Welcome to Season 2 and The Jeff & Ishan Show (he passed the audition in December). This month, we review the family drama The Mehta Boys (UA 13+) and its outstanding performances. Our original theme music by Ano Malee.
It’s a slow burn. And in a way, I appreciated that because it avoided cliches. This is not a Bollywood romance, and I thought that was great about it...There are some strong family themes and parts that were super serious but woven through was also the comedic aspect.
Shuvam’s on vacation in India this month so guest co-host Ishan and I closed out the year by reviewing the Hindi-language film Khel Khel Mein, a hilarious romantic comedy about brutal honesty in the digital age.
It’s like The Hangover meets Glass Onion…This group of friends all come together and decide to play a game where everyone’s phones are public . . .You can guess how everything’s going to quickly go horribly wrong, but you can’t. You couldn’t guess. That’s one thing I loved about the movie.
– The Jeff & Shuvam Ishan Show
Dive into our review below. Our blinky Santa hats are widely available in the US but these two are important to us because we bought them on the street in Kolkata (Park Street and New Market) during various trips when we happened to be there in December. We treat them like gold!
Woohoo! Colossal congratulations to my friend, colleague and fellow FulbrighterAbhijit Chowdhury, Concept Cube, Fourth Floor Entertainment and the entire cast and crew of The Strange Life of Dhrubo for rocking the Kolkata International Film Festival’s National Competition, Bengali Panorama category. Can’t say I’m surprised but I love hearing the news.
And it keeps on rolling. Congratulations, Abhijit Chowdhury and team, producers of The Jeff & Shuvam Show, for their latest feature film The Strange Life of Dhrubo making it into the prestigious Kolkata International Film Festival. I’ve seen it but I wish I could watch it on the big screen in the City of Joy.
This month, Shuvam and I review the Hindi-language film Sector 36, a police thriller about a serial child killer streaming now on Netflix. Loosely inspired by true events surrounding the Nithari case, it led us to a much deeper conversation than in our usual reviews including discussing the RG Kar rape case, the Atlanta child killings, the French gang rape case and the politics of caste and religion.
It has a lot of layers. It talks about caste politics, religion politics, and the patriarchal side of society. Deepak Dobpriyal is known to play comedy roles but this movie has given him an opportunity to really shine. Vikrant Massey has also done something which he has never done before. So, kudos to both of these great actors . . . The film keeps the police thriller genre fresh by placing a real life social issue in the middle of it, which is that the police and the media are not interested if it’s a poor kid.
