Latest news with #Nila
India Today
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- India Today
Are you a historian? High Court blasts Kamal Haasan for Kannada remark
The Karnataka High Court heavily criticised actor Kamal Haasan while hearing a petition filed by him seeking directions to ensure the release and screening of his upcoming film Thug Life in the M Nagaprasanna questioned Haasan's refusal to apologise for the statement, observing that it had hurt public sentiment. 'No citizen has the right to hurt sentiments,' the judge said, adding, 'Water, land and language — Jala, Nila, Bashe — are important to citizens. The division of this country was on linguistic lines.'advertisementHaasan's petition came after widespread backlash over his recent controversial remark, 'Kannada was born out of Tamil'. The comment sparked criticism from political leaders and protests by pro-Kannada groups across Karnataka. The judge criticised the actor's stance and remark questioning his responsibility as a public figure. 'No language can be born out of another. Where is the material to support this (claim)? And what has happened? Disharmony. And what have the people of Karnataka asked? (Only) an apology.'Justice Nagaprasanna also questioned Haasan's claim. 'The circumstances were created by Kamal Haasan, and he has said he will not apologise? You have undermined the sentiment of the people of Karnataka ... On what basis? Are you a historian? Or a linguist?'Appearing for the petitioner and representing the film's producer, senior advocate Dhyan Chinappa submitted that the actor's statement could be viewed by the court just once, and added that it was not intended to offend or that it was not so drastically this, Justice Nagaprasanna responded strongly: '(If you won't apologise) Why do you want the film to run in Karnataka? Leave it. Freedom of expression cannot be stretched to hurting sentiments of a mass. You apologise, then no problem. You want to earn some crores from Karnataka also.'The court also questioned the actor's decision to seek protection from the police despite having caused the unrest. 'Now you are here for a commercial interest, that police should protect for a situation created by you! One apology would have solved everything. In law, we will consider. But look at the attitude!'The court also observed that Haasan could have issued a clarification, saying, 'I have made a statement without looking into the history.' Recalling a similar incident, the judge said, 'Rajagopal Acharya had apologised for a similar statement decades ago. Language is a sentiment attached to people. You have said something to undermine that.'The High Court made these observations while hearing the petition, but is yet to issue a ruling on the petition, although has asked Haasan to consider apologising. The hearing was adjourned to 2.30 to the court's observations, Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister said, 'Hope Kamal listens to the court. But we also shouldn't be too adamant.' IN THIS STORY#Karnataka#Tamil Nadu
Pink Villa
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Latest Tamil movies to watch on OTT this week (May 26 - June 1): Retro to Seeran
This week, Tamil cinema delivers another round of stories on OTT. These films may not have created the noise like big-screen releases, but their stories hit just as hard. Perfect for those late evenings or lazy weekends, these picks are all about strong storytelling. So, settle in, scroll less, and let the screen take over. This week's Tamil releases are worth your time. Tamil movies to watch on OTT this week 1. Retro Cast: Suriya, Pooja Hegde, Jayaram, Nassar, Joju George, Prakash Raj Where to watch: Netflix Release date: May 30, 2025 Retro follows the story of Paari, a man burdened by his father's rejection. After his mother's death, he meets Rukmini and falls in love. On the other hand, he becomes part of her criminal empire but is treated as just a henchman. Wanting a better life, he plans to marry Rukmini and leave crime. However, a fallout lands him in prison and the film then follows his fight to reclaim his identity and abandon violence forever. 2. Nizharkudai Nizharkudai revolves around the lives of Lancy and Niranjan, an interfaith couple planning to move to the US. Their daughter, Nila, suffers from a rare condition that triggers seizures when she cries. Due to work pressure, they hired Jyoti as her caregiver. One day, Nila goes missing. As the mystery unfolds, secrets surface and lead to the shocking truth behind the child's disappearance. 3. Seeran Cast: James Karthik, Soniya Agarwal, Aajeedh Where to watch: Tentkotta Release date: May 30, 2025 Seeran tells the story of a young man from a caste-divided village. His family faces constant shame due to their lower caste. Tired of the mistreatment, he leaves for the city to build a better life. Through determination, he finds success and returns to his village to fight the injustice his family endured. 4. Virunnu The bilingual film, titled Virundhu, features dialogues in both Malayalam and Tamil. The story begins with the mysterious death of businessman John Kalathil. Soon after, his wife, Elizabeth, dies in a car accident. Before dying, she pleads with Hemanth to find a man named Balan. As he follows the trail, he gets pulled into a series of unexpected events. Stay tuned to Pinkvilla for more such stories!
Pink Villa
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Nizharkudai OTT release: When and where to watch Devayani, Vijjith starrer Tamil family drama online
Nizharkudai is a Tamil family drama that hit the big screens on May 9, 2025. Directed by Shiva Arumugam, the movie received mixed responses, but fans appreciated the performances of the lead actors, including Devayani. Now, within a month of its release, the film is set to make its digital debut. When and where to watch Nizharkudai Nizharkudai will start streaming on Aha from May 30, 2025. The announcement on the OTT giant's social media platform read, "She is BACK. #Nizharkudai premieres from May 30 on @ahatamil." Check out the official announcement post of Nizharkudai's OTT release below: Official trailer and plot of Nizharkudai Nizharkudai follows the story of Lancy and Niranjan, a young interfaith couple aiming to settle in the US. Their daughter, Nila, suffers from a medical condition that causes seizures if she cries too much. Due to their busy schedules, the couple often leaves Nila with caretakers. After facing issues with the first caregiver, they appoint Jyoti, a Sri Lankan refugee living in an old-age home. Jyoti quickly forms a strong emotional bond with Nila and becomes her primary caregiver. While the parents focus on their careers and visa processing, Jyoti provides constant support and affection to the child. The story takes a dark turn when Nila goes missing. An investigation begins, led by Inspector Ilavarasu. Several suspects are introduced. Eventually, it is revealed who kidnapped the girl and what the motive behind it was. Cast and crew of Nizharkudai Nizharkudai is produced by Jothishiva and directed by Shiva Arumugam, who also wrote the story. The film features a talented cast including Devayani, Vijjith, Kanmani Manoharan, Rajkapoor, Vadivukkarasi, Ilavarasu, and Neelima Rani. Himeshbala has penned the dialogues, while the music is composed by Naren Balakumar. The cinematography is handled by none other than RB Gurudev, with editing by Rolex. Vijay Anand serves as the art director, and Darshan takes on the role of creative producer. Stay tuned to Pinkvilla for more updates on upcoming OTT releases! ALSO READ: Tourist Family OTT Release: When and where to watch comedy-drama as it grosses close to Rs 60 crore in theaters
Time of India
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Nizharkudai OTT Release Date: When and where to watch Devayani and Vijjith's emotional Tamil family drama
Nizharkudai OTT Release Date: Devayani recently headlined this Tamil family alongside Vijjith, which arrived in theatres on 9th May. Written and directed by Shiva Arumugam, the film is finally ready to make its digital debut. Nizharkudai will be streaming on Aha Video starting May 30, 2025. Here's everything you need to know about the saga ahead of its premiere. Nizharkudai's cast and crew Produced by Jothisiva under his Dharshan films, this Naren Balakumar musical is cinematographed by RB Gurudev and edited by Rolex. Nizharkudai also stars Kanmani Manoharan, Raj Kapoor, Vadivukkarasi, Ilavarasu, Neelima Rani, Niharika, Ahana and Dharshan Siva among others. Nizharkudai's plot overview Nizharkudai follows Lancy and Niranjan, a young couple from different religions who are focused on building a life in the US. Their little daughter, Nila, has a medical condition that causes seizures if she cries too much. Since her parents are busy chasing careers and visa approvals, Nila is mostly left in the care of others. After a rough experience with one babysitter, they hire Jyoti, an older Sri Lankan refugee living in an old-age home. Jyoti has her own emotional baggage, but she quickly forms a loving, motherly bond with Nila. Her care and affection for the child feel genuine, and their relationship becomes the heart of the film. Meanwhile, the parents' constant arguments and neglect come across as forced and unconvincing. The story suddenly shifts gears when Nila gets kidnapped, creating a sense of urgency that feels a bit over-the-top. Inspector Ilavarasu starts an investigation, and in the end, the big reveal is that Nila was taken by her own grandparents, who meant no harm. Nizharkudai's review The Times of India rated the movie 1.5 out of 5, and a part of their review read, 'If you're looking for subtle storytelling, Nizharkudai might not be your first stop. Nizharkudai tries to tackle important themes like parental neglect and the sacrifices made for ambition. It was like a lecture disguised as a movie; even dramas can be fun, but this one was just preachy. In its eagerness to deliver a message, the film forgets that even the most important stories need to breathe.'
The Age
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Searching for your next read? Here are 10 new books
From medieval world-building and early 2000s nostalgia to a seminal study of Palestine and the cultural significance of one of our great rivers, this week's books traverse time, subject and genre. FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK The Pretender Jo Harkin Bloomsbury, $32.99 The Pretender takes us into a late medieval England dominated by violence and political intrigue. As the dynastic bloodbath of the Wars of the Roses draws to a close, Henry Tudor snatches the crown from the corpse of Richard III on Bosworth Field. Meanwhile, a farm-boy is groomed for power – yet another pretender to the throne. Raised John Collan, the lad is told he is not in fact a commoner but Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick. For his own safety, he must assume a third persona – that of Lambert Simnel – as he is shunted between unscrupulous powerbrokers jockeying for position in, and plotting to overthrow, the court of Henry VII. Jo Harkin reaches deeply into medieval (and classical) literature, language and thought in this rich novel that follows the fortunes of a character forced into three layers of identity. It's an unusually granular and imaginative act of historical world-building, attentive to the fabulism and flaw of history itself, and should appeal to fans of medieval fantasy as much as those who devoured Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. A classic love triangle morphs into more multidimensional, non-Euclidian emotional geometry as Erich Puchner's Dream State unfolds. It opens with preparations for matrimony underway. Cece is to be wed to a brilliant young doctor, Charlie. She travels to her in-laws' majestic lake house in Montana to finalise details, together with Charlie's best friend (and best man) Garrett, whose own prospects as a baggage handler at a provincial airport can't compare to the bright future Charlie has mapped out for himself. From there, the course of their lives unfurls over decades. They have children whose lives will be marked in enigmatic, fateful ways by their parents' decisions, and against the family saga, told with winning humour and poignancy, the world around them runs not just to the present day but into a starkly imagined future. Destiny and human agency, a progression from innocence to experience, and the grim fate of the natural environment haunt this expansive and engaging work, which has the scope of a Victorian novel while remaining breezily contemporary in tone and style. Daughter to two Afghan doctors who fled to Germany before she was a thing, Nila is seized by a perverse desire to ruin her life. Sex, drugs and hedonism beckon her to the nightclubs of Berlin. Nila begins a romance with a celebrated American author, Marlowe Woods, that was always bound to exoticise her, even as it nurtures her desire for artistic expression (for which Marlowe, predictably, takes too much credit). She becomes a photographer, as acute at capturing the contradictions and piercing moments of life as it's experienced through images as the novel's author – clearly a poet – is through words. Good Girl might be slightly over-realised, tying up too many loose ends and drumming home answers to thematic questions, but only after it has seduced and shocked with its delirious honesty, its refusal to succumb to received ideas about race and racism, say, or to reduce the countershading and complexity of characters usually portrayed as either good or bad. A coming-of-age novel thrumming with the complications and ironies of desire, from a writer to watch. The Book of Guilt Catherine Chidgey Penguin, $34.99 New Zealand novelist Catherine Chidgey has penned a diverse corpus of fiction – everything from Holocaust novels to a book featuring a magpie narrator – and her ninth novel consciously echoes Kazuo Ishiguro's most renowned work, Never Let Me Go. Like that book, it's set in an institution for children, and follows three of them – teenage triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William – as the institution they live in is mothballed by guilt-ridden bureaucrats. Released into the community, they meet another child cut off from the world outside and discover sinister truths unknown to them. The Book of Guilt departs from Ishiguro in more fully articulating a dystopian vision. The history of this alternate, Thatcher-era England includes the successful assassination of Hitler in 1943, a rapidly negotiated conclusion to the war, and the global embrace of unethical medical experimentation. Chidgey is also more overtly political in her approach, incorporating other voices such as that of a government minister. It isn't a terrible book, but no one who's read the Ishiguro will be able to resist unfortunate comparison. The length of the literary shadow is too long. Deep Cuts Holly Brickley The Borough Press, $32.99 An homage to indie music of the early 2000s wrapped in a romance, Holly Brickley's Deep Cuts sees two young characters enmeshed in a fruitful creative embrace long before love takes over. Joe and Percy meet at Berkeley – the former is an emerging singer/songwriter, the latter is, well, a critic, among other things. Percy recognises Joe's talent and collaborates with him to develop it, although she refuses credit on the album when it is released and Joe's career takes off. When Joe's girlfriend Zoe announces she's gay, the space opens for Percy to make a move. A simmering attraction is placed on the backburner, however, as Joe values their creative bond and friendship too much to risk a relationship. Brickley immerses the reader in period pop-cultural references, as the world turns from 9/11 to the election of President Obama. Her book should find a ready audience in Millennials with a taste for having their nostalgia buttons pressed, even if the romance plot itself is less exciting than the period colour, or Percy discovering her own voice in the face of frustrated love. NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Trails to Freedom Simon Tancred Hardie Grant, $39.99 On September 3, 1943 Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, effectively ending its involvement in the war. Prison guards in the north of Italy released their captives, drinking and celebrating with them. Among them were four Australian POWs, who, a few weeks later, walked into neutral Switzerland along medieval paths – the eponymous trails to freedom. It was no stroll in the park, the Germans weren't happy, and they had to be guided by brave partisans. Tancred, who first heard of the Australians' escape from a friend, was inspired to walk the same trails, and as he follows in their footsteps he skilfully incorporates the tales of the partisans, German atrocities and the story of his uncle, a POW who drowned in the Mediterranean after his transport was torpedoed by an English sub, Tancred granting him another fate and imagining he too took that walk to freedom. It's a fascinating account of dangerously topsy-turvy times in one corner of Italy, Tancred vividly evoking the countryside as he completes the walk, topping it with a rolled ciggie in his uncle's honour. The Question of Palestine Edward W. Said Text, $36.99 With the slaughter in Gaza going on and on, the re-publication of this seminal 1979 study couldn't have come at a more critical moment. What distinguished it 45 years ago, among other things, was the fact that for the first time a lauded Palestinian writer, writing in English, presented the Palestinian story to the West to widespread acclaim. It was not so much a history of the country, as an attempt to convey the Palestinian experience to a largely ignorant world. Said, who died in 2003, was a towering figure in critical theory, his landmark work Orientalism essentially putting post-colonial studies on the map. And that whole notion of the oriental Other underpins his thinking here, for it is the Orientalist lens that frames Western and Zionist thinking about Palestinians, ultimately 'de-humanising' them. Not an easy book for him to write, he covers a highly complex situation from 1948 (the establishment of Israel, and the displacement of Palestinians) up to Camp David – also including the reasons for his shift from favouring a two-State solution to a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian one-state solution. The writing, fired by passion yet calmly stated, is masterly. The River Chris Hammer MUP, $36.99 In the summer of 2008-09, when journalist and author Chris Hammer embarked on a series of journeys through the Murray-Darling Basin, a 10-year drought had dried up many of its waterways – and the 'mighty' Murray didn't have the oomph to flow into the sea. As he observes in this up-dated version of his 2010 publication, 'The dams are (now) full, the rivers are flowing', but it's largely due to the luck of the weather and will only take the pendulum to swing back and Australia's largest, most vital river system will once again be in dire straits. And although some things have changed politically, not enough has. The River, a compelling record of those drought days that seemed to bring the apocalypse with them, is just the antidote for the 'complacency' that has since set in. It's a highly evocative catalogue of mud-baked rivers, tragically laughable signs indicating mooring sites and properties going bust (he interviewed numerous farmers), which also incorporates the cultural significance of the river system. A literary warning bell, often very moving and still resonant. Sarah Arachchi's memoir about becoming a paediatrician is as much a migrant tale as a first-hand account of the varied experience of being a female doctor of colour in Australia. Born in Kandy, Sri Lanka, her parents (in response to the dangers of civil war) immigrated to Australia, fetching up in Melbourne. It was the start of a protracted tug-of-war between one home and another, often played out in a number of schools both state and private (courtesy of scholarships she won), where she was bullied – the recurring question being 'Where are you really from?' Added to this is the gender prejudice she's continually faced as a woman doctor. But what really comes through is the complexity, the juggling act of coming from two cultures, both of which she embraces – fiercely proud of her Sri Lankan heritage, and an Aussie girl who played cricket against the boys and had, it seems, a particularly fine sweep shot as well as a crush on Shane Warne. A plain speaking but emotionally charged rites-of-passage portrait. Unveiled Vincent Fantauzzo Penguin, $36.99 This memoir, by portrait painter Vincent Fantauzzo, recalls among other things his time growing up in the tough environment of the Broadmeadows/Glenroy area in the late 1970s and '80s. Fights were an everyday occurrence, not to mention the violence and neglect of his father (a troubled relationship reflected in the son's ambivalent feelings on his death). He is also dyslexic and was written off as a lost cause in all the schools he attended. But he could draw and paint, and at 16, painted Albert Einstein, for whom he developed an affinity because Einstein emphasised imagination over knowledge. The story ranges from Broady to Britain and New York (where he had the dubious distinction of meeting Donald Trump), back to Melbourne, marriage and children. There are some pretty grim scenes here – brawls, drugs and the occasional creative use of a baseball bat – but it's also a classic tale of a seemingly lost soul finding his life-saving métier.
