Cocktail: Friends With Limits

Not one of the biggest successes of 2012, but still one of the best films that year was Homi Adajania’s second movie Cocktail, the story of three friends in London and the eventual love triangle that results between them. In many ways, it was a classic romantic story, but one that focused on character drama instead of cool action moments. It was certainly in the shortlist of movies that I’d classify as the best movies of the year. Newcomer Diana Penty pretty much rocked it while veterans Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone also turned in some great moments.

It is always nice to get a film like this in Bollywood, which these days is far too obsessed with the big and flashy. Cocktail is nothing of the kind, not by far, and I just loved almost everything about it. I would love for these three actors to work together again, particularly Diana Penty, and Homi Adjania to return with a third movie too.

NANP: Naming The Knights

Today’s guest on the blog for Names: A New Perspective is Freya Robertson, another new author with Angry Robot. She has published several romance novels previously and her Elemental Wars series marks her big fantasy debut. The first novel in the series, Heartwood, came out last year in November and the sequel Sunstone is due soon as well. I’m really excited for this series since it plays up some tropes of the genre that I like, such as the mystical order of knights and the quest feel of the narrative. I’ll hopefully be checking it out quite soon and the sequel as well. In the meantime, here’s what Freya has to say on the topic of names.

Comics Picks of The Week 13.11.2013

Managed to read a handful of more comics this week, since there were a lot of titles released that I was really interested in, and a couple from previous weeks that I hadn’t been able to get around to at the time. As usual, it was all a mixed reading experience, with some really good comics mixed in with some bad ones and a few that straddle the fence between the two extremes. More positive ones than negative ones.

No graphic novels this week sadly, since this week was a real slog in reading, again, and I was struggling for time in general with everything else too. Perhaps this coming week can be different!

In the meantime, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Comics Picks of The Week 09.10.2013

Finally, this was a week where my non-DC reading far out-stripped my DC reading. Villain’s Month really seems to have taken a toll with my reading, what with reading like seven or eight titles a week. Things are finally becoming more normal, and that’s excellent in and of itself. Lots of Dark Horse and IDW reading as well this week, which was really nice, since I’m playing catch-up with a few of their titles and really need to be getting down to read these issues.

However, no luck with reading any graphic novels again this week. I had hoped to read at least one during my flight back to Dubai from Delhi but things didn’t work out like that since I slept on the entire flight, all three and a half hours of it. That’s something I suppose. But now I have the time I hope so will see what happens.

In the meantime, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Trillium #3 by Jeff Lemire (Comics Review)

Coming straight out of the left field, Trillium has proven to be one of the surprise hits for me this year. I picked up the first issue on a whim in August, and I was amazed by how good it was. Then came the second issue last month, and continued to blow me away. Beyond just good storytelling and good art, the series so far has been notable for for structural experimentation, which makes for a rather nice experience. Or would I suppose if I was getting this in print! In digital, some of that effect is lost (more on this later in the review).

Now here we have the third issue and once again Jeff Lemire continues to impress in every way. Coming on the heels of the excellent Green Arrow #24, this is most definitely Jeff Lemire’s week as the top-man in comics. Lemire’s experimentation with format continues as he moves the story of Nika and William’s time-crossed romance forward.