Is Kannada Cinema Streaming's Stepchild? |
Publicly and privately, Kannada filmmakers have been voicing concerns over the shrinking OTT space available to them, reports Subha J Rao |
“A KANNADA FILM for acquisition? Chhee, who is watching Kannada cinema?” followed by a shrug — this is the reaction the director of a recent Kannada film got from a decision maker at a prominent OTT platform. Another suggested he should have made the film in Malayalam, in which language it might have fared better. While Kannada filmmakers have been flagging — both in public and private — the shrinking OTT space available to them, this latest interaction is possibly the crudest that one of them has faced. “I judged everything I did. I wondered why I’d made a film, why I had to wait to hear from a team that had zero empathy or understanding of my film and arrived at this conclusion without even watching the film in the first place. I questioned every choice of mine (sic),” says the director, who requested anonymity. Like him, many other young filmmakers I spoke with about this issue preferred to keep their names off the record, simply because if they were to make a second film, they would have to go back to the same OTT platforms to ensure their films live on online and find their audience. Over the past couple of years, young Kannada filmmakers have been plagued by two overwhelming thoughts: will their film find a theatrical release window, and will their film find a home on a streaming service. The former, while formidable, can still be managed; the latter, however, is a steep mountain to climb. These filmmakers are simply unable to score meetings with the big OTT set-ups, and when they do manage that, they’re told there isn’t a budget for Kannada content. |
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Wim Wenders' Perfect Days, And The Imperfect Solace Of Solitude |
This is #ViewingRoom, a column by OTTplay's critic Rahul Desai, on the intersections of pop culture and life |
OVER THE YEARS, I’ve learned to like my own company. I’m at ease when I’m alone. My head feels like a semi-furnished home where the furniture keeps shifting; where the space keeps renegotiating its relationship with old and new objects. It’s intense and inert in equal parts, but it’s a home nonetheless. My mental demons are so domesticated that they wear pyjamas to sleep every night. In other words, I like thinking: overthinking, underthinking, imagining, assuming, remembering. I’m comfortable with silences, awkward and loaded. I’ve built my life around sustaining this attachment to myself. In my work: I write about movies from home. In my leisure: I swim, walk and travel solo a lot. In my bonds: My partner is also an introvert. Even in my isolation: I’m not addicted to technology, but on the days I am, I use it to watch other portraits of isolation — like wordless trekking, camping and mountaineering videos. Lover of classics or consumer of all that's new, we've got you covered. Subscribe to the OTTplay Premium Jhakaas monthly pack, for Rs 249. So when I started watching Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, I felt both seen and restfully invisible. At first, the film looked like an uncanny window into my future. I knew I’d grow old(er) to be Hirayama, the 60-something public toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose seclusion unfolds like an analogue ritual in a digital world. It’s almost as though he turns the concept of urban isolation on its head. He lives alone in an ungentrified neighbourhood. He wakes up at the crack of dawn, and his body embarks on an expedition of muted muscle memory: brushing, dressing, smiling at a sunless sky, soda from the vending machine, drive, music in the van, work, lunch sandwich, photographs of reflected sunlight and trees, post-work soju, cycle to local bathhouse, read, dinner, sleep. He treats everyday as a perfect day — perfectly similar, perfectly felt, perfectly content, perfectly familiar and new at once. |
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Like A Dragon: Yakuza | All You Need To Know About The Franchise |
Karan Pradhan compiles a cheat sheet to bring you up to speed before the highly anticipated video game adaptation premieres this October on Amazon Prime Video |
AT THE END of July, Prime Video dropped its first teaser for Like a Dragon: Yakuza, the live action show based on SEGA’s long-running series of action-adventure, brawler, role-playing game series, Yakuza/Like a Dragon. For those not in the know, the nearly-20-year-old video game franchise revolves around the life and times of Kazuma Kiryu — a fictional character who has risen up the ranks of the Yakuza and then retired for a life of peace and quiet. But trouble and his past links to the world of organised crime are never too far away. Over the years, the series has produced 23 games and reportedly sold approximately 21 million copies. In news that should keep series loyalists happy, at least one of the episodes of the show is being written by Nagoshi Toshihiro — longtime writer and wearer of many hats for the video game series. And Yokoyama Masayoshi, writer (including scripts) and producer for a majority of the games is on board as executive producer. |
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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. | |
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