Radhe movie review

Take a dozen Salman Khan starrers. Peel and dice them without washing. Throw the whole lot into a wok with stale oil left over from last week’s cooking. Toss them together and serve when half cooked. 

That seems to be the recipe director Prabhu Deva followed for his latest collaboration with Salman Khan. Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai harks back to their blockbuster team-up in 2009, Wanted, in which Khan played an undercover cop going by the name from which this new film takes its title. Wanted was a remake of the Telugu smash hit Pokiri. Text on screen right before Radhe rolls declares that it is based on the Korean film The Outlaws directed by Kang Yun-sung – the fact that they do not bother to specify whether the Korea in this case is South or North Korea should tell you all you need to know about Radhe’s attention to detail. 

Briefly, Radhe is the story of a turf war in Mumbai’s drug-peddling scene when a new lord – a guy called Rana played by Randeep Hooda – enters the picture, and a disgraced cop (Radhe, but of course) is called in to bust this deadly racket that has led to an outbreak of addiction and deaths among the city’s youth. 

Review of a Novel Michael Schaub on Ling Ma’s Severance (NPR)

The great thing about Schaub’s reviews is they feel less like prose and more like having a conversation with Schaub over a plate of Austin barbecue. His review of Ma’s debut (which also happens to be one of my favorite novels of the year) begins with a brilliant connection between post-apocalyptic fiction and personal essays about “Why I’m Leaving New York”:

“Severance is the kind of satire that induces winces rather than laughs, but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining—Ma exhibits an admirable restraint throughout the novel, never giving in to tired clichés or overwrought sermonizing. It’s a stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring: This is the way the world ends, Ma seems to be saying, not with a bang but a memo.”

The fault of our stars "Review"

‘The Fault in Our Stars’ is one of those books for me. I won’t call it badly written, lacking emotions, or meagerness of realism but it is just a good book for me that I can read and maybe forget forever. Let me clarify I am not criticizing it.

There are some books that leave an eternal impression on the pages of your mind. There are some that you can read time and again. But won’t you agree if I say that there are books which are highly appreciated but somewhere in your mind, you realize that they are good, but not like those creating an everlasting impact on your mind, in your life and sometimes, on your thinking?

So, ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ is a book that talks about cancer patients, who are very well cognizant of the fact they are soon going to envisage their impending fates. It talks about two teenagers- Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters- who happen to be cancer patients and the protagonists of the book. What next? They meet, fall in love, and spend a lovely time together. They embark on a journey to a foreign land and realize some bitter truths of life- at such a young age.

Finally, Hazel realizes that Augustus is the one who is going to face fate first, which eventually happens. At last, she finds a letter which was written by Augustus before his demise. All that she understands is that Augustus came like a breeze and changed her notion of life. She realizes that one becomes happy or sad with the choices one makes in life, something Augustus made her realize. The book reaches its climax with Hazel realizing that she is happy with her choice in life.