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India Today
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
Why RK Narayan's Malgudi Days still feels like a slice of real India
On a warm afternoon in the 1930s, a young man in Madras sealed a letter to his friend in Oxford. Inside was a manuscript he believed had little chance. He even joked that it could be tossed into the destiny, as it often does in good stories, had other manuscript became Swami and Friends, and it gave birth to Malgudi, one of India's most beloved fictional With this book, RK Narayan built a universe that would live in the hearts of millions of Indians for decades to somewhere between Madras and Mysore, Malgudi wasn't a real town. But to readers, it might as well have been. You could almost smell the hot pakoras by the roadside, hear the chatter from the Board High School, and spot Swaminathan loitering with his friends under the shade of a tamarind tree. (Photo: Narayan introduced Malgudi in his first novel, Swami and Friends (1935), published thanks to the help of his friend and legendary author Graham Greene, who recommended it to a publisher in was the kind of world that didn't rely on political drama or larger-than-life heroes. Malgudi was about ordinary people -- rickshaw pullers, shopkeepers, schoolboys, astrologers -- and their quietly moving lives. It was a microcosm of Indian TO TELL STORIESRasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami was born on October 10, 1906, in Madras. His father was a school headmaster, facing frequent job transfers. Narayan spent much of his childhood with his grandmother, learning early lessons in mythology, music, and storytelling. RK Narayan with his family in the 1920s. RK Laxman is around 4 years old here (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) After a rather unremarkable time at school, and he even failed the university entrance exam on his first attempt. However, he eventually graduated from Maharaja's College in Mysore with a degree in began working as a journalist and teacher, but his heart was set on writing. After multiple rejections, his first big break came with Swami and Friends, and it set the tone for the rest of his WHO FELT LIKE NEIGHBOURSadvertisementNarayan's books never screamed for attention -- they quietly tapped on your shoulder. And once you opened the door, they pulled you was just a schoolboy, but in him, generations of readers saw their own childhood mischief and The Guide, Raju the tourist guide transforms into a reluctant spiritual leader -- a journey filled with irony, humour, and there was Jagan in The Vendor of Sweets, an old-fashioned father trying to understand his westernised son. Each of these stories carried a strong emotional undercurrent, without ever becoming characters were less like characters, and more like people you knew. WHEN MALGUDI CAME TO TVIn 1986, Malgudi Days hit Indian television screens -- and a new generation fell in by Kannada actor-director Shankar Nag, and with iconic sketches by Narayan's brother RK Laxman, the series was filmed in Agumbe, Karnataka, a sleepy town that looked like it had stepped straight out of the pages of the episode adapted a different short story, from 'A Hero' to 'The Missing Mail', and the theme music by L Vaidyanathan still rings nostalgic in the ears of Indian series aired on Doordarshan, but its magic has lasted for decades -- reruns, YouTube uploads, and even an Amazon Prime listing continue to draw in LOSS, WRITTEN QUIETLYIn 1933, Narayan married Rajam, a happy union that ended in heartbreak when she died of typhoid in 1939. He was devastated, and it deeply affected him and influenced his writing. RK Narayan with his wife, Rajam (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) Out of that pain came The English Teacher, a novel that captured his grief with unflinching honesty. The book reads like a conversation with his lost love. It was raw, beautiful, and deeply remained devoted to their daughter, Hema, and never remarried. Narayan's philosophy emphasised the importance of simplicity and authenticity, both in life and literature.A LEGACY BUILT ON SIMPLICITYOver the decades, Narayan wrote 14 novels, countless short stories, essays, and even memoirs like My Days. His writing was never flamboyant. There were no fireworks in his prose, just a steady flame that kept readers was often called 'India's answer to Chekhov' -- though Narayan himself was modest about such comparisons. He once said he simply wanted to 'write about ordinary people going about their lives'.AWARDS, HONOURS, AND A SEAT IN PARLIAMENTRecognition came, slowly but surely. Lyle Blair of Michigan State University Press (Narayan's U.S. publisher), RK Narayan and Anthony West of The New Yorker (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) Narayan was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1964 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2000. In 1986, he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, where he voiced concerns about education, especially the burden of heavy schoolbags on children -- a classic Narayan received honorary doctorates from multiple universities and was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize, though he never won it.A QUIET GOODBYERK Narayan passed away on May 13, 2001, at the age of 94. But Malgudi didn't die with lives on -- in dusty old paperbacks passed down in families, in nostalgic TV reruns, and in new readers discovering Swami, Raju, and Jagan for the first time. It feels more real than many places on the wasn't just a setting. It was a feeling. And through it, Narayan gave us the rarest of gifts: stories that felt like home.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘I didn't think he was a jerk': Paul Giamatti on finding the humanity in his standout ‘Black Mirror' episode
The only formula for Black Mirror is that there isn't one. 'Eulogy,' the fifth episode of the current season, is essentially an hour-long solo performance by Paul Giamatti. Though he does have a costar in Patsy Ferran, he holds the screen himself for nearly the full hour, acting opposite an avatar (spoiler alert!) as a middle-aged man named Phillip coming to terms to terms with long-buried memories of a lost love. What's first presented as a simple ask to collect memories soon reveals itself to be a far deeper, more emotional journey, led by Ferran's 'The Guide' through — and into — old photographs. And it takes an actor of Giamatti's caliber — with accolades from the Oscars, the Emmys, the Globes, BAFTAs, SAGs, and more — to keep us riveted. More from GoldDerby Charlie Cox teases 'sense of oppression' and 'slightly different genre' for 'Daredevil: Born Again' Season 2 11 Oscar contenders with the most to gain at this year's Cannes Film Festival 'The Masked Singer' is skipping the fall season 'to regroup' Here, Giamatti tells Gold Derby why he empathizes with Phillip, why he likes playing bad guys, and why he was excited to revisit Downton Abbey: 'They finally let me in the house!' (Watch the full interview above). SEEPaul Giamatti, Chris O'Dowd, Rashida Jones, Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson, and every 'Black Mirror' Emmy acting submission Gold Derby: You've said the script came to you through your manager. What made you say yes? Paul Giamatti: First of all, that it was Black Mirror would have been enough. Because I really like that show, and I like things like this. There's a moment in it when [Phillip] says, 'I've sort of had it with this, this is not working,' and [The Guide, played by Ferran] says, 'Do you want to stop?' And he says, 'No.' That was the moment that I went, 'This is cool.' This poor guy is so in conflict with himself. And I thought what a cool way to dramatize somebody's conflict about stuff through the technology. Did you have any conversations then with [series creator] Charlie Brooker about where you wanted it to go from there? Any changes you wanted to make? The only thing that needed to change was the character was British, written for an Englishman. Other than that, nothing needed to be changed. I had nothing to offer, except just getting out of the way of it and letting it play itself when we had to do it. How did you film the scenes where you're transported into your old photos? None of it is CGI. They're all actual people standing there just frozen. They would freeze for the length of the take. They were all dancers and mimes who could maintain a position, be expressive, and hold it for a really long time. We did a lot of actual work with them so they could stage that, so it was very tricky. The effect of it going 2D to 3D was very complicated, so there was a lot of work that needed to be done before even getting into the studio. They also had to find a guy who looked like me because they weren't going to de-age me. They want to do as little digital stuff as possible, which I thought was great. What about the scenes when 'The Guide' was just a voice in your head? Yes, she was there, sitting in the corner, which was great. A lot of actors wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have expected anything else from her, but it was great to have her there, so it was never like I was alone. I had not quite realized how much I was alone in it. When I first read it, when we came to rehearsal to shoot it, I suddenly thought, Oh, my God! There's a good two-thirds of this, three-quarters of this, I'm alone in here. But once we did it, it didn't feel like that at all. Knowing what an emotional rollercoaster the episode was going to be, how did you calibrate your performance throughout? A lot of it's in the writing already. I could see it in the writing and so there's a way in which it's almost like it's a temperature chart. It was really clear where he goes up or down, and he gets upset or doesn't. That was a tricky line. I'm sure there's people who walk away from this thinking the guy is a real jerk. I didn't think he was a jerk. The levels of him being maybe unpleasant at times, that was tricky. But if it's well-written, that's helping you a lot. And the directors were really terrific and were really good at helping modulate it sometimes. SEEAll 34 'Black Mirror' episodes ranked, including 'USS Callister: Into Infinity' and 'Eulogy' Was there a specific note or direction they gave you that was helpful? Actually an interesting thing was that his life is OK. He's not suicidally miserable. He starts in a place where he's OK. He gets taken somewhere he doesn't want to go, opens all this stuff up, and then he's kind of not OK. By the end, I think he's more OK. But it was an interesting thing for them saying to me, the starting point is not one of miserableness. He's got his life. He prunes his roses. He's got some kind of job, and he's lived in this nice place, and he's reached a kind of middle-aged contentment. What's your takeaway of the ending? When I saw the actual piece put together, I found it much more hopeful than it was on the page to me when I first read it. When we were actually doing it, I thought, 'Oh, this is terrible what this poor guy is kind of being forced to do.' But then when I saw it, I thought it maybe isn't. It was much more positive than I thought it was going to be. I mean, it's strange that everybody's sitting there with this thing in their head all zoned out at the end. He's the one person who's not, though, which is kind of cool because he doesn't need it at this point anymore. There's some way in which he sees her again, he finds her again. But he also knows it's gone, it's all gone, and she's dead, and it's all in the past. Why did he agree to participate in this trip down memory lane that he knows is going to be painful for him? That's what I mean — that's why that moment of my saying 'No, I don't want to stop' was so interesting to me. It's that strange thing that we have, like I can't stop picking at this scab, and when he says 'I haven't thought about her in a long time' I'm not sure that that's true. He can't quite see her the way he'd like to; he can't remember what was real about it, what she really was like anymore. But the other thing that I found interesting is that thing of why does he do it in the first place. I actually said to them, 'This is so strange. Does there need to be some moment of ' but then the more I thought about it the more I thought the interesting thing about this technology is that we just obey it. … Technology is gently coercive like that. We just obey these things. We have to do what they tell us to do. It's really strange. That to me is at its best when it's asking those questions. What's the message for you from the episode? I think it's just asking the questions. It's about regret and grief. I keep thinking of this short story I read which is all about a technology event where you can remember everything from the second you're born until the present moment. And the whole point in that story is, is it good to actually remember everything? Maybe we're meant to forget. Maybe we're meant to misremember. Maybe we have to have the narrative wrong sometimes. Maybe we shouldn't know when we were right or wrong. And so there's that question on this one, would he have been better off? Did it really serve some sort of purpose? I think it does ask that question. But then I also just hope it's a kind of moving story — a nice, melancholy story about a guy who's given a second chance. You also have the finale movie coming this fall; you've said you were surprised to be coming back. Why? I was a really, really marginal character. So I was a little bit like, "You really want me to come back?" And then I actually do something of great significance. But I loved doing that show the first time around. I love period stuff like that. And you know anything like that I'm a sucker for. And I actually got to be in the house this time! You're also going to be in the series. What appealed to you about that one? Science fiction. I love Star Trek. I've been a big Star Trek fan. They came to me with a really great part to play in this really good series. Talk about good writing! And Holly Hunter plays the captain. I was like, I can't say no. What can you reveal about your character? I'm a bad guy. I'm a very bad guy. That's what I can reveal! I like being the bad guy. I don't get to play so many out and out bad guys often, which is good. I play sort of ambiguous people often, but I do like to play like an out and out bad guy. Best of GoldDerby 'Grotesquerie' star Niecy Nash-Betts on that shocking coma twist, and Travis Kelce's 'greedy' appetite TV Cinematography panel: 'Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire,' 'Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,' 'Étoile' 'Étoile' cinematographer M. David Mullen on reuniting with the Palladinos Click here to read the full article.
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Olivia Colman to star in Netflix's Pride and Prejudice written by Dolly Alderton
She has played spies, detectives and two queens of England. Now Olivia Colman is to take the part of Mrs Bennet, the scheming mother of five daughters, in a Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The six-part series will also star Emma Corrin as Elizabeth Bennet, and Jack Lowden as Mr Darcy. The adaptation will be written by the author and Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton. Production on the series is scheduled to begin in the UK later this year. It will be directed by Euros Lyn, who also directed David Tennant in Doctor Who, three episodes of Broadchurch starring Colman and Tennant, and Happy Valley. Mona Qureshi, a Netflix executive, said: 'Pride and Prejudice is the ultimate romantic comedy. 'Dolly's fierce intelligence and enormous heart, twinned with her genuine love of the Austen novel, means she is able to bring new insights, whilst celebrating all that the generations of fans hold so dear. 'The calibre of a cast led by Emma, Jack and Olivia is testament to this precious story being in the best possible hands.' Corrin, who played Diana, Princess of Wales, in the Netflix series The Crown, said: 'Playing Elizabeth Bennet is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. To be able to bring this iconic character to life, alongside Olivia and Jack, with Dolly's phenomenal scripts, is truly the greatest honour. I can't wait for a new generation to fall in love with this story all over again.' Alderton said: 'Once in a generation, a group of people get to retell this wonderful story and I feel very lucky that I get to be a part of it.' Austen's 1813 novel was the 'blueprint for romantic comedy', she said, adding: 'It has been a joy to delve back into its pages to find both familiar and fresh ways of bringing this beloved book to life. 'The book is a gift to adapt – packed with drama and depth as well as comedy and charm. In it lies the opportunity to examine the complexities of love, family, friendship and society, while aspiring to Austen's delightfully observational voice. Sign up to The Guide Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday after newsletter promotion 'With Euros Lyn directing our stellar cast, I am so excited to reintroduce these hilarious and complicated characters to those who count Pride and Prejudice as their favourite book, and those who are yet to meet their Lizzie and Mr Darcy.' Pride and Prejudice's themes of love, social conventions, reputation, wealth and class have endured for more than two centuries. The novel, Austen's second after Sense and Sensibility two years earlier, has been adapted for the big screen at least 17 times and made into television series in English, Italian, Dutch and Spanish. A 1995 BBC adaptation propelled Colin Firth to stardom after he emerged from a lake with his wet shirt clinging to his torso. He later said the scene 'tended to create this image that can restrict what kind of roles you are going to be able to find'. A 2005 film version starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen is due to be rereleased this year for its 20th anniversary.
The Guardian
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guide #182: Is Severance one of the most unlikely TV hits ever?
We haven't really discussed season two of Severance here at The Guide, at least not compared with all the hyperventilating we did over season one. While I'd like to argue that there's been a lot to cover so far in 2024 – The Oscars, The Traitors, dead-eyed celebs trying to convince us of the merits of AI – it does feel like a bit of an oversight. Because in this second season, Severance seems to have become a stealth cultural juggernaut. Such terms are nebulous of course, particularly when it's harder than ever to determine how popular anything is. Apple have claimed that Severance is its most-watched show ever, overtaking Ted Lasso, which is no mean feat - although, as ever with the streamers, actual tangible numerical data for these claims is hardly forthcoming. But Severance has also performed strongly in Nielsen's (again somewhat contested) ratings for original shows on streaming, routinely appearing in the Top 10 – a rare speck of the gunmetal grey of Apple's logo in a sea of Netflix red. And in that more ambient sense of 'popularity', Severance is triumphing. It's the subject of endless audience fascination, measured in think pieces, innie/outie memes, Reddit threads or fan visits to the real-life setting of the show's shadowy corporation, Lumon. It's definitely the show that people currently seem to be expending the most energy discussing and thinking about. The only other contender in that regard is The White Lotus – though I'd argue that much of the energy being expended on The White Lotus is in complaining that the show's third season isn't as good as the first two. Even those of us who were Severance supporters from day one, who joined on the ground floor of the Lumon lift, didn't see this coming. Severance felt – like so many series made in the streaming age (particularly those made by Apple) – perfectly placed to be watched by a handful of true believers and then quietly cancelled after a couple of seasons. Its work brain/home brain bifurcation concept, as anyone who has tried to explain it to friends down the pub knows, is hard to pin down; it unfurls slowly, and has the sort of offbeat, deadpan tone that feels likely to turn off as many people as it engages. The three-year gap between seasons – ample time for people to forget its plot points, not to mention why they liked it in the first place – could hardly help either. What I underestimated was Severance's ability to appeal to completely different audiences at the same time. There's the puzzle box mystery crowd, of course, the people on forums feverishly speculating about goat symbolism and what exactly goes on in the elevator, but –unlike, say, Westworld – it's light enough on the lore for anyone not willing to go fully down the rabbit hole to engage with. And the fact that the show is so thick with ideas means that different cohorts engage with different aspects of it: the politically minded, enjoying its satirical skewering of corporate America; the psychoanalysts, drawing parallels with Jungian theory; the religious allegory types, considering what it says about Mormonism or Jesus, or cultish behaviour; the people intrigued by what it has to say about our relationship with the office in the 21st century; or those simply fascinated by its retrofuturistic design (and wondering where they can buy that lampshade). Managing to serve so many different constituencies is quite an achievement, one that I think has been reached, rather counterintuitively, by a lack of pandering. This is about as far from a show created by committee as you can get: funky and weird and slightly obscure. It makes creative decisions that would cause an AI-scriptwriting bot to malfunction – waffle parties, say, or entire episodes set in a frosty wilderness, about as far away from the comforting green baize of the Lumon office as possible. That capacity to go off-piste, married with a willingness to actually provide answers and push the plot forward, is reassuring: it suggests that Severance's creative team know what they're doing. Still, it's a high-wire act of a show to pull off, and season two hasn't been perfect. There have been points where, in expanding its wider world and deepening its mystery, Severance has neglected its core quartet a little, with too few scenes of the innies bickering and bonding in the office, one of the great low-key charms of season one. This time around, occasionally the characters can feel less like fully breathing people than plot facilitators: we've had too little of Helly R (still performed with a superb mix of naivety, anguish and gen X ironic detachment by Britt Lower), with the show more interested in the machinations of her outie, Helena Eagan. I'd chalk this up to second season growing pains though, and for the most part Severance is still as peculiar, thought-provoking and compelling as ever. And, as with season one, next week's finale is a marmalade-dropper: tense and stuffed with big revelations, and containing (for my money) the single best scene in the show's history. It's a scene that, for all the talk about the huge amount spent on each episode, is brilliantly economical: just two characters (I won't tell you who!) discussing the strange circumstances they find themselves in and what it means for their sense of self. As with all Severance's best moments, it's stuffed full of ideas – a huge reason that people keep coming back to this peculiarly popular show. Sign up to The Guide Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday after newsletter promotion If you want to read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday
The Guardian
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Stories from Cornwall brought to life in new Michael Morpurgo play
The stories about life in Cornwall have flowed in: the hairdresser who gives everyone the same style because it copes best with the elements; the teacher who took a snowball in a cool box to the Isles of Scilly: the cat who follows the same routine as a country singing legend. Over the last five years, scores of such tales have been painstakingly collected and blended into a new play called White Horse that reimagines a beloved book by one of the great chroniclers of south-west England, Michael Morpurgo. Taking a break from rehearsals before the play's opening in the old Cornish mining town of Redruth, the director Simon Harvey said themes that surfaced during the five-year story- gathering project included the importance of place, family, home and belonging – plus the enduring vitality of storytelling. 'It has been a fascinating project, a really interesting way of working,' he said. 'More than 80 stories emerged – so much good material. We went into the communities and spent a few days there and started chatting to people and collecting stories.' Some nuggets people told Harvey and his team find their way into the play, based on Morpurgo's book The White Horse of Zennor and Other Stories, such as a woman who described an existential fear of the stark horizon after moving to north Cornwall from Manchester. 'There are bits like that that are peppered all the way through the script,' Harvey said. Other stories do not directly appear but are there in the subtext. 'Some are more overt and others subtle, more of a feeling, a theme that is woven in.' Morpurgo's 1982 book features five stories centred on the village of Zennor, a place adored by artists, poets and mystics. 'That was the first spot we visited,' said Harvey. 'We did a story-gathering there. Invited people, laid on food, hired the village hall.' And the tales began to emerge. Realising there was a wealth of Cornish stories to tap into, the theatre and film company behind the play and project, o-region, applied for money from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, a government programme that funds projects in places that can be hard to get to or are often bypassed – in this case, Bude on the north coast, the market town of Launceston, the Isles of Scilly, the Treneere estate in Penzance, one of the most deprived in England, and Redruth. They found the hairdresser who gives all her clients the same 'choppy cut' in Bude. The Scilly teacher said she took the snowball in a cool box to her pupils from the mainland because snowfall on the islands is so rare. A Treneere resident told them their cat went out mousing 9-5, so they named her Dolly Parton. Sign up to The Guide Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday after newsletter promotion A rocker in her 90s regaled the researchers with an account of a punk band stripping off on stage in Launceston while someone mentioned the modern legend of north Cornwall surfer Peter 'Vicko' Vickery inventing the surfboard leash in the 1950s using a washing line. As well as enriching drafts of the White Horse script, many of the stories have been turned into pieces of prose or poetry by a team of writers and some are being released in a podcast series called From the Horse's Mouth. Harvey said: 'There's a lot in there about living in isolated places. We've learned a lot about these towns and villages and the people who live there. It's been hugely rewarding.' White Horse is being performed from 28 February to 8 March at the Regal Theatre in Redruth
