Max names its artists
Max Fashion has put out the names of three artists whose art has been used in its latest Project New collections: Simon Raj, Pavithra and Manas. The three artists are part of Kairassi, a Chennai-based organisation working with differently-abled artists. Their original paintings have been taken “straight onto dresses, shirts, scarves and totes exactly as they were created,” the apparel company said. It also used an exclusive block print pattern, inspired by Japan’s sakura blossoms, by unnamed craftspeople from Sanganer in Rajasthan. Actress Kalki Koechlin, who is the brand ambassador for Max, personally shortlisted Kairassi and the three artists whose work anchors the collection. (Posted on 15 September)
(Not) Yet another Malayalam thriller
From the Malayalam film industry that churns out police procedurals by the dozen, a new thriller is winning praise for “injecting novelty into the genre”. The movie is ‘Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar‘, which, the reviewer notes, has quite a few parallels with Jeethu Joseph’s Drishyam, but has very different concerns and approach to the crime.
Growing up, meeting someone
Remember the hit web-series ’90s: A Middle Class Biopic’, and the youngest child in that family, Aditya? Well, he has grown into his twenties, is now in the UK, meets a girl called Kadali, and the ‘Epic: First Semester‘ is his story. The central theme is apparently relationships and anxieties around commitment. Both the lead actors get praise for their portrayals, as does the music director for creating a supporting undercurrent. It’s the director who gets the critical appraisal. The reviewer says the director, also named Aditya, has taken a leap of faith, “holding back from pandering to familiar mainstream tropes”. She reads meaning into the film’s tagline, ‘an unfinished story’, and sees an intent to push the boundaries of the coming-of-age story in the words ‘point of view’ that follow the director’s credit.