There are some films that are a huge deal when they are released, and fade away into obscurity over time. Sometimes it’s because of the marketing machine and sometimes the film is something different enough for people to take notice, but there are always ever shinier trinkets to pay attention to and their time in…
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By the 1980s, Amitabh Bachchan was at the height of his stardom. While the decade was not the most vibrant for the Hindi film industry in general, Amitabh went on to do some of his most iconic movies at the time. Their success can in no small part also be ascribed to some of the…
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Dil Chahta Hai will remain a landmark film in the world of Hind cinema for many reasons. While it didn’t have the sheer bravado of something like Lagaan from earlier that year, this 2001 film included a change in what was possible within the old tropes, it introduced some important players, and it re-introduced some…
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By the time the 1959 film Anari came along, Raj Kapoor was a well established presence in the Hindi film world, as was his his slightly-awkward and naive Chaplinesque on-screen persona, made famous by such films as Awaara (1951). So perhaps in some ways he was playing to type in this mix of romance and…
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While my family is originally from South India, besides speaking a language and seeing my grandmother’s Kannada books and newsletters lying around on occasion, I didn’t have a lot of regular exposure to strictly South India culture as a kid. I might have casually watched the odd film shown on Doordarshan, but only casually, since…
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The 1998 film Ghulam will be remembered for many reasons. It remains director Vikram Bhatt‘s best film (from what I’ve seen), Aamir Khan sang a song in it, in some ways it marked the beginning of Aamir Khan moving away from his popular romantic hero image to being considered a serious actor, and while it…
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In the early 2000s, there was a rash of films that were either made by film-makers of India origin living in other parts of the world, or by Indian film-makers about the Indian diaspora, and clearly targeted at that audience. Even if they were in Hindi, they were not quite Bollywood films, and in fact…
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As a director, Manmohan Desai will always be known as the one who took the Hindi masala movie to its pinnacle from the 1960s to the early 1980s. He had a dream run of mostly successful films, all depending on a cornucopia of drama, a focus on mass entertainment above all other considerations, and a…
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If the great golden run of Indian pop music peaked during the mid 1990s, by the end of the century and into the new millennium it was pretty much dead. A few established acts were still releasing the odd song video, but gone were the crazy over-the-top productions and the songs that truly took chances.…
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Tere mere sapne, released in 1996 was not a super-hit movie, but it still stands out in memory if you lived through the time, because it was memorable in various small ways. For one it was produced by Amitabh Bachchan’s on again, off again production house ABCL. It also introduced into the Hindi film world…
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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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