Tag Archives: 2021

Series Review: Aranyak (2021)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Aranyak on Netflix

Aranyak is Netflix India’s answer to Twin Peaks. With a compelling story and right-sized episodes, the supernatural (or is it?) murder mystery is made to be binged.

Aranyak takes place in the perpetually overcast fictional mountain town of Sironah, surrounded by a dense forest. Police officer Angad Malik (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) arrives to take over duties from Kasturi Dogra (Raveena Tandon), who’s taking a leave of absence from the force to deal with family issues.

On the day Angad arrives, a French tourist named Julie (Breshna Khan) reports her teenage daughter Aimee (Anna Ador) missing. Angad and Kasturi bicker over who should lead the case until Aimee’s body is found hanged in a tree. The cops agree to work together, putting Kasturi’s leave on hold.

Aimee’s death hits Sironah hard because of its similarities to a series of murders 19 years earlier that left over a dozen young women dead and the residents of the town emotionally scarred — none more so than Kasturi’s father-in-law Mahadev (Ashutosh Rana). He led the investigation into the murders but was unable to find the killer known as the “leopard man.”

The leopard man is a figure of local myth: a murderous beast and also the steward of a crop of “mystery mushrooms” that cure disease, but at a grievous cost to those who consume them. Whether the killer from 19 years ago was a man or a monster remains up for debate in Sironah.

One curious fact about the new crime is that all the rich and politically-connected residents in town seem to know that something bad happened to Aimee before the police do. Local politician Jagdamba (Meghna Malik) and sketchy rich guy Kuber Manhas (Zakir Hussain) try to leverage that information to their advantage.

There are many more characters and possible suspects. The story — written by Rohan Sippy and Charudutt Acharya — does a nice job of keeping all of them somehow connected to the crimes of the present or past. Each of the series’ eight episodes runs about 40 minutes, giving enough time to flesh out characters and their motivations without getting bogged down in backstory.

The runtime gives enough space to deal with the themes that Aranyak shares with Twin Peaks: collective trauma, whether evil exists as an independent entity or whether it’s simply individual moral corruption, and how “good” people reckon with this evil in their midst.

One of the more interesting characters is the politician Jagdamba. Her position is in jeopardy because her young adult son Kanti (Tejaswi Dev Chaudhary) was previously convicted of rape. She wants to protect him, but she also believes that he committed the current crime and fears that he might do it again. She’s concerned not just because he’s a political liability, but because she doesn’t want him to hurt anyone else — yet she’s not sure how to stop him. She loves her son, but he might be irredeemable.

This subplot fits with the show’s focus on the dangers faced by women, be it rape, murder, roofies, or cyberstalking. The stakes are raised for Kasturi because she has a daughter, Nutan (Tanseesha Joshi), who is the same age as Aimee. One of the commonalities between Aimee’s death and the murders from 19 years ago is that the police weren’t able to prevent any of them, only respond to them after the fact.

Aranyak has a few glaring flaws. Kasturi does stupid things that put people in danger, and she’s never heard of the jugular vein. Action scenes in the final episode defy the laws of space-time. The finale’s closing shot is sincerely crazy. The whole reason I watched the show was because Shah Shahid of the Split Screen Podcast warned me that the show’s final seconds were nuts, and he was right.

That said, the story build-up to that point is solid enough to make time invested in Aranyak worthwhile. Consistently good performances help, too, with special acknowledgement of Joshi as Nutan and Wishveash Sharkholi as Bunty, her boyfriend. Though the story feels complete as is, I’m very curious to see where Season 2 would go, based on the finale’s closing seconds.

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Best and Worst Bollywood Movies of 2021

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2021 was a rough year, and one of the things that had to take a backseat for me was movie reviews. After a few months of catching up on some of last year’s releases, I feel like I’ve finally seen enough to pick some titles for my annual Best of and Worst of lists.

Here are my best and worst Bollywood movies of 2021, starting with the best:

Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is one of director Dibakar Banerjee’s finest films — which is saying a lot, considering his sterling body of work! Parineeti Chopra and Arjun Kapoor play a banker and her kidnapper on the run from assassins out to kill both of them. It’s a beautifully-paced thriller that allows enough time for substantial character development as well as an examination of the expectations and limitations placed on women by patriarchy and capitalism. It’s for sure my favorite film of 2021.

Bollywood has produced several successful horror comedies in recent years, and Bhoot Police is right on trend. Saif Ali Khan and Arjun Kapoor (again!) play brothers who conduct sham exorcisms, only to find out that ghosts might be real after all. Themes about sibling bonds and the unique relationship each child has with their parents are expertly woven into the story. I’m jealous of the terrific screenplay, written by the trio of director Pavan Kirpalani, editor Pooja Ladha Surti, and co-writer Sumit Batheja.

Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is Bollywood’s first mainstream romantic comedy with a transgender lead. Though it might have benefited from more transgender representation in front of and behind the camera, it does demonstrate the commercial viability of stories about transgender people. Plus, it’s a very enjoyable movie with likeable, complex leading characters.

2021 also had a lot of good but not great titles that fell somewhere in between — movies like The White Tiger, Haseen Dillruba, Tribhanga: Tedhi Medhi Crazy, and The Girl on the Train. (Just gonna note here that all four of these titles are Netflix Original Films.)

Of course, 2021 also had its share of duds as well. Here are my worst movies of the year:

Dybbuk is a ghost story with nothing to say about anything. It’s not even fun in a stupid way.

Bhuj: The Pride of India chronicles an interesting part of India’s 1971 war with Pakistan, but the story as it’s told is truncated to fit into a single movie. This would have been better as a series.

The title of Worst Bollywood Movie of 2021 belongs to the dreadful Akshay Kumar action flick Sooryavanshi. Part of director Rohit Shetty’s “cop universe,” Sooryavanshi the character is annoying. Sooryavanshi the movie is lazily written and hateful toward Muslims. I’m not sure why Shetty felt like he had to expand his “universe” (just kidding, of course I know: $$$), but he’d have been better off just making Singham sequels until the end of time.

Kathy’s Best Bollywood Movies of 2021

  1. Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar — stream on Amazon Prime
  2. Bhoot Police — stream on Hulu
  3. Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui — stream on Netflix

Kathy’s Worst Bollywood Movies of 2021

  1. Sooryavanshi — stream on Netflix
  2. Bhuj: The Pride of India — stream on Hulu
  3. Dybbuk — stream on Amazon Prime

Previous Best Movies Lists

Previous Worst Movies Lists

[Disclaimer: my Amazon links include an affiliate tag, and I may earn a commission on purchases made via those links. Thanks for helping to support this website!]

Movie Review: Sooryavanshi (2021)

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0.5 Stars (out of 4)

The third member of Rohit Shetty’s “cop universe” of cinematic heroes — Sooryavanshi — is introduced in his namesake film. It’s even worse than I expected it to be.

The plot draws from the standard Bollywood “supercop” genre playbook. A sleeper cell of Islamic terrorists is planning an attack on Mumbai, and the only man who can stop them is Veer “Surya” Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar). What differentiates the film is the degree to which it leans into lazy genre tropes and outright harmful stereotypes.

First among the lazy tropes is that patriotism is a blanket excuse for reckless or immoral actions. Shootout in a crowded marketplace? Extrajudicial murder of unarmed perpetrators? Engaging in a firefight with a suspect while your son is in the car, leaving the boy wounded? All okay, so long as they’re done for the sake of the country.

This feeds into the second lazy trope: that patriotism is the only personal quality that matters. There’s a theme in the movie about the importance of family, but it only pertains to Surya’s wife Ria (Katrina Kaif), not Surya. Ria wants to protect their son Aryan from Surya’s blinkered commitment to duty, and she’s painted as the villain for wanting to move to Australia without her husband. Never is it mentioned that maybe Surya should not have married or procreated if his duty to country prevents him from ever prioritizing his family and may require him to put them in danger. But that leads us back to the first lazy trope: Surya’s patriotism excuses him being an awful father and husband.

Another lazy “supercop” trope is that the hero is the only person who can defeat the villains. No one else in the vast local and federal anti-terrorism infrastructure is up to the task. When Surya takes one afternoon off at Ria’s insistence, one of his team members dies (making Ria the bad guy once again).

One caveat: Sooryavanshi skirts this lone-hero trope in its climactic sequence by including cameos from the other members of Shetty’s “cop universe” — Simmba (Ranveer Singh) and Singham (Ajay Devgn). Together, the trio defeats the terrorists in a climactic showdown that lacks spatial orientation. Lots of stuff explodes, but rarely ever within the same frame as the star actors, ruining the immersion.

All the cameos do is remind the audience that Devgn is the only actor of the three with the charisma to pull off this type of character. That Singham wins the final fight in this, another hero’s movie, just cements that.

Beyond an over-reliance on tropes — which can be forgiven if a movie is fun — Sooryavanshi is deplorable in its depiction of Muslims. It builds the plot around the harmful stereotype that every Muslim man deserves suspicion as either a possible terrorist or a corrupter of Hindu women. The only way to prove that you’re a patriotic Indian Muslim is to join the police force or collaborate with them, despite knowing that they engage in torture and extrajudicial murder.

It makes for depressing viewing. When it’s not depressing, it’s annoying thanks to Surya’s pathological inability to remember people’s names. The joke is revisited frequently, and it’s never funny.

The only positives in Sooryavanshi are Javed Jaffrey’s grounded performance as a veteran counter-terrorist agent and Akshay Kumar’s entertaining hand-to-hand fight scenes, of which there are too few. But for them, the film would be irredeemable.

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Movie Review: Bhoot Police (2021)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Bhoot Police on Hulu

Bhoot Police (“Ghost Police“) is a really satisfying, high-concept horror comedy.

Brothers Vibhooti (Saif Ali Khan) and Chiraunji (Arjun Kapoor) are exorcists for hire, carrying on the legacy inherited from their father, the renowned spiritual healer Ullat Babu (Saurabh Sachdeva, in flashbacks). However, the brothers’ business is a grift. Non-believer Vibhooti rationalizes their work as harmless since their sham spells put peoples’ minds at ease, but Chiraunji isn’t so sure. He’s convinced that their father’s encoded spellbook holds some key to the spirit realm, if only he could figure out how to read it.

Chiraunji asks his dearly-departed father for a sign, and Dad delivers. Chiraunji drops the spellbook, and a hidden scroll unlocking the book’s code pops out. The book lands at the feet of a woman named Maya (Yami Gautam) who needs the brothers’ help. Decades ago, Ullat Babu banished a ghost from her family’s tea estate, but the ghost seems to have returned. Now that Chiraunji can decipher his father’s book, perhaps he can perform a real exorcism and save Maya’s business.

The performances in Bhoot Police are a lot of fun. Khan’s opportunistic cad Vibhooti is contrasted against Kapoor’s earnest, sentimental Chiraunji. Gautam’s warmhearted Maya is balanced by her party girl sister Kanu (Jacqueline Fernandez, whose energetic performance is slightly over the top). Amit Mistry and Javed Jaffrey do exactly what needs doing in their supporting roles.

Because Bhoot Police feels silly and fun, it’s easy to miss how much thought went into its construction. Making the brother’s disparate personalities the main driver of conflict and then doubling it by adding two sisters with a similar dynamic adds depth to the story. There’s a goofy subplot with Jaffrey as a police inspector who’s hunting the brothers that has an unexpected payoff. The story behind the ghost haunting the estate is surprisingly emotional. All these layers give the actors a lot to work with and keep the plot moving along.

None of this should be a surprise given the team behind Bhoot Police. Director Pavan Kirpalani previously directed the excellent psychological thriller Phobia, starring Radhika Apte. That film required a great understanding of character, which is present in the characters in Bhoot Police as well. Both of the brothers suffered from the trauma of their father’s death but found different ways of coping with it. Revisiting the scene of their dad’s most famous exorcism forces the brothers to finally confront their feelings about him.

Kirpalani wrote both Phobia and Bhoot Police with Pooja Ladha Surti, who also edited both movies. She’s Sriram Raghavan’s go-to co-writer and editor, too, having worked with him in those capacities on Andhadhun and Badlapur (among other films).

Bhoot Police‘s other co-writer and assistant director — Sumit Batheja — wrote the dialogue for the hilarious action comedy A Gentleman.

With such talented people behind the camera, it’s no wonder that Bhoot Police is as enjoyable and well thought out as it is. The cast in front of the camera brings the story to life with a seeming effortlessness. If only every comedy could be made with this much care and deliberation.

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Movie Review: Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (2021)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is the first mainstream Bollywood romance to feature a transgender lead character. While the movie represents a huge step forward, it opens up a wider conversation about representation and who gets to tell trans stories.

Manu (Ayushmann Khurrana) runs a gym in Chandigarh that struggles for business. He hopes that winning the local strongman competition in a few months will raise his gym’s profile, but his chances of beating the reigning champ are slim.

Then Maanvi (Vaani Kapoor) arrives. New in town, Maanvi shows up at the gym to start a new Zumba program — one of Manu’s schemes to keep the gym afloat while he trains for the competition. Maanvi is gorgeous and energetic, and soon her Zumba students outnumber the bodybuilders.

On top of being popular, Maanvi is kind and generous. She helps Manu when he breaks his nose, getting him safely home and impressing his family in the process. The two spend time together, sparks fly, and love blooms.

Yet Maanvi is cautious. She’s been hurt before, so it’s only when Manu proposes marriage that she tells him an important secret: she’s transgender. Confirming her worst fears, Manu reacts terribly, spewing hateful slurs and vowing to ruin her life.

Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is aimed at a broad audience — many of whom may not have given much thought to what it means to be transgender and the challenges that come with that — so the plot hinges on Manu’s emotional process as he comes to understand what Maanvi’s confession means for both of them. He educates himself about what it means to be transgender, educating the audience in the process.

Given the power imbalance that favors male stars in Bollywood, many romantic comedies treat their female leads as little more than accessories to the male lead. Not so with Maanvi. She has a full backstory that’s conveyed through her current relationships and also via smaller details, like the cutting scars on her arms or the nervous way she fidgets with the strap on her purse during a conversation that could turn awkward. The film tells us who Maanvi was by showing us who she is, without relying on flashbacks. Maanvi is a prime example of how to write a female lead character with as much depth as the man she’s romancing.

Two main points of criticism can be leveled at Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui that have nothing to do with how watchable or competently-made the movie is (it is both): the actor playing Maanvi is not a transgender woman, and no one on the writing team — including director Abhishek Kapoor — is trans. To the second point, the idea for the film’s story came from writer Simran Sahni, who is a mother to two trans daughters. Director Kapoor has stated in interviews that he and his co-writers consulted with trans people and organizations while writing the film.

Not casting a trans woman to play Maanvi is a missed opportunity. That’s taking nothing away from Vaani Kapoor’s performance, which is the best of her career. But casting a transgender woman would have elevated the movie from being a “conversation starter” to an example of turning a good intention into action. Director Kapoor claims that the film needed an established star like Vaani to draw the audience’s attention, but how can trans actors become stars if directors and producers won’t cast them?

Abhishek Kapoor told Filmfare: “This is not the last movie, this is the first movie of its kind that has been made and the kind of response and the kind of houses that this story has penetrated because of the kind of casting we’ve done . . . there is an understanding of the trans community and from hereon when you cast trans people for roles, I think it has opened doors, it has started conversations.” He’s right that this is the first movie of its kind. And maybe it was the studio or producers who insisted on a cisgender woman playing Maanvi. Still, hoping that someone else will see the success of Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui and take the next step is by no means a sure thing.

As much as I enjoyed the film, I recognize that as a cisgender woman I may have missed important context or other elements that could be problematic. I’ve linked below to a couple of articles about the film written by trans women that I found helpful, as well as interviews with Abhishek Kapoor about his casting choices. I’ve also linked to a great video essay about intention in storytelling that, while about a different specific subject (Asian-inspired movies by non-Asians), still seems relevant to Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui.

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Movie Review: Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (2021)

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4 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar on Amazon Prime

In 2012, Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra made their lead debuts in the romantic thriller Ishaqzaade. They made an excellent duo, turning in nuanced performances in a story that tackled a number of thorny subjects. Reunited nearly a decade later in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (“Sandeep and Pinky Have Absconded“), Kapoor and Chopra remind us that they might be at their best when they’re together.

Writer-director Dibakar Banerjee’s chilling opening scene sees a car full of rowdy bros gunned down as the opening credits come to an end. Shortly thereafter, we learn that their murder is a case of mistaken identity.

The real target is Sandeep “Sandy” Walia (Parineeti Chopra), a high-ranking executive at Parivartan Bank. She’s dating her boss, Parichay (Dinker Sharma), and is pregnant with his child. As Sandy waits at a restaurant for her boss/boyfriend, a messenger — Satinder “Pinky” Dahiya — arrives with a note from Parichay asking her to accompany Pinky to a different location.

Pinky is trying get his suspension from the police force overturned by doing jobs for a well-connected goon named Tyagi (Jaideep Ahlawat). Pinky assumes he’s been hired to turn Sandy over to some thugs who will scare her (he doesn’t care why). When he realizes Tyagi intended to have him killed along with Sandy in order to cover up her murder, Pinky reluctantly takes Sandy to a border town where they can cross into Nepal.

Pinky’s emotional arc is pretty conventional and self-contained. He needs to shed his tough guy self-image and learn to care about people other than himself. He does so first by realizing the special considerations Sandy has to take to protect her own health for the sake of her unborn child. Pinky’s progress is also helped along by Munna (Rahul Kumar), a young man who looks up to Pinky and needs a shoulder to cry on. Pinky’s compassion toward Munna — however grudgingly it’s given — yields dividends when Tyagi shows up in town.

Sandy’s arc is more complex and ties in with the film’s themes about misogyny, double standards, and capitalism. Sandy’s just as morally flexible as Pinky, if not more so — comfortable with both large scale corruption and simple interpersonal lies — but she’s often pressured to act by external forces. Parichay convinces her that the only way to save the bank is for her to do something illegal, so she acts in a way that saves her company and her relationship with him at the expense of faceless customers she thinks she’ll never meet. When she needs a clean place to stay, Sandy convinces an older couple — known simply as Aunty (Neena Gupta) and Uncle (Raghuvir Yadav) — to rent a room to her and Pinky even though they have no money. It’s an understandable act of deception for an expectant mother worried about her health.

The world as presented in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar allows women no margin for error and gives men full discretion over the terms of their existence. Sandy climbs the ranks in her field through hard work but becomes disposable once she asks for something for herself. She makes a mutually beneficial deal with a local bank manager (played by Sukant Goel) who abruptly changes the terms, then resorts to violence when she refuses to comply. Uncle values his pride more than Sandy’s safety.

Aunty tells a story to Sandy and a group of other women about being so angry at Uncle that she packed a bag and left the house. He followed her out and asked where she was going to go. Realizing she had nowhere else she could go, she turned around and went back in the house. Everyone laughs, but the truth of the story is incredibly sad. All of the options for women in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar are bad.

The only woman with a chance of making things right is a lawyer named Sejal (Archana Patel), hired by Parichay to track down Sandy. Like Sandy, Sejal is smarter than the men around her, so Parichay withholds information from her about the reasons why Sandy fled and what he plans to do with her when she’s found. Though at first she seems like another pawn working to preserve the power of capitalism and patriarchy, Sejal is Banerjee’s way of introducing hope into the story. Sandy didn’t see Parichay’s true colors in time, but if Sejal can, maybe she can balance the scales of justice a little bit.

Every performance in the movie is spot-on, down to the smallest roles. But boy do Chopra and Kapoor do an amazing job of reminding you just what they are capable of, especially when they’re working with a great director. Banerjee’s story — co-written with Varun Grover — heads in unexpected directions but never feels like it’s being clever for its own sake, and it does so at a pace that is neither too fast nor too slow. Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is totally engrossing and dense enough to merit a second viewing.

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Streaming Video News: December 23, 2021

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Christmas 2021 might be one of the busiest periods on streaming video ever, with a mix of new original content and OTT debuts of theatrical releases. Satyameva Jayate 2 — which released in theaters on November 25 — was first out of the gate, dropping on Amazon Prime in the afternoon on December 22.

This afternoon saw the release of two more titles: the OTT debut of Salman Khan’s Antim: The Final Truth on Zee5 and the worldwide launch of the Bollywood romance Atrangi Re — starring Sara Ali Khan, Dhanush, and Akshay Kumar — on Hulu (new home for Hotstar content in the US).

Finally, the new Malayalam superhero flick Minnal Murali premieres on Netflix in the early hours of December 24.

And those are just the Indian movies releasing in time for Christmas. Other December 24 streaming releases that I’m looking forward to include the new Netflix premieres Don’t Look Up and The Silent Sea and the OTT debut of Encanto on Disney+.

If you plan to use the holiday break to catch up on movies you missed this year, Zee5 made a helpful page just for their 2021 releases. You can also check my Bollywood Movies on Netflix, Bollywood Movies on Amazon Prime, and Bollywood Movies on Hulu pages and use the Command-F/Ctrl-F keyboard shortcuts to search for “2021.” When I searched “2021,” it returned 113 entries on my Netflix page, 233 entries on my Prime page, and 168 entries on my Hulu page. That’s a lot to catch up on!

If you’re already up-to-date with this year’s biggest Indian releases, check out the massive 2022 Netflix preview I wrote for What’s on Netflix. There’s a lot of good Indian content to look forward to on Netflix next year!

Have a safe and happy holiday! — Kathy

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Streaming Video News: December 17, 2021

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I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with today’s premiere of the Original series Decoupled, starring Madhavan and Surveen Chawla. Netflix also added the 2020 Tamil drama Kadaseela Biriyani.

I also updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime with yesterday’s streaming debut of Bunty Aur Babli 2.

I continue to add titles to my list of Bollywood movies on Hulu. It’ll likely take several more weeks to finish grabbing the data for all of the Hotstar titles in the catalog because Hulu’s interface loads really, really slowly — but progress is being made!

I’m also working on a 2022 preview of Netflix Original movies and series for What’s on Netflix, so stay tuned for that!

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Streaming Video News: December 10, 2021

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I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with today’s debut of the new Hindi thriller series Aranyak, starring Raveena Tandon.

I also updated my list of Bollywood movies on Hulu with today’s addition of the Telugu film Maa Oori Polimera and the premiere of Season 2 of Sushmita Sen’s Hotstar Special series Aarya, which is available in Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. If you need a quick recap of the events of Aarya Season 1, Madhuri Dixit Nene was helpful enough to provide one:

Finally, I also updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime with yesterday’s debut of the Marathi horror film Bali. Have a great weekend! — Kathy

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Streaming Video News: November 19, 2021

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I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with today’s premier of the Hindi thriller Dhamaka, starring Kartik Aaryan. The latest Little Singham movie — Samundar Ka Sikandar — also dropped on Netflix today. These could be the last two Indian flicks added to Netflix for the rest of November, with Cobalt Blue not scheduled to arrive until December 3.

I also updated my list of Bollywood movies on Hulu with yesterday’s trio of new additions: Adbhutham (Telugu), Cash (Hindi), and Pon Manickavel (Tamil). Hulu has been importing older Hotstar content in other languages, and I’ll work on incorporating those titles into the page over the next couple of weeks.

In a surprise announcement yesterday, Disney (parent company of Hulu and Hotstar) announced that Hotstar will officially cease operation in the United States on November 30, 2021. This is a huge acceleration from the “late 2022” date that was originally announced back when Hotstar’s content was split between Hulu and ESPN+ back in September. By now, all Hotstar subscribers should have received an email offer — and several reminder emails — to upgrade to the Disney Bundle in order to maintain access to Hotstar’s content. I’m guessing this pre-ponement means that enough Hotstar subscribers have made the switch that Disney feels comfortable forcing the remaining holdouts to do so as well.

Finally, I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime with a few additions in an otherwise quiet week. Next week will be busier, with the debuts of the Telugu sequel Drushyam 2 on November 25 and the Hindi horror film Chhorii on the 26th.