Entertainment
The Jungle Book’: Extraordinary in the truest sense
Film: “The Jungle Book”; Director: Jon Favreau; Cast: Neel Sethi; Voices of: Nana Patekar, Om Puri, Irrfan Khan, Shefali Shah, Priyanka Chopra; Rating: ****
Though parts of the film towards the end become excessively crowded and flurried, there is a cuddlesome quality to this new large-screen adaptation of the beloved Rudyard Kipling fable about a little boy Mowgli who is brought up in the jungles by animals.
Suspension of disbelief be damned. The animals speak in human voices. The film literally finds its voice on the soundtrack. Every actor has given a unique dimension to one of the principal animals. Bagheera, the wise panther becomes a pantheon of prudence in Om Puri’s voice. Priyanka Chopra’s seductive snake act is a bit of a stretch, coiling as it does its hypnotic hold over Mowgli in what seems like an invitation to sniff coke at a rave party.
Scarlett Johansson does the serpentine’s saga much better in the English version of “The Jungle Book”.
And surely if Scarlett can sing for the end-titles in English, Priyanka could have done the same in Hindi.
It’s Irrfan Khan’s Baloo, the oversized indolent but clever and kind bear who steals the show. Shrewdly, Irrfan has given the bear a Punjabi accent. The devilish dishy drawl draws us into Baloo’s laidback view of a world where survival is all about pulling the right strings… sometimes, literally.
Nana Patekar’s intimidating Sher Khan is a portrait of sinister aspirations. He is diabolic in his determination to destroy Mowgli but not entirely wrong in his assumption of corruption being the governing spirit in the human world.
It is this quality of man-induced corruption that this film eschews with firm hands.
“The Jungle Book” provides us with a wealth of visual and emotional bounty. It’s not just about the astounding computer graphics, though those in themselves are no mean achievement. The mysteries and secrets of the jungle open themselves up in front of our disbelieving eyes as a world defined by strive and sublimity.
I am not too sure if it’s an inviting world. It’s way too dark and forbidding, and the U/A censor certificate is not unjustified. The way the animals are shown to fight off predators, makes the animal kingdom more menacing than seductive.
And yet tearing through the sheen of the sinister this remarkable work of computer-generated art invites us into little Mowgli’s world. This is as good a place as any to say Neel Sethi owns Mowgli’s world and speaks to the luminaries of the animal kind as equals. He is a prodigious discovery, and one that hopefully won’t disappear with time.
The magic of this adaptation is that the animals who appear more humane than human beings, never look down at mankind as sub-human species the way they did in Kipling’s novel. Lurking somewhere in the folds of this enrapturing tale of jungle etiquette are unspoken homilies on the complex relationship between Man and Beast, beautifully and fluently bridged by director Jon Favreau as he sets out to create a world that yokes Man and Nature in a clasp so captivating it makes you gasp.
Don’t wait. Just go out this weekend with the kids and relive one of the most cherished children’s stories told from an adult perspective and yet miraculously maintaining an artless innocence that makes this film entirely winsome experience. And so what if Priyanka doesn’t sing in the Hindi version. The film is suffused in the music of the soul.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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