telltale: my take on what I watch on screen

  Across the world, many cases of sexual assaults go unreported. In India, as per a study, these could be as high as 99% of the cases. Similar studies in the United States suggest that these cases are grossly under-reported. One of the most cited reasons among many is the lack of trust. We tend to blame the overall system for this dreadful situation. However, the first two episodes of Unbelievable are enough to give you a glimpse on why the people who are part of the system are equally to be blamed. Unbelievable opens with 18-year old Marie Adler being raped by a person who breaks into her apartment. She reports this to the cops only to be disbelieved by them. Cops with pre-conceived notions about her, based on what they read in her background file, dismiss her case assuming she is false-reporting. In the second episode, there is another victim of sexual assault – and we see a different detective handling the victim in a complete opposite manner wherein she is comforted. As a r...

Whodunnit murder mysteries – is a genre which has been a favorite of story tellers and audiences since ages. Our minds immediately associate this with Sherlock Holmes, Perry Mason or Hercule Poirot. Despite watching and reading a lot on this subject, it continues to evoke interest. A plot where a murder happens and a detective investigates to find the killer – that’s how simple the basic premise of stories in this segment are usually. What makes it work is that it does not turn out to be as simple as it seems and far more interesting than it sounds.   Streaming now on Netflix, is one such story, where an inspector investigates a patriarch’s death after a family gathering gone wrong. No, I am not talking about Knives Out, another brilliant movie starring Daniel Craig with a similar plot. I am describing the plot of Raat Akeli Hai , starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui who plays an inspector investing the murder of an influential person in a small town in UP. The victim is murdered in hi...

Finally, Season 3 of Dark is here... streaming on Netflix.... the wait is over. However, anyone who has watched the first two seasons know that keeping up with various characters and their timelines is not an easy job. A year has passed since the last season dropped and one hardly remembers the minute details of it. To prep myself for the latest season, I decided to draw up a chart of my own to recap all the events that have taken place in Winden until now. The result of that is the image you see below (#spoiler alert - given that its a recap of season 1 and 2). Its a labyrinth and rookie mistake on my part to assume that a small sheet of paper would be enough. Have a go at it.. though I doubt you'd be able to make much out of it, given both the complicated plot and the terrible handwriting. Enjoy streaming the final season of this intelligent series. Cheers.

At some point in our lives, most of us would have suffered from performance anxiety. It could have been while performing in a school play when you were a child, just before an important meeting / presentation or even in bed while having sex. The field of sports is filled with examples of strong teams and players choking when it matters most. While reading this, I am sure all cricket fans are thinking of South Africa. It isn't unique to any one of us. What matters is how you move on and that defines you as an individual. Anurag Kashyap's latest - 'Choked: Paisa bolta hain' - on Netflix is about an incident of performance anxiety that affects the direction of one's life. Sarita, played by Saiyami Kher, is a working woman who handles household chores along with earning for a living. Her husband Sushant, underplayed well by Roshan Mathew, is unemployed and refuses to be of much help at home. Sarita is haunted by an incident in her past where she choked an...

Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana, Ratna Pathak Shah, Deepak Dobriyal, Vijay Raaz, Saurabh Shukla… the list goes on. They are not heroes in movies; this is list of ‘Kalakaars’ (Artists). These are so called supporting actors without whose support the movies they act in will never be the same. However, hardly any of them ever get the recognition they deserve. ‘Har kissi ke hisse: Kamyaab’, now streaming on Netflix in India, is a call for attention to such supporting character actors. The movie, directed by Hardik Mehta, stars Sanjay Mishra – another one of those actors who belong to the above list. He plays the role of Sudheer, a successful supporting actor who is now past his heydays. As an actor, he has played every supporting role one can imagine mouthing (the now cliched but then popular) dialogues from the 80's and 90's. Realizing that he has done 499 movies in his career which ended abruptly, he wants to act in one last movie to complete 500 movies and ...

Remember the scenes on the streets when India announced a nationwide lockdown in response to pandemic crisis. People rushed out to stock essentials fearing they may not be available later. And people bought more than they required resulting in stocks running out. This led to few people having more than they required and most having less or nothing. The optimal behaviour in such a situation would have been to stay calm and buy only what one needs. However, this works only if everyone in unison exhibits this same behaviour. Fear that some would opt to hoard leaving others stranded, leads to most people opting for a not so ideal solution to avoid regret. Changing the strategy from not hoarding and buying only what one need when they need, in absence of others following suit, will result in no additional gains. As defined in Game Theory, this is the Nash Equilibrium – a solution of a non-cooperative game where no player has anything to gain by changing only his/her own strategy....

Trust, talking and truth - Words said by Jean Millburn (Gillian Anderson) in the premier episode of season 2 - is an apt representation of season 1 of sex education which dropped on Netflix in 2017. Teens trust a kid in their class and talk to him about sex related issues who in turn speaks the truth to them. As a plot-line, this was refreshing and funny. The creators kept it simple. Season 2, however, expands the scope beyond this and it's three central characters - Otis, Maeve and Eric. In terms of the story, Season 2 picks off from where season 1 ended.  As the school break gets over, Otis Millburn (Asa Butterfield) - the sex kid - and the rest of the class are back to Moordale High. Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackay) is back too albeit without the dash of pink hair which drew comparisons of Emma Mackay with Margot Robbie. The sex clinic is up and running as well saving the day for hundreds of helpless horny kids. But this time around they have competition from Jean, Otis...