iWorld
Hooq adds Prestige, Zodiac & Village to its offering
MUMBAI: The 89 Annual Oscar awards are scheduled to happen later this month on the 24 February. As we gear to watch the awards where films with excellent content are nominated every year, Hooq has added new movie titles to its existing content base. The new titles include renowned names such as The Prestige, Dirty Pretty Things, There will be Blood, Zodiac, Inside Jobs, The Village, The English Patient amongst others.
Hooq India MD Salil Kapoor said, “Oscars being the most prestigious awards in the history of the film industry automatically becomes a benchmark for the best curated content of all time. As a platform which offers video on demand service, we want to give our customers the best and the most exciting content from across the world and genres. We are very happy to announce the addition of new Oscar titles to our existing base. Hooq has one of the largest number of titles and we are very excited to continuously add more content every month. With varied content on our platform, we aim to offer our audiences different flavors with an uninterrupted viewing experience. To propagate our efforts further, we have multiple partnerships in place, to give a few examples, the Hooq complimentary trials are available for postpaid customers of Airtel, Vodafone and ACT Fiber net. These partnerships will help consumer experience the freedom of viewing content anytime, anywhere with Hooq and give them a window to what we have to offer.”
The Prestige- is a mystery thriller drama film directed by Christopher Nolan, from a screenplay adapted by Nolan and his brother Jonathan from Christopher Priest’s 1995 World Fantasy Award-winning novel of the same name. The story follows Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, rival stage magicians in London at the end of the 19th century. Obsessed with creating the best stage illusion, they engage in competitive one-upmanship with tragic results.The film had 34 nominations and five wins in the Academy Awards.
Dirty Pretty Things- is a British drama film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Steven Knight, a drama about two immigrants in London. The film had 19 nominations and 5 wins in the Academy Awards 2004.
There Will Be Blood- is a American epic historical drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. The film was inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! It tells the story of a silver miner-turned-oilman (Day-Lewis) on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The film had around 80 nominations with 70 wins out of them.
Zodiac- is an American mystery-thriller film directed by David Fincher. Zodiac tells the story of the manhunt for a notorious serial killer who called himself the “Zodiac” and killed in and around the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, leaving several victims in his wake and taunting police with letters, blood stained clothing, and ciphers mailed to newspapers. The cases remain one of Northern California’s most infamous unsolved crimes. The film had 30 nominations with 10 wins out of them.
Inside Job- is a documentary film, directed by Charles H. Ferguson, about the late-2000s financial crisis. The film is about “the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption”. In five parts, the film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices helped create the financial crisis.Inside Job was acclaimed by film critics, who praised its pacing, research, and exposition of complex material. The film was screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in May and won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The Village- is an American psychological thriller film, written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver. The film is about a village whose inhabitants live in fear of creatures inhabiting the woods beyond it. Like other films written and directed by Shyamalan from the same time period, The Village has a twist ending.The film received mixed reviews, with critics especially divided about the plausibility and payoff of the ending. The film gave composer James Newton Howard his fourth Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. The film had 11 nominations with 5 wins out of them.
The English Patient is a British-American romantic drama film directed by Anthony Minghella from his own script based on the novel of the same name by Michael Ondaatje and produced by Saul Zaentz. In the final days of the Italian Campaign of World War II, Hana, a French-Canadian nurse working and living in a bombed-out Italian monastery, looks after a critically burned man who speaks English but cannot remember his name. They are joined by Kip, a Sikhsapper in the British Army who defuses bombs and has a love affair with Hana before leaving. The film was released to critical acclaim, and received 12 nominations at the 69th Academy Awards, eventually winning nine, including Best Picture, Best Director for Minghella and Best Supporting Actress for Juliette Binoche.
iWorld
Why Peaky Blinders is one of television’s biggest hits that still deserves more attention
Six seasons, multiple awards and the release of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man bring the Shelby saga back into the spotlight
In the crowded universe of streaming content, only a handful of shows manage to leave a lasting cultural footprint. Peaky Blinders is overwhelmingly considered one of the biggest global hits of the past decade. Yet many viewers still haven’t fully explored the dark, gripping world of the Shelby family.
Originally produced for the UK’s BBC and later finding a massive global audience through Netflix, the series quietly grew from a British period drama into a worldwide streaming phenomenon.
Created by Steven Knight, the show follows the rise of the Shelby crime family in post-First World War Birmingham. What begins as a gritty street-gang story gradually expands into a sweeping narrative about ambition, politics, power and survival.
At the centre of the saga is Thomas Shelby, portrayed with extraordinary depth by Cillian Murphy. The casting of Murphy is widely regarded as perfect for the role. With piercing eyes, restrained dialogue and an almost hypnotic screen presence, he transforms Shelby into one of the most unforgettable characters in modern screen storytelling.
Murphy’s brilliance lies in his restraint. He rarely shouts or performs theatrically. Instead, a quiet stare, a calculated pause or a subtle shift in expression conveys the emotional storms within the character. Beneath the ruthless gang leader is a war veteran carrying trauma, guilt and loneliness. Murphy captures this complexity with remarkable precision, making Thomas Shelby both terrifying and deeply human.
Beyond its central performance, Peaky Blinders stands out for its unfiltered portrayal of reality. The show does not romanticise crime. Instead, it exposes the harsh social conditions of early 20th-century Britain, from poverty and class struggle to political extremism and the psychological scars left by war.
The series also presents powerful female characters who hold their own within the Shelby empire. Polly Gray, played by Helen McCrory, is the strategic backbone of the family and one of the most formidable figures in the story. Women in the series shape decisions, influence power structures and challenge the rigid social norms of the time.
Across six seasons, the narrative grows dramatically in scale. What begins in the smoky streets of Birmingham evolves into a story involving political conspiracies, fascism and international criminal networks.
The series has also earned significant critical acclaim. It won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Drama Series in 2018 and multiple National Television Awards for Best Drama, cementing its reputation as one of Britain’s most celebrated modern shows.
Another defining feature of the series is its iconic music. The show’s opening theme, Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, became instantly recognisable and widely associated with the Shelby universe. Combined with a powerful soundtrack featuring artists such as Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, the music helped shape the show’s dark, stylish identity and became hugely popular among fans.
And the Shelby story is not over yet.
In fact, its legacy is unfolding right now. The long-awaited feature-length continuation, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, was released on March 6, 2026, bringing the Shelby universe from streaming screens to cinemas and giving fans a new chapter in the saga.
For viewers who have not yet stepped into this world, the timing could not be better.
Six gripping seasons are ready to binge on Netflix. A new film has just arrived in theatres. And at the heart of it all stands one of the most magnetic performances in modern drama by Cillian Murphy.
So if Peaky Blinders has been sitting on your watchlist for years, this weekend is your moment.
So, by order of the Peaky fookin’ Blinders, consider this your cue to finally step into the ruthless world of Thomas Shelby. Pour yourself a drink, clear your schedule and press the play button. Because when the Peaky Blinders give an order, you listen.
