Entertainment
‘My Birthday Song’: A skilfully mounted psychological drama (IANS Review, Rating: ***)
By Troy Ribeiro
Film: “My Birthday Song”; Director: Samir Soni; Cast: Sanjay Suri, Nora Fatehi, Zenia Starr, Ayaz Khan, Samire Sharma, Elena Kazan, Aarti Khetarpal, Aryan Veir Suri, Kausher Ali Khan, Rahul Gaba, Aarav Bedi and Rohan Awasthi; Rating: ***
“My Birthday Song” is a catharsis designed as a psychological drama. It is a simple tale that is intelligently narrated where the plot is made complex with an astutely layered, story-telling technique that makes the film fulfilling.
It is advertiser Rajiv Kaul’s 40th birthday and he inadvertently gets trapped into a time loop where events connected to his birthday party repeat itself. And every time the sequence reboots, newer aspects of Rajiv’s personality, life and family are revealed.
Written and directed by debutant Samir Soni, the film gets into all sorts of angles using various elements of suspense — dreams, hallucination and doubts. The graph of the plot fluctuates with strong intensity.
The narrative starts off on an intriguing note with a one-night stand that turns into a murder mystery and continues till it gets convoluted and corny. But fortunately, the director skilfully pulls away from all gimmicks to reality in the nick of time salvaging the film, making it appear convincing.
The screenplay, with inputs from Vrushali Telang, is enhanced with the seamless transitions of the scenes. The editing, by Sandeep Shethy and his team, is brilliant and it leaves no scope for doubts.
The moments that capture the zenith and nadir of Rajiv’s life are what make the film interesting. What’s more, these moments are candidly portrayed by Sanjay Suri who play’s Rajiv with utmost sincerity.
He is aptly supported by Zenia Starr as his wife Ritu Kaul, Nora Fatehi as Sandy Williams — the acquaintance whose character changes from episode to episode during the various time loops. Apart from these two, the others are all perfunctory. Purab Kohli and Pitobash Tripathy in guest appearances are totally wasted.
With moderate production values, the film is efficiently shot by cinematographer Shubham Kasera and his team. Unfortunately, the visuals are a bit disappointing as most of the frames are invariably captured in mid-shots and tight close-ups.
The music tracks seamlessly mesh with the narrative thereby elevating the viewing experience.
Overall, with a lecture of karma thrown in, “My Birthday Song” is an engaging film that keeps you riveted to the screen.
–IANS
troy/rb/dg
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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