A Portrait Of The Artist As A Con Man |
Raj & DK transform the cop-chasing-criminal template into something far more nuanced and complex in their latest, Farzi. |
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| Cast: Shahid, Vijay Sethupathi |
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IT IS A FAMILIAR STORY. An artful offender is pitted against a troubled law enforcer. Both will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. A thin line separates them: not of morality, but legality. This is the premise of Farzi, the new series on Amazon Prime Video. But what is a Raj and DK show without nuance? The overused setting then becomes shorthand to depict a distinct strata of society, sandwiched between principle and purpose — the middle-class. Even this would be describing the outing loosely. The filmmakers — who have helmed one of India’s most successful streaming franchises (The Family Man) — have a more streamlined vision. Farzi is about a singular section of the middle-class, those who are fated to make a choice between greatness and fame: the gifted ones, the artists. More specifically, it is about the journey of one such artist who refuses to make that choice. — ISHITA SENGUPTA |
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The Man Behind The Fables |
The soul of The Fabelmans is Steven Spielberg’s rumination on the medium he became synonymous with. |
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| Cast: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano |
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WHEN THE MOST FAMOUS DIRECTOR on the planet turns the camera on himself, it’s not just an autobiographical film — it’s an autobiography of Film, too. It’s not just a personal story, it’s an ode to the personality of storytelling. It’s like watching the moment that cultivated our collective sense of time; it’s like seeing the past that shaped our language of flashback. The Fabelmans is a fictional account of 75-year-old director Steven Spielberg’s own adolescent years as a boy, brother, son and aspiring film-maker. The Jewish protagonist, Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle), falls in love with the craft of movies while recognising its art in the fall of his dysfunctional family. As Sammy navigates the slow-burning divorce of his engineer father and pianist mother — of science and art; of curiosity and spirit; of precision and madness — Spielberg marries his candour of living with the cinema of having lived. Nearly every scene of this memoir has existed in familiar disguises and identities on screen over the decades. — RAHUL DESAI |
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The one newsletter you need to decide what to watch on any given day. Our editors pick a show, movie, or theme for you from everything that’s streaming on OTT. |
| Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think is worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. |
| In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an hour on this. |
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