logo
Diary of a mad Mumbai housewife

Diary of a mad Mumbai housewife

Washington Post17 hours ago

Startling, dreamlike, frustrating, funny — Karan Kandhari's debut feature, 'Sister Midnight,' is an absolute original. Which doesn't mean this diary of a mad Mumbai newlywed doesn't have its antecedents and influences. In interviews, the British Indian director has spoken of his love for Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati, and the film's careful framing of explosively reactive slapstick evokes both classic film comedy and the deadpan precision of Wes Anderson. Yet there are darker sources that take 'Sister Midnight' in disturbing, elliptical directions reminiscent of Roman Polanski's 'Repulsion' and Ana Lily Amirpour's 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.'

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

The Switch 2's biggest game changer for old titles isn't its performance boost
The Switch 2's biggest game changer for old titles isn't its performance boost

Digital Trends

time4 hours ago

  • Digital Trends

The Switch 2's biggest game changer for old titles isn't its performance boost

With the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, I was initially focused on playing all the new Switch 2 launch games. Mario Kart World dominated my first day with the device, but I already had a list of original Switch games I wanted to return to on the newer hardware to see how they benefited from the improved hardware. Aside from the games with bespoke Switch 2 Editions, I was curious to see how big a difference the experience would be for these older games with improved stability and maybe a bit of a visual bump. As impressed as I was with how much better nearly all my old titles ran on the Switch 2, it is an accessibility option absent from the Switch that turned out to be the biggest game changer. Recommended Videos Accessibility on demand One of the driving criticisms of the Switch was its power. As the generation went on, the issues only became more prominent, with games like Pokémon Scarlet and Violet being prime examples of games that buckled to the point of breaking on the underpowered device. Third-party ports were especially downgraded compared to their PS5, Xbox Series, and PC siblings, and even Nintendo's best first-party offerings were starting to show cracks. The Switch 2's power is more than enough to brute force its way past almost all of those issues, even for games without dedicated upgrades or patches, but it doesn't solve the big issue I had with so many Switch games: the controls. I love the Joy-cons, and the Pro Controller is arguably my favorite modern gamepad, but those can't alleviate the lack of accessibility options in Nintendo games. There's a larger argument to be made for how far behind Nintendo is compared to the likes of PlayStation and Xbox for players with greater accessibility needs, but what always baffled me was how even the most basic options had been ignored. Specifically, I'm talking about remapping controls. There are tons of examples to pull from, but my personal biggest gripe was with Tears of the Kingdom. By default, the game maps the jump button to X and dash to B, which are the north and south buttons, respectively. That makes the act of dashing into a jump a particularly uncomfortable and unintuitive action, despite how frequently the player is likely to do it. The only alternative control scheme the game offers is to swap jump and dash, which in no way solves that problem. That leaves players to either remap their buttons on the system-level in the Switch options — assuming you know that is even available — or hope you eventually get accustomed to it. Playing these older games on the Switch 2 doesn't magically add fully rebindable buttons to old games, but it does make it much more convenient to work around it. Button remapping on the Switch 2 works nearly identically to the Switch, but with one key difference — the Quick Settings shortcut. By holding the Home button, you can bring up a few settings to tweak without having to exit your game and dig through the system menu to find them. By default, button remapping isn't included in that list, but if you take a moment to add it then you can give yourself a quick and easy workaround. Combined with the ability to save specific control schemes as profiles, jumping into a game like Tears of the Kingdom, swapping controls, and then going back to the default on the fly is about as good of a solution as I could hope for. It can't be understated just how much my experience with certain games was improved over my original playthrough once I wasn't fighting the controls. Compared to that, better frame rates and resolution are just icing on the cake. This isn't an excuse for future Switch 2 games to neglect this feature. For as much as Nintendo prides itself on creating experiences that are fun for everyone, its lack of accessibility options has always felt like a glaring omission. We're just at the start of the Switch 2 generation and have to see if this changes, but I hope this workaround isn't treated as a solution for what should be an expected feature in future Nintendo games.

How India's 'biggest art deal' buried MF Husain masterpieces in a bank vault
How India's 'biggest art deal' buried MF Husain masterpieces in a bank vault

Yahoo

time5 hours ago

  • Yahoo

How India's 'biggest art deal' buried MF Husain masterpieces in a bank vault

Nearly two dozen paintings by one of the world's most celebrated modern artists - once part of a record-breaking art deal - are set to hit the auction block for the first time next week. On 12 June, 25 rare MF Husain paintings will go under the hammer at an art gallery in Mumbai city, more than two decades after he painted them. This will be the first public glimpse of the paintings, locked away in bank vaults since 2008 after authorities seized them from a prominent businessman over an alleged loan default. "It's like the paintings have come full circle," says Dadiba Pundole, director of Pundole Art Gallery, where the auction is set to be held. Husain used the gallery as his studio for many of these works, part of an ambitious 100-painting series he never finished. Often called the "Picasso of India," he was one of the country's most celebrated - and controversial - artists. His works have fetched millions, but his bold themes often drew criticism. He died in 2011, aged 95. Titled MF Husain: An Artist's Vision of the XX Century, the 25 paintings at Pundole'a gallery offer a glimpse into his take on a transformative century shaped by leaps in technology, politics, and culture. Pundole has estimated that the auction could fetch up to $29m (£21m). This comes months after another Husain painting, Untitled (Gram Yatra), sold for an unprecedented $13.8m at a Christie's auction in New York, becoming the most expensive Indian artwork to be auctioned. The oil-on-canvas masterpiece had adorned the walls of a Norwegian hospital for almost five decades, forgotten by the art world, until the auction house was alerted about its presence in 2013. The latest paintings to be auctioned seem to follow a similar trajectory. Husain began working on them in the early 2000s, with great excitement and vigour, recalls Pundole. "When he was painting, nothing could disturb him. It didn't matter what was happening around him," he adds. In 2004, Husain sold 25 paintings to a Mumbai businessman as the first instalment of a billion-rupee deal. Kishore Singh, author of MF Husain: The Journey of a Legend, wrote about this agreement in the Indian Express newspaper. "He [Husain] wasn't jealous of fellow artists, but he was competitive," Singh writes, noting that Husain struck the deal soon after Tyeb Mehta's Kali [an Indian goddess] set a new record for India's most expensive painting in 2002, selling for 15 million rupees. Husain struck a billion rupees deal with businessman Guru Swarup Srivastava for this series of paintings. Media dubbed it "India's biggest art deal," catapulting the little-known Srivastava into overnight fame as a celebrity collector. But two years later, India's top crime agency, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), began investigating Srivastava's business, alleging he and associates had misused a loan from a government-backed agricultural body. The CBI alleged Srivastava diverted the funds into real estate, mutual funds, and Husain paintings. He and his company deny all charges; the case remains in court. In 2008, a tribunal allowed the government-backed agricultural body to seize one billion rupees in assets from Srivastava, including the 25 Husain paintings. In February this year, a court cleared the way for the paintings to be auctioned to recover part of the loan. And so, after years locked away in bank vaults, the 25 paintings are finally stepping into the spotlight. In a 2018 interview to author and journalist Tara Kaushal, Srivastava spoke about his stalled deal with the artist. "I had planned to pay Husain for the rest of the paintings by selling the first 25. But legal complications meant that, when Husain called me in 2008 saying the paintings were ready in London and Paris, and to pick them up at the agreed price, my funds were not ready. He understood," he said. Asked why Husain had chosen to sell his paintings to a person who almost nobody knew in India's elite art circles, Pundole says, "He didn't care. As long as his paintings were sold." There's no way to know how Husain felt about the failed deal or his unfinished 20th Century series - but the episode remains a striking footnote in his bold, eventful career. The 25 paintings in this series, vibrant acrylics on canvas, showcase Husain's bold style while reflecting key 20th-century events and social attitudes. One painting shows an unlikely group chatting on a bench, symbolising Husain's call for peaceful dialogue and coexistence among global powers. Another painting honours Charlie Chaplin while juxtaposing a rocket launch to highlight the contrast between social and economic disparities and massive state spending. Other paintings depict a world battling poverty, soldiers in trenches, and humanity confronting tragedies like World War Two, the Partition, and the Holocaust.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store