The Long Take with Akhil, Rohan & Devika

Even the random appearance of a Karni Sena guy can’t distract from the fact that House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths—the new true crime documentary series on Netflix—is more than just a by-the-numbers telling of a crime story that gripped the nation.

We talk about our memories of the Burari deaths, the seemingly endless dark spiral that Indian news media is in, and directors Leena Yadav and Anubhav Chopra’s decision to double down on discussions about the psychological and sociological angles in the case.

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].

Break Point—the new ZEE5 documentary series directed by Ashwiny Iyer and Nitesh Tiwari—soars on the strength of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi’s compelling story, but it’s no The Last Dance.

We talk about the seven-part series’ cheap-looking filmmaking—the fake backgrounds, the cheesy graphics, and the lack of archival footage—and wonder how much better it would’ve been had the Tiwaris put in more effort.

We also discuss the show and its protagonists’ blindspots, whether or not it would make a difference to casual viewers, the highs of its 1999 Wimbledon and 2006 Doha episodes, and recall memories of watching Bhupathi–Paes play live.

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].

The second season of Kota Factory—now acquired by Netflix—begs the question: why was this TVF show ever popular in the first place?

We discuss its one-dimensional characters, and its tendency to overuse Jeetu Ex Machina, which involves throwing Jitendra Kumar’s fan-favourite character at every problem.

We also talk about its lack of female perspective on screen, the series’ ignorance of real-world tragedies, and its indifference towards examining why the Indian education system is broken.

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].

Sandwiched between two godawful short films in Ankahi Kahaniya—the new anthology on Netflix—is director Abhishek Chaubey’s near-silent near-perfect story about solitude in a big city.

We discuss the jarring discrepancy in quality in these three chapters, how director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari failed to capitalise on an intriguing premise, and why director Saket Chaudhary might get slapped by Meryl Streep.

Along the way, we lament at the state of Bollywood that continues to deny feature opportunities to a talent like Chaubey.

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].

Mumbai Diaries 26/11—the new Amazon ensemble series led by Konkona Sensharma and Mohit Raina—is flying under the radar for now, but as we discuss on our podcast, it probably won’t for long.

We talk about the show’s politics, which feel almost revolutionary in the context of what we’ve been made accustomed to seeing. We wonder how creator Nikkhil Advani can deliver both this and The Empire.

And while we shower plenty of praise, we also discuss its melodramatic flashbacks, its outrageous perception of news media, and its baffling decision to deviate massively from facts in the third act.

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings took us back to cinemas after 18 months—and we liked it so much that not once do we discuss committee-driven filmmaking or cynical-minded China appeasement, topics that should invariably come up while talking about Disney movies.

What we do discuss is Tony Leung’s scene-stealing turn as the “villain”, comparing him and the film favourably to Black Panther, the internalised trauma that is at the heart of Shang-Chi, and why Marvel isn’t going to need Bangladeshi bot farms to bump up IMDb ratings.

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].

Dev Patel-led epic medieval fantasy The Green Knight—written, directed and edited by David Lowery—takes an Arthurian legend and filters it through a millennial lens.

We discuss the film’s momentous scale, its timeless anxieties, and Patel’s near-perfect central performance as a talentless man who believes he’s destined for greatness.

Along the way, we talk about our favourite scenes, the exquisite cinematography and the CGI fox, and gush about its spectacular climactic sequence.

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].

Kuruthi—the new Malayalam-language movie on Amazon Prime Video—has a lot on its mind: communal hatred, environmentalism, and a Biblical notion of good and evil. But does it do justice to any of those ideas?

We discuss the film’s hyperreal nature and how it could’ve gone further (akin to its inspiration Get Out), director Manu Warrier’s meticulous handling of the home invasion portion, and its lacklustre final act that dissolves into full B-movie.

Later, we talk about Simu Liu’s knee-jerk reaction to Disney CEO Bob Chapek calling (the theatrical-only premiere of) Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings an “experiment”—and wonder if it was warranted.

Chapters

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].

Just because Sidharth Malhotra looks like a movie star, Bollywood has spent a decade trying to make him one. His latest vehicle, the war drama Shershaah, is a by-the-numbers vanilla biopic that doesn’t do justice to its subject, the Kargil War hero Captain Vikram Batra.

We discuss the film’s strange pacing, director Vishnu Varadhan’s handling of the action and the drama, Dharma Productions’ deliberate efforts to avoid nationalism, and the underwritten character that Kiara Advani has been saddled with.

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].

Is James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad a much-deserved apology to DC fans for David Ayer’s mismanaged original film?

We discuss why we are willing to ignore the movie’s thin plot, have come to embrace its ridiculous and over-the-top tone, and believe The Suicide Squad would be deemed “anti-national” if it was made in India.

We also talk about our favourite gags (shout-out to King Shark and Polka-Dot Man), and wonder why Margot Robbie is top-billed even though Idris Elba is the real star of the show.

Later, we delve into gossip about The Batman, involving an acrimonious split between star Robert Pattinson and director Matt Reeves.

Chapters

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Hosted by Akhil Arora and Rohan Naahar, The Long Take is fully bootstrapped. Please consider donating if you enjoy our work.

The Long Take is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, JioSaavn, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow The Long Take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at [email protected].