Moj, MX TakaTak Merge to Form India’s Largest Short Video Platform in Post TikTok World

The international union that governs skating said Tuesday that it was following the recommendations of the International Olympic Committee in banning athletes from Russia and Belarus from its competitions across the sports of figure skating and speed skating. It becomes the latest organization in the sports world to take action since Russia began its military invasion of Ukraine.

Naman Ramachandran Entrepreneur Karnesh Ssharma is launching Clean OTT, a streaming service focusing on female-oriented original content, in the first quarter of 2023.Female actors, directors and producers will be at the heart of the service, which aims to move away from the male gaze that plagues Indian content and to create a sustainable platform for female professionals to further their career in the entertainment industry, while also removing age barriers.The content will include originally curated and produced works by Clean and pre-selected projects that meet the Clean OTT messaging framework by other producers from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.Ssharma is also a co-founder of Clean Slate Filmz (Netflix’s “Bulbbul,” Amazon’s “Paatal Lok”). The Clean OTT library will feature work from directors, scriptwriters, actors, and producers associated with Clean Slate Filmz, as well as providing opportunities to emerging talent.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorTikTok is again cranking up the maximum length of videos users can upload to the platform — more than tripling it, to 10 minutes.TikTok, owned by Chinese internet conglomerate ByteDance, is moving to let creators make longer-form videos as rivals like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram have aggressively built out their own TikTok-like short-form video features.TikTok’s expansion to allow up to 10-minute videos comes less than a year after it raised the maximum length of videos to three minutes in July 2021 (up from 60 seconds before).One of the reasons TikTok has become massively popular — with more than 1 billion monthly active users — is that it provides an auto-generated feed of entertaining, bite-size short videos of under a minute, algorithmically tailored to users’ interests. It’s not clear how many TikTokers will take advantage of the longer-form videos but the change clearly shows that the company is eager to facilitate ways to keep viewers in the app for longer periods of time.

Naman Ramachandran Indian acting powerhouses Vidya Balan (“Kahaani”) and Shefali Shah (“Delhi Crime”) headline film “Jalsa,” which will bow on Amazon Prime Video.The film is a tale of conflict narrated through the life of a celebrated journalist and her cook. The cast also includes Manav Kaul (“The Fame Game”), Rohini Hattangadi (“Gandhi”), Iqbal Khan (“Crackdown”), Vidhatri Bandi (“Shiddat”), Srikant Mohan Yadav (“Inside Edge”), Shafeen Patel and Surya Kasibhatla.“Jalsa” is directed by Suresh Triveni who previously worked with Balan on the critically acclaimed “Tumhari Sulu” (2017).

Facebook Reels, which launched on Instagram as a competitor of TikTok, has expanded to 150 countries as a feature on Facebook.

Despite all the high-tech tricks, political posturing and pyrotechnics, the best part of the Closing Ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics proved to be the athletes.

President Joe Biden said that a Russian invasion of Ukraine remains “distinctly possible,” as he made further warnings to Moscow of its implications while holding out the possibility of a diplomatic solution.

Naman Ramachandran Amazon Prime Video India has revealed Hindi, Tamil and Telugu-language versions of hit series “Modern Love.”Based on the weekly The New York Times column of the same name, the U.S. version of “Modern Love” was developed by John Carney (“Once,” “Sing Street”), who also directed several episodes over its two seasons in 2019 and 2021.

Nathan Chen has earned his place in the Olympics record book!

Nathan Chen has earned his place in the Olympics record book!

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticTikTok, the omnipresent video-based social-media app that launched five years ago, has always seemed a less serious, more frivolously youthquakey destination than a number of other online networking services — most obviously Facebook. Yet as Shalini Kantayya’s sprightly, informative documentary “TikTok, Boom.” makes clear, there are more levels to the TikTok phenomenon than there are to almost any other blockbuster app.There are the countless people who consume it: the kids from all over the world who get addicted to watching the up-to-three-minute-long videos (dances, pranks, sexy flaunts, tutorials, monologues, protest messages) as if they were popping Sour Patch Kids.

The opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics is just getting under way in Beijing. Overseeing the event is filmmaker Zhang Yimou, back after directing the 2008 Summer Games opener to global acclaim. This time around, Zhang has said the ceremony will have a romantic tone that he hopes will “amaze the whole world.”