Calcutta’s Roxy

click to enlarge

Aamir’s latest Tata Sky Ad & older ones

Amitabh Bachchan — the one man industry

Taran Adarsh among the ‘witnesses’..

related Nahata piece…

Some examples of the anti-Bachchan media at Bachchan’s peak..

I’ve often made the point that the media was anti-Bachchan even at his peak for all kinds of ideological reasons. The two magazine covers here offer classic examples of this. In the strongest phase of Bachchan’s career when everything he touched turned to gold, when he was shattering box office records in unparalleled fashion, before or since, when he was doing all the things that some of the trade talks about in the post right above this, and as he was doing so in what was even by his standards a spectacular period the media was putting up such covers as these two here..
[Jan '78]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Chandni Chowk to China at Bombay’s New Empire

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Pakistan’s film industry is in collapse (LA Times)

LINK

Reporting from Lahore, Pakistan – The Odeon Cinema’s creaky, ripped red vinyl seats are mostly empty except for a couple of back rows where a dozen Pakistani men sit slouched, their eyes half-open, legs slung over the seats in front of them. Along the hall’s bubble-gum pink walls, rows of fans barely move the hot, dank air. The Odeon’s loudspeakers crackle like a ham radio.

Abhishek’s ‘Special Chabbis’ with Neeraj Pandey

thanks to Kassam..
LINK

A Wednesday director Neeraj Pandey who is making Special Chabbis based on the notorious 1987 heist at Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri jewellery store at Opera House, has signed Abhishek Bachchan to play the lead role. Abhishek will play the man who booked a room in a posh Mumbai hotel as Mohan Singh and proceeded to commit the most daring daylight robbery in the city.

Parveen Babi on Filmfare (Dec 22, ‘77-Jan 15,’78)

Abzee’s Roundup of the Mumbai Film Festival

A glittering array of Bollywood and international celebrities assembled for the closing award ceremony of the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images’ (MAMI) 11th Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) on Thursday night at the posh JW Marriott.

Dimple interview

LINK

“Though I am selective, I need to survive. So I have to accept a character, which is good enough if not the best. There are no more script writers like K.A. Abbas, Nabendu Ghosh and Abrar Alvi today. So it is pointless to expect a film like ‘Dharti Ke Lal’, ‘Parineeta’ or ‘Saheb Bibi Gulam’ today,” admits Dimple Kapadia. The beautiful auburn-haired actress was recently in Kolkata for an art auction, which was kept a secret to avoid unnecessary crowds.

Apu-In-The-World (Outlook)

Fifty years after the Apu trilogy, the West still misreads Ray
Chandak Sengoopta
LINK

Satyajit Ray’s chronicle of the life and destiny of the Brahmin boy Apu and his family, which began with Pather Panchali in 1955 and continued with Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956), was completed 50 years ago with the release of Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959). The films were immediately recognised across the world as masterworks. Pather Panchali, a moving study of the joys and sorrows of a rural priestly family, won a prize at the Cannes film festival and then had a record run in New York; Aparajito, a harder-edged depiction of the boy Apu growing up and drifting away from his widowed mother, won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival; the highbrow American journal Film Quarterly hailed Apur Sansar, in which Apu got married, lost his wife, and ultimately gained a son, as “probably the most important single film made since the introduction of sound”.

Abhishek HT interview

thanks to Tyler..
LINK

Abhishek Bachchan holds up his hand to show the thick orange-strapped diving watch from the brand he endorses and says, “It’s shark resistant, which means a shark may eat you up, but the watch will survive.” It’s these attributes of loyalty and humour that have stood by the junior Bachchan almost as much as his famous lineage and popular spouse. For, if he didn’t see humour in life, he would not have survived 17 flops in four years and still hung on bravely.

Rishi-Neetu on Star & Style (April 20-May 3, ‘79)

Kurbaan trailers (updated)

Co-habiting Bollywood stars cause a stir (Straits Times)

LINK

NEW DELHI, Nov 8 —When Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor stepped on stage at a so-called Leadership Summit here last week, old-timers shook their heads in disapproval.Everyone knew that ‘Saifeena’, as the movie magazines now call the couple, was at the Taj Palace Hotel to talk about how they were living together in unwedded bliss.

The ‘multiplex’ film and the ‘prestige’ movie

[SM asked me questions regard both of these points and urged me to devote a post to them. Since I need little excuse to ramble at length I have readily agreed. But these are rather impromptu remarks as I have delved into both subjects at great length in the past. I have summarized rather schematically without hopefully being obscure. SM now owes me a Magadheera piece]

1)The multiplex film is epitomized by something like Wake Up Sid. Basically a kind of movie that has principal appeal among the classes and segments that form the core multiplex audiences. The majority of this audience is under 30 though there is a very important family segment here also, in some ways as influential inasmuch as it’s more likely to go in for repeats. Also less likely to be distracted once it takes to a film, factors important for trending. But it’s not just films like WUS. This is part of the story. Bollywood essentially makes films for multiplexes now which is to say these films have very little appeal outside major metros for the most part (barring exceptions) though this is changing as there has been more of an attempt this decade to make universal films that appeal across various social divides.

A shout out for Wanted

Hemant Kumar favorites

Baat ek raat ki

Self-indulgent Bollywood!

LINK

It takes one Harishchandrachi Factory to make us realise what obscene levels of self-indulgence the Bollywood Dream is being taken to. And that too, mind you, in the year of the worst recession this godforsaken industry has ever seen.

Rajesh Khanna & Zeenat Aman on Stardust (‘76 Annual)