Subsequently, the police, during its investigation into the recent murder of PFI leader Subair (43) in Palakkad, had found that he was killed to allegedly avenge the murder of Sanjith.

The original version of Sonic from the Sonic the Hedgehog movie makes a cameo appearance in the new Disney+ film Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers.

The original Sonic design, which had a more ‘realistic’ appearance, was scrapped following a backlash after the first Sonic movie trailer (which can be seen embedded below) was shown.

Sonic was redesigned into something more aesthetically pleasing, and the movie went on to enjoy the best opening weekend of any video game adaptation at the time.

That original design has become internet legend, however, hence its appearance in Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, which arrives on Disney+ today.

In the new Disney+ movie, ‘Ugly Sonic’ has his own guest booth at a comic convention, and is trying to make the most of his infamy by selling signed photos of himself.

Talking about the convention-goers, Ugly Sonic says: “They’ll like me for who I am, not like last time when the internet got one look at my human teeth and burned the place down.”

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He then signs an autograph for a teenager, who chuckles to his friend.

“Oh, they’re laughing at me,” Ugly Sonic reacts. “I know that. You can’t hurt my feelings if I’m in on the joke.”

He then claims to have been offered a job on a reality show called Ugly Sonic, Uglier Crimes where he accompanies the FBI on ‘ride-alongs’.

The director of Rescue Rangers explained how the Ugly Sonic cameo came about on Friday, and said he’d like to “thank the lawyers”.

The original Sonic the Hedgehog trailer was first shown online in April 2019 and was instantly met with widespread displeasure from the Sonic fanbase.

After the trailer’s release the less exaggerated, more realistic Sonic design came under heavy criticism on social media, with even the character’s co-creator Yuji Naka acknowledging the unpopular design.

Sonic movie director Jeff Fowler then took to Twitter to reassure fans that their message had been received.

“Thank you for the support. And the criticism,” he wrote. “The message is loud and clear… you aren’t happy with the design you want changes. It’s going to happen.”

Further reading

Adding the hashtag #GottaFixFast, he promised: “Everyone at paramount and Sega are fully committed to making this character the best he can be.”

The resulting redesign was a clear success for paramount. The first film performed well enough to justify a sequel, which has now become the highest-grossing video game movie of all time in the US.

paramount and Sega also announced in February that a third Sonic the Hedgehog film and a live-action TV series focusing on Knuckles have already entered production.

Action always works best when it is backed by emotion. Who knows it better than John Abraham who  Force-d his way into the genre in 2011 with the Nishikant Kamat film? With  Action, he aims for level 2… and doesn’t disappoint.

In action films, the emotion is usually revenge, and in debutant director Lakshya Raj Anand’s film, it’s very much the fulcrum. But there is more. For a film whose title explains its intentions in one word, it is not as brutish as the title suggests.  Attack plays out like a smart video game designed for teenagers of all age groups where the soldier — sorry — super soldier hasn’t lost his heart yet in the web of artificial intelligence.  

Propelled by the nationalist narrative, the premise doesn’t even test the average intelligence. A terror group with Muslim names has mounted an attack on India. The target is our Parliament. The good thing is Anand doesn’t load us with explainers and hits the ground running. He remains focused on the task at hand in this hostage drama. As the romantic angle is intertwined with action, he doesn’t digress into love songs, and there’s not even an item number to catch the breath.

Arjun (John), an Army major, who has been almost reduced to a vegetable in a terror attack, is asked by his mentor Subramanium (Prakash Raj) to undergo a risky experiment that would transform him into a one-man army and provide him an opportunity to save his country and avenge the death of his beloved (Jacqueline Fernandez). Unlike the cyborgs that Hollywood factories unleash on us, Arjun retains some human emotions beneath a chiseled body.

When he grapples to live with his artificial robotic assistant IRA, the film gets some refreshing light moments. When he struggles with his inner demons, we sense what it could have been. This solider carries a chip in his cerebellum, not on his shoulder. The potential has not been fully realised, and leaves a lot of scope for a sequel.

Taut and fast-paced, the action choreography is closer to the stuff that Hollywood offers and the electric background score provides reason for the adrenaline glands to make their presence felt. The best part is whenever Lakshya takes a leap of faith, it doesn’t look fake, particularly, when the action shifts to the Parliament House. The cinematography is fluid as the camera judiciously moves from tight close-ups to the long shots. Drone cameras have become a fad these days, but cinematographers Will Humpris, P.S. Vinod and Soumik Mukherjee don’t go for the overkill.

The politics of the war room is at times problematic, sometimes even juvenile, but good fun in the context of the film. When Prakash Raj says yesterday’s fiction is today’s fact, we know what it means.

The writers (John is one of them) have loaded Arjun with so much trauma that John doesn’t need to express much. We are just expected to get it! When John, who has also co-produced the film, is with Jacqueline in the frame, we know who has the greater possibility to have an acting muscle. And the moment action becomes a one-dimensional word, John is our man. He is credible as the last man standing. 

Prakash Raj is solid as ever. Rakul Preet Singh as the scientist is saddled with an under-written part, as is veteran Kiran Kumar. As the crude North Indian politician, Rajat Kapoor attempts to play against the type, but falters. It is Elham Ehsas as the counter force Hamid Gul, who is also fighting a personal battle in the guise of faith, that provides meat to the action. The London-based actor has played variants of Gul in international productions. Here, he is believable as the face of terror who perhaps carries a pusillanimous heart.

Overall, if the audience can suspend their disbelief after the pandemic for two hours,  Action is a nationalist substitute for PubG, plus a heart that hasn’t stopped beating, yet.

Attack is currently playing in theatres. 

At the end of Radhe Shyam, what stayed with me were its picture perfect frames that were painstakingly made to look like paintings. Cinematographer Manoj Paramahamsa, production designer Raveender Reddy and costume designers Thota Vijayabhaskar and Eka Lakhani create the mood for an epic fairytale. But how long can one soak in the atmosphere, admiring the columns of light that pour through tall windows and the long corridors of the hospital and the homes in Italy? Sure, the film boasts of Prabhas and Pooja Hegde who have a good screen presence. But the soul of the film, the story, is flaky. What is meant to be an aching romance of two people racing against destiny turns out to be bland and listless. 

In this period drama set in the 1970s, the protagonist Vikramaditya (Prabhas) is positioned as ‘the Einstein of palmistry’. His guru Paramahamsa (Krishnam Raju in the Telugu version; Sathyaraj in other versions) is consulted by a team of Indian space scientists before a mission. The guru understands a scientist’s scepticism of palmistry, astrology and related practices. He cites the example of Arundhati and Vashista stars being known long before they were discovered by modern science; there are things beyond human comprehension, he says, thus setting the tone for events that unfold later.

Vikramaditya carries forward the guru’s legacy and early on in the film, reads Indira Gandhi’s palm and predicts that she is going to declare Emergency! Later, there is a passing photographic reference of John Lennon taking Vikramaditya’s autograph. Radhe Shyam might have done away with stunt sequences one would find in a star film, but tries to create a halo around Prabhas’s character through such sketchy sequences. 

Scratch beneath this layer of heroism and Vikramaditya comes across as a guy who has surrendered to the diktats of destiny. The way he indulges in casual relationships, which he terms as ‘flirtationships’, is a clue that he is commitment phobic with good reason. Ultimately, of course, he falls in love when he meets the exuberant but mysterious Dr Prerna (Pooja Hegde), who also runs a mile from relationships. 

The beautifully mounted ‘Ee Rathale’ (composed by Justin Prabhakaran) serves to show how the two who are destined to not meet or fall in love, continue to cross paths. In portions like this, the film manages to create some magic. Vikramaditya and Prerna’s courtship happens amid hints being dropped about what makes them the way they are. It is also punctuated by banal comic portions in a hospital ward. 

The film wastes a bunch of talented actors, making them merely stand by and utter a line or two. Sachin Khedekar at least gets something to do. Jayaram, Jagapathi Babu and Priyadarshi are wasted. The one who is wasted the most is Murali Sharma, and that too saddled with a bad wig. Kunaal Roy Kapur and Bhagyashree also have nothing much to do and were perhaps roped in to have familiar faces for the Hindi audiences. 

For the first hour or so, the aesthetic visuals, the music (background score by S S Thaman) and the lead actors who are made to look picture-perfect, accentuate the dreamy setting. Pooja Hegde looks every bit the princess and in later portions, shows a glimpse of her acting potential that is waiting to be tapped. Prabhas is effective in his portrayal, but there isn’t much in the story or characterisation that challenges him as an actor.

When the conflict between destiny and love takes centrestage, the film begins to lose whatever little charm it had. The biggest issue with Radhe Shyam is that it never sucks you in. The ship sequence at the fag end of the film sinks an already shaky film, despite Prabhas being made to scale a tall ship in a Baahubalian manner.

The parallels with Mani Ratnam’s Geethanjali are also tough to shake off. The journeys of the two lovers against what destiny has in store for them can be viewed as a hat tip to that iconic romance. While Geethanjali also rode on a premise that required suspension of disbelief, it was all heart and made us root for the protagonists. Radhe Shyam could have benefited with some of that soul in its writing.

As a kid, Mike Janik could be found spending his days crashing Hot Wheels cars together and playing racing games. 

Now, two decades later, he’s “giddy” knowing he’s attending this weekend’s 2022 Formula One Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal — and can check watching “the pinnacle of motorsports” off his bucket list.

Growing up, Janik had always followed more of the rally scene. Until one day, he stumbled upon F1 highlights on YouTube and his interest went “from zero to 100.”

“I went from having no knowledge of it to … at the drop of a hat, at the snap of a finger, I tune in for every race weekend,” Janik said. “I don’t miss a beat.”

Since the Netflix series Drive to Survive — featuring behind-the-scenes footage of the usually secretive racing teams — debuted in 2019, the audience for F1 has skyrocketed. In May, the show was confirmed for fifth and sixth seasons. And Apple Studios confirmed it’s producing a racing film starring Brad Pitt co-produced by champion driver Lewis Hamilton.

But it’s more than other studios trying to cash in on the new audience for F1. Other sports, like the PGA Tour, want to see if they can too.

While F1 focuses on high-octane racing, the show lifts the curtain on the drama and complexity about what goes into making a livelihood as a Formula One driver.

“I think the most revealing part of that series … was just sort of understanding the real team effort behind it,” Janik said. “Seeing these teams put everything they can to eke out thousandths of a second and just perform at this superhuman level, I think that’s really what sold me.”

Popularity as driving force behind new content

The humanity of the show is part of its winning formula, says Adam Seaborn, a sports media analyst and head of partnerships at Playmakers Capital.

It takes audiences beyond the track, giving people the chance to connect with the drivers and teams — and it breaks down the complexity of racing for people who might otherwise not watch sports, he said.

“You can get a storyline,” he said. “You can know their back stories, you know the rivalries, where they grew up … So it’s easy to understand who versus whom every single week.”

The popularity of the sport and its Netflix show has driven the streaming platform into a bidding war for the broadcast rights to F1 series racing — hoping to unseat ESPN, whose TV rights end next season.

People are also watching the show outside of primetime hours, with an average of 200,000 to 400,000 viewers per race between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., Seaborn said. In Canada alone, the show’s ratings doubled from the previous year, he said.

“Netflix is in millions and millions of homes in Canada,” Seaborn said. “I think [Formula One] hit an intersection of digital media, of social media and of sport all at the perfect time.” 

Steering into stardom

In the past, films like Rush and Ford v Ferrari marked a starting point of racing’s growing media presence. But reality TV boosted Formula One’s visibility, straddling the line between sports and entertainment.

“What we are currently obsessed with and interested in is actually driving the content, which I think is so exciting,” said Alexandra Nikolajev, who began watching the series during the pandemic.

She became fascinated with the sport and its level of luxury and exclusivity. Only 20 drivers can compete, creating a world of drama, politics and teamwork between the drivers and vehicle creators behind the scenes.

And F1 stars themselves are embracing new media, said Nikolajev, who shares pop culture analysis on TikTok with her more than 92,000 followers.

“They’re starting to go on podcasts, they’re starting to do interviews,” she said, adding that fans are “starting to be invested.” 

Not everyone agrees with bringing F1 racing to the masses, Nikolajev said. There’s been backlash from legacy fans who would prefer the sport maintain its air of exclusivity.

“But I think that the whole point of content in this day and age is accessibility — and bringing us all together. And I think it’s … amazing that we’re continuing to push that boundary.”

Drivers advocate for social change

Reaching that larger audience has given drivers a chance to push other boundaries. 

Drivers are using their celebrity status to champion human rights issues — and other causes they’re connected to, said Shanika Abeysinghe, co-host of Get Checkered, a Canadian Formula One podcast. 

“The drivers are advocating for changes, whether it’s in their own little world or publicly or whatever that looks like,” said Abeysinghe.

Sebastian Vettel has advocated for the inclusion of an LGBTQ driver in the Formula One, wearing a rainbow shirt with the words “Same Love” on it at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix. Hamilton is the only Black Formula One driver, and has created a non-profit organization to identify and reduce the barriers to Black people in U.K. motorsports.

But for all the sport has risen in popularity, Abeysinghe said, it still fails to reflect the diversity of its growing fan base. 

“It’s the powers that be, which is the FIA, that need to realize that we need a woman to drive, we need someone that identifies as LGBTQ to drive,” she said. “There’s only 20 seats — so how do we create equity in a sport that’s inherently inequitable?”

Inspiring copycat shows

As Drive to Survive looks to its next season, other sporting bodies are exploring the possibility of using the show as a template to develop sports media. 

The PGA tour has commissioned a deal with Netflix to provide behind-the-scenes access to the sport, attempting to recreate Drive to Survive’s success. 

“In many ways there’s a lot of similarities. It’s athletes who are independent contractors who have great storylines,” said Seaborn.

“You get them in with the entertainment piece. It’s exciting; it should be fun. And if you become a real fan, you get hardcore.”