Tag: Vidya Balan

Vidya Balan files police complaint against unknown person for creating fake Instagram account in her name

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Actress Vidya Balan has registered a complaint against an unknown individual for creating a fake Instagram account, news agency ANI reported. Apart from using her name and pictures, the person running the account has also been asking people for money, the Kahaani actress alleged.

The Instagram account in question looks identical to Vidya Balan’s real ID. On Monday, Aditi Sandhu, the manager of the actress, filed a complaint under the Information Technology Act at the Khar Police Station, reported Free Press Journal.

The Khar Police have registered the FIR against the unknown person under Section 66 (C) of the IT Act and further investigation is underway, reported ANI. According to police officials, the accused has also created a fake Gmail account through which the Instagram ID is logged in.

Following the FIR, the Bhool Bhulaiyaa actress informed her fans about the case through Instagram stories. She also warned the fans and followers of such acts. Apart from that, she also asked her followers to block and report the said account, suggesting not to fall for anyone demanding money in her name, any further.

She wrote, “Hello everyone… first the phone number, and now someone is running an account in my name. From this account, he is contacting people with my name. My team and I have reported it. You should also report and block this account. This will be very good for us. He is talking to many of my friends and many of my people. Please don’t entertain it and report and block it,” on her Instagram story, reported India TV.

Vidya Balan has 9.2 million followers on her official Instagram account where she posts day-to-day life updates and reels.

A close contact from the film industry brought the fake account to Vidya’s notice. She was told that the person running the Instagram account was also conversing with people on WhatsApp, reported The Times of India.

The actress was last seen in Neeyat in 2023. She will next feature in the romantic comedy, Do Aur Do Pyaar alongside Pratik Gandhi, Ileana D’Cruz and Sendhil Ramamurthy. The film is scheduled to hit the theatre on March 29.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Remembering Pradeep Sarkar through his love letter of a film — Parineeta

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Writer, director, and ad-filmmaker Pradeep Sarkar passed away on March 24 at the age of 67. Though he is celebrated for making several popular Hindi films such as Laaga Chunari Mein Daag (2007), Mardaani (2014), and Helicopter Eela (2018), Parineeta (2005)—his directorial debut—continues to be the crowning jewel of his Hindi film career.

Starring Vidya Balan (in a memorable debut), Saif Ali Khan, and Sanjay Dutt in key roles, it’s the adaptation of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s 1914 Bengali novella of the same name. Sarkar sets the film in 1962 Calcutta; bolstered with N Natraja Subramanian’s poetic cinematography and Shantanu Moitra’s career-defining music, he gives the teeming metropolis the feel of a city lost in time, long forgotten, akin to a yellowed postcard tucked away in a frayed book kept in a quaint, old library that few frequent.

Calcutta is as much of a central character in the film as Lolita (Balan) or Shekhar (Khan); it is filmed just as prominently and with as much love. Swathes of the city feature not just physically but also through people’s sensibilities, clothes, language, customs, and everyday life. Be it the sprawling havelis in which Shekhar and Lolita live, them singing away Piyu Bole on a tiny boat cruising across Hubli under a luminescent Howrah Bridge, the young women’s love for confectionary from Flurys, their excitement about spending an evening at Moulin Rouge, them gorging on roadside puchkas with relish, or Shekhar and Lolita’s natural, organic, unshakable inclination towards music, Calcutta ebbs and flows in every frame, discourse, and conflict.

What is also striking about Parineeta is how closely it resembles Devdas, another Chattopadhyay classic, adapted to the screen several times, the most recent outing being Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s opulent 2002 tragedy starring Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and Madhuri Dixit. The barebones outline of the two films is the same—two childhood sweethearts in a dreamy Bengal torn apart by family’s disapproval. Although Bhansali sets his saga in a time much earlier, both love stories are rocked by pride, insecurity, jealousy, hearsay, and indecisiveness.

But one major difference sets them apart. The women of Devdas—whether it be Sumitra (Kirron Kher), Parvati (Rai Bachchan) or Chandramukhi (Dixit)—are a great deal bolder and better fleshed-out than the women of Parineeta. They are more fiery, edgy, and exercise ample agency even in a time and place as patriarchal as Chattopadhay’s Bengal.

There is a terrific scene in Devdas in which Paro visits Dev in his bedchamber at midnight, defiant and in love. Another in which she refuses to elope with him on her wedding night and gets married to a much older widower instead. Yet another in which she invites Chandramukhi to her Durga Puja celebrations fully aware of the havoc it might wreak, and one more in which she accepts her love for Devdas in front of her husband and mother-in-law. Similarly, Bhansali accords Sumitra and Chandramukhi several scene-stealing moments too, that establish them as indomitable forces of nature.

Meanwhile, even though she is the eponymous lead, Sarkar’s Lolita exercises her power in a more muted, subdued, roundabout way. Unlike Paro or Chandramukhi, she lets the men around her save the day. She waits, pines, conceals more than she reveals, and allows people to call her names, humiliate her, even assault her physically. Even if you look at the other women—Koel (Raima Sen) and Gayatri (Dia Mirza)—Sarkar uses them more as props than people, purely to further the plot. Koel wordlessly marries a man who is in love with someone else and we are never shown how Gaytatri reacts or what becomes of her after Shekhar decides to not marry her on their wedding night.

But even if Parineeta is no Devdas, it is not Kabir Singh (2019) either; far from it, in fact. When Shekhar hits Lolita in a crucial scene, you realise that on the surface, it’s the same as Kabir slapping Preeti, and yet, there is a world of difference. No, it has little to do with us living in the post-Me Too world of today, more “woke” now than we were in 2005 when Parineeta released. Even for a story set in 1962, Sarkar had the sensibility to denounce what is wrong. Hitting anyone in any setting, no matter the circumstance, cannot be right. But if you absolutely have to show it on screen, the filmmakers need to be extremely mindful of the gaze, the context, and the way they stage it. It makes all the difference.

This is why, even 18 years on, Parineeta, a story plucked from over six decades ago, continues to be timeless and the most precious movie in Sarkar’s filmography. Re-watch it for the incredible music, world-building, and the joie de vivre of a director daring to make his debut at 50.

Read other pieces by Sneha Bengani here.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Jalsa movie review: Vidya Balan and Shefali Shah are terrific in this edgy thriller on morality and motherhood

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Vidya Balan and Shefali Shah’s Jalsa is the kind of rare thriller in which the most pivotal event happens within the first 25 minutes. However, unlike Sriram Raghavan’s 2015 film Badlapur, it is a lot more than a philosophical revenge drama. The hit-and-run accident is just the starting point, the opening of a can so full of worms that they continue to spill even onto the last frame.

Jalsa is Suresh Triveni’s second Bollywood feature film. His first, the much-loved 2017 domestic drama Tumhari Sulu, was also headlined by Balan. However, Jalsa has a lot more in common with Balan’s other memorable outing, the sleek 2013 crime thriller No One Killed Jessica than it does with Tumhari Sulu. But this time around, the tables have turned. Balan is the journalist. She is the one wielding power. The kind that makes retired justices with dubious credentials nervous during live television interviews, makes her hoardings feature prominently in public spaces, and makes trainee journalists look up to her with stars in their eyes.

Her Maya Menon is the star—of her life and her channel WRD. She calls the shots both at work and at home which she shares with her mother and her 10-year-old son Ayush, a child with cerebral palsy. However, as hard as she may try, within the first 30 minutes, her life, much like a pack of cards, begins to come undone.

Jalsa is also a rare film in the way it juxtaposes two starkly different worlds through its two central women. One that’s rich, affluent, and powerful through Balan’s Maya. The other with all the grime, sweat, and toil through her cook, Shah’s Ruksana. As disparate as their worlds might be, the two women invariably share a lot in common. They are both proud working mothers, both stubborn, opaque, and both groping, trying to find some sense of semblance somewhere between black and white.

Both Balan and Shah are terrific as Maya and Ruksana, respectively. They hardly have any scenes together in the film but the two that they do are so brilliant, they make you question why it took so long to bring together actors as transcendental as them. The first happens around half-time. Set inside Maya’s kitchen, it’s so fraught with tension, you worry something or someone might explode. They are both hiding their truths and yet each wants to know what the other does. They are looking to vent out but they don’t know how to and so the gas stove becomes the excuse. Watch out for this scene. It’s arguably one of the most well-done—written, staged, choreographed, and performed—in recent memory.

The closing sequence is the second. The build-up to it is so intense, you wonder if you’d get a satisfactory release. The chances look grim. You can feel your breath, the time passing, your hold on your seat getting tighter. Shot in the dark, it has no dialogues. Just Maya calling out hopelessly as an impassive Ruksana sits on a rock at the beach, looking at the black sea.

Life is a lot about what happens to us but it is more about what we do with all that comes our way. It’s about conflicts we are faced with and the choices we make. Jalsa deftly treads the thin line between the two, blurring it all along. Triveni also deserves a special shout-out for not being lazy or unthinking about his portrayal of the sharp class divide. Ruksana’s son doesn’t use the same bed as Ayush during a sleepover, but he doesn’t sleep on the floor either. The two boys play video games together as equals. Ruksana is offered tea in the same mug as everyone else. Ayush even picks up a fight with his mother when she unfairly accuses Ruksana. Triveni’s gaze is full of dignity and the kind of sensitivity that includes, not others.

Jalsa is also rare in the way R Balki’s 2009 comedy-drama Paa was not. As much as I love the film and as much of a “casting coup” it was, it had Amitabh Bachchan play a child afflicted with progeria. Mercifully, Triveni makes no such mistake. Instead of hiring an able-bodied actor to play Ayush, Triveni has cast Surya Kasibhatla, a 10-year-old Indian-American from Texas who has cerebral palsy since birth. Now that’s a casting coup we’ve been long waiting for. Kasibhatla is delightful as Ayush.

Triveni’s Jalsa is as much about motherhood as it is about morality. Much like Tumhari Sulu, it brilliantly taps into the gamut of emotions that working mothers feel every day—guilt at their child’s slightest inconvenience in their absence, for not being around, insecurity when they get closer to their regular caregivers, and always trying to make up for the lost time.

As much as we may plan and organize, we can never anticipate how a jalsa would pan out, even if we are the ones hosting it. So many independent, unconnected elements are at play, each with their own story, shortcomings, and agendas that things often spiral out of control. Triveni’s Jalsa is just the same. At no point, you can tell with any surety what would happen next. Moreover, at no jalsa is everyone celebrating. This is the story of the ones who are not.

Read other movie reviews by Sneha Bengani here

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

10 years of Kahaani: Celebrating the Sujoy Ghosh film that gave Bollywood Parambrata Chattopadhyay

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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It’s been 10 years since Vidya Bagchi landed at Kolkata’s Kalighat police station to search for her missing husband. In the last decade, a lot has been said and written about in the praise of this brilliant Sujoy Ghosh thriller. And rightly so. Since its release, Kahaani has carved the kind of legacy all films aspire to but few achieve.

Though Vidya Balan had started to gain ground with films like Ishqiya (2010), No One Killed Jessica (2011), and The Dirty Picture (2011), it was her pregnant protagonist act in Kahaani that cemented her position as the lone female warrior who didn’t need any hero to get the box office rolling. The spark that she ignited then has caught on like wildfire.

Today, films with strong, independent, empowered female protagonists are getting funded by big producers and loved by even bigger audiences. Women’s stories have become the new currency. Take the last two months for instance. Looop Lapeta, Gehraiyaan, A Thursday, Gangubai Kathiawadi, Human, The Fame Game—all these much-talked-about projects, backed by gigantic studios and streamers, were fronted by women.

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Other than shifting the needle for women’s stories and paving way for a thriller franchise—its spiritual sequel Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh released in 2016 and Bob Biswas, a spin-off on its serial killer, released last year—Kahaani also accomplished another remarkable feat. It introduced Parambrata Chattopadhyay to Hindi movie-goers.

Mrs. Bagchi’s whodunnit would have fallen like a pack of cards in the first few minutes had she not found an aide, a confidante in Chattopadhyay’s Satyuki Sinha. He is to her what Krishna was to Arjun in Mahabharat. He’s the all-too-important saarthi, the chariot rider, the facilitator, without whom it’d have been impossible to make any progress, let alone hope to win.

Satyuki helps her with all the nuts and bolts needed to further her investigation. He’s a local cop and Vidya an outsider in a city where no one can get even her name right. Be it talking to the natives in Bengali, providing police protection, furnishing confidential government information, accessing police records, or establishing contact with informers, he assists Mrs. Bagchi with it all and more.

As a fresh recruit six months into the service whose nature of work hasn’t yet hardened him, Chattopadhyay’s Satyuki is endearing. It is his soft, cherubic, innocent presence that radiates a little light and hope in this grim revenge drama primarily shot across a Kolkata that’s dirty, dilapidated, dingy, and dangerous. Even though Kahaani was his Bollywood debut, not once does Chattopadhyay feel like the lesser actor in front of Balan. That’s because he had been acting prolifically in Bengali cinema for 10 years by the time Kahaani came his way. In fact, he’s been acting for much longer than Balan. He even co-starred with her in her debut film Bhalo Theko (2003).

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After the Sujoy Ghosh directorial, Chattopadhyay’s next notable Hindi outing was Prosit Roy’s 2018 supernatural thriller Pari. One of the most intelligent and richly contextualized Bollywood horror films of all time, it has him play Arnab, a bespectacled young man who accidentally runs his car over an old woman, killing her and making way for her daughter Rukhsana into his life.

Chattopadhyay’s Arnab is tender, restrained, and conflicted, as he constantly battles his feelings for Anushka Sharma’s Rukhsana, who he finds out is not human, not at least the way he is. The film is a thought-provoking commentary, highlighting that sometimes, humans can be the most heartless and barbaric of all demons.

Chattopadhyay next made the audiences sit up and take notice in Netflix’s 2020 film Bulbbul. Like Pari, this period thriller was also produced by Anushka Sharma’s Clean Slate Filmz. Directed by Anvita Dutt, he played Dr. Sudip, the only friend and well-wisher of the regional thakur’s young wife who is harboring a violent past and many a dark secret. Chattopadhyay doesn’t have a lot of screen time in this noir mood piece but he nevertheless steals the show in every scene he’s a part of. When the film ends, all you can think about is the gross cruelty, the injustice of it all, and Chattopadhyay.

Then came Aranyak in December last year. Chattopadhyay played a cop again, but his Angad Malik in this Netflix show was nothing like Kahaani’s Satyuki Sinha. Malik is the parallel lead to Raveena Tandon’s Kasturi Dogra, his colleague representing a different set of ideologies but conflicted just the same. The two work together, sometimes in tandem, other times at odds with each other, to find a killer at large.

Chattopadhyay is slowly but surely becoming the go-to choice for Hindi projects with strong female leads, courtesy his easy charm and unassuming acting prowess. It takes some solid sense of self and confidence in your craft to feature so effortlessly alongside Bollywood stars as he has been since his Bollywood debut 10 years ago. More so when he himself is a celebrity in Bengali cinema who has acted in over 60 films and directed six.

The 41-year-old actor-director is not unaware of this niche space that he has created for himself in Bollywood. Ahead of Aranyak’s release, he told IANS last year, “I think I just come across as someone who would be a very dependable and safe company to strong-willed women, trying to cut and make something for themselves. So, I think the roles have come to me, be it Kahaani, Pari, or Aranyak.”

Content with his thriving career in Bengal, he is extremely mindful of the Hindi scripts he says yes to. “There are two reasons for me to do few films in Hindi. I have my priorities here as I juggle a lot of hats. I make films myself, I produce content for my company and I have a lot of films as an actor here. That has always made me not leave my roots and settle in Mumbai,” he told PTI in 2020 ahead of Bulbbul’s release.

“Maybe I have missed out on some great opportunities but it is partly by choice and partly because of the consequences of the choice I made. The Hindi films that I have done or I will do in the future are handpicked and have come from directors who want to work with me. That’s mainly how it has panned out,” he added.

Walking the talk, he reportedly turned down a role in Karan Johar’s upcoming Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani starring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt since he felt it didn’t have anything interesting to offer. Now that’s real power. When one actor from regional cinema finds footing in Bollywood, it opens the doors for several others.

Diljit Dosanjh and Dhanush are other towering examples that immediately come to mind—regional stars who have done some terrific work in Bollywood and made the world of Hindi cinema richer by their staggering talent. But Parambrata Chattopadhyay was among the first ones in the current crop of actors. And it all started with the story of a hapless pregnant woman trying to find her missing husband.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow