Sharmila Tagore on missing out on Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani with Dharmendra, “I fell ill and couldn’t do the film”

“We shared the same birthday. He was my co-star in seven films. I knew he was not keeping good health. But the news of his passing is still very saddening,” said Sharmila Tagore, who worked in films as far-ranging as Satyakam and Chupke Chupke with Dharmendra. She reflected on their screen togetherness. “We first worked together in Devar and then during the same year in Anupama. Two very serious subjects, followed by an out-and-out commercial film Mere Humdum Mere Dost. Shooting with him was a breeze. He was as effortless on screen as he was off it. He was never ‘The Star’ on the sets, always his natural self. There was nothing put-on about him.” Sharmila Tagore recalled her first meeting with Dharmendra. “Before we worked together, we met when I was shooting with Yash Chopra’s Waqt. I don’t know in what context he was there. But I remember he was dressed… how shall I put it… not like a star at all. When s...

The Monkey review – slapdash splatter comedy is a grating misfire

Writer-director Osgood Perkins follows up horror hit Longlegs with a tiresome, juvenile adaptation of a Stephen King short story about an evil toy monkey

“Everybody dies and that’s fucked up” is the tagline and emo ethos of snarky Stephen King adaptation The Monkey, a film about the inescapable inevitability yet goofy silliness of death. The writer-director Osgood Perkins, who scored a hit with last year’s Longlegs, knows more about it than most. His father, the actor Anthony Perkins, died of Aids when Osgood was 18 and then his mother, the actor and model Berry Berenson, died in the September 11 attacks as a passenger on Flight 11. Perkins has found a way to work through something so unimaginably awful with a career as a horror film-maker, and his latest, focused on twins cursed by generational trauma is his most obviously personal film yet.

To his credit, Perkins has chosen not to wallow in the grim dirge associated with trauma and the horror genre. The original script for The Monkey had apparently delivered its central conceit – a toy monkey that brings death to those around it – with a straight face, something he found to be discordant, insisting a lighter, comedy-over-horror makeover. But the humour here is far too smug and nihilistic, similar to the grating can-you-believe-we’re-doing-this swagger of the Deadpool series, so happy with itself that it doesn’t really care if anyone else is smiling too. The film has a juvenile middle-finger-up attitude that confuses broad fuck-the-world misanthropy for actual edginess, annoying enough for a scene but close to insufferable for an entire movie. It’s also a tone that doesn’t really work for a King adaptation and when a flash of his earnestness does shine through, it’s uncomfortably out of place, providing more of a jolt than any of the ineffective death scenes which rely on brash and empty Looney Tunes violence. If the aim is numbing us to the shock of a violent death then perhaps the film succeeds but surely we shouldn’t be quite so bored by it too.

Continue reading...

from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2psZ9KN
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Miracle Club review – Maggie Smith can’t save this rocky road trip to Lourdes

BREAKING: Interstellar back in cinemas due to public demand; Dune: Part Two to also re-release on March 14 in IMAX

EXCLUSIVE: Mona Singh gears up for an intense role in an upcoming web series; Deets inside!