total timepass...

'And then there were none' is an Agatha Christie whodunit play. Its already been made into a Hollywood movie as well as a Bollywood one. So when I got an opportunity to see the play in the theatre, I was expecting it to be not as entertaining as if I hadn't known the story. And how wrong I was!! The play we saw was in Leeds (and I must say the theatre was quite grand and larger than some of the ones I have gone to in London). The setting of the play is 10 'little soldiers' who all land up in an empty house on an island off Devon in the UK. They were all conned into coming there in a suspicious way. They are get stuck there, isolated and unable to get off the island. And then suspicious things start happening. Also, each of them is accused of having abetted a murder which they all deny in the beginning but somehow seems to be connected to their being on the island itself. Slowly, as the story unfolds, one by one, all of them start getting murdered. And as we lea...

I recently saw the play ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ (hopefully I got the name right!) and I am still trying to figure out my views on it. We went in thinking it would be a light hearted mystery play and it was anything but that. The option we had passed on was ‘The Book of Mormons’ and I think that also had a part to play in the fact that I wasn’t impressed:). The play starts with the murder of a dog, and the neighbour autistic boy Christopher gets involved in it. The play is then onwards about Christopher - a teenager staying with his father and whose mother is dead. He is shown as a relatively intelligent boy, but with his own social problems. He is obsessed with finding the truth about the dog, and on the way, he uncovers secrets about his own family - about his father and his mother. But more than that, this journey helps him discover himself, his strengths and what all he is capable of. I generally don’t like movies and plays which are about rediscove...

I have an existing bias towards thick books - an inherent assumption that they have something more substantial and concrete to say. Sense of an ending is the best example of why my bias is completely biased and incorrect:). Sense of an ending is a very thin novel, or a novella as they say. It recounts the story of Tony, an old man now as well as his school friend Adrian and ex-girlfriend Veronica. The tale is in Tony's own words and covers a period of more than sixty years. The story is split into two parts, the first details Tony's childhood friendship with Adrian and his doomed relationship with Veronica. And the second part details circumstances where Tony and Veronica come in contact again, interact again, open old wounds; all this uncovering a different version of the first part of the story. I can write about the book's story but that would spoil the pleasure of discovering it yourself, for all who may want to read it sometime. Suffice to say, the story is slow,...

(Spoiler alert) I hadn't watched the original Tanu Weds Manu and so had no context of what to expect. And I think that was a good idea, I went in the theatre with no first impressions, and came out completely shaken. What a movie! I do have some issues with it, but to be honest they are my own. The movie by itself was amazing and a must watch. TWMR (couldn't they think of a more creative name?) starts 4 years after the marriage of the boring UK doctor, Sharmaji with the fiery Tanu from Kanpur. Their marriage has soured so much that Tanu gets Manu put into a mental asylum and returns back to Kanpur. At this point you would assume that their marriage is over, and that is where you are wrong! When they both come back to India, the movie is a riot. Manu goes completely overboard with trying to get over Manu - acts crazy, flirts with her ex-boyfriends, paints the town red with their renter and god knows what all. She is just so crazy, you are never sure what she is capable o...

Piku is a tough one. To be honest, the movie is well crafted - the dialogues are individually funny, the acting is top class (Irfan and Amitabh as expected, and Deepika upping her game) and the story flows well too. But something doesn't add up! Piku is the story of a Bengali girl, Piku and her father, Bhashkor da. Her father has constipation problems and hence behaves like a difficult person - loud, irritating, eccentric, quarrelsome and so on. So in one word - highly irritating. Piku loves him and takes good care of him, but it also means balancing her own life is tough for her. Finding a boyfriend, getting married, being on a date, work et al. And so she acts as tough and difficult as her father. Then of course, is her colleague Syed; the local taxi owner (and the only normal person in the movie), Irfan - whose taxi drivers refuse to drive Piku anywhere! and Pike's aunt, Moushmi Chatterjee who provides entertainment with her very multiple marriages. All these character...

Its been a year of very different and interesting movies I must say. Byomkesh Bakshy, Piku and now Tanu wed Manu returns. Some may disagree with the last one, but I found it to be a class apart from the regular Bollywood fare. Anyways let me start with Byomkesh Bakshy - the movie blew my mind away. I went in with a clean slate, I had managed to not see any trailer and no idea at all about the look and feel of the movie. And for me, that turned out to be the deal clincher. Of course everything other than the look and the feel was perfect too, the characters, acting, story, music, dialogues. It all came together so perfectly. The story is about a new age detective in Calcutta, Byomkesh Bakshy. With his sweetheart getting married to someone else, he focuses his attention on finding out who killed Ajit Babu's father. This search takes him to Dr. Guha's guest house, the local politicians Sikdar & Sukumar, a Japanese temple, the local cantonment, a chemicals factories, Chin...

We recently saw a play called 'Dara' at the National Theatre in London. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. Dara portrays the struggle that had taken place between Shah Jahan's eldest son, Dara and his youngest son, Aurangzeb for the Mughal crown. We all know who had won, but most of us don't know how he had won it. This play is a story of what had happened between the two... Dara had been his father's favourite forever, his chosen heir. While Aurangzeb had always been one of the other sons, younger and ignored. This childish rivalry had taken the shape of adult hatred, to the point that Aurangzeb killed Dara and enslaved his father for years to get to the crown. The play details scenes from their childhood to adulthood; interactions between the brothers, with their sisters and father; of Aurangzeb's love for a Hindu woman; his getting together with his brother Murad to beat Dara; Dara's running away but getting caught due to his naivete; and then Aurangzeb ...