February 1, 2008
Set in a jungle estate, this is a fun movie mystery with bountiful clues and plenty of suspects to go around. What really makes it work though is the stellar cast: Dharmendra and Asha Parekh star along with Sanjeev Kumar—he won the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor award for it. They are also supported by Johnny Walker, Manmohan and Rehman—and my favorite girl Helen who gets two dances and a substantial role in the film! The songs by Shankar-Jaikishan are wonderful, and the dancing superb.
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Posted in Excellent Use of Helen, Hindi movies |
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January 28, 2008
In India—to my great excitement!—I got to meet Vinci Wadia, the son of JBH Wadia and nephew of Homi Wadia. JBH and Homi Wadia are the brothers who founded the Wadia Movietone studio in the 1930’s, and launched the career of Fearless Nadia the stunt queen. Homi Wadia also eventually married Nadia in 1961. Vinci Wadia spent a couple of hours with me talking about films, life, and Nadia, and generally charming my socks off (as a boy he met Frank Capra on Capra’s visit to Bombay!).
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Posted in Hindi film history, Hindi movies |
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January 24, 2008
For anyone who doesn’t know, Bollywood Ka Boss is a new Indian television show on the Sahara Filmy channel, hosted by Boman Irani. It’s a Hindi film trivia quiz show, and I was very honored to have them do a special short segment on me: a pagli American girl who essentially has nothing better to do all day but obsess about Hindi movies and retain all kinds of useless information about them.
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Posted in Hindi movies |
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January 19, 2008
I am in India, hence not much time to write a post. BUT I was on the sets of Bollywood Ka Boss yesterday, Boman Irani’s new film trivia quiz show on the Sahara Filmy channel. He did a short segment with me.
Will update when I get home!
Posted in Hindi movies |
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January 10, 2008
When I first heard about this film I was excited, because—as you may have figured out by now—I love Hindi films from the 50’s and 60’s, and have devoured every biography on every personality from that era that I can find. Also I think Sudhir Mishra is a good director, and Shantanu Moitra was doing the music; his songs for Parineeta were as close to the quality of old film music as most modern film music gets.
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Posted in Hindi movies |
8 Comments »
January 7, 2008
Attention all Shashi fans (and I know you’re out there)—this is a must-see movie for you! It is just so much fun, and Shashi is so…well…Shashilicious! His first song alone is worth buying the DVD for (I’ve watched it many times already and just can’t get enough of it). It’s called “Kehne Ki Nahin Baat” and it features Shashi dancing like Shammi, a marching band and a bunch of guys wearing berets with pom-poms.
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Posted in Hindi movies |
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January 2, 2008
I recently realized that I have not written about any movies from the 1990’s, mostly because I’ve seen the ones from that decade that I want to (I started off watching films from the 90’s and 2000’s and then moved on, or back, depending how you look at it). Essentially, I haven’t seen a movie made in the 90’s for a long time. So I thought I’d give this one a shot since Nana Patekar is in it, although my expectations of enjoyment were not too high. Turns out Nana IS the main reason to watch this—but what a reason! He almost singlehandedly makes this a good movie. It’s a great lesson in how one actor’s performance and charisma can carry a film to another level than it would be otherwise. The other actors (Jackie Shroff, Manisha Koirala) are competent, but it is Nana’s film all the way.
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Posted in Hindi movies |
11 Comments »
January 1, 2008
I thought of this while writing yesterday’s post. How were Mehmood and Meena Kumari connected in real life?
Anonymous UK is our winner today! Mehmood married Meena Kumari’s older sister Madhu, making him Meena’s brother-in-law.
Posted in Hindi movies, Trivia time |
5 Comments »
December 31, 2007
A weepy melodrama starring Meena Kumari at her sacrificial-lamb finest, somehow made bearable by the presence of Guru Dutt and director Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s light touch with what could be (okay, IS) very heavy going.
Here’s our first look at Gauri (Meena Kumari), accompanied by the plaintive wailing of violins:
I steel myself for a soap opera where duty, honor and tradition mean that everybody suffers, especially Gauri.
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Posted in Hindi movies |
18 Comments »
December 23, 2007
This movie had many things to delight me: my beloved Shammi both acting and directing (his first film as director); a veritable “Who’s Who” compendium of character actors; and a screenplay by Abrar Alvi (who wrote for such classic films as Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Mr & Mrs 55, and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam). It is based on (and Shammi has always credited) the Billy Wilder film Irma La Douce. The action all takes place on Manoranjan (Entertainment) Street, whose denizens are mostly pimps and kind-hearted prostitutes.
It’s a very stylish film. I loved the sets and song picturizations (songs by RD Burman)—they seem to show Vijay Anand influences, from Teesri Manzil in particular (especially the songs). The movie is also refreshingly honest about sexuality, although one of its major weaknesses is that it glosses over the pain that prostitution causes to women who are forced into it—the girls in this film seem positively happy to be prostitutes! Shammi did not direct again (only Bundal Baaz two years later), I guess because he was discouraged by the lukewarm response his films received from audiences. Too bad! I would have liked to see more from him.
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Posted in Hindi movies, Yahoo! Shammi! |
26 Comments »
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