What’s new on the VoD platforms?

Hotstar is attracting serious traffic. The video-on-demand platform is streaming ICC Cricket World Cup matches which has made it the mandatory destination for cricket buffs watching the tournament on the Internet. Among the hot favourites this time, the Men in Blue led by Virat Kohli have started off well. What else for motivation does the average Indian cricket lover with a Hotstar subscription need?

As the business of VoD platforms grows, creating more and more original content to tempt the Indian subscriber has become necessary. Netflix has released Sachin Yardi’s Chopsticks, an Abhay Deol-Mithila Palkar comedy. The film is a Netflix original which implies that the platform has been involved with the project right from the word go instead of acquiring it after it had been already made. With a running time of 100 minutes, Chopsticks can be squeezed into a busy person’s schedule with relative ease. Should one find time for it? The film is intermittently funny while falling way short of being the gut-busting comedy it could have been.

Chopsticks has three main characters. One is a gawky girl (Patkar) working as a Mandarin translator who loses her Hyundai car almost immediately after she buys it. The need to find the vehicle takes her to a mysterious man known as ‘Artist.’ He is a strange creature, who cooks delicacies in an unoccupied house and would play a big part in the search. The third character is of a gangster (Vijay Raaz) who is obsessed with his goat. The stolen car connects the three of them, an obvious link leading to a disappointing climax. Although the actors do their best in the film, a shoddy script lets them down. Of course, several films that left the theatres not long ago are available for watching online. If you have missed the Shah Rukh Khan-Anushka Sharma starrer Zero – or weren’t too excited about watching it in a movie hall – you might wish to check it out on Netflix. The same platform has also acquired Thackeray, the biopic of the Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray that made more noise than money and stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the title role.

Some new films on Amazon Prime Video might also excite the subscriber. The platform has Kesari, the jingoistic war film starring Akshay Kumar, the modern-day Bharat Kumar, whose story is based on the Battle of Saragrahi in which 21 Jat Sikhs had confronted the might of an estimated 10,000-12,000 Afghans without fear of death. Prime Video also has Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi, another nationalistic film that tells the story of Jhansi’s Rani Laxmibai who had clashed against the British during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Then, there is Gully Boy, a fabulously well-made film about rappers, their music and lives inspired by the real-life stories of rappers Divine and Naezy.

Lucifer Morningstar, who became widely popular with graphic novel fans after his appearance as a supporting character in The Sandman written by Neil Gaiman, found many more followers after showing up as the protagonist (played marvellously by Tom Ellis) in Lucifer, a television series produced by Fox for the first three seasons. After Fox cancelled the show, Netflix decided to go ahead with the making of the fourth season.

Lucifer fans know who he is: The Lord of Hell, who has relinquished his throne and migrated to Los Angeles where he runs a nightclub named Lux and assists the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The series about Lucifer and an assorted bunch of characters – some of them with unique personalities – developed a cult following in the US from the first season itself. This writer is happy to report that the fourth season will be a treat for ‘Lucifans’ and also those who haven’t seen the series earlier. Crisply edited and with superb cinematography and great story arcs, it also has Ellis at the top of his game.

That the writing is truly good has a fine example in episode eight, which mostly focusses on Amenadiel, Lucifer’s brother. Amenadiel befriends an African American teenager who has run into problems with drug dealers. What happens in the episode acquaints Amenadiel with the difficulties many African Americans face when they deal with the police. This is an eminently watchable episode – just like most others in the series.

VoD platforms have introduced a lot of interesting content in recent times. Looks like the stream will continue in future too.