November 25, 2008

Produced by Homi Wadia, and written by JBH Wadia, this film surprised me. It lacks their usual emphasis on stunts and crazy special effects, which I always enjoy; but is a solidly entertaining filmi noir more along the lines of Howrah Bridge and C.I.D. (although not nearly as competently done) than of Aladdin. Dwarka Khosla (any relation to Raj?) directed, and the plot is interesting (in spite of the many holes), with good performances and—best of all—spectacular music.
Feroz Khan stars in one of his first roles; as Todd pointed out in a comment elsewhere, he seems to have started off his film career as a poor man’s Shammi Kapoor. If that was his brief from the filmmakers, he certainly lived up to it during the songs at least. I will say that if Shammi and, say, Madhubala or Asha P. had starred, it would have probably taken the film to a whole other level; but as it is Feroz and Chitra deliver consistently if not spectactularly.
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November 9, 2008

Although I could not finish watching this DVD myself [begin rant: thanks to Shemaroo’s incredibly poor quality control—about half the DVDs that I get which are manufactured by Shemaroo don’t play all the way through, and I am so done with them! end rant] it had so much going for it that I’m going to write about it anyway. Shashi at his most delicious! Pran at his coolest! Heartbreak and romance and thrills!
Maybe one of my all-knowing readers can enlighten me as to the ending (although I can probably guess).
It inspired in me a name for this type of film: dacoit-drama. Get it? Daku-drama? Okay, sorry. But up until it dissolved into random pixels it was a highly entertaining movie.
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September 16, 2008

Manmohan Desai directing, Rajesh Khanna in a double role (for which he won the Filmfare Best Actor award) with beautiful Mumtaz opposite, plus Kumari Naaz (one of my favorite actresses), a co-starring dog, and Vinod Khanna! Believe me when I say I jumped through hoops to get my hands on a working DVD of this movie. Shame on you, Shemaroo! *shakes fist in their general direction* [Begin rant: Why do they not check master DVDs before duping them a million times, why? How hard can it be? End rant.] Thank goodness for BEI.
In any case, I DID jump through hoops because…well, read the first sentence again. Was it worth it? Read on!
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