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Time of India
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Kubbra Sait's birthday celebrations spark relationship rumors
Kubbra Sait celebrated her birthday peacefully in Mandwa village before 'Son of Sardaar 2' releases on August 1. She shared photos of her relaxing morning, birthday cake-cutting with rumored partner Akash Mehta, and coastal moments. Kubbra stars as Mehwish in the film directed by Vijay Kumar Arora. Kubbra Sait , widely recognized for her role as Kuckoo in the Netflix series 'Sacred Games', celebrated her birthday on July 27. Known for her diverse performances, Kubbra is set to star alongside Ajay Devgn in the eagerly awaited film 'Son of Sardaar 2'. The comedy-drama, a sequel to the 2012 blockbuster 'Son Of Sardaar', is scheduled to release in theaters on August 1. Kubbra Sait's peaceful birthday celebrations in Mandwa Village The actress enjoyed some peaceful moments in Mandwa village, Alibaug, before the release of 'Son of Sardaar 2'. She posted a collection of photos and a video on Instagram, sharing with her followers how she marked her birthday surrounded by the quiet coastal beauty. Kubbra Sait's relaxed moments and morning meal The 'Sacred Games' actress was seen relaxing comfortably in a garden, lounging on a chair with a laid-back vibe. She wore a loose pink vest matched with vibrant green shorts, her hair styled up. In some photos, she admired the garden's picturesque beauty, while in others, she was busy scrolling on her phone. Her breakfast consisted of fresh sliced fruits accompanied by a warm cup of beverage. Kubbra Sait's birthday celebration with rumoured partner Kubbra's rumored partner, Akash Mehta, appeared in a video where they celebrated her birthday together at a restaurant. In the clip, she blew out a candle and joined in the cake-cutting ceremony, both smiling brightly. The remaining photos show Kubbra's love for animals, her delight in Mandwa's coastal beauty, and her enjoyment of a food-filled getaway. She captioned her post, 'Spent my birthday exactly the way I once envisioned it. Light and love.' Kubbra Sait's role in 'Son of Sardaar 2' In 'Son of Sardaar 2', Kubbra will be seen playing Mehwish. Directed by Vijay Kumar Arora, it also features Mrunal Thakur as the female lead alongside Chunky Pandey, Ravi Kishan, Sanjay Mishra and Mukul Dev.
News18
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- News18
Did Son Of Sardaar 2 Star Kubbra Sait Confirm Her Relationship Status In Birthday Post?
The first few snaps capture Kubbra Sait lounging on a chair in a garden. She exuded easy-going vibes in an oversized pink vest and a pair of love green shorts. Kubbra Sait, best known for her role as Kuckoo in Netflix's Sacred Games, celebrated her birthday on July 27. The actress. Kubbra is a name synonymous with bold and versatile characters. She will next be seen opposite Ajay Devgn, in the much-awaited movie Son of Sardaar 2. The comedy drama, which is the sequel to the 2012 hit Son Of Sardaar, will arrive in the silver screens on August 1. Ahead of Son of Sardaar 2's premiere, Kubbra Sait spent some downtime at Mandwa village in Alibaug. She has posted a bunch of pictures and a video on Instagram showing fans how she spent her birthday. Kubbra Sait's Alibaug Getaway The first few snaps capture Kubbra Sait lounging on a chair in a garden. She exuded easy-going vibes in an oversized pink vest and a pair of love green shorts. Her hair was done in an updo. Kubbra enjoyed the scenic views from the garden in one frame and was scrolling on her phone in the next. Her morning meal involved sliced fruits and a cup of beverage. Kubbra Sait Posts Video With Rumoured Partner Kubbra Sait's rumoured partner, Akash Mehta, featured in one of the videos. In the clip, Kubbra was seen celebrating her birthday with him at a restaurant. The actress blew out a candle and took part in the cake-cutting ceremony. The duo had big smiles on their faces. The rest of the photographs showcase Kubbra Sait being an animal lover, soaking in Mandwa's coastal charm and enjoying a gastronomical escapade. Her side note read, 'Spent my birthday exactly the way I once envisioned it. Light and love" View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kubbra Sait (@kubbrasait) Ajay Devgn's Birthday Wish For Kubbra Sait Ajay Devgn wished his Son of Sardaar 2 co-star, Kubbra Sait, on her 42nd birthday. The actor dropped her film poster on his Instagram Stories and wrote, 'Kudi, tu hamesha nachdi phire! Janam din di lakh lakh vadhaiyan saddi Mehwish nu (Girl, may you always dance around! Wishing our Mehwish tons and tons of birthday blessings!)." Kubbra Sait In Sor Of Sardaar 2 Kubbra Sait plays the role of Mehwish in Son of Sardaar 2. The film, directed by Vijay Kumar Arora, also features Mrunal Thakur as the female lead alongside Chunky Pandey, Ravi Kishan, Sanjay Mishra and Mukul Dev. First Published: Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Scroll.in
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘Gunboy': A Bombay underworld novel that falls a little short of the depth it demands
To me, the pleasure of reading good noir, written well, with style and substance, with attention to both the physical details as well as what they add to the characters being presented to us, a noir where you know the language deployed is deliberate – tough, peppered with well-observed similes, effortlessly but carefully building its world, offering crackling dialogues to drink from – for me the pleasure of reading such a novel trumps almost every other reading pleasure. And the better if that noir is set in India, written by an Indian writer who knows where they are taking us and what they are doing on the page, and why – though such an Indian noir, I must admit, is a very rare commodity indeed (Sacred Games is the GOAT, as they say; but Tanuj Solanki's Manjhi's Mayhem and Nilanjana Roy's Black River are two good recent examples; as also novels by Ankush Saikia, a criminally underrated writer who has written about half-a-dozen, all worth your time). Shreyas Rajagopal's Gunboy is almost that novel. Almost. You could see it getting there in its opening pages, which describe the twin emotions that come to the victims of bullying – unbearably fearful and isolating loneliness, coupled with an intensely imaginative desire for vengeance – with such vivid and tender detailing that I was sure this book would give words to what I imagine was every bullied victim's desire in their troubled adolescent: to grow up dangerous and powerful, to settle scores with their tormenters with a slight smile hovering over the edge of their lips, thinking but not saying: remember me? In nowhere land The bullied boy in question here is Arvind, a 'South Indian', who, along with his friend Sudipto, a Bengali, is harassed by his influential seniors at school, apparently because they are outsiders. The seniors are not just influential within the school premises, but also in the town in general, courtesy of their leader, Jaggi Ranade, and his father, who is a politician in a factory town called Rannwara, somewhere in the 'dusty, lawless hinterland' of India – but where, exactly? There are descriptions on offer, but they don't help situate the town, or the action. We guess the town might be in Maharashtra because in Marathi, its name translates to fields and winds, and there are characters with Marathi surnames. But the texture of the town – there's Hotel Jaipur here, for some reason – seems hardly hinterland Maharashtra, and for the longest time into the novel, I wasn't sure what to make of the place and its politics. While there are a lot of descriptions of action, of where the action is taking place, of why the action is taking place, they lacked the insight of experience and observation. This could have been any town in any part of this country and it wouldn't have made any difference. All of which is to say that while Rajagopal has a grip on some of his characters, he has a tendency to be aloof about the smaller stuff that ends up adding to the fourth dimension of the book, so to speak, particularly in such stories. Take, also, for instance, the Gun in question. This gun, called the Gun by everybody who has ever possessed it – including a builder, I think, and a hitman, and the aforementioned Arvind – has metaphysical aspects attached to it, which at a certain point attain the proportion of the Elder Wand. Passed on, unwillingly; possessed, powerfully. The Gun is a mythical thing, a mystical object, but it is actually just a Beretta 9mm, its 'custom sleeve with engravings of cool chrome, the custom grip finished in enamel and gold, the body blinding white'. It is also, if all that wasn't enough, 'blessed by Lord Hanuman himself', and the monkey God's image shines along the Gun's grip. Out of place The truth of the matter is that all of this, personally, feels awkwardly out of place in the fast-paced, cold-blooded world of the Bombay underworld, where the gun has been birthed and christened. Had this been some kind of satire, or witty take on the hitman genre, this could have worked – but Rajagopal is dead serious with his story and his characters (the humour in this book is as lacking as any worthwhile dialogue). In which case, he had many, many other alternatives for what the supari killers called their guns in the heydays of the Bombay gangland scene: ghoda, to begin with; saman, dhatu, chappal, sixer, chakri, baja, mithai, bartan, guitar, spray, jhaadu, amma… a list Suketu Mehta provides in Maximum City while writing about exactly the kind of hitmen Rajagopal hopes to write about. In Gunboy, that hitman is Amar Singh, and by this time, I have started to ignore the names of the characters, which are again strikingly out of place for the world they are situated in. But while Amar has certain depth – and despite the novel's many weaknesses, Rajagopal does build some of his characters excellently – he seems again to be a Bombay hitman without the politics that made them. Supari killers of the 1990s and early 2000s Bombay did not just pop out of slums and chawls because that's what they wanted to do – there was a very specific kind of politics that went into making them choose and work for certain 'companies' and certain gangsters. And Rajagopal doesn't seem to be unaware of this hitman subculture: he knows of the rituals that some of these killers followed before and after a hit; their superstitions, their addictions, the practices that made them think they were immortal. Everything about Amar Singh says he is a killer from that stable, but he just doesn't feel like one. One way to make a novel like this grainy is through its dialogues, which reveal the inner life of a character in much more detail than all the descriptive poetry. But dialogues in Gunboy – which is to say, actual, human-to-human conversations – are few and far in between. At over 400 pages, the novel is pretty hefty and expectedly populated. The lofty prose remains lofty throughout, which, at least for this reader, was one of the major pain points of this novel. The story of Gunboy might be interesting, but it is too preoccupied with the writing than it is with the story telling, and pace, one should remember, is not about how quickly you wrap up a chapter. It has its internal logic, which seemed to be sorely missing in this story – among other things. Atharva Pandit is a writer whose debut novel, Hurda, was published by Bloomsbury India in 2024.
Time of India
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Trigger: A Korean Action Thriller Examining Gun Control and Social Dynamics
Fresh Concept That'll Make You Paranoid About Every Package Imagine ordering biryani online and instead of your usual delivery boy, someone drops off a mysterious box containing... a loaded gun. That's exactly the premise of Trigger , the new Korean action thriller that just dropped on streaming platforms today. Set in South Korea - a country where spotting a gun is literally rarer than finding a parking spot in Connaught Place - the show explores what happens when illegal firearms start getting delivered through regular courier services to ordinary people. Star Power That Actually Delivers Unlike Your Local Delivery Boy Kim Nam-gil takes on the role of Lee Do, a former military sniper turned police officer who's basically that one responsible friend trying to clean up everyone else's mess. Having served as a sniper in conflict zones, he knows exactly how dangerous these weapons can be and is determined to get them off the streets before South Korea turns into a Korean version of a Wild West movie. Kim Young-kwang plays Moon Baek, the mysterious figure who shows up when things get complicated. The dynamic between these two is giving major Sacred Games vibes but with way more psychological tension and significantly better production values. Their on-screen chemistry is already being praised, with Kim Nam-gil mentioning how his co-star helped bring emotional depth to his character while maintaining consistency throughout the series. The timing couldn't be more relevant. Director Kwon Oh-seung, who previously worked on Midnight , emphasized that while the show explores societal breakdown, it's meant to highlight the importance of gun control rather than glorify violence. The show's exploration of how military training intersects with civilian life adds another layer of complexity that makes it particularly compelling. More Than Just Action - It's a Social Experiment Gone Wrong Director Kwon Oh-seung didn't just want to make another action series filled with gratuitous violence. The show digs deep into what he calls "everyone's trigger" - basically, what pushes ordinary people to make extraordinary and often terrible decisions. Each episode features different characters receiving these mysterious gun deliveries, exploring their individual breaking points and moral choices. The series tackles themes that resonate universally - economic pressure, social inequality, and the thin line between justice and revenge. In today's world where everyone seems to have a breaking point, Trigger asks uncomfortable but necessary questions about human nature. It's particularly relevant considering India's own struggles with violence, social tensions, and the breakdown of traditional support systems during economic hardships. What makes this even more intriguing is how the show reflects the unique Korean context where military service creates a population with weapons knowledge but no legal access to firearms. This paradox creates tension that's uniquely Korean - imagine if every guy in your college had commando training but couldn't even own a toy gun legally. The contrast between having the skills and being legally prevented from using them creates a fascinating social dynamic that Trigger explores masterfully. The show's exploration of how quickly a peaceful society can descend into chaos feels especially relevant. South Korea maintains complete civilian disarmament despite having a population where most men are trained in advanced weaponry. It's this contradiction between capability and restriction that makes the premise so psychologically compelling. Trigger premiered globally today with all 10 episodes available for binge-watching. With its combination of intense action sequences, psychological depth, and thought-provoking social commentary, it's shaping up to be one of those series that'll have everyone talking - and maybe looking at their next delivery with a lot more suspicion. In a world where the line between fiction and reality keeps getting blurrier, this show serves as both entertainment and a fascinating exploration of how social order can be both fragile and resilient at the same time.
Indian Express
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2, Traitors, IPL, Kapil Sharma: How streaming is replicating television, the very beast it wanted to tame
When streaming first began in India in the early 2010s, the audience was still getting used to YouTube and the phenomenon of a 'web series,' a television show that could be watched anytime, anywhere on your smartphone or laptop, and could also be paused, rewinded, and forwarded. It was Tata Sky+ yet in a completely new medium, that gave rise to faces and brains who were struggling to get noticed by the Hindi film and TV industry. The Jio revolution in the next few years allowed the masses to access even new international streaming apps like Netflix and Prime Video, which entered the domestic market in 2017. Netflix India's first Original, Sacred Games, and Prime Video India's first original, Inside Edge, also dismantled the confines of television and demonstrated how streaming could push boundaries of what Indian entertainment came to be known as till then. Then came the pandemic in 2020-22 when India, confined to its homes, warmed up to streaming to such an extent that it'd be an ordeal to bring them back to cinemas even when the lockdowns ended. Streaming became a habit, and the Indian audience its slaves. The victim was not only cinema, but also television. Cable television and direct-to-home services, once a household necessity, were replaced by smart TVs and fire sticks. Streaming turned out to be for satellite what satellite was for VHS (Video Home System) and Doordarshan in the 1990s. But now, as cinemas and other avenues of entertainment open up after the pandemic, streaming can't sustain the skyrocketing growth it once registered in India during a couple of years. So, 2023 brought a shift in direction — the streaming, once known for being a substitute to television, started to embrace parts of the latter that appealed to India's masses. It was no longer the rebel kid, but that backbencher in a classroom who wanted to get away with the exam by peeping into the class topper's papers. Smriti Irani, former I&B Minister, recently claimed that last year, the television industry and the streaming industry accounted for a revenue of Rs 30,000 crore and Rs 24,000 crore, respectively. She rallied for the two industries to unite and generate content together instead of competing with each other. This month, she's set to reprise her iconic character of Tulsi Virani in Ekta Kapoor's landmark daily soap Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, which will be available for viewing on both its native home StarPlus and its streaming counterpart, JioHotstar. Sameer Nair, who was the head of programming at StarPlus back in 2000 when Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi first premiered, believes the show can still work as well as it did back then, but only if the story has adapted to the times and the audience it's catering to. 'Honestly, it's not got so much to do with streaming or TV. On JioHotstar, their strong, long-performing show has always been Anupamaa. On SonyLIV, for the longest time, Bade Achhe Lagte Hain used to be their #1,' argued Nair, in an interview with SCREEN. Not every TV show with an immense recall value would fare as well on streaming, as one saw in the case of Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai – Take 2. 'I think the streaming of daily soaps allows more flexibility to its primary audience — the homemakers, the mothers, the elderly women. They get the option to access it any time of the day, something they wouldn't be able to do when it aired at a very late slot of 10:30 pm on TV,' said a former StarPlus official, who's also worked with JioHotstar. 'At that time, these women used to wait for their husbands and kids to fall asleep after watching Kaun Banega Crorepati so that they could get their guilty hour of Kyunki. But now, they can stream it anytime, without guilt! It's not just Ekta and Smriti Irani, but also the streaming that's empowering them this time,' they added. Nair, who's now the Managing Director at Applause Entertainment and collaborates with a host of streaming platforms, saw this televisionization of streaming coming from a mile. 'Streaming is just settling down now. It just means they're going for a wider audience by catering to the largest common denominator. But streaming can also cater to niches. The good thing is both can co-exist on streaming. So you can do both a Kyunki and an Adolescence. The technology allows you to do that. On TV, you could be either a GEC or a niche channel,' he reasons. Why does then an Anurag Kashyap then blame Netflix India for entering a partnership with Ekta's Balaji Telefilms instead of commissioning an Indian version of Adolescence? Why does he call Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos the 'definition of dumb' when he opines that they should've launched the platform in India with something 'more populist' than Sacred Games? 'That's because if all the energies and resources are directed towards a populist form of entertainment, then a niche or a less mainstream show has to really elbow its way in to get the streamer's attention. Streaming was supposed to enable and empower these, and not really use them as a token to show how cutting-edge they are, whenever it suits their narrative,' says a screenwriter who's worked with both Kashyap and Netflix India. When asked, on Nikhil Kamath's podcast People by WTF, to react to the shift in programming of Netflix India with CID and The Great Indian Kapil Show, he played the diversity card — If it's not for you, it's for someone else. But a former Netflix India employee claims diversity is more of a buzzword than a thought-through corporate strategy. 'Reed Hastings is an LA guy so he really cares for the movies. He's the one who started Netflix as a DVD business. He's a true disruptor,' they tell us, adding, 'But when Sarandos took over, there was a change in direction. Since every country Netflix is in is culturally so different from each other, the only common point they could find between them was diversity. And that became their corporate strategy, so to say. But make no mistake, it was always made clear that the priority is numbers.' When SCREEN asked Tanya Bami, Series Head at Netflix India, why shows like The Royals, Rana Naidu, and Mismatched got renewed despite getting a large chunk of negative reviews from critics, she said, 'Love from everyone is critical. As a human being, you seek that affirmation. But in terms of a stack order, we're very clear it's the love of the audience that matters to us.' That became very apparent with Netflix India's programming in the last three years. 'We were never categorically asked to sell some shows more. They wouldn't say that because that doesn't go with their brand image. But you figured, with the kind of people they hired or the kind of shows they greenlit, that the focus had changed. There are so many ex-Balaji faces in Netflix India now,' added the former employee. Balaji has been a champion of broadcast, but it's also tried its hands at streaming. Ekta, who has straddled cinema, TV, and OTT, believes they serve different purposes — community viewing, family viewing, and personal viewing respectively. That's why the woman behind culturally rooted, sanskari daily soaps on TV churned out tonally divergent shows like Gandii Baat and Ragini MMS: Returns on her now-defunct streaming platform ALTBalaji. But with the advent of smart TV in Indian homes, families began to increasingly watch OTT content together instead of separately on their phones. That gave rise to The Viral Fever's family-friendly shows like Gullak and Yeh Meri Family. That also explains Ekta's pivot back to what she knows best — daily soaps, but those that can be positioned as effectively on streaming as they can be on TV. Many marketing executives, who enthusiastically joined streaming platforms, in order to promote the kind of alternate content, they believed in, have now gone independent to push middle-of-the-road cinema in theatres and indie films at global festivals, and fill the gaps that have long plagued India's entertainment ecosystem. They neither know 'how to sell a Kapil Sharma' nor do they believe a Kapil Sharma needs their selling. But this coexistence of Kapil Sharma and Vir Das on a platform comes at an interesting cultural juncture for India. Sample last year, for instance: audience of both the mainstream and niche turned up in hoards to attend concerts of Diljt Dosanjh, a grounded Punjabi popstar, as well as Coldplay, a British rock-pop band. That's also why an audience that once looked down upon Bigg Boss or similar reality shows are now lapping up The Traitors, the Indian adaptation of the globally resonant American show, on Prime Video. 'I think they've hit the sweet spot with that one. Unlike some versions in the West, they've taken a bunch of internet celebrities and made a reality show with them that just has high production value than say, a Bigg Boss,' points out an industry insider. 'Having Karan Johar to host it with all his campness intact is a masterstroke — he's one celebrity who gets equal attention from the classes and the masses, whether it's love or hate,' adds another. Instead of the crassness associated with Bigg Boss and MTV reality shows like Roadies and Splitsvilla, Traitors rolls out like a saucy game of chess — pretty much like a very expensive, lived-in version of board games like Shasn and Cards Against Humanity. 'For every Traitors, there should be a Stolen. But the fact is for every Traitors, there's also a Khauf, a brilliant horror show that goes under the radar,' says a former employee of Prime Video India, adding, 'Streamers made quick money during the pandemic by not just having a captive audience, but also buying ready, big-budget films from production houses waiting to release their films in endless lockdowns. They've grown used to that licensing model. So they're just picking up anything and everything that's worked in the past, whether from films, sports or TV, instead of developing envelope-pushing content like they did pre-pandemic. Which is why you see how the slate of originals has gone down drastically. Licensed shows which happen to work in the first season are then adopted and then developed like it was their own baby to begin with.' If picking existing IPs from TV wasn't enough, streaming has also stooped down to advertisement revenue in order to sustain. Prime Video is the most recent platform to introduce ads and an ad-free premium version, as per the YouTube and Spotify revenue model. 'India is a price-sensitive country, so even if you give us the option to pay more and get rid of ads, we'd stick to the ads,' says a former Netflix India employee. They claim that commercials on streaming isn't new to India, but the hullabaloo is about the way Prime imposed it. 'At Netflix, there were designated employees for this job, who scientifically picked points when it could switch to commercial in a way that the audience don't lose interest. It was transparent and gradual, unlike the blindsiding that Prime has done now,' they add. Also Read — Sameer Nair feels Indian adaptation of The Office would do far better today: 'Market was smaller then, wanted to do 11 seasons like US' Is it really only about the transparency? Should streamers just own it that they want to go where TV did and accept that the daily soaps, broad comedy, reality shows, advertisements, and sports entertainment are their mainstays? The life-sized hoardings of WWE on the Mumbai expressways tell that very story. But is it a bad deal if IPL gets more consumers to subscribe to JioHotstar so they could watch a School of Lies that they otherwise wouldn't? 'I don't see it that way. Would I really count my show as a success story if it excels in the same months that IPL airs? It's a good way to show numbers and ask for an appraisal, but those who're doing this for creative reasons deserve better.' Going back to television is a disservice to the innovation of streaming. As iconic comedian Milton Berle so wisely put it, 'We owe a lot to Thomas Edison. If it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight.'
