22 | She/Her | Will write/direct a film someday | Pretend music expert | Aspiring Polyglot | Sanghis (and other varieties of bigots) should fuck right off
THREAD
20 July 1972 saw the untimely demise of singer-extraordinaire
#GeetaDutt
at the young age of 41. But her tragically short life hasn't made the slightest dent in her lasting legacy as one of our greatest & most versatile artistes. Let us revisit 12 of her best songs!
1/n
I have a million thoughts but I don't want to voice a single one of them out. It's pointless anyway. Prioritise your sanity and safety, and wait for the tables to turn. Which they will, no matter how long it takes.
My husband doesn't know which politician joining which party. He doesn't even know current generation cricketers. He is not even on Social Media. He works, comes home, watches his fav movie while having dinner, goes for night walk with us then sleeps.
Men like him still exist🥺
The trolling that Shilpa Rao is facing, when her tweet is this generic and doesn't even mention elections, parties or a person spreading the said hate, says so much about these rotten times.
Also telling, is how the hate brigade just identified itself and its divider-in-chief.
Was at a café today. After staring at me across tables for a while, this cute guy comes over. He strikes up a chat and tells me I'm EXACTLY what he's been looking for. Calls it love at 1st sight!
I ask him to prove it by licking my shoe.
HE. WALKED. OFF!
What did I do wrong?
Rewatched
#Swades
after ages and I'd forgotten just how much warmth this film exudes. There's such idealism, simplicity and sincerity in the film's messaging. And it's very unabashedly Gandhian?
#ARRahman
's music really elevates everything. The score made me cry. Several times.
Yuck. People follow FC for quality film content. Not for puff pieces on cheap, smooth-brained influenzas like Ranveer Prayagrajia who has nothing to do with films and everything to do with platforming far-right bigots on his podcast.
Will make sure I drop a dislike on Youtube.
1/7
Early on in
#Jawan
, a heavily bandaged
#SRK
asks a village, "Main kaun hoon?", a rousing brass theme thunders in the background and a title card appears: SHAH RUKH KHAN.
That in a nutshell is this electrifying and mad new Atlee film. It's part saga & part self-aware paean.
Could someone please explain exactly what I was supposed to see (and love) in
#12thFail
that TVF hasn't already shown in a dozen different iterations in shows like Kota Factory or Aspirants? Sure, it's well-made and brilliantly performed but it really didn't stand up to the hype.
I got a like from Rahman???! What?? Why?? How??! My life has peaked. I want to kms this very moment, because nothing will ever top this 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Rewatched
#Swades
after ages and I'd forgotten just how much warmth this film exudes. There's such idealism, simplicity and sincerity in the film's messaging. And it's very unabashedly Gandhian?
#ARRahman
's music really elevates everything. The score made me cry. Several times.
I was an admirer of Dhruv Rathee... until 2019. When he tacitly supported the revoking of article 370. I unsubscribed to his channel and everywhere else. His latest video on The Kerala Story is extremely well-researched and important. But I'm wary of endorsing him fully anymore.
Leftists(like me) love shitting on Dhruv Rathee while the truth is that dude has brought more people from the fringe of right wing fanaticism to centrist mediocrity while most of us have barely been capable of having a coherent conversation with their own families about fascism.
Richa Chadha exudes the kind of idgaf energy I've only seen in Neena Gupta. That she has the acting chops, brains and emotional intelligence to back this unbothered confidence up only makes it that much sweeter. Chintus from Chandigarh with their kaddu si shakal should sit down.
Just can't shake off the feeling that
#Dunki
was refashioned from the carcass of Munnabhai Chale Amreeka. Perhaps that explains why everything feels so dated and shoehorned. The entire IELTS segment seems reused.
Given
#Alaikadal
is a boatwoman's song and the santoor's inherent sound echoes dripping water, this gorgeous santoor cover by SantoorSuma (insta) makes so much sense! How lovely would it be if
#ARRahman
has used similar instrumental themes drawn from the song in
#PonniyinSelvan
.
@fesshole
The copier's Fesshole draft:
Customer wanted two valuable art prints copied, so I handed over copies of the original prints. It's been 15 years and he has never figured it out.
Each character in
#LaapataaLadies
is on a train to a station, variably called Feminismpur or Equality Nagar. Some need to travel further than others, some are lost along the way, and some are daily passengers on the route. There are laughs, tears and a journey to remember! ❤️
#AnubhavSinha
is overdoing it, just for the sake of sensanalizing the issues. It's films like
#Bheed
that brings unwarranted hate for the Hindi Film Industry.
I first read
#TheFaultInOurStars
in school & bawled.
Then I watched the 2014 film adaptation & bawled again.
But watching
#SushantSinghRajput
in his swansong
#DilBechara
today, I bawled way harder than the last two times.
What a terrible loss!
Hope you find peace, Sushant!💔
1/3
Like many others, Aaoge Jab Tum was my introduction to Ustad Rashid Khan's brilliance, and his rich, resounding voice. But one of my most cherished pieces of his work
is his minute-long alaap in the outro of A R Rahman's Jana Gana Mana. It's pristine, nostalgic and so moving.
I so want
#Chamkila
to do things for Parineeti's career the way Highway did for Alia's. I also wish more people watched & discussed Dibakar Banerjee's Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar because Parineeti was spectacular in it. As she always has been in the hands of a good director.
Diljit and I had the privilege of playing the role of two legends who changed the music landscape in India. Recreating their famous images in the film and seeing them again today gives me goosebumps.
Cannot wait to share the world of Chamkila with everyone❤️❤️
Wouldn’t have been…
The way
#VidaKaro
just casually walked in and destroyed, annihilated, destructed, obliterated, assaulted, bulldozed, demolished, razed, toppled, dismantled and disassembled me 😭😭😭😭😭🤌🏻
#ARRahman
#ArijitSingh
Films I'm looking forward to the most in 2024, and the reason why:
Merry Christmas (Jai Sriram)
LSD 2 (Dibakar)
Chamkila (ARR)
Kennedy (Kashyap)
Stree 2 (Amar Kaushik)
The Buckingham Murders (KKK)
Thangalaan (Chiyaan)
Lapata Ladies (Kiran Rao)
Metro Inn Dino (Basu)
Kill (TIFF)
I received an invite from the Biden administration for a Diwali event being held by the VP on nov 8. I decline any invitation from an institution that supports the collective punishment of a trapped civilian population—50% of whom are children.
A Bhansali-
#ARRahman
collab will never happen but the Hindi version of
#VeeraRajaVeera
is a taste of what might have resulted! And it's oddly emotional to hear Kavita Krishnamurthy in a mainstream song after an eternity. Her last big song was in Rockstar, also with Rahman! 🥺❤️
#PrajwalRevanna
proudly flaunted his passport in Frankfurt; none of the fidgeting or self-doubt of the last century! The immigration officer looked impressed. She was either a fan of India or just worried she was holding up one of Modi ji's rapists.
Modi hai toh mumkin hai! 🥰🇮🇳
1/8
A married Tamil woman, and her son, caught in a sticky mess until a strange man decides to help her out by pretending to be her husband?
Nope. Not the plot of Mr. & Mrs. Iyer, but of Swathi & Umesh in
#KillerSoup
, Abhishek Chaubey's delicious, twisted new broth on Netflix!
#MerryChristmas
felt a bit like mom's dosas on a bad day. I see the amount of effort and love that's gone into them from the previous day, and how delectable they usually are, so it feels unbearably wrong to complain when she asks how they've turned out this time.
2003 - Aishwarya Rai
2007 - Nandita Das
2009 - Sharmila Tagore
2013 - Vidya Balan
2022 -
#DeepikaPadukone
Such a moment for Deepika. And what stellar ranks to join!
#Cannes2022
Dil Gira Dafatan always makes me oddly emotional. Maybe because of how free-flowing & unpredictable the lovesick melody is. Or maybe because of how everything from jazz scatting to Celtic bagpipes to Chinese violins to orchestral runs all fit together inexplicably but beautifully
Dil Gira Dafatan - music only version!!!
This is one of my fav
#ARRahman
hindi song..
Hear carefully The whole 1.5 minute mukhda has this string instrument melody in a “copy paste “ mode
Is it banjo /bouzouki or some other instrument ?
1/n
The just-released
#DilBechara
album finds
#ARRahman
in his most accessible & fresh-sounding form in recent times! The tracks feature a profusion of intricate vocal harmonies, strings, electronic sounds; & traverse varied genres like ballads, dance-pop & hiphop!
*THREAD*
Milan Damji has overpowered Vidya & kicked her pregnant belly. She falls to the ground, groaning in agony
*The audience is horrified*
Vidya looks up, reaches for, and removes her prosthetic pregnant belly and smacks Milan in the face
*Jaws have dropped*
#Kahaani
#VidyaBalan
what was a moment/scene in a Hindi film which shook the earth beneath you? I rem vividly when Kangana Ranaut's Shonali walked the ramp in Fashion, I was shaking. Iconic. That whole Mar Javan bit -- a runway show set to a deeply melancholic song -- captured the film's essence.
@film_waala
I was mind blown because here was this young actress excelling and standing out in two diametrically different roles landing on Netflix within a week of each other! I hope she has a great career ahead
Where else but in Kolkata will copies of The Bible, The Gita & The Koran greet you at the entrance to a Durga Puja pandal? The goddesses' idol tucked away at the innermost section, that one gets to after getting through a section full of books and another full of ethereal light?
Recently Ranveer Prayagrajia was trying to find a "neutral" perspective on Hitler on his podcast. Hitler was glorified, and the mass murder of millions was termed a "career hack". The video was later deleted.
Is this the brand association you want
@FilmCompanion
@anupamachopra
?
7/7
Somewhere between a rock song & a Hemant Kumar classic, a deranged evil capitalist & a machine gun-wielding 70yr old woman, an amnesiac father & a mother who stands bravely at the gallows,
#Jawan
resurrects in us a jawan.
Desh ko haath lagane se pehle voter se baat kar!
#ARRahman
's knack of whipping up bangers that'd make an overzealous psychiatrist diagnose a dozen different conditions, in the way they tie up wildly disparate ideas and formats within the same song is quite something.
#Chamkila
's Baaja, in the same tradition, is a knockout! 🔥
Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating! ❤️
Here's my go-to Eid song from a grossly misunderstood Bhansali film featuring fetus Ranbir with a decent hairline and a luminous Sonam who does perfect Kathak chakkars (in direct contradiction to her viral Genda Phool mal-performance)
The
#Animal
trailer is path-breaking and fab!
For the FIRST TIME EVER™ we'll see - Ranbir's character having daddy issues, an iteration of graphic action sequences from the little known Korean film Old Boy, a Chitta Kukkad redo (finally!) and Rashmika's towering thespian skills!
What feels like a Rahman song but isn't?
I'll start.
Jheeni Meeni Jheeni from Maqbool,
Kaisi Hai Ye Rut from Dil Chahta Hai,
and Awaara from 7 Khoon Maaf.
Not that
#AliaBhatt
and Vijay Verma didn't k!ll it, but I can totally imagine a young
#Tabu
and Irrfan playing Badrunissa and Hamza if
#Darlings
was made in the early 2000s. Shabana would be perfect as Shamsunissa.
Directed by Vishal Bhardwaj obv 😌🤌✨
4/7
Atlee's cleverest touch, however, is weaving
#SRK
's ladies' man image into
#Jawan
's plot. The jawans (soldiers) in his army are all women - each terribly wronged by the system. But he is NOT their glorious saviour. They avenge themselves.
He's an ally. They're the heroes.
@shripatsurana
@N4irit
Yeah the mass shootings in the USA are solely because of bad parenting and not the fact that one can just walk into a Walmart and buy semi automatic rifles...
Is
#AishwaryaRaiBachchan
the actor with the most number of
#ARRahman
albums in their filmography?
1. Iruvar
2. Jeans
3. Taal
4. Kandukondain Kandukondain
5. Guru
6. Provoked
7. Ravaan/Raavanan
8. Enthiran
9. Ponniyin Selvan 1
10. Ponniyin Selvan 2
6/7
Not since Rang De Basanti have we had such an audacious, fiery comment on misgovernance and the importance of dissent, as in
#Jawan
. In a stunning 4th wall breaking sequence,
#SRK
first sheds his makeup and then speaks to us. The gaze is straight, the questions straighter.
#WamiqaGabbi
is so so magnetic as Niloufer in
#Jubilee
. She's gorgeous on screen; carries the charm and poise of an old-school film star with the most effortless acting talent I've seen in recent times. Totally see why she's
#VishalBhardwaj
's new muse!
The long threads here dissecting the historical accuracy and realism of
#Heeramandi
, as informative and detailed as they are, feel to me a bit like zoologists analysing the talking fishes in Finding Nemo or botanists studying how a pumpkin turns into a carriage in Cindrella.
There you go
@FilmCompanion
@anupamachopra
. Take a long hard look and ask yourselves if you really want to platform such people on your much respected brand.
"Vishal Bhardwaj films are either bangers or outright duds"
Except even VB's "duds" have more to dissect & chew on than your avg "hit". Matru has a Brechtian subtext, Rangoon studies patriotism & subverts Casablanca, Pataakha reads as a striking analogy of the Indo-Pak conflict.
The closing 7min montage of
#Jubilee
is masterful, elevated further by the heartbreaking Saare Ke Saare Akele -
#AmitTrivedi
and
#Kausarmunir
's glorious homage to both Bichhde Sabhi Bari Bari & Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye, with Devenderpal Singh doing a new-age Rafi! Beauty!🥺❤️
1/8
A married Tamil woman, and her son, caught in a sticky mess until a strange man decides to help her out by pretending to be her husband?
Nope. Not the plot of Mr. & Mrs. Iyer, but of Swathi & Umesh in
#KillerSoup
, Abhishek Chaubey's delicious, twisted new broth on Netflix!
1/8
A married Tamil woman, and her son, caught in a sticky mess until a strange man decides to help her out by pretending to be her husband?
Nope. Not the plot of Mr. & Mrs. Iyer, but of Swathi & Umesh in
#KillerSoup
, Abhishek Chaubey's delicious, twisted new broth on Netflix!
@__Shashanksingh
@Memeghnad
Meanwhile Shashank Singh pays ₹900 a month to a free site for a blue tick that lets him pretend he is more important than he actually is. Tsk tsk
Aishwarya rambles a lot LOT in interviews. I've always loved her and some of her work is undeniably iconic but jeez it's a pain listening to her interviews. Too many words with nothing underneath. DP suffers from the exact same problem. And I love her just as much.
Revisited
#DevD
after ages
Dev's lawyer is named 𝐁𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐥 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐮𝐚 s/o 𝙎𝙖𝙣𝙟𝙖𝙮 Barua (ref SS)
🔹𝐁𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐥 Roy & PC 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐮𝐚 introduced Devdas to films!
🔹𝙎𝙖𝙣𝙟𝙖𝙮 is a likely nod to SLB whose Devdas
@VikramMotwane
(DevD's writer) assisted on
Such lovely nods!♥️
#AliaBhatt
has a school girl earnestness about her that I find very adorable. It's evident she puts work into her performances and even surprises like these. And that imo differentiates her significantly from the other girlies in her own or the current lot.
RK really struck gold.
It will never not be amazing to me how Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, which is astonishingly similar in terms of plot and themes, released just a year after Ek Hasina Thi. Two modern masters near-simultaneously working on similar material and delivering knockouts!
Annual reminder: Do not mess with Sarika Vartak. She is deeply vengeful.
Happy 20th to the film that ushered in the Sriram Raghavan era and gave us one of Urmila Matondkar’s top performances — Ek Haseena Thi
The first time I heard Kahaan Hoon Main, I remember being so startled by Jonita Gandhi. Here was a singer sounding both like Whitney Houston and Kavita Krishnamurthy in a sparkling, dreamy
#ARRahman
composition. That sparse opening still transports me somewhere far and beautiful.
What’s a still from a movie or TV show that will completely devastate anyone who has seen it, but seem completely unremarkable to anyone who hasn’t?
#Sairat
Both DP and Alia stans need to calm tf down. Not a day, nay, hour passes when they're not at each other's throats. These are 2 gorgeous, very talented women. Let them be. Pitting them against each other and spreading toxicity constantly is only bringing your fave more negativity.
thinking about the biggest downgrade in history is how both the songs are directed by sanjay leela bhansali but deepika padukone looked like a goddess serving cunt while alia bhatt who’s on a mission to copy her served burgers doing gymnastics
2/7
In
#Jawan
,
#Atlee
distills the narrative spirit of his guru Shankar, & Manmohan Desai; the anti-establishment rage from Nayak, Indian, Ghayal, & Rang de Basanti; and bottles it all in a dazzling comic book-style vigilante drama that still inexplicably feels inventive & fresh
5/7
Speaking of heroes, who is
#Jawan
's title alluding to? The women soldiers in
#SRK
's team, the retired army jawans, or the greying father who still acts jawan (young)? It's all of them, and none of them.
It is probably us, whom the film's climactic monologue is directed at.
3/7
#Jawan
's clever because it uses references and then flips them on their head. There's a Kaveri amma here, who is NOT the timid Gandhian from
#Swades
. This Mohan can hold the Agriculture minister hostage in his RV to lift the poor Dalit farmer Haridas' life out of poverty.
#LaapataaLadies
in the Anurag Kashyap Universe would have Phool & Jaya not lost but kidnapped and trafficked to two competing brothels with a bloody history of assassinations. Caught in a cycle of unending violence and mayhem, a kind cop (played by Nawaz) is their only hope.
'Laapata Ladies' in the Dharma Universe would have featured a Janhvi vs Sara dance-off on 'Ghoonghat Ki Aad Se 2.0' by Tanishk Bagchi feat. Neha Kakkar.
VIDEO | "Let them fight their battle. I don't know what's happening there, I just read in the newspapers. In the sports world, I realised one thing that you don't talk about things you don't have complete knowledge of," says
@SGanguly99
on wrestlers' protest.
Might watch
#Brahmastra
*IF* (and that's a really big if) the reviews and wom are good.
#AliaBhatt
hasn't made one misstep this entire year and regardless of my feelings for the trailer, I want this to work for her. 🤞