Diptakirti Chaudhuri's Blog

Disclaimer: I may have been involved in a professional capacity with at least one film in this list. But before you dismiss that as partiality, do note that the other reviews have been more effusive that my assessment.

Honourable Mentions 

Over the years, Avinash Arun has built up a very wide range of filmography - from Pataal Lok to School of Lies to Killa - that defies slotting him into any genre. As we wait for the second season of Paatal Lok in early-2024, he expanded his genre list further wi...

I read an alarming low number of books this year (damn you, Reels!) but still managed to find some amazing ones, which will remain with me for a very long time. I also suffered from an advanced case of tsundoku, and I promise to finish all* the books that remain precariously balanced on my bedside shelf. Let me see if I can delete Insta from my phone as a new year resolution.

5. The Miracle Makers - Bharat Sundaresan with Gaurav Joshi

India’s greatest Test triumph needed a chronicle to match. Sund...

In one fell swoop, I have combined all languages of the world - except one - and created this list. 

5. Barbie - Greta Gerwig

I was supposed to like the other film, right? Barbie was supposed to be the vacuous film I would take my daughter to, wearing pink and sneering at it? But when you have such a clever takedown of patriarchy, masculinity, corporate greed, human existence - all with a superhero(ine) operating in multiple universes, what’s not to like?

4. Decision to Leave - Park Chan Wook (Mubi...

As it turns out, ranking the shows I loved this year turned out to be most difficult - and there were so many that I loved a lot. 

Who cares? Here's everything I loved! 

Honourable Mentions 

Raj & DK disappointed this year. Guns & Gulaabs being a complete damp squib. As for Farzi (Prime Video), I am trying to remember when was the last time I enjoyed a film so much while still being a bit disappointed. The chemistry between Vijay Sethupathi and Zakir Hussain, the casual competence Kay Kay brings to...

My hopes of reading a few more books than last year got dashed by Netflix, Instagram and Twitter. I just about managed to hit my target (but not without some underhand tricks) and I end the year with hopes of reading more... next year.Here are my favourite five* books from the year.
5. Uttam Kumar: A Life in Cinema - Sayandeb Chowdhury
Uttam Kumar is that star whose roles have been recreated by at least nine Hindi film superstars, and yet he never succeeded in the Hindi film industry (despite his ...

After watching a lot of regional language content, I still seem to have missed out a truckload of them across languages. Blame it on time I wasted on Insta Reels! Here are my favourite five movies/shows in all languages other than Hindi.

Tied at the fifth place are three films that I couldn’t decide between. All of them have flaws, but they stand out nevertheless.
X = Prem (Bengali, Hoichoi) is a beautiful film borrowed from a Hollywood classic, but it turns the premise on its head. And the fact t...

2022 was the year everyone predicted Bollywood would die. And yet it didn’t.The leaping tigers of RRR, the ear-jangling entry scenes of Rocky in KGF Chapter 2, the romantic flutterings of Hridayam, and the prosaic messages of Pa. Ranjith couldn’t stop Bollywood from churning out five superhits and five critically acclaimed milestones that wiped out the fears triggered by the five high-profile duds.
I think if Bollywood can get Aamir Khan out of his PK-hangover and restrict Akshay Kumar to social ...

I finished reading Jayshree Sundar’s Don’t Forget 2004 on the first anniversary of a very unlikely electoral win of recent times. Not even its most passionate supporters gave Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress more than 170 seats in the (294-member) Bengal Assembly elections of 2021. TMC had won 210+ seats in the 2016 elections, and BJP threatened to – some exit polls predicted – halve that tally. It was supposed to be a BJP juggernaut all the way. 

Don’t Forget 2004 is a smoothly written, ex...

For no reason at all, a picture of Amrish Puri from a 1980s potboiler called Loha.
Thanks to the ever-growing need for content and the insatiable interest in Bollywood, listicles (how I hate this word!) are now at a point where they are being produced (or recycled) at a velocity higher than the audience can consume. Since the authors are only a tad older than Generation Z, these lists tend to have a very heavy post-1990s bias, with just a smattering of the all-time classics and no representation ...

      Image of fans watching DDLJ at Maratha Mandir by the legendary Danish Siddiqui  

My daughter has ‘discovered’ Hindi cinema with 83. A rousing sports victory, memorable characters and an episodic narrative are perfect ingredients for a Gen Alpha kid to love a film and she has lapped it up. This has come after a lot of sneering and eye-rolling at Hindi cinema (Yeah, Amar Akbar Anthony just didn’t work. Sigh.) but she has now professed her desire to watch a lot of Hindi films during her summer...