If Bigg Boss & Splitsvilla Had A Love Child...

Temptation Island India: If Splitsvilla & Bigg Boss Had A Baby

Real time thoughts on watching the hottest new entrant to the Colors Reality TV Universe.

“TEMPTATION ISLAND: Pyaar ka pariksha” — more like viewers ka pariksha. Okay, that’s a lie. I just said that to sound cool. Because I am watching this show. Voluntarily. For fun. I am not afraid to admit I love reality television. The trashier, the better. And so, I am willing to take one for the team of those who are intrigued but don’t feel inclined enough to watch. Don’t worry. I watched (and also opined, laughed, predicted) Temptation Island so you don’t have to. And here are my thoughts:

There was definitely going to be a slo-mo edit of Mouni Roy in a bikini. This is giving Sunny Leone entry shot in Splitsvilla on MTV vibes.

“Love. Ishq. Mohabbat. Pyaar. Duniya ki sabse powerful feeling,” Mouni Roy says while mock-bathing in a jacuzzi and making sexy faces. But there’s no sexualising of Karan Kundra. Why not? I believe he has a massive fan base. He is good looking. He is suave. Why is the onus of being the show hottie resting only on Mouni Roy’s shoulders? The nation wants to know.

Har love story ki shuruvat temptation se hoti hai. Essentially, couples will stay away from each other for 45 days on separate islands and there will be singles thrown into the mix to tempt them away from their loyal partners. Sounds like some good old reality TV drama. Sign-me-up.

— SWETHA RAMAKRISHNAN

The Actor Who Was Matthew Perry

Perry’s portrayal of Chandler Bing came closest to capturing the millennial angst of a world trying to figure its boundaries and its anchoring centre.

Read the companion piece to this column: The Man Who Was Matthew Perry.

“I TELL people things. It makes them like me,” Chandler Bing says in an episode of Friends. The premise for the punchline is built around the character’s inability to keep a secret, and crippling insecurities about being likeable. On paper, Chandler was possibly the least interesting character on the show, so bland and competent in being a measured adult, most of his demons had to be invented by the past. But in being as unremarkably goofy and persistent as he was, Matthew Perry’s portrayal came closest to capturing the millennial angst of a world trying to figure its boundaries and its anchoring centre. Chandler drew on the beats of sarcasm as that chirpy, unsure man-child, perpetually courting approval but he was also seeded in an affecting sense of vulnerability. An aspect of human nature we millennials have learned to embrace through men like Perry, playing twitchy, self-deprecating men like Chandler Muriel Bing.

— MANIK SHARMA

Stray: Here's Why The Film Adaptation Won’t Do Justice To The Hit Game

We're not feline it! The movie version of Annapurna Studio's game with its cat protagonist will lack a key element: you.

STRAY — the game — released on 19 July last year. Having tracked it since its first announcement trailer at the June 2020 PlayStation Showcase, you can be certain I set about playing it on Day 1. As I had observed for another publication at the time, the game was not particularly long (scaling around eight hours on a completionist run), was devoid of combat and dialogue, and was quite linear.

Why then did I describe it as ‘gaming nirvana’?

Further, why am I skeptical about its translation into the format of film?

And even further, why am I advertising this skepticism in the headline of this piece?

All of these, I assure you, will be answered in good time. Let’s first tackle the raison d’etre of this analysis. It was nearly two months ago that news began trickling in that the BlueTwelve Studio-developed and Annapurna Interactive-published Stray was set to be adapted as an animated feature film.

— KARAN PRADHAN

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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.