With Love!! – TRULY!!

While cribbing about the decline in quality of recently released Tamil movies, we come across a very well written and perfectly casted movie in ‘With Love’. Directed by Madhan, the movie has Abishan Jeevinth (of Tourist Family fame), Anaswara Rajan, Saravanan and others.

Spoilers Ahead!!

 

Highlights

Music by Sean Roldan is soothing to our ears and plays a beautiful backdrop to carrying the breezy movie on its shoulders.

Cinematography by Shreyaas Krishna and Editing by Suresh Kumar was crisp and seamlessly carried forward the movie. The close-up on each of the actors truly brough out the best of emotions.

Supporting actors like Kavya Anil, Harish and others have done a fantastic job of supporting the movie with pitch-perfect emotions especially with Saravanan as the Chemistry teacher explaining what happened with an incident later in the movie with the enlightning advice to not judge anyone harshly too quickly.

Abishan Jeevinth had fantastically directed Tourist Family, which was a complex portrayal of human emotions, strongly highlighting the goodness of human nature. His foray into acting is no less spectacular with him giving his absolute best in every frame.

Anaswara Rajan has truly transformed into the character of the social media influencer, Monisha. From a free-flowing student characterization to a subdued but famous influencer wanting attention but not demanding it, as well as standing up for her rights, she has literally grown into the character. Wishing to see more such powerful women-oriented roles from the gen-z actors.

But the true highlight of the movie has been the director of the movie, Madhan who has crafted it meticulously and cast with such precision that no character feels out of place or forced. Delving seamlessly into past and present with differing perspectives of two individuals requires quite an understanding of human emotions and the director has come up with trumps in it.

 

If you wish to re-visit your school memories with fondness and unwind with a breezy lighthearted rom-com, ‘With Love’ definitely should be on your list this weekend. Do share your thoughts if you have seen the movie.

Boom-Raah!!

After a generation of fiery fast bowlers like Ambrose, Walsh, Mcgrath, Gillespie, Wasim, Waqar, Alan Donald, Dale Steyn and swing specialists Anderson and Broad, who make a batsman, sway, swivel, sweat and smell the leather all the time, we have once-in-a generation bowler, who can absolutely bowl any type ball at any point of time. 

Starting his career a decade back, he has broken open every format of the game, Tests, ODIs and T20s and made opposition fear and plan against him. With 500+ international wickets, Bumrah has been the backbone of Indian cricket for the last decade.

Many Test and One-Day Internationals brilliance aside, here is a look at two of his feats in most recent T20 World Cups.

 

T20 World Cup 2024

Having scored just at run-a-ball on a sluggish New York drop-in pitch, all our friends in our community gathered to cheer for the Indian team to defend this low total. Bumrah’s 3 crucial wickets including Babar and Rizwan broke open the game and helped India defend this super modest total.

With our friends gathered one more time and peering through a small mobile phone in a different setting, we watched as India had to defend 30 runs in as many balls. What gave us absolute comfort was the fact that Bumrah still had to bowl 12 balls out of the 30. And save us indeed he did, as he bowled a superb 16^th over with a wicket and a run to strangulate the Proteas batting line up and set up an absolute fire-cracker of a win with all of us screaming our throats out.

T20 World Cup 2026

With India having blasted a 250+ score, it only seemed like a formality that we would win the semi-final against England yesterday. But an absolute screamer of an innings from centurion Jacob Bethell nearly tilted the favor in favor of the Brits. The most crucial part of the game came in 18^th over of the England innings when they had to score nearly 50 runs from 18 balls. With Bumrah bowling unplayable pin-point Yorkers and low-ball full tosses, the English batsman very cleverly played safe against Bumrah and thereby choked themselves with too much to get from the final overs.

Player-of-the-match Sanju Samson’s words rang true, when he mentioned that the true POTM should have been Bumrah, who with great cricketing intelligence and exceptional executional skills single-handedly won India the match. 

Jasprit Bumrah, is just not a bowler, he is a game-changer. Do join me in wishing him and India all the best in the finals against New Zealand on Sunday.