In the black and white Hindi films of the 1950s, it was fairly common for them to shoot a scene or two, or at least a song, on the streets of Bombay. Part of it was probably the relative ease of taking over a little piece of side-street in some suburb for the shooting while…
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Known mostly for his over-the-top Rajnikant extravaganzas, Sivaji and Enthiran, S. Shankar has had a much longer career as director. He’s even strayed away from Tamil and made a Hindi film with Nayak, and he’s made plenty of bizarre Tamil films in the past too. One such is the 2005 film Anniyan, which I have…
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This song from the 1981 film Yaarana has a special memory for me. While the song itself is a great little melody, what first comes to my mind is the way my parents described me singing the words to it when I was a kid, rather than what they actually are. While this doesn’t spoil…
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Hindi films have always been very fond of having songs which have a hidden meaning to the audience and some of the players on screen, but seem perfectly innocent to everyone else. I’ve spoken before of the typical Hindi film party song, with words that do everything from profess love to mock the antagonist of…
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Being one of only three of the dozens of major Indian languages I can claim to know, I’ve always been curious about Marathi cinema. I watched my fair share on the TV in the good old days of Doordarshan, but all that taught me was that I was almost always in for either utter tragedy…
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The smoky confines of bars, the garish halls of old brothels, and such houses of mostly ill-repute have long been a great excuse for Indian films to break into song. In the old days, this on-screen responsibility was as likely to be handled by one of the main cast of actresses, as it was to…
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In 2005, Yahaan arrived and went by without anyone noticing, for the most part. The undervalued Jimmy Shergill might have had something to do with it, or the first outing of an actress no one had heard of, Minissha Lamba, or the ever complicated setting of Kashmir. But in spite of the lukewarm reception, the…
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In the mid 90s, shortly after the economic liberalisation of India and the influx of new things like satellite television and international brands of fizzy drink, we had a fairly vibrant pop-music scene for a while. Players new and old broke on to the scene with modern music, slick music videos and experiments in both…
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