About an hour into Shershaah, we get a scene carved out of the screenplay book of every Indian film. Or rather, every film that wants to extract tears in whichever way possible. It goes like this: Vikram Batra (Sidharth Malhotra) and his comrade Bansi (Anil Charanjeett) are on night patrol in Jammu and Kashmir, where they are posted on the sidelines of a brewing war with Pakistan, and the duo has a heart-to-heart conversation. Bansi shows a picture of his daughter, Durga, and says that he will carry her in his arms for the first time, when he goes home post-war. Affected by Bansi’s choice of words, Batra melts and promises to open an FD in his daughter’s name, to secure a future for her.

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If you are an average cinema viewer, you sense from a mile that it is a cue to finish off the character. What truly takes you by surprise is, it does not happen in the aforementioned scene but three minutes later. It is also the sort of death that would change the belief system of the hero, Vikram Batra. For instance, he says to his fellow officer Captain Sanjeev Jamwal (Shiv Pandit), that nobody will ever die on his watch, when he becomes a commanding officer. “The bullet had my name,” he remarks, about the bullet Bansi takes for him.

Now whether this incident is real or not, or whether it affected Batra to sacrifice his life to protect his team, is beside the point. The manner in which Shershaah’s screenplay is designed, looking too constructed to be true could be argued as the more affecting death of the two.

Also Read | Sidharth Malhotra: Why ‘Shershaah’ matters

Another scene that reeks of familiarity is when Batra goes to meet Dimple (Kiara Advani) unannounced. Before he leaves for the war again, she asks him to come back for her. There is sadness in her eyes and uncertainty in voice. Batra cuts his finger and puts a tilak on her forehead, signalling a unification of hearts. It is too flimsy and sugary to be Bollywood and it isn’t a surprise that the line: ‘soldiers live by chance, love by choice and kill by profession’ is apparently Batra’s. But you get the drift…you know the eventuality.

Mind you, all of which is not to suggest that Shershaah is a bad film. It is well-made and could have been a recommendable watch. There is a vision in cinematography (Kamaljeet Negi), earnestness in direction (Vishnu Vardhan) and flavour in music (Tanishk Bagchi, B Praak, Jaani, Jasleen Royal, Javed-Mohsin and Vikram Montrose). The issue is not with the execution but with the writing. It is bathed in the same familiarity as the other Indian war films, with Lakshya and Uri: The Surgical Strike being obvious exceptions.

Shershaah follows a similar structural, narrative arc as last year’s Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl, also released on the Independence Day weekend. Given how both these films are produced by Dharma Productions, I half-expected Jahnvi Kapoor (as Gunjan Saxena) to make a swashbuckling cameo, rescuing men from the operation.

In the opening, we see Captain Vikram Batra and his troops in the middle of action when they are on the way to destroy the last Pakistani bunker that would recapture the peak. It is a flashback, flash forward narrative, like we saw in Gunjan… But unlike Sharan Sharma’s film, which got its rock-solid emotional beats right by exploring the dynamics of a father-daughter, Shershaah looks scattered. There is a childhood episode in Batra’s life which neither has emotional heft nor says anything about him. It acts as a filler, just as the romance with Dimple. But these are a few supposedly “charming” portions you buy Sidharth as Vikram Batra, not in the battlefield.

Narrated by Vikram Batra’s twin brother, Vishal Batra (also played by Sidharth Malhotra), Shershaah makes up for its mishaps in the second half by entering the warzone. Twenty-five-year-old Batra’s heroics during the Kargil War are morphed into hair-raising action pieces and we do get a sense of war, though sporadically. It makes you think how marvellous Uri was, despite it being a really well-made work of propaganda. In that sense, Shershaah is not loud, rather, a ‘soft’ film. But for us to participate, it needed more friction.

Not so long ago, people who used to proudly display their religious bigotry used to be referred to as ‘fringe elements’. Slowly, that usage almost ceased to exist as hate speech got mainstreamed through vast social media and ground networks, so much so, that not even the remotest regions remained immune from it.

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In Kuruthi, the action takes place in one such remote region, inside the hilly forests, which is recovering from the after-effects of a landslide. When we see the families here first, most of them are still grieving the deep personal losses. There is not a clue about the communal cauldron simmering beneath, not especially in a woman who is spending much of her waking hours in taking care of the affairs of her neighbour, who belongs to another religion.

The film, written by Aneesh Pallyal and directed by Manu Warrier, seems to say that it might not take much to kindle a fire from the inherent biases and baser instincts in humans, especially when political actors of various hues are waiting to gain from it. Following the genre of ‘home invasion’ films, here we have a police officer (Murali Gopy) barging in one night along with an accused in a religious hate crime into the household of Ibru (Roshan Mathew), who is grieving the loss of his wife and daughter in the landslide.

Before long, a band of extremists of the opposite hue lands up at the doorstep, baying for the accused’s blood, setting up a clash of religious ideologies, in which even the most sane ones sometimes display their dark sides. Moosa (Mamukkoya) and Laiq (Prithviraj) represent varied ways of looking at the same religion, while on the other side there are the accused’s and Manikandan’s characters.

Yet, this promising premise does not exactly translate into exciting cinema, with over-dramatic and, at times preachy, lines spoiling the effect. One gets a staged feeling in some of the sequences, which is compounded by the fact that much of the action takes place inside a room. Saddled with the unenviable task of striking a balance between the extremism of both sides, and distributing the blame equally, the scriptwriter must have broken more sweat than the cinematographer.

At times, the balance seems to be forced and simplistic, and at some points the crimes of one side seems to be downplayed and explained away as the doings of an impressionable youth. In fact, we are never shown any images of the murder that he committed, but we get to see a lot of the violence those hunting for him are committing. Several layers are set up for exploration, on how religion colours interactions between humans, but these are either left under-explored or are delivered as unconvincing one-liners amid the bouts of violence.

The makers of Kuruthi might have been well-intentioned, but the intent somehow gets lost in the treatment and the forced balancing.

Kuruthi is currently streaming on Amazon Prime

MELVILLE, N.Y., Sept. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Building on the success of the EOS R camera series, Canon U.S.A. Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, today announced the next leap forward in full-frame mirrorless cameras – the professional-grade Canon EOS R3. The new camera leverages the advancements in technology that Canon has developed since the original EOS R launch in 2018 and bridges the gap between the immensely popular EOS R5 and the world-renowned Canon flagship EOS-1D X line. The EOS R3 is the first “3” series camera from Canon since the widely used EOS-3 film camera launched in 1998.

The EOS R3 camera’s features greatly emphasize superb AF performance and speed with fast-moving subjects. It was designed to meet the reliability and durability demands of professionals, even when working in some extremely challenging conditions.

“The launch of the EOS R3 sets a new benchmark for the Canon EOS R camera system. Canon listened carefully to the voices of professionals when developing a camera to meet their standards,” said Tatsuro “Tony” Kano, executive vice president and general manager of Canon U.S.A.’s Imaging Technologies Communications Group. “The EOS R3 is a monumental evolution in digital imaging technology. I look forward to seeing the camera in action on the sidelines of sporting events and in the hands of nature and wildlife photographers across the globe.”

The core of the EOS R3 features a Canon designed and manufactured 24.1-megapixel back-illuminated stacked CMOS sensor. The sensor is the first of its kind from Canon, and when combined with the DIGIC X processor, delivers a high-speed readout allowing for continuous blackout-free shooting¹ at up to 30 fps in electronic (silent) shutter mode and up to 12 fps in mechanical shutter, with minimum rolling electronic shutter distortion. The combination also increases the high sensitivity, light-capturing efficiency of a native ISO range of 100-102400, expandable up to 204,800 for still images. Like the EOS R5 and R6, the camera features the improved Dual Pixel CMOS AF II with 1,053 AF Points and evolved EOS iTR tracking down to EV -7.5 for subjects such as eye, face, head, animals², and select cars and motorcycles. In addition, the camera features up to 8 stops³ of in-body image stabilized (IBIS) shake correction.

Leveraging technology and performance feedback from the popular EOS R5 and EOS R6 cameras, the EOS R3 uses Deep-Learning technology to further enhance eye and body detection for even better performance during portrait and action-type shooting. Featuring a new 5.76-million-dot and 120fps blackout-free¹ Electronic Viewfinder, the EOS R3 camera will provide photographers with the ability to select the initial area for AF tracking by simply looking directly at the viewfinder location where they want to begin AF. With Eye input AF2 and Servo AF activated, the camera will focus on and track moving subjects at that location in the frame. When Face Detect + Tracking is active, the camera will continue to follow moving subjects around the entire active AF area.

The EOS R3 camera doesn’t just capture spectacular still images, it also packs impressive video specs as well. The camera is capable of shooting 6K 60p RAW and 4K 120p 10-bit uncropped video with Canon Log 3 support, in addition to the possibility for oversampled 4K and RAW movie internal recording. Canon Log 3, which is frequently used in cinema production, helps to reduce the possibility of highlight blowouts. What’s more, the features such as industry standard BT.709, BT.2020 color gamuts, and cinema gamut help to maintain color and tonal consistency. Coordinated 5-axis IBIS helps to correct operator motion or shaking providing dependent video capturing even when using a lens without built-in Optical IS.

Additional features of the EOS R3 Full-Frame Mirrorless Camera include:

• Canon’s next-generation Multi-Function Shoe that is compatible with a variety of accessories including the Speedlite EL-1, and new accessories such as the ST-E10 Speedlite Transmitter, External Mic and Smartphone Link Adapter
• One-piece magnesium alloy design, integrating the body with a vertical grip section
• Weather and dust resistance equivalent to EOS-1D camera models.
• Mobile File Transmitter application for iOS® and Android® devices allows photographers to transfer their images quickly and easily without the need for wired LAN equipment
• Built-in Wired LAN, 5GHz Wi-Fi®, USB and Bluetooth® technology
• Dual-card slots, supporting one CF express and one UHS-II SD

The Canon EOS R3 Full-Frame Mirrorless Camera is scheduled to be available in November 2021 for a suggested retail price of $5999.00*. For more information, please visit usa.canon.com

About Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Canon U.S.A., Inc., is a leading provider of consumer, business-to-business, and industrial digital imaging solutions to the United States and to Latin America and the Caribbean markets. With approximately $30.4 billion in global revenue, its parent company, Canon Inc. (NYSE: CAJ), ranks third overall in U.S. patents granted in 2020^† and is one of Fortune Magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies in 2020. Canon U.S.A. is dedicated to its Kyosei philosophy of social and environmental responsibility. To keep apprised of the latest news from Canon U.S.A., sign up for the Company’s RSS news feed by visiting www.usa.canon.com/rss and follow us on Twitter @CanonUSA.

† Based on weekly patent counts issued by United States Patent and Trademark Office.

* Specifications, availability and price are subject to change without notice. Actual prices are set by individual dealers and may vary.

1 Blackout(s) may occur in some cases; such as when the built-in memory is full or when the flash battery is fully recharged after the battery ran out during continuous shooting.

2 Effectiveness varies depending on the subject. In some cases, dogs, cats or birds may not be detected, while some animals other than dogs, cats or birds may be detected. 

3 When combined with certain IS lenses such as the RF24-105mm F4 IS L USM, or when used with certain non-IS lenses as well. See individual lens product page for more information.

SOURCE Canon U.S.A., Inc.

This was reflected in the resolutions demanding the scrapping of the four labor codes, extension of wages under MNREGA, implementation of Forest Rights Act, against atrocities on women and curbing of price rise of diesel, petrol and essential commodities.

The Muzaffarnagar rally was notable not only for its massive participation, but there was another political significance. Eight years ago, in 2013, Muzaffarnagar district was engulfed in communal violence and over 80 people lost their lives, many women were raped and hundreds of houses destroyed. The communal divide this created, particularly between the dominant peasant community of Jats and Muslims, was fully utilised by the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP swept the elections in western Uttar Pradesh and the communal polarisation had its impact in Haryana and parts of Rajasthan.

At that time too, a “mahapanchayat” was held on September 7, 2013 in Sikhara village, near Muzaffarnagar town in which khap leaders like Naresh Tikait and Rakesh Tikait had participated. BJP MLAs Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana and rabble rousers like Sadhvi Prachi had made incendiary speeches against Muslims and this provocative meeting had sparked off a wider conflagration.

The idea of a killer being inside your house is scary enough. But what if the killer revealed themselves to be… you? That’s the hook of There’s Someone Inside Your House, the new Netflix slasher horror movie from producers Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) and James Wan (Malignant).

There’s Someone Inside Your House is based on a New York Times best-selling novel of the same name by Stephanie Perkins. Directed by Patrick Brice and written by Henry Gayden, it stars Sydney Park, Théodore Pellerin, Asjha Cooper, Dale Whibley, and others as teenagers in an unassuming Nebraska town. All is quiet until, well, a killer wearing the face of their victims arrives. Here’s the trailer.

That trailer makes There’s Someone Inside Your House feel like a very 1980s or 1990s slasher movie. Multiple, interchangeable teens, lots of dramatic secrets, and plenty of suspects who could believably be the killer. One would assume the producers are hoping this could maybe be a franchise too, especially when the killer could more or less be anyone.

Having not read the book, my biggest question after this trailer though is… how does the killer make these masks? Technology like that feels like it exists mostly for the Marvel Cinematic Universe or with the Mission: Impossible crowd. In reality, a machine that can duplicate faces certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibility, but wouldn’t it be rather easy to trace? How many people in rural Nebraska have gotten shipments for real life mask technology in the past few weeks? Case solved.

In all seriousness though, from the 21 Laps team of Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen, as well as the Atomic Monster team of James Wan and Michael Clear, There’s Someone Inside Your House looks like it has some serious nostalgic horror chops. We hope it can live up to its potential. Co-starring Jesse LaTourette, Diego Josef, Burkely Duffield, Sarah Dugdale, William MacDonald, Andrew Dunbar, Markian Tarasiuk, There’s Someone Inside Your House drops on Netflix October 6.

• Charge your phone and watch simultaneously

• Wide compatibility with phones and watches

• Case friendly

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One of the most surprising things about The Matrix Resurrections when it was first announced was the news that Lilly Wachowski wouldn’t be returning to direct the project alongside her sister Lana, with whom she wrote and directed the first three films. Though Lilly gave her sister and the rest of the movie’s creative team her blessing, she ultimately chose not to come back for the fourth installment for a number of reasons including her grueling work schedule.

In addition to her own professional obligations, Lilly having recently come out as transgender, and the passing of both of her parents five weeks apart, also factored into her decision not to be a part of Resurrections. For Lilly, Resurrections represented a significant part of her previous life that she wasn’t particularly interested in stepping back into, which is more than understandable on multiple levels.

In the time since, the Hollywood hype machine’s been hard at work getting the public into a frenzy ahead of The Matrix Resurrections’ premiere this fall. The fact that this is the first Matrix not to be crafted by both of its sibling co-creators has fallen out of the news cycle. But the topic recently came up in a roundabout way at this year’s Berlin International Literature Festival, where Lana Wachowski spoke on a panel about screenwriting.

While Lana didn’t expand on her sister’s reasons for moving on from the Matrix franchise, she did speak about how their parents’ deaths also impacted her feelings about Resurrections and her decision to make Neo and Trinity a core part of the new story.

“My brain has always reached into my imagination and one night, I was crying and I couldn’t sleep, and my brain exploded this whole story,” Wachowski said. “And I couldn’t have my mom and dad, yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most important characters in my life.”

The Matrix Revolutions’ first trailer features a couple of glimpses of Neo (Keanu Reeves) within the Matrix where he encounters Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), who seemingly doesn’t remember him outside of a vague sense of déjà vu when they first meet. Though at least some of the past comes back to Trinity and Neo—who also doesn’t fully recall the events of the previous movies—the trailer definitely makes Resurrections seem like it could feel like a soft reboot meant to remind audiences what it felt like to see The Matrix for the first time. For Lana Wachowski, bringing Neo and Trinity back was both cathartic and healing.

• Charge your phone and watch simultaneously

• Wide compatibility with phones and watches

• Case friendly

“It was immediately comforting to have these two characters alive again, and it’s super simple,” Wachowski reasoned. “You can look at it and say: ‘ok, these two people die and ok, bring these two people back to life and oh, doesn’t that feel good?’ Yeah, it did! It’s simple, and this is what art does and that’s what stories do, they comfort us.”

The Matrix Resurrections hits theaters and HBO Max on December 22.

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A group of British Columbia community organizations wants changes to the province’s COVID-19 vaccine card, saying it fails to account for the needs of people who face legitimate barriers to getting a vaccine or proof of immunization.

A joint letter to Health Minister Adrian Dix and Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says the plan could restrict access to services for people who can’t get a shot for medical reasons, as well as people without government identification.

It was released by Vancouver-based Pivot Legal Society this month and says B.C. has failed to identify a workaround for people without ID, which could include women fleeing violence, people who are homeless and undocumented migrants.

The vaccine card system requires patrons to show proof of at least one vaccine dose by Monday and two doses by Oct. 24 to access certain indoor settings, including ticketed sports events, concerts, restaurants, gyms and movie theatres.

The card will not be required at grocery and liquor stores, pharmacies, fast food restaurants, salons, barbers, hotels, banks, retail stores, food banks and shelters.

B.C. residents need a personal health number to order a paper copy of their vaccine card or to download the card online for display on a smartphone. The card will be checked alongside government identification.

“If you’re homeless and living outside, carrying around a piece of paper is just not going to work out,” said Rowan Burdge, director of the B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition and a signatory of the letter. “We’ve seen encampments where people’s belongings have been taken away.”

The letter says the province hasn’t done enough to follow the advice of organizations that understand how best to navigate public health guidelines for those living in poverty or with a disability, for example.

Disability Alliance B.C., which also signed the letter, said in a separate statement that mandating so-called vaccine passports without accommodating people who cannot get vaccinated due to their medical condition is “blatant discrimination.”

Ministry says it trying to address challenges

The Health Ministry said in a statement it appreciates the groups’ feedback and it has “been doing what we can to address some of these challenges.”

Asked about accommodation for people who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons, the ministry said there will be an exemption process “for extremely rare circumstances.”

“Dr. Henry has said that if you are unvaccinated, for whatever reason, these kind of indoor settings with lots of people are high-risk right now,” it said.

Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba have also introduced vaccine passport programs.

Burdge said she doesn’t want requests made in the letter to be conflated with anti-vaccination rhetoric.

“We absolutely are supporting people to get vaccinated. … But we’re worried about the systemic barriers that are going to come from this particular policy.”

A number of B.C. communities have seen protests against the vaccine card, including protests outside hospitals.

Dr. David Naylor, co-chair of Canada’s COVID-19 immunity task force, said there’s a widespread sense that COVID-19 has “hijacked our lives,” leading some people to scapegoat the public health measures adopted to protect the health-care system and those who are too young to receive a vaccine.

But Naylor said those measures, including achieving a higher rate of vaccination, are the “only way to restore normalcy in the months ahead,” particularly as the highly contagious delta variant makes up the majority of Canada’s COVID-19 cases.

Vaccine passports have a role to play in curbing the fourth wave by encouraging immunization among people who may be late getting their first shot, but who aren’t staunchly opposed to vaccination, said Naylor, who led a review of Canada’s public health system after the outbreak of SARS in 2003.

Those opposed to vaccination or vaccine cards are “simply inviting continuation of some of the measures that everyone would like to avoid,” he said in an interview.

Naylor said even staunch libertarians, or those who believe in maximal freedom of choice and minimal government regulation, acknowledge that one person’s civil liberties stop when they lead to harm or encroach on the liberties of others.

“The notion here that you have people who could do harm to other people is relevant in considering the constraints on the civil liberties claim by people who choose to remain unvaccinated in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic.”

And yet as recently as earlier this week, it behooved one of the “I Am Legend” screenwriters to clarify that the 2007 film is, in fact, a work of fiction: “Oh. My. God,” tweeted Akiva Goldsman, who co-wrote the adapted screenplay with Mark Protosevich. “It’s a movie. I made that up. It’s. Not. Real.”