Entertainment
‘Sniff’: Amole Gupte serves up an olfactory delight (Film Review)
By Subhash K Jha
Film: “Sniff”; Cast: Khushmeet Gill, Manmeet Singh, Surekha Sikri, Sushmita Mukherjee Director: Amole Gupte; Rating: ***1/2
The best thing about “Sniff” is the wonderful children — God bless their untarnished souls — who play detectives to a car thief in Mumbai.
But wait. This is much later. This is where our interest in the goings-on begins to flag. The minute Sunny Gill (the wonderfully solemn and wise Khushmeet) turns super-snooper the plot loses its flexibility and momentum and falls prey to a kind of hushed rush of juvenile activities that don’t really add up to much.
But this absence of a hefty payoff is not what we are looking for or missing in this film. Straight out, “Sniff” is a charming ode to the tastebuds and the olfactory nerves, both co-related as one gives you a yummy feeling in the mouth and the other in the nose.
But what if you are born with no sense of smell?
Little Khushmeet plays one such unfortunate child of fate. Born into a family of pickle makers, he can’t smell the aroma of the spices that forever emanates from his lovable grandma Surekha Sikri’s kitchen.
It’s not so much in the way the film tickles the tastebuds that the film gathers its vigour and strength. It’s in the way the film celebrates the smells and sounds of food. Not since “The Mistress Of The Spices” has any film given us such an aromatic view of food and cooking. The camera manned by the magician of the lenses Manush Nandan, glides with sly smoothness over edibles, creating for us a kind of heaven on the palate.
For me the best, most cherishable moments in the narrative are those where smell-proof Sunny sits stoically at the family meal watching other family members ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over family pickles.
Sunny can’t smell, you see.
Once Sunny finds his sense of smell, the narrative creates a big stink over a stolen car on the society apartment premises. Nonetheless the film’s artless charm holds till the end. All the child actors are wonderful, far superior in their ability to hold together the proceedings by the lapels of their own convictions than the adult performers who are way too conscious of their obligation to let the children take the forefront.
Luckily for us, editor Deepa Bhatia allows the children more space in the goings-on than she does to the tantrum-throwing adults. In spite of a weak denouement the kids amply hold the plot together. Sound designer Avinash Sonavanve keeps the frames vibrant with extraneous noises. Very often I found myself listening to the sounds of silence that surround little Sunny’s serene presence.
Once the noise takes over he withdraws into a world of his own far away from our inquisitive eyes. Which is a pity. Because Sunny’s world and his charming friends show director Amole Gupte in pursuit of those simple little pleasures that we lose as we grown older.
Pleasures like licking the pickle from a jar and smacking the lips.
Thank you, Amole, for giving our childhood back to us.
–IANS
skj/vgu/bg
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
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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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