News / Author / Karishma Upadhyay

Karishma Upadhyay

Articles by Karishma Upadhyay

Surrealism stretches out: A day at the Dali museum in Spain

Salvador Dali designed it to be ‘a great surrealist object’ that would cause people to ‘leave with the sensation of having had a theatrical dream’.

The museum is housed in a crimson building studded with pa de crostons (a local Catalan bread that Dali loved) made of yellow concrete, and topped with giant, white concrete eggs. (Getty Images)

Art and Culture

Updated on Jan 10, 2025 04:50 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

The legend lives on: The essential Raj Kapoor watchlist

As a teen, he was fascinated not by stardom but by the mechanics of movie-making. Here are our picks of the best films he later starred in, directed or produced

Did you know: Awaara, released in Russia in 1954 (three years after its India release), was the year’s biggest hit in that country.

Art and Culture

Updated on Dec 06, 2024 07:11 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

The wonder years: A tribute to the legendary Raj Kapoor, in his centenary year

We’re still joining the dots on the massive impact he had. He gave the world an early glimpse of what India could do, and be. And then was just suddenly... gone

Read on to see how Raj Kapoor’s films lit up screens in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean; how snatches are reappearing in films made today. (HT Archives)

Art and Culture

Published on Dec 06, 2024 06:55 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Cut to fit: A Wknd interview with Emmy-nominated film editor Varun Viswanath

The electronics engineer from Bengaluru has been nominated for his work on the Taika Waititi-Sterlin Harjo series Reservation Dogs. Here’s how it happened.

Art and Culture

Updated on Aug 02, 2024 04:18 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

‘All India Rank tells a personal story’: A Wknd interview with Varun Grover

His first film is about a teen in Kota who knows he doesn’t belong at an IIT. They say ‘Write what you know, says Grover, a comedian, writer and civil engineer.

All India Rank, now streaming on Netflix, follows 17-year-old Vivek Singh (Bodhisattva Sharma) as he discovers that he isn’t remotely equipped to chase the IIT dream that he was raised to pursue.

Art and Culture

Updated on May 17, 2024 02:34 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Breaking character: A Wknd interview with theatre director Feroz Abbas Khan

His Mughal-e-Azam was a lavish spectacle. His new production, Letters of Suresh, is different; minimalist. ‘It’s unlike anything I’ve done in years,’ he says.

'It would, in some ways, be easier for me to do another big production, to do more of that kind of work. But to make the complex accessible is what makes me the happiest,' Khan says.

Art and Culture

Updated on May 04, 2024 03:57 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

It’s alive! The making and remaking of ‘monster’

Why does a 200-year-old tale continue to draw storytellers? See how modern retellings of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are taking on patriarchy, migration, AI.

Emma Stone as Bella Baxter in Poor Things, the Oscar-winning 2023 feminist retelling.

Art and Culture

Updated on Apr 05, 2024 08:25 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Paws and play: An animated short about seniors, with a twist

Rahul Razdan knew he wanted to make films in his final year at architecture school. At 51, his first movie is now out and winning awards.

Old Age Home follows different characters as they talk about their lives. The twist emerges at the end: the residents aren’t people, they are dogs at a shelter. (Image courtesy Bakarmax)

Art and Culture

Updated on Mar 23, 2024 05:41 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

‘I have a lot of respect for Ray, but am tired of stereotypes of Indian poverty’

Siddartha Jatla discusses the grim plot of In the Belly of a Tiger, why his villagers wear brightly coloured clothes and why every frame is suffused with beauty

Art and Culture

Updated on Mar 22, 2024 06:32 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

I’m a greedy actor: Nimisha Sajayan of Poacher (and The Great Indian Kitchen)

She struggled in Mumbai. ‘I think I looked too much like a typical Malayali,’ says Sajayan, 27. Now a name to contend with, she wants to do action, romcoms.

Sajayan plays the lead role in Poacher, of a fierce forest officer driven by anger and by the assumed guilt of knowing that her late father was a prolific poacher too.

Art and Culture

Updated on Mar 09, 2024 06:39 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

A TV star who became the voice of consumers

Kaveta Chaudhry, known for her role as Lalita ji in Surf ads, passed away at 67. She also starred in TV series Udaan and wrote the film Badhaai Ho Badhaai.

Chaudhry remains best known as Lalita ji of the Surf ads that aired from 1984 on. (HT Archive)

India News

Updated on Feb 17, 2024 06:00 AM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay, Mumbai

Stardom is not a goal for me: Kani Kusruti of Girls Will Be Girls

She plays the other woman in Killer Soup; shines in GWBG, which recently won at Sundance. What did it take to play a mother almost menacing in her loneliness?

The actor picked her own last name. Kusruti is Malayalam for Mischievous. Though it doesn’t show in her filmography, she yearns to do comedy, she says. (Photo by Anand Gandhi)

Art and Culture

Updated on Feb 12, 2024 12:04 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Remember Bombay Boys? Rewind 25 years with the OG Mumbhai gang

Kaizad Gustad’s campy Hinglish film released in December 1998. Feel old, feel cringey, sing I am Mumbhai, as the cast and crew serve up their best memories

Bombay Boys, a tale story of three expat boys in Mumbai was a sleeper hit 25 years ago.

Brunch

Updated on Dec 15, 2023 04:12 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Son spots: On Mrinal Sen as friend, father, filmmaker

Kunal Sen’s book is an intimate look at his parents' marriage, their politics, his own bond with his father and his work. It’s memory, with no myth, he says.

Kunal Sen with his parents and wife Nisha Sen.

lifestyle

Updated on Oct 27, 2023 09:15 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Get to know... Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju

The actor and doctor lives for dessert, hates loud alarms and is only just coming to terms with fame

Doctor-actor Trinetra Haldar has been listening to Cigarette After Sex’s Apocalypse.

lifestyle

Updated on Aug 25, 2023 06:45 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Mommy issues: Meet the unique new voice in stand-up, Zarna Garg

Her jokes are brutal, frank, questioning. Why are we like this, is her overarching theme. She toured with Tina Fey, and now has a special out on Amazon Prime.

In her comedy, Garg questions why brown women must laugh in secret. Why the archetypal mother-in-law is so awful. She jokes about her kids, her two cultures (Indian and American), her inability to not parent. ‘I don’t think I’m funny. I’m just honest,’ she says.

lifestyle

Updated on Aug 05, 2023 11:28 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Shekhar Kapur on fear, films and ‘taking the scenic route’: A Wknd interview

What’s Love Got to Do with It? is his seventh film in four decades, but each release has made news, won awards. Fear of failure motivates him, says Kapur, 71.

lifestyle

Updated on Jul 27, 2023 04:43 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Plate tectonics: A Wknd interview with restaurateur Niyati Rao

Ekaa, just 14 months old, has made it onto the extended list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. The dream is to create new Indian classics, says the 28-year-old.

‘Decades ago, someone came up with the idea of frying little puris and filling them up with spicy water. That’s how we got pani puri. I don’t want to give the world a new version of pani puri but maybe create something that a century from now could be perceived in the same way,’ says Rao. (HT Archives)

lifestyle

Updated on Aug 11, 2023 08:57 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

I knew Kapil Sharma had it in him: Filmmaker Nandita Das, on Zwigato

The struggling food-app delivery worker Sharma plays is nothing like the funnyman we know. But he was the common man before his TV stardom, says Das.

Sharma as Manas, a laid off factory-floor manager who finds his life unsettled further after he joins the gig economy. The film is now in theatres. It’s a tale about man and the algorithm, Das says.

lifestyle

Updated on Aug 12, 2023 03:35 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

The hidden agenda: A masked trail from Zorro to Watchmen

Hollywood has shown us how masks can consume a man, revealing as much as they conceal. Amid talk of a Zorro reboot, a look at heroes, villains and cover-ups.

(Left to right) Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro (1998). The character Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th (1980). Christian Bale as Batman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). V, an anar-chist freed-om fighter, wears the Guy Fawkes-inspired mask in V for Vendetta (2005).

lifestyle

Updated on Aug 04, 2023 04:53 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

A watershed moment for Indian documentaries

All That Breathes and The Elephant Whisperers are unlike most animal documentaries. Instead of serving as a warning about the extinction of creatures or the human threat to their ecosystems, the film is a portrait of coexistence and interspecies bonds.

All That Breathes (a still in photo) and The Elephant Whisperers have made their mark on the global stage, for their country and their craft, proving that small is indeed beautiful (PTI)

opinion

Updated on Jan 27, 2023 07:11 AM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Up to the tusk: A Wknd interview with the maker of The Elephant Whisperers

Kartiki Gonsalves's Oscar-nominated documentary follows a tribal couple in Tamil Nadu who adopted two orphaned elephant calves. It’ll be orcas next, she says.

Gonsalves spent 18 months just building a bond with the little family, so that they would be comfortable around her. The result is a wealth of endearing, candid moments. In one such moment, during bath time, Bomman asks Raghu, ‘Who’s the best elephant?’

lifestyle

Updated on Aug 04, 2023 12:16 AM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Breaking the sound barrier: A Wknd interview with RRR’s MM Keeravani

He’s reclusive and uninterested in fame, but it’s coming his way. The musician’s Naatu Naatu from RRR is India’s first film song shortlisted for an Oscar.

lifestyle

Updated on Jul 24, 2023 02:54 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Matinee to OTT: Big B, star for all ages, turns 80

Amitabh Bachchan turned 80 on Tuesday. Exactly half a century ago to the day, he woke up on his 30th birthday, stretched languidly, and decided that his life had turned a corner.

india news

Updated on Oct 12, 2022 02:37 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Jaggi: A Punjabi film lifts the veil on sexual violence against men

What is life like for a slim, quiet, ‘weak’ Punjabi man? An award-winning new film offers a raw, brutal take on violence, repression and gender identity in rural Punjab.

Ramnish Chaudhary (centre) plays Jaggi, a teen who is repeatedly raped, beaten and ridiculed. ‘It happens and we don’t talk about it,’ says filmmaker Anmol Sidhu.

lifestyle

Updated on Jul 01, 2022 10:38 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

The rise of the Indian undead

Zombies have begun to shuffle across screens in India, with films released in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu. Gore is a given, but so is humour. Look out!

Stills from the Telugu film Zombie Reddy (2021), the Bengali Zombie-sthaan (2019) and Dibakar Banerjee’s short in the Hindi anthology Ghost Stories (2020).

lifestyle

Updated on Jun 18, 2022 08:01 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

How zombies got up and shuffling in Bollywood

Mainstream Hindi cinema hasn’t had a lot of zombies ambling about, but they have been first movers in India. Check out some of the earliest undead works.

Go Goa Gone (2013) tells the story of three friends who wake up after a rave to find that the other party-goers have turned into zombies.

lifestyle

Updated on Jun 17, 2022 05:46 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Vito power: The Godfather at 50

The film, released in March 1972, didn’t just leave its mark on Hollywood. From Amitabh Bachchan-starrers to movies by Mani Ratnam, scenes, lines, themes and characters from the classic echo across Indian cinema too.

lifestyle

Updated on Mar 25, 2022 05:08 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Love craft: A Wknd interview with intimacy director Dar Gai

Mythology, philosophy and Obama’s list of favourite songs of 2019 all came together to point Ukrainian filmmaker towards her role on Shakun Batra’s Gehraiyaan. See how the 32-year-old became one of mainstream Bollywood’s first intimacy directors.

lifestyle

Updated on Feb 11, 2022 09:46 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

Kinship, road trips, realism: How Dil Chahta Hai broke the mould

Twenty years on, the film — with its casual attitudes to money, travel, relationships and sex — feels almost prophetic. Back then, in a time of bloated ‘NRI films’, its authenticity was groundbreaking. A look at what made Dil Chahta Hai such a unique blockbuster for its time.

Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna go on that famous road trip to Goa, yes. But their bond wasn’t the loud, boisterous thing of mainstream blockbusters. Instead, they gently navigated the heartbreaks of transition into adulthood, the grief of impossible love and the confusion of not knowing one’s place in the world.

lifestyle

Updated on Aug 06, 2021 04:48 PM IST

ByKarishma Upadhyay

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Karishma Upadhyay

Salvador Dali designed it to be ‘a great surrealist object’ that would cause people to ‘leave with the sensation of having had a theatrical dream’.

As a teen, he was fascinated not by stardom but by the mechanics of movie-making. Here are our picks of the best films he later starred in, directed or produced

We’re still joining the dots on the massive impact he had. He gave the world an early glimpse of what India could do, and be. And then was just suddenly... gone

The electronics engineer from Bengaluru has been nominated for his work on the Taika Waititi-Sterlin Harjo series Reservation Dogs. Here’s how it happened.

His first film is about a teen in Kota who knows he doesn’t belong at an IIT. They say ‘Write what you know, says Grover, a comedian, writer and civil engineer.

His Mughal-e-Azam was a lavish spectacle. His new production, Letters of Suresh, is different; minimalist. ‘It’s unlike anything I’ve done in years,’ he says.

Why does a 200-year-old tale continue to draw storytellers? See how modern retellings of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are taking on patriarchy, migration, AI.

Rahul Razdan knew he wanted to make films in his final year at architecture school. At 51, his first movie is now out and winning awards.

Siddartha Jatla discusses the grim plot of In the Belly of a Tiger, why his villagers wear brightly coloured clothes and why every frame is suffused with beauty

She struggled in Mumbai. ‘I think I looked too much like a typical Malayali,’ says Sajayan, 27. Now a name to contend with, she wants to do action, romcoms.

Kaveta Chaudhry, known for her role as Lalita ji in Surf ads, passed away at 67. She also starred in TV series Udaan and wrote the film Badhaai Ho Badhaai.

She plays the other woman in Killer Soup; shines in GWBG, which recently won at Sundance. What did it take to play a mother almost menacing in her loneliness?

Kaizad Gustad’s campy Hinglish film released in December 1998. Feel old, feel cringey, sing I am Mumbhai, as the cast and crew serve up their best memories

Kunal Sen’s book is an intimate look at his parents' marriage, their politics, his own bond with his father and his work. It’s memory, with no myth, he says.

The actor and doctor lives for dessert, hates loud alarms and is only just coming to terms with fame

Her jokes are brutal, frank, questioning. Why are we like this, is her overarching theme. She toured with Tina Fey, and now has a special out on Amazon Prime.

What’s Love Got to Do with It? is his seventh film in four decades, but each release has made news, won awards. Fear of failure motivates him, says Kapur, 71.

Ekaa, just 14 months old, has made it onto the extended list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. The dream is to create new Indian classics, says the 28-year-old.

The struggling food-app delivery worker Sharma plays is nothing like the funnyman we know. But he was the common man before his TV stardom, says Das.

Hollywood has shown us how masks can consume a man, revealing as much as they conceal. Amid talk of a Zorro reboot, a look at heroes, villains and cover-ups.

All That Breathes and The Elephant Whisperers are unlike most animal documentaries. Instead of serving as a warning about the extinction of creatures or the human threat to their ecosystems, the film is a portrait of coexistence and interspecies bonds.

Kartiki Gonsalves's Oscar-nominated documentary follows a tribal couple in Tamil Nadu who adopted two orphaned elephant calves. It’ll be orcas next, she says.

He’s reclusive and uninterested in fame, but it’s coming his way. The musician’s Naatu Naatu from RRR is India’s first film song shortlisted for an Oscar.

Amitabh Bachchan turned 80 on Tuesday. Exactly half a century ago to the day, he woke up on his 30th birthday, stretched languidly, and decided that his life had turned a corner.

What is life like for a slim, quiet, ‘weak’ Punjabi man? An award-winning new film offers a raw, brutal take on violence, repression and gender identity in rural Punjab.

Zombies have begun to shuffle across screens in India, with films released in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu. Gore is a given, but so is humour. Look out!

Mainstream Hindi cinema hasn’t had a lot of zombies ambling about, but they have been first movers in India. Check out some of the earliest undead works.

The film, released in March 1972, didn’t just leave its mark on Hollywood. From Amitabh Bachchan-starrers to movies by Mani Ratnam, scenes, lines, themes and characters from the classic echo across Indian cinema too.

Mythology, philosophy and Obama’s list of favourite songs of 2019 all came together to point Ukrainian filmmaker towards her role on Shakun Batra’s Gehraiyaan. See how the 32-year-old became one of mainstream Bollywood’s first intimacy directors.

Twenty years on, the film — with its casual attitudes to money, travel, relationships and sex — feels almost prophetic. Back then, in a time of bloated ‘NRI films’, its authenticity was groundbreaking. A look at what made Dil Chahta Hai such a unique blockbuster for its time.

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