THE STORYTELLER

By Avik Basak When Marvel produced Daredevil, their first web series in collaboration with Netflix, they stated that it would be followed by Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist to ultimately lead to a crossover event, The Defenders. Since then, this mega team up of Marvel’s TV section of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) started to generate some hype. It was not expected to be something as grand as The Avengers as that was a full-fledged theatrical movie and as a result had the budget and resources. On the contrary, the miniseries, just like its comic counterpart, was expected to be much lesser in scale with a smaller backdrop compared to the other team of big guys in the MCU. As soon as Daredevil premiered on Netflix, people knew the proposed team up would be a lot darker and a lot grounded than the movies or the other TV serials produced by Marvel. After the blind crime-fighting lawyer of New York, the introduction of the struggling superhero turned private inv...

By Avik Basak Hollywood has always taken pleasure in making spy movies with women as their central figures. What makes Atomic Blonde different is the fact that it relies more on the thrills of its storytelling rather than the high-octane action sequences. Make no mistake, there are action sequences in this film and they have been well-executed and well-choreographed as well but the main attraction of this flick is the way it unfolds. The story of Atomic Blonde is about an MI6 operative (The “Blonde” Theron) who has been tasked to track down a double agent and recover a list of all the active British field agents in the then Soviet Union that went missing. A kind of plot, which we have seen a lot of times before, even Skyfall had a similar storyline but the smartest thing about this movie is the era that it is set in, during the end years of the Cold War, days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The setting and the characters are good enough to get the audience...

By Avik Basak It has been more than a month since Amazon Prime’s first ever Indian web series, Inside Edge premiered on their official On-Demand portal. It took some time but I finally caught up with the series and am ready to share my thoughts on the same with you. When the first trailer of Inside Edge was launched, it was described to be the first of an array of Indian web series that will be produced by Amazon in collaboration with the various reputed production houses of the country. After taking a peek at the trailer and looking at the names of the production houses Amazon has roped in, I for one was really impressed and thought the initiative to be a revolutionary one. Talking about Inside Edge , it seemed like a first of its kind web series in India from its trailer and various TV spots. Mainstream film stars, a gripping plot, three-dimensional characters and most importantly, a limited number of episodes, Inside Edge promised to bring everything that ...