Good Hindi film criticism (not an oxymoron!)

Finding a film critic whose opinion you can trust is much like finding a wine seller with the same taste in wine as you have.

Indispensable!

Raja Sen at rediff.com has always been that for me. I think he writes the most erudite, thoughtful, credible, intelligent and well-rounded criticism of films in Bollywood (it doesn’t hurt that I almost always completely agree with him). His is the first opinion I look for when a movie I’m interested in seeing is released. Maybe I should ask him if he drinks wine!

He has just been joined by another critic calling herself Bollywoods, and I have really been enjoying her columns and reviews as well (she is knowledgeable and writes well, and is funny. Particularly I enjoyed her column about critics).

If you haven’t discovered them, you should!*

*along with some of the blogs I have listed under favorite links!

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6 Comments to “Good Hindi film criticism (not an oxymoron!)”

  1. I always enjoy, even if I don’t always agree with, Baradwaj Rangan: http://www.desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/ . He recently won a National Film Award for his film writing.

  2. your post made my day, thanks extremely.

    oh, and I like merlot :)

  3. Hi ,
    I like critics that aren’t impressed very easily——Raja Sen is one such critic—-although he is very biased to Vishal Bharadwaj and seems overtly impressed by him. Rajeev Masand is decent in his reviews although definitely not erudite by any means.The worst crcitc of all time is Subhash K. Jha——if you read the review he wrote for ‘black’ you’d probably throw-up—here it is
    http://www.nowrunning.com/film/review.asp?movieNo=1854
    if that doesn’t make you squirm–then read this
    http://www.indiafm.com/features/2007/10/30/3201/index.html
    BTW this is the same guy who started giving Sonu Nigam songs a bad review after Sonu sdidn’t agree to perform sexual favors(alleged) in exghange for rave reviews!!!!

  4. Subhash Jha is a hack, not to put too fine a point on it. He is more interested in himself than in the movies he writes about.

    I myself am pretty partial to Vishal Bhardwaj :-)

    I will look for Rajeev Masand and Baradwaj Rangan’s writing, thanks for the recommendations!

  5. Make mine a chardonnay, though no one asked me :-)

    A minor correction: I’ll pass on the critic bit, and stick to doing columns on issues that catch my eye, or stick in my craw, or both.

    Thanks for the boost, Greta, and hopefully you will find time to do that piece for me soon.

  6. Whatever you want to write is okay with me, Bolly Woods! It’s always entertaining. And I’m working on it :-)

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