s the staccato, droning, frenzied, draining crushing, grinding, peeling, chopping, washing, mopping, dusting, and at night, the abuse that gets to you. As a man, one slowly, almost seditiously, feels repulsed by what one sees. But one only needs to look into the mirror! In a society grossly steeped in patriarchy and misogyny, this is ...
The posters for South Korean filmmaker Jin-ho Hur’s Christmas in August (1998) show a man and a woman standing closely together under an overcoat, awkwardly and amorously smiling, as the snow falls from above. The poster and the genre (drama/romance), may make you wrongly interpret this as a passionate love story, riddled with melodramatic gestures. On the ...
Art is an important form of self-expression, and filmmaking is an enchanting, provoking, and at times, downright lovely expression of that. So here’s where we say ‘thank you’ and show some love. Welcome to The Toast, a bi-monthly series dedicated to Hollywood’s greatest acting legends. An ode to the finest. Get a glimpse into their off-screen life and their ...
Eeb Allay Ooo opens with our protagonist Anjani (Shardul Bharadwaj) on trial for a measly government job of chasing away monkeys. The young migrant worker from Bihar, like countless invisibles who’ve left their homes behind, has moved to the capital in search for a better life. First-time director Prateek Vats’ political satire cleverly explores class ...
Titli is a story of a dysfunctional family, three brothers and a father, who’ve lived a life of crime and violence. Quartered in a squalid, run-down area in East Delhi, they make a living car-jacking. First-time director Kanu Behl skilfully brings out the nuances of the city, establishing a setting that feels lived in. Fraught with ...
“When, in spite of all the good fortune that had come his way, he wasn’t happy, it was because he had not wanted to be happy in the general sense of the word.” Between 1898 and 1904, a Danish realist writer, Henrik Pontoppidan, published an eight-volume novel, Lykke-Per, which was later translated into English as ...
“Can we put ourselves in the place of others?” So begins Nathalie Chazeaux’ (Isabelle Huppert) opening statement, revealing of what stark realities lie underneath the exterior appearances of a happy family as they travel to the island of Grand Bé. Early on in the film, we see Nathalie watching her family walk distantly ahead of her, ...
“The hills are alive with the sound of music.” But with one less beautiful voice. Actor Christopher Plummer, who brilliantly played Captain von Trapp (aka “Austria’s awesomest Nazi-fighting musical dad ever!”) in The Sound of Music (1965) passed away early this month. He was 91 years old. February is a sad month, and the world heaves a collective ...
Dipankar Sarkar
