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Time of India
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Alia Bhatt pays tribute to Rekha in iconic Silsila look for Umrao Jaan screening; Diet Sabya responds: ‘Reference done right'
Alia Bhatt turned heads at the screening of Umrao Jaan, not just with her elegance, but with a heartfelt tribute to Rekha 's iconic look from Silsila (1981). Dressed in a soft pink custom saree paired with feather earrings, Alia's appearance was styled by Rhea Kapoor, who drew direct inspiration from Rekha's cult classic style as Chandni in the Yash Chopra directorial. The actor complemented the look with dewy makeup and free-flowing hair, posing gracefully for the paparazzi at the event. The nod to Rekha's style wasn't subtle, it was a full-fledged homage that had fashion enthusiasts buzzing. Rhea Kapoor took to Instagram Stories to post a picture of Rekha in the original Silsila look as a reference point, confirming the homage. Fashion critic Diet Sabya also applauded the styling, writing, 'Rekha ma in Silsila has given us fashion and heartbreak refs for ages... and the only way to pay homage is to do it correctly or not do it at all. Alia in TT custom couture baby pink (or is it lilac?) sari worn with feather earrings for the screening of Umrao Jaan tonight. Reference done correct. Modern. Styled by @rheakapoor.' A double celebration of Rekha's legacy The event also marks excitement around the re-release of Umrao Jaan, one of Rekha's most celebrated performances. Restored by the National Film Development Corporation-National Film Archive of India under the National Film Heritage Mission, the film returns to theatres this Friday. Set in 19th-century Lucknow, Umrao Jaan follows the story of Amiran (played by Rekha), who is kidnapped and sold to a brothel, later becoming a renowned courtesan. The film also stars Farooque Shaikh, Raj Babbar, and Naseeruddin Shah, and is considered a cinematic and musical classic. Alia Bhatt, who has often expressed admiration for Rekha, will next be seen in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Love and War opposite Ranbir Kapoor and Vicky Kaushal, and in the YRF action film Alpha, which is part of the studio's spy universe.
Deccan Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Deccan Herald
Rajkumar Hirani, Shoojit Sircar, Anjali Menon, Onir to direct second part of ‘My Melbourne'
The project, produced by Mind Blowing Films and presented by the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM), aims to continue celebrating cultural diversity and strengthening ties between India and Australia through cinema, a press release said.
India Today
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- India Today
Priyanka Chopra shares note as she regrets missing Rekha's Umrao Jaan re-release
Actor Priyanka Chopra shared a heartfelt note on social media as she expressed regret over missing the theatrical re-release of Rekha-starrer 'Umrao Jaan', which she described as her 'favourite movie'. The film is set to re-release on June posted a short clip from the film featuring Rekha, Farooque Shaikh, and Naseeruddin Shah, writing, 'So sad to miss out on supporting my favourite movie and actors. It's going to be a legendary night. Congratulations, Rekha ma'am, #RekhaMaam #NaseeruddinShah sir (sic).'advertisementTake a look at the post here: The 1981 movie has been restored by the National Film Development Corporation-National Film Archive of India under the National Film Heritage in the 19th century, the film traces Amiran's (Rekha) arrival in a brothel in Lucknow and her relationships with three key characters played by Farooque Shaikh, Raj Babbar, and Naseeruddin from Mirza Hadi Ruswa's 1899 novel 'Umrao Jaan Adaa', the film received widespread acclaim for its layered storytelling, soulful music, and Rekha's powerful performance as Amiran, which earned her her first National Award. It also bagged National Awards for Best Music Direction, Best Art Direction, and Best Female Playback Singer, along with three Filmfare Priyanka will next be seen in 'Hedas of State' along with Idris Elba and John Cena. The actor also has 'Citadel 2' which was scheduled to release this year. Howeber, it has been postponed to a spring 2026 Watch
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Elio' Review: Pixar's Space Opera Adventure Needs More Time on Earth
Watching Elio, the title character of Pixar's latest film, it's difficult not to draw comparisons to another child hero underneath the Disney umbrella. Introduced as a shy child reeling from an unspecified accident that took his parents' life, the 11-year-old bursts out of his shell upon an encounter with an installation speculating of life beyond the stars and emerges as a hyperactive, alien-obsessed weirdo who runs around wearing a cape and metal colander helmet, speaks in a made-up language he calls 'Elio-ese,' and drives his Air Force aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) crazy. From the tragic backstory to the misfit behavior to the tense relationship with his guardian, Elio might as well be the male version of Lilo from Disney's similarly sci-fi themed 'Lilo & Stitch' — it doesn't help that plenty of people went to go see the remake just last month. More from IndieWire Danny Boyle Says He Couldn't Make 'Slumdog Millionaire' Today, and He'd Want 'a Young Indian Filmmaker' Instead David S. Goyer Says Warner Bros. Execs Were Upset It Takes an Hour to See Christian Bale in the Batsuit in 'Batman Begins' The crucial difference? In the original 2002 animated film that introduced her, Lilo won the hearts of viewers because she was such a specific, sharply written weirdo. She was rough around the edges, bratty and mean, and with eccentricities — a love of Elvis Presley, a belief that a fish on her nearby beach can control the weather — that were singular to her and her alone. Elio is a teddy bear in comparison: he's too instantly sympathetic to ever get properly annoyed at, and his obsession with aliens feels more banal and less personal, a way of acting out after the death of his parents rather than a real passion inside himself. He's easy to like, a sweet kid voiced winningly by spirited child actor Yonas Kibreab. But, like the movie that bears his name, he's a bit too forgettable to fall in love with. Any Pixar film that's been released since roughly the mid-2010s invites a perhaps unfair game of comparison, measuring how it stacks up to the studio's golden period of the 2000s, when every other film they produced was an instant classic. 'Elio' certainly is a fair sight better than much of the company's latest output, which has geared more toward regurgitating old ideas or sputtering around in shallow storylines. And yet watching it feels a slight bit depressing at the same time, a reminder that where Pixar's films once led the animation industry, taking out there concepts like rats that want to cook and robots that want to find love and bringing exquisite heart to them, they now feel imitative instead of innovative. If there were ever a version of 'Elio' that had the spark of an old Pixar classic, it got shuffled out of existence by a turbulent production process that saw original director Adrian Molina, who previously helmed the company's Oscar-winner 'Coco,' replaced by the duo of Domee Shi — whose hilarious 'Turning Red' remains the best Pixar film of the 2020s by a significant margin — and Madeline Sharafian, known for directing the short 'Burrow.' Molina based the film's original story concept heavily on his own life, and the directorial transition occurred right around Pixar head Pete Docter admitting the studio would be pivoting away from 'personal stories' driven by directors to films with universal mass appeal. Certain elements of the script directly based on Molina's life, such as Elio's mother working for the military, got rewritten entirely. The directorial change-up feels readily apparent throughout 'Elio's' 90-minute running time. That's not necessarily due to plot holes or pacing — the film clips along its standard beats at a steady pace, only lagging during one spaceship ride near the end that comes across as pure filler — but the overall feeling that it's only dipping its toes into the emotional and creative depths of this story. Elio's desire to be abducted by aliens, a reaction to his miserable loneliness on Earth, leads him to send a message via a satellite at his aunt's base to the stars pleading for extraterrestrials to come abduct him. The message gets received not just by a spacecraft but by the Communiverse, a roaming planet-like spaceship holding an international committee of representatives from across several galaxies. Getting whisked away into this fantastically technicolor world is a dream come true for Elio, enough that he's willing to go along with it when the committee reveals their misread that he's the leader of Earth. To secure his place in their ranks, he bravely/insanely plunges himself into solving a diplomatic crisis between the alliance and Lord Grigon (a suitably hammy Brad Garrett), the 'blood emperor' of a warlike race of alien worms from the planet Hylurg, who seeks revenge on the ambassadors for rejecting his bid to join them. All of this looks fantastic — while on Earth, Elio suffers a bit from that squishy, rounded animation style that's recently become more or less Pixar's house look. In space, the movie experiments more, adding splashes of 2D graphic animation and gorgeous technicolor around the stately white spaces Elio inhabits. The alien designs are suitably weird and inspired, from the mind-reading floating flatworm Questa (Jameela Jamil) to the rock monster Tegmen (Matthias Schweighöfer). One can detect sci-fi inspirations from 'E.T.' to 'Star Wars' all over the film's DNA, and in its funniest and most memorable moments it takes cues from sci-fi horror of all things, including the introduction to Grigon's son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), which has a whiff of both H. R. Giger in the character design and Ridley Scott in the blocking. But, as fun and creative as some of the individual parts of this spaceship are — from the chibi supercomputer sprite that gives Elio the ability to communicate with other aliens to the cloning goo he uses to explain away his absence on Earth — on a whole, the Communiverse is never as wondrous as you want it to be. None of the ambassadors get enough individuality for us to actually care about them, and their actual goals as an organization are too vague to grasp. Grigon is amusing as a warlord who, at heart, is really a beleaguered dad — he reminds one of Bowser in the Mario games more than any past Pixar character — but his softness is telegraphed a bit too early for him to ever be a convincing threat, even to children. This wondrous world up in the stars too frequently feels more like an amusement park for Elio to run and geek around in than a living, breathing universe. The real problem, though, might be the material that's earth-bound. 'Elio' draws clear parallels between Grigun's issues relating to Gideon and Elio's disconnect from his aunt Olga, and his desire for alien approval comes from a deeply wounded sense of pain that he no longer belongs on Earth after the passing of his parents. There's some great raw material here, and yet onscreen it never gets to compelling territory. Elio and Olga are simply too generic, stock types that can be found in plenty of modern animated films, for their friction to ever build into something as compelling as, say, Marlin and Nemo's strained father-son relationship. It doesn't help that Saldaña, whose character is meant to be the story's heart, sounds like she's phoning it in a bit in the voiceover booth. There's no specificity to Elio's circumstances on Earth — his trauma from his parents' deaths gets mostly brushed over, the isolation he feels from his peers is represented via a stock bully, even the town he lives in is a generic suburbia — which makes his yearning to escape to the stars ring hollow. So, by the time Rob Simonsen's rather generic score begins to overdo the bombast and the film gears up for an emotional decision from Elio about where he belongs that it has to take more than a few logical leaps to arrive at, the pathos falls a tiny bit flat. It's difficult not to wonder what 'Elio' could have been like, had the original concept from Molina made it onscreen, and whether or not the more 'personal' version of this story had the sharp edges and specificity needed to elevate the film from a cute kids' film to something more meaningful. 'Elio' isn't a bad time at the theaters — it's pretty to look at, charming enough, and frequently funny. But by shying away from investing in where its main character is coming from, the movie makes his galactic adventures feel a bit weightless. Disney will release 'Elio' in theaters on Friday, June 20. Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers. 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Boston Globe
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Nantucket Film Festival celebrates its 30th anniversary
Brabbée said this year's festival feels like both a celebration and reunion as past festivalgoers, talent, staff members, filmmakers, and community members prepare to return to Nantucket. 'We're really excited to have so many people who have been part of the festival's fabric over the years be woven back in,' she said. 'And of course, the audience, we're really excited to just share what we've created for them.' Advertisement For over a year, Brabbée and her team have planned numerous events to celebrate NFF's three decades of storytelling. One of those is this year's seaside garden soiree, ' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Elin Hilderbrand Nantucket Film Festival Brabbée also highlighted an event where journalist Lesley Stahl will lead a discussion with historian Nathaniel Philbrick and filmmaker Ken Burns about Burns's new 12-hour documentary series, ' After a seven-year hiatus, Advertisement The heart of the festival, of course, is film. The week kicks off with a pre-festival screening on June 24 of NFF's centerpiece film, ' The documentary celebrates the film's cultural impact with never-before-seen footage from director Steven Spielberg. It'll be followed by a panel discussion of the film's effects on the industry and the public's perception of sharks. Then on the festival's official first day, NFF has two films lined up. There's the documentary ' from 2017 to 2023 as she navigates national crises and motherhood. For those interested in a more narrative film, there's ' Film still of Jacinda Ardern working from home with her baby from "Prime Minister." Nantucket Film Festival Basil Tsiokos, NFF's senior programmer, said figuring out an opener for a festival can be challenging because it's about getting a sense of what audiences want to see while considering the tone being set for the rest of the festival. 'I think that's one of the reasons why we did two films for opening night, is to kind of capture the complexity of a festival that celebrates not only screenwriting fictional, but also storytelling in the sort of documentary sense,' Tsiokos said. 'So, both of those films are incredibly strong and so we thought it was a great way to kick things off.' Dylan O'Brien and James Sweeney in "Twinless." Nantucket Film Festival Outside of the documentaries and features, Anita Raswant, NFF's lead programmer, highlighted the shorts programming as a great selection that allows audiences to take in strong stories in shorter segments. Advertisement With so many offerings, the NFF team emphasized festivalgoers' ability to personalize their experiences, so they can get the most out of their trips to Nantucket and enjoy the festival community. 'It is important to gather people together to watch film,' Tsiokos said. 'Films open up the world to audiences and, yes, you can get access to films down the line, on streamers and on whatever, which is great, and that's part of the ecosystem as well, but there's something to be said for being in person.' NANTUCKET FILM FESTIVAL June 25-30. Single screening tickets start at $20. For more information, including films, locations, and screening times, visit
