Prose By Any Other Name... |
Kannada web series Ekam features stories that are original, inventive and literary, writes Aditya Shrikrishna |
EKAM: ONE AND THE MULTITUDE is the new Kannada web series that’s now available on its own platform — ekamtheseries.com. Sumanth Bhat and Sandeep PS are the creators, it is produced by Journeyman Films, and presented by Rakshit Shetty’s Paramvah Studios. You may not have heard those words in that order often — “Kannada web series”. The big streaming platforms are not yet into long-form storytelling or even anthologies in Kannada and Malayalam. The Tamil and Telugu web series ecosystem is also at its nascent stage. The creators of Ekam are on record about how no OTT platform showed interest in the anthology series because of its language. So here we are, with this series of short films released independently by the creators as the last and only resort. Stream the latest movies and shows with OTTplay Premium's Simply South monthly pack, for only Rs 249. Ekam is yet another anthology, but it is vastly different from those that the OTT giants dumped on us as part of several attempts to test the waters of the streaming space with popular filmmakers, writers and actors. Except for maybe Modern Love Chennai, none of them has been memorable or exuded enough effort to warrant a revisit. There was no coherent vision or introspective quality to any of those stories. Ekam, on the other hand, flows like properly imagined short films, narrativised from the classical short story tradition. There is more a writing triumph here rather than at a filmmaking level, but the output is richer for it. These stories have a central philosophy that guides them; they are complex and, at times, even abstract; they are thematic and dance around their high notions with elegance, maturity and simplicity. There are seven stories with one-word English titles — Flight, Void, Masquerade, Delusion, Legacy, Tradition and Identity. Bhat writes and directs Void, Masquerade, Delusion and Legacy. Flight is by Sankar Gangadharan and Vivek Vinod, while Sanal Aman and Swaroop Elamon direct Tradition and Identity. |
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Pill: More Placebo Than Cure For What Ails Pharma Biz |
THE PIVOTAL PIECE OF EVIDENCE that ties the world of Pill (JioCinema) together is a dusty file, randomly discovered amid a dumping ground. Trash has rarely enjoyed the kind of prominence it does here, but on some level it points to the ingenuity needed to break the moulds of pliant journalism and fragile institutions. In a world where power isn’t questioned, maybe endeavour ought to be dragged through the dirt so it can be wielded against the mighty. But it’s this simplicity or randomness of fate that often gets in the way of a series’ fairly dogged approach to surveying an industry’s inner rot. What Pill gains in terms of clarity of design, it loses by way of purpose and actual twist-and-turn entertainment. Riteish Deshmukh plays Prakash, a suitably uncharismatic middle-class protagonist, who stumbles onto a trail above his pay grade. Prakash is tender, unremarkable, and frequently undermined by his talkative son. The symptom of all middle-class malaise — a feeble, wobbly car — makes up the background for what is routine for a puritanical portrayal of heroism. On the other end of the divide is Pawan Malhotra’s Brahma Gill, the pushy but also secretly sentimental boss of Forever Pharma. After a file listing a substandard drug is flung into the river, it ends up in the hands of a tenacious man willing to wager his life for a story. Thus ensues a chess match between the powerful and the powerless with a predictable outcome visible from the middle-distance. |
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| This weekly newsletter compiles a list of the latest (and most important) reviews from OTTplay so you can figure what to watch or ditch over the weekend ahead. |
| Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think it worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. | | In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an
hour on this. | |
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