Fri, August 15 2025

War 2, the sequel to the highly successful War and the next film in the Yash Raj Films’ Spy Universe, carries the story forward from the end of the first film but it also doesn’t. Actually, it doesn’t appear like a continuation of the first film, although the makers want us to believe so. Hence, the actual war is fought by the audience to try and decode what the film is about. So, at that start of War 2, which is directed by Ayan Mukerji, we are told that one of the best R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing) officers Kabir (Hrithik Roshan) has gone rogue and there is absolutely no major reason given for the same. We expect to be told Kabir’s back story later which led him to take such an extreme step against his agency and country but that never happens.

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Fri, August 15 2025

More posturing than performance, director Ayan Mukerji loses grip on the narrative while balancing the screen time of Hrithik Roshan and Jr NTR

In childhood, we were attracted to comic digests by their girth. One used to believe that the more the stories, the more the fun. The pages were glossy, and the packaging used to be fetching. However, the excitement often dissipated into disappointment when one discovered that it was a marketing gimmick, where the publishers added only a couple of new adventures of our favourite characters, the rest were just a repetition. Ayan Mukerji’s sequel to War gives the same feeling of a recycled product that shines. It starts with a bang but soon becomes a rudderless star vehicle. In the race to populate the spy universe, screenwriters have compromised on substance, indulging in hero worship and flag-waving to pass the box office test. Yes, the trailer looks attractive, the stars shine bright, and the post-credit scenes are appetizing. However, when it comes to telling a story, the makers prove more successful in highlighting Kiara Advani’s curves than in conveying the contours of the storyline. It features a variety of stunts with a script that appears to be powered by artificial intelligence.

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Fri, August 15 2025

करीब छह बरस पहले जब सिद्धार्थ आनंद के निर्देशन में हृतिक रोशन और टाइगर श्रॉफ वाली फिल्म ‘वॉर’ आई थी तो मैंने उसके रिव्यू में लिखा था-‘‘यह फिल्म पूरी तरह से पैसा वसूल एंटरटेनमैंट परोसती है। इसे ‘जानदार’ या ‘शानदार’ से ज़्यादा इसके ‘मज़ेदार’ होने के लिए देखा जाना चाहिए।’’ दरअसल इस किस्म की फिल्में दर्शक को एक ऐसे आभासी संसार में ले जाती हैं जिनके बारे में हमें पता होता है कि इसमें जो दिखाया जा रहा है वैसा न हुआ है, न हो सकता है। लेकिन पर्दे पर दिख रहे इस संसार की रंगीनियां, मस्ती, चमक-दमक और रफ्तार हमें ‘मज़ेदार’ लगती हैं और हम कुछ घंटों के लिए उनमें खो-से जाते हैं। सस्पैंस, रोमांच, एक्शन और आंखों को भाने वाले दृश्यों का जो आभामंडल इस किस्म की फिल्में रचती हैं, वह हमें लुभाता है और ‘बॉलीवुड’ इन्हीं मसालों को हमें बार-बार परोस कर हमें खुश और खुद को अमीर बनाता है। लेकिन कभी ऐसा भी होता है कि इन मसालों की खुशबू और क्वालिटी उतनी दमदार नहीं बन पाती कि हमारे दिल में गहरे उतर सके। ‘वॉर 2’ में यही हुआ है।

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Fri, August 15 2025

Arun Gopalan generates a sense of urgency and purpose in this noteworthy take on Indian intelligence and geopolitics

For a change, Pakistan is not the pivot of a Bollywood script that has a terror attack at its centre. Based on real events, Tehran draws from the alleged concerted Iranian attack on Israeli embassies in India, Georgia, and Thailand in 2012. Waiting in the wings for a while, Tehran assumes importance at a time when West Asia is on the boil again because of strained relations between Iran and Israel. The film shows how the two countries attack each other’s interests, but in this case, India, which has friendly ties with both Iran and Israel, gets caught in the crossfire between the two countries fighting a war of civilisations.

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Fri, August 15 2025

A good watch for fans of the cast and the genre

Tehran, led by John Abraham, Manushi Chillar, and Neeru Bajwa follows the attacks on Israeli diplomats which took place in 2012. The action thriller film directed by Arun Gopalan not only follows the story of justice at the hands of an Indian officer, but also the geopolitics that is just as important. The makers do not focus on the star power but on the story they wish to showcase. The film begins with John Abraham’s ACP Rajeev Kumar taking down a major gangster without any protocol after he had threatened his family. When the cops arrive, he just hands over the case and asks him to take care of it. On the other hand, as his daughter is returning from school, a similar car is attacked and blasts off in the middle of the road, injuring by standards and killing an innocent 6 year old girl.

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Fri, August 15 2025

What John Abraham, whose impassivity helps his character feel as real as it can when done with reel-drama, manages to pull off here is noteworthy.

It’s raining spies everywhere you turn, but it’s in ‘Tehran’ that you actually get a sense of what the work entails– it could mean putting in long, hard hours in nondescript offices, and the field operations that are shown as fast-paced car-and-copter-chases in the movies is, in this John Abraham-starrer, mostly about learning how to hide in plain sight, even as the danger of betrayal looms at every step. Abraham plays Rajeev Kumar, an intelligence officer who gets embroiled in the dirty business involving two foreign nations, Israel and Iran, on Indian soil. A blast in New Delhi results in the death of a little girl, a bystander with zero stakes in the long-standing conflict in the Middle East, and RK finds himself moving from the periphery to the centre. It’s no longer about the job; it is now personal.

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Fri, August 15 2025

Easy and a rich watch

The Assasin is a crime thriller created by Harry and Jack Williams and led by Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore, which follows a mother and son duo as their past begins to haunt them. While the mother is an assassin the son returns to her asking questions about who his father is. Meanwhile, a unknown group puts a heavy bounty on her head making it impossible for the two of them to have real conversation without racking up dead bodies around them. The show begins with Keeley Hawes as Julie at a young age in 1994, fighting off a group of Russians to get to her target. Despite being offered a lot of money, she finished her mission and left the money behind. However, just as she confirms her kill and is about to move on to her next, the timer on her watch rings out to let her know it’s time to check the pregnancy test. 31 years later, Julie has retired and is living on a small Greek island alone while waiting for her estranged son to come visit her.

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Fri, August 15 2025

Fri, August 15 2025

Fri, August 15 2025

It is Rajinikanth the star and Deva the character who call the shots all the way through.

Coolie has no dearth of big stars. It has Aamir Khan in a special appearance as a swaggering, heavily tattooed crime lord who pops out of a chopper in the middle of a desert at the fag-end of the film. Upendra has an extended cameo that kicks of late in the second half when the chips are down for once for the titular protagonist. Nor is that all. Nagarjuna Akkineni dons the garb of the principal villain and Soubin Shahir slips into the skin of a slimy double-dealer. It’s top-heavy, to say the least. Each one of them carries his weight in Coolie-The Powerhouse (the title of the Hindi dub of the Tamil action extravaganza that’s been released without the suffix). But it is hardly surprising that the onus of doing most of the heavy lifting in squarely upon the redoubtable Rajinikanth.

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Fri, August 15 2025

Andhera, starring Priya Bapat, Karanvir Malhotra, Prajakta Koli, Pravin Dabas, Surveen Chawla, among others, should come with a tagline: suspend all disbelief, all ye enter this supernatural-horror territory.

The hardest thing about this show is also the easiest. Once you accept the fact that heightened hokeyness is key to both the characters and the construct, you begin admiring the straight-faced seriousness with which everyone gets with the plan, with nary an eye roll or giggle in sight. Without giving too much away, and I suppose I couldn’t even if I wanted to, so outlandish is everything, the ‘andhera’ in the title turns out to be a malevolent entity which threatens to enslave human-kind. It has wriggly tentacles which probe and fasten, whisking victims away into a never-never land where they lie in suspension, neither dead nor alive, mere husks.

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Thu, August 14 2025

The 8-episode horror show trades mental health metaphors for paranormal inactivity.

Cold on the heels of Mandala Murders, Andhera (“darkness”) is yet another supernatural thriller that ends up becoming a cautionary tale on narrative ambition. This genre of horror is so shapeless that, if the theme isn’t as culturally focused as a Khauf or even an Asur, it tends to spiral into several directions without doing justice to any. It’s like a batsman who keeps swinging big — regardless of the match situation — under the pretext of “intent”. It doesn’t help that Andhera is one of the longest Hindi shows of the year. Or perhaps its 8 episodes feel longer because the world-building just never stops building; it’s not a good sign when a central character says “we were wrong all along” in the penultimate episode. It’s obvious that I’ve run out of patience because I usually don’t hit the ground running with criticism in the opening paragraph. I like some suspense and world-building too. But life is short and, if the title is anything to go by, I’m one typo away from reviewing the suburb I live in (Andheri).

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Fri, August 15 2025

Netflix's new show, Saare Jahaan Se Acch,a is created by Gaurav Shukla, directed by Sumit Purohit, and stars Pratik Gandhi. But it's Sunny Hinduja and Suhail Nayyar who walk away with the best moments.

It’s not the fault of this series that it comes exactly a week after the one which had the same theme. Well, almost. Salaakar is about scotching Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions with the help of canny footwork by Indian spies : this week’s new show on Netflix, Saare Jahaan Se Accha, created by Gaurav Shukla and directed by Sumit Purohit, is exactly about the same thing. The intent may be the same but the treatment, thankfully, is vastly different: the beyond-terrible Salakaar, with Naveen Kasturia leading the charge, reminds you of a comic-book with none of the fun of the genre; this Pratik Gandhi starrer, on the other hand, takes things seriously, and that’s a good thing, more or less.

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Thu, August 14 2025

Thu, August 14 2025

Vishnu Shankar can’t come to terms with his inability to prevent nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha’s death. Now married, working under RAW, he’s transferred to Pakistan to stop its emergence as a nuclear power, which could mean doomsday to humankind at large. Torn between his conscience and national duty, Vishnu is relentless, however, paying a heavy price for his choices. There’s no better news than Pratik Gandhi getting his due as an actor – even if it’s on OTT more than the big screen. Playing a role modelled on a real-life hero, he doesn’t make a saint out of him, portrays his integrity, while also highlighting his grey areas. Rajat Kapoor, in the shoes of Kao, has it a little too easy; the character is no real test to his mettle.

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Fri, August 15 2025

Pavan Malhotra is as dependable as ever in the latest TVF offering.

Shifting focus from panchayats and chikitsalayas, TVF takes the legal route to tell the story of a generational conflict revolving around small-town court kacheris. Is Harish Mathur, whose acumen in the court-room has earned him legions of fans, wrong to assume that his son Param will follow in his footsteps? Is Param right in wanting to forge his own path, which will take him far away from both his father’s chosen profession, as well as the land of his birth?

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Thu, August 14 2025

कोर्ट कचहरी और काले कोट वाले वकीलों से लोग अमूमन दूर ही रहना पसंद करते हैं, इसलिए उनकी दुनिया से अंजान भी होते हैं। ऐसे में, न्याय के इस मंदिर के इर्द-गिर्द ढंग से कहानी बुनी जाए तो एक ताजगी और नयापन जरूर महसूस होता है। जैसा कि बीते साल आई वेब सीरीज ‘मामला लीगल है’ को लेकर महसूस हुआ था। रवि किशन स्टारर यह सीरीज टीवीएफ (द वायरल फीवर) से निकले विश्वपति सरकार और समीर सक्सेना ने बनाई थी। वहीं, अब TVF के मूल कर्ता धर्ता अरुणाभ कुमार इसी विषय पर नई सीरीज ‘कोर्ट कचहरी’ लेकर आए हैं, जिसमें दो पीढ़ियों यानी पिता-पुत्र के बीच करियर की आजादी को लेकर तनातनी का तड़का भी है, मगर इसके बावजूद मामला सही से सेट नहीं हो पाया है और उनका यह केस (सीरीज) कमजोर रह गया है।

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Wed, August 13 2025

Starring Pawan Malhotra and Ashish Verma, the 5-episode TVF series resembles a sweet-talking man who becomes a red flag

Court Kacheri does a lot right for its first three (out of five) episodes. It unfolds as a legal dramedy that questions its own identity. The young protagonist, Param (Ashish Verma), is a reluctant second-generation lawyer by virtue of being the son of a popular senior advocate, Harish Mathur (Pawan Malhotra). Param detests the profession — he’s seen his dad entertain all kinds of criminals, shady clients and corrupt politicians over the years. All he wants to do is leave for either Dubai or Canada, but a Police Clearance Certificate (PCC) becomes a conflict after he’s caught in a fake-marksheet scam. Basically, he’s a nepo-baby who can’t handle the pressure of legacy. The outsider, Suraj (Puneet Batra), is Harish’s loyal assistant. Unlike Param, he wishes he was his mentor’s son with silver-spoon privileges; his passion for law sees him hustle to start a secret practice with a friend (Amarjeet Singh) behind Harish’s back. In short, there’s a toxic patriarch and two boys desperate to escape his shadow and become their own men.

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Thu, August 14 2025

Zach Cregger's Weapons appeals to our inherent quest for answers — for an endgame — from a horror film, and delights in the journey rather than the destination.

Weapons opens and closes with a kid’s voiceover, but the anonymity of this narrator kind of ties into the film’s thematic fluidity. As viewers, we are simply wired to look for social cues, for hints and allegories. Weapons knows this and toys with our instincts. The meaning — or lack of it — lies in the eyes of the beholder. The horror in the film becomes anything we want it to be. For some, it could be a self-aware take on community trauma and urban isolation. For some, it could be a nifty riff on our biases about witchcraft and creepy relatives. For some, it could be a naughty satire on our perception of true-crime and supernatural stories. For some, it’s the wicked title, where the emotional ‘weaponisation’ of an entire town on edge prevents them from looking in the most obvious places. The twist — of a fragile outsider arriving to cast a voodoo over victims and turn them into literal weapons — is an entertaining rendition of this simple idea.

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Tue, August 12 2025

Unsettling, hynotic, wildly unhinged and chilling to the bone — this brilliantly written small-town mystery is madness wrapped in genius.

When 17 kids from the same class mysteriously disappear from their homes on the same night except for one student (Alex) and the teacher (Julia Garner as Justine), the bewildered town seeks answers. While both survivors face scrutiny, Justine becomes the prime suspect. How did the kids vanish into thin air! Who’s behind these bizarre disappearances? This gripping small town mystery is like nothing you have seen before. Shocking at every turn, it never gets predictable. Very rarely do you come across a horror film that’s smartly layered, deeply unsettling, dark and amusing, all at once. Weapons ticks all the boxes. Be it the isolated setting, camera work or performances, you feel as much a part of this eerie mystery as the characters.

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Sun, August 10 2025

What’s most satisfying about Zach Cregger’s ‘Weapons’ is how he refuses to pin-down his central allegory, inviting questions from the audience rather than handing them answers

A child’s voiceover at the beginning of a horror/mystery film might not be the most novel choice, but there’s a way director Zach Creggers uses it in his second film, Weapons, in a matter-of-fact way, making it that much more eerie. Voiced by Scarlett Sher, the voiceover starts telling a story about a town where something strange happened, and the townsfolk were so embarrassed by the incident that they buried it within themselves. It’s a startling detail for a horror movie, where an untoward ‘supernatural’ incident becomes the cause of terror, haunted mansions and urban legends. But Cregger appears more interested in our human reaction – of shame, sadness and denial – to the said incident, refusing to articulate it to the rest of the world. It’s most apparent in the way Cregger uses George Harrison’s Beware of Darkness – probably too literal a choice for a horror film. However, it’s only when the mournful ballad plays as 17 school kids running with their arms spread out, disappear into darkness, is when we register the grief. As the opening voiceover warns us – this incident will never be solved.

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Thu, August 14 2025

Co-written and directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, the adult comedy feature has some wild and crazy moments in the life of an about-to-be neutered dog.

Fixed is not a family film. It is far, far from that. Instead, the animated feature on Netflix focuses on a dog named Bull who is about to lose his ‘manhood’ by being neutered at the vet. Along with three of his besties, he has a wild 24 hours before he is tamed. Think of Fixed as an animated The Hangover featuring canine characters. Filmmaker Genndy Tartakovsky’s new animated feature goes hard and may not be for everyone. Bull (voice of Adam DeVine) is a mutt who is loved by his family but they are tired of him humping anything that moves, including the aged Nana. The solution is to send him to the vet to get neutered once and for all. Bull’s pack of besties, boxer Rocco (voice of Idris Elba), dachshund Fetch (voice of Fred Armisen) and beagle Lucky (voice of Bobby Moynihan), try to reassure him, but he runs off to the city. They eventually track him down, leading to a night of mayhem where Bull tries to admit his feelings for Honey (voice of Kathryn Hahn), an Afghan hound who is being presented at the dog show. The pack’s misadventures make up much of the story.

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Thu, August 14 2025

Based on the 1936 novel by Manik Bandopadhyay of the same name, Suman Mukhopadhyay’s film is far from a straightforward story of an educated, upright man reforming rural India.

Shashi (Abir Chatterjee) is not the ‘hero’ we’re used to seeing in mainstream cinema. He comes off as someone perpetually irate at the people around him, but it’s probably his powerlessness that gives way to his anger. The one and only doctor in a tiny hamlet in West Bengal, despite his best attempts, Shashi is never able to meet his own expectations. In the film’s first scene – he discovers a dead acquaintance, killed by a bolt of lightning. The man was on his way to find an educated groom for his teen daughter. More than anger, Shashi is disappointed how a life is lost in search of a 10th-pass prospect.

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Tue, February 4 2025

Suman Mukhopadhyay’s Putulnacher Itikatha or The Puppet’s Tale (part of the Big Screen Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam this week) begins with a man on a boat, the twilight glistening in the swampy conditions surrounded by rural Bengal of the late 1930s. On the boat is Dr Shashi Bhuto (Abir Chatterjee), encountering his ancestral village and with it, death. “Everyone must face death someday”, his voiceover drones, insisting that he doesn’t, therefore, mourn. He lives a double life, one in his physical manifestation, as a doctor in a village in pre-Independence India, populated by people with little to no education and beset by all kinds of issues, from religious dogma, superstitions and lack of access to basic services amidst war in Europe and freedom struggle. His other life is in his head, his future he dreams of in a city, maybe London, as the affluent, posh doctor he wishes to be. In many ways, The Puppet’s Tale — adapted from Manik Bandopadhyay’s 1936 novel of the same name — is a curious film. It can be placed in the context of a particular time in India as well as a particular period in Indian cinema. It is set during a transitional, commotion-filled phase in modern Indian history — less than a decade for independence from British rule—with the movement touching every corner of the country. The film intentionally refrains from registering any of that. In cinema terms, it is almost two decades before Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, which itself is a certain rural time capsule of new India, followed by forced migration towards busier parts of the country. Here, Shashi’s existential crisis takes precedence over India’s own. That’s not to say he is unbothered by the condition of a country that is just about incubating. His existential crisis eats away at him, he holds dreams of moving to London to be the doctor that he wants to be instead of toiling away treating the local villagers who are sceptical about his methods.

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Tue, August 12 2025

There is such a thing as a Festival Discovery. When you walk into a theatre blind and watch in awe a film taking shape and culminating into everything you wanted to see but did not know. There is such a thing as a film seeing you in a crowd, acknowledging you for what you are and smoothening the jagged edges of what has become of you. Like offering a handshake in the dark. Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was that film for me. The description on the festival website was vague: “Something bad happened to Agnes. But life goes on… for everyone around her, at least.” It said something and nothing. Something bad happened to Agnes (Victor), the tall, awkward protagonist of the film who lives in a quaint house and is overjoyed every time her best friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie) visits her from New York. They sit on a couch and collapse into a lived-in comfort of years. You look around and see no one else around. When they meet their other friends from college, Agnes is asked, “Do you still live there?” Her gaze falls and Lydie holds her hand beneath the table. But even she has her own apprehensions. “Don’t kill yourself,” she urges. “I won’t,” Agnes reassures with a certitude that implies that she had considered it.

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Tue, August 12 2025

Hollywood has done some excellent work in the post-MeToo era. This film adds to the list.

My first reading of Agnes (played by Eva Victor) was that of a buoyant 30-something person struggling to hold on to her twenties, shirking responsibility of a long-term relationship (or anything that we consider ‘grown-up’), sleep-walking through a listless mid-career, and probably too afraid to leave the comfort of her surroundings. Living in a small home in New England, she’s visited by her best friend and former house-mate, Lydie (Naomie Ackie), a writer in New York, working on her next book. It appears some time has passed since they last met. As they catch up, Lydie talks about her book, and Agnes deflects any conversation about herself. I braced myself for a film that ends with Agnes acting like a responsible adult, exiting her dream world.

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Sat, August 9 2025

What is remarkable about Eva Victor’s Sundance breakout, a taut 104 minutes, is the way it refuses to position its protagonist as a classic victim, even though there’s enough reason for it.

Often, a woman who finds the courage, and the words, to talk about an assault that’s happened to her, is asked why she is doing it ‘so late’. It’s easier to say ‘an’ assault, rather than ‘my’ assault because disassociation kicks in. Owning up to it becomes too much, and the only way to survive is to begin distancing from ‘the event’. All too often, it goes unaddressed, lying like an unhealed wound, pushing itself to the fore when the survivor least expects it. Debutant director Eva Victor’s ‘Sorry, Baby’ in which Victor plays Agnes, a professor in a small New England town, does have a Bad Thing happen to her. Her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who is visiting her when the film opens, was her grad school roommate, when it happened. In the film’s most chilling sequences, we are rendered spectators to the Bad Thing, at a remove. We see the tall, gangling, fresh-faced Agnes go into her thesis guide’s home at dusk: the lights go, hours elapse, and we wait, at a distance, as the camera stays unmoving and unflinching, for Agnes to come stumbling out, sit on the steps, wear her boots, and get into the car and drive back home, possibly the longest, and the most difficult, drive of her life.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Tender and tense in equal measure, director Ankur Singla’s film finds life between the generation gap

In the march of civilisation, some dear words are in danger of falling by the wayside. One of them is Ghich Pich. It can be loosely translated as cramped space, but it is a state of mind that a single word can’t explain. Much like the nostalgia of the 1990s, young filmmakers continue to revisit it to tell coming-of-age stories. It is a template where the focus is on providing an experience, and in the hands of director Ankur Singla, the emotional and physical architecture feels tangible and honest as he captures a slice of life from three Chandigarh boys grappling with hormonal rush and daddy issues.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Ankur Singla's Chandigarh-set film, ‘Ghich Pich’, is a simple but reasonably effective slice of nostalgia

It’s rare to see architecturally attuned Hindi films. Basu Chatterjee in the ‘70s had an eye for it. Last year, Atul Sabharwal’s Berlin used Brutalist buildings to suggest forbidding bureaucracy. I wouldn’t go as far as to say architecture informs Ankur Singla’s Ghich Pich, but the film is alive to it. Every now and then, a deliberate framing will dwarf the characters and call attention to the building in the back. It’s a welcome strategy. Why set your film in Chandigarh if you’re not going to use Le Corbusier’s creations? You can tell Singla grew up in the city. His vision of Chandigarh in 2001 feels unforced but specific, a series of quick, confident sketches rather than a laboured recreation. The central trio, fast friends and classmates in high school, are deftly drawn too. Anurag (Aryan Singh Rana) is a promising student, the one likeliest to make the jump to a metro like Delhi. Gurpreet (Kabir Nanda) is a sad sack who spends all his time thinking of ways to impress classmate Ashima. Gaurav (Shhivam Kakar) mostly gets in trouble at school, content with a future working in his doting father’s eyewear store.

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Sat, August 9 2025

2000s Chandigarh is the protagonist of Ankur Singla’s well-acted friendship drama

In this streaming era, I’m suspicious about stories set in the 1990s and early 2000s. When nostalgia becomes the only selling point, it’s hard to enjoy the curated slice-of-life-ness. I’m also wary of the term ‘Mindie’ (mainstream+indie): a tonal signifier of low-budget productions with a commercial pitch. Ankur Singla’s Ghich Pich (a colloquial term for “emotional turmoil”) is a Mindie marinating in post-liberalisation nostalgia. The year is 2001, the setting is Chandigarh. Posters of Chandrachur Singh, Sonali Bendre and Shawn Michaels dot the coming-of-age narrative of three teen friends in the late-night-drives and single-ring-on-landline phase of their lives. Board exams are around the corner; middle partings, blissful ignorance (“I’ve heard it spreads through eye contact,” whispers a kid about homosexuality), pre-digital innocence (“Kiss? No, my love for her is pure,” a boy declares) and letters inked in blood are all the rage.

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