Bhappi Sonie is one of my favorite directors (Ek Phool Char Kante, Janwar, Brahmchari, Tum Haseen Main Jawan…wah!) and this film stars Dharmendra with Vyjayanthimala, Helen, Pran and Mehmood! It also contains one of my all-time favorite songs “Dekha Hai Teri Aankhon Mein” by Shankar Jaikishan. I searched high and low for it for several years and finally got my grubby little hands on copy that worked. Happy happy joy joy! Unless you hate fabulous songs, a great cast and a riveting story with lots of twists, you will love this movie.
OMG! One of the sweetest films ever. Even without the misleading puppy on the title screen—is he peeing on the striped bellbottoms?—you really don’t need a puppy when Farooq Shaikh and Utpal Dutt are in the movie. Big melting brown eyes everywhere. Not to mention Hrishikesh Mukherjee directing!
Throw in beautiful Deepti Naval and funny Saeed Jaffrey, and a cute story with passable non-disco Bappi Lahiri songs and you’ve got at least as much entertainment as a lap full of puppies—and the same gooey warm fuzzy feeling too.
I do love a good buddy film. Redford and Newman in The Sting and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, and James Caan and Billy Dee Williams in Brian’s Song (the most surefire way to get an American man to cry) illuminate those films with friendships that remain vivid long after the lights come back on.
So here are my favorite Hindi movie buddy roles—and brothers are not allowed. So…no Shashitabh here, sorry (Shashitabh probably deserve a post of their own some day).
I was so f*ing happy to see these words. An alternate title could be When Bad Things Happen To Good People. The denouement has Dilip Kumar stabbing his own eyes out. And up until then it’s nothing but misery, suffering and pain.
I will say that it is a well-crafted film, with superb performances—especially by Dilip Kumar and Ashok Kumar. But for a girl who already worries too much about eight dollar cups of coffee and what the world is coming to it’s unredeemably depressing.
It’s time for more Shammi, in brilliant Eastman Color! Janwar is one of my favorite Shammi films (okay, I know I always say that), because it’s chock full of crazy outfits and disguises, great repartee between Shammi and his sidekick Rajendranath, and the presence of Prithviraj Kapoor and Rehman as well. It also has a great fast-paced story full of fun, and the songs by Shankar and Jaikishan are brilliant.
Can anyone tell me who the female singer in this song from the film Chandni Raat is? She sang in a handful of films in the late 1940’s, before becoming much better known as an actress in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s (she stopped singing).
This weekend I decided to take a trip down memory lane and revisit an early, somewhat guilty, pleasure: Daud (tagline: Fun on the Run). It’s probably one of the first fifty Hindi films I saw; I bought it for Sanjay Dutt whom I had just discovered, and I really enjoyed it but haven’t watched it since. All I really remembered about it was the crackling chemistry between Sanjay Dutt and Urmila Matondkar, and the wacked-out musical numbers.
All that is still there; but now, six or so years and hundreds of Hindi films later there is so much more too!
I once had a Russian boyfriend who was depressed pretty much all of the time. On one of those perfect April days—when the sun is spreading its warmth, flowers are exploding into life, and birds are chirp-chirping away—to cheer him up, I said: “Well, spring is coming!”
Yash Chopra’s second directorial effort, this film is lauded as a classic, and deservedly so. Set in the years prior to Independence and Partition, it addresses issues like religion, nationalism, prejudice—all topics that are still relevant today, of course! It has a wonderful cast, including Shashi Kapoor in his first adult role (as an insufferable, pompous bigot). The music by N Dutta is very good too, with words (thankfully subtitled) by the great lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi.
MemsaabStory 
