Bachchan in Gowariker’s next

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After Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Abhishek Bachchan, Ashutosh Gowariker is all set to work with the legend, Mr Amitabh Bachchan in his next. Big B will play the lead in Gowariker’s next film all set to go on floors next year.

Short take on zindagi na milegi dobara

With zindagi na milegi dobara its evident how much of hollywood influence has come into mumbai film industry .

Some of the exotic Indian locations and tourism part is hugely underutilized in Indian film industry( from the deserts of rajasthan …beaches of goa ….visual delight of kerala …. heritage of bengal…  old charmness of lucknow etc .)    What we see again is the influence of hollywood (even movies likes hangover though its compleately different but  again the concept of protagonists go out  for a new place for fun and for rediscovery find resonance here)

Images from Aarakshan (updated)

Mohd Rafi Death Anniversary

TO be frank i didnt knew much about the great guy or havent heard much songs, but today took my mom to this guys tribute concert by a local who his famous mohd rafdi’s voice… and it was unbelievable, speechless experience.. as rafi fans came and made it one of the most memorable evenings of my life… i didnt knew much songs of the legend.. but i njoyed mukadar ka sikander antra.. which introduced us.. and jalado yeh duniya from pyaasa.. and some that i have forgotten by now as i heard for first time… indeed a great evening.. and i want all of us at SS to remember the legend.. as u guys might know more of him.. and some of his songs please post them if possible.. i would like to know

Walk The Talk……Kapil Dev on Gavaskar

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The Prescription to Save Ailing Superheroes (NY Times)

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It’s probably not a good sign for the superhero genre as a whole that the most talked-about comic-book movies of summer 2011 are the ones due out in 2012. But it’s not even August, and the conversation in superhero-nerdspace is all about leaked trailers for “The Dark Knight Rises” and “The Avengers,” both scheduled to be released next year, or about how Andrew Garfield, that kid from “The Social Network,” looks in his Spider-Man suit.

Gandhi to Hitler, Khap, Singham & ZNMD (ongoing), the rest of the box office

last week’s thread

The Ides of March trailer

The Deols in Anil Sharma’s 3D venture

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They entertained us thoroughly in Yamla Pagla Deewana earlier this year and now the trio of Dharmendra, Sunny and Bobby Deol will once again be seen together on the big screen in Anil Sharma’s 3D extravaganza Masters. It may be recalled that Anil had earlier directed the trio in the 2007 flick Apne.

Pranayam trailer

thanks to Aajkaarjun..

A brief, rambling note on Delhi Belly

It is more than a little amusing to even think Delhi Belly could cause any degree of controversy with its expletives. The latter are not uncommon in very many films these days and the recently released Bhindi Bazaar Inc offers a far more flagrant example if one chooses to think of it in those terms. It is not that I am unaware of how a newer age often asserts its rebellion against the ‘good manners’ of the past by in the first instance disturbing language. Certainly this has not happened for the very first time, whether in India or elsewhere. But what’s amusing here is the fact that Delhi Belly is otherwise a rather tame, even comforting film for its genre. Fairly watchable though somewhat unevenly handled by Deo with a fair bit of ‘dead time’ (though this is not unique to him.. it is part of the genre conventions even in for example Hollywood) the limit of its ‘resistance’ begins and ends with the language. This is basically about offending one’s parents! But a world in which this is the greatest ‘infraction’ is itself a rather quaint imagining. The truth of this point can be sought in very many other ‘Bollywood’ productions where a representation of sex bordering on soft-porn codes more often than not reigns (Delhi Belly has one risque moment in this sense though it’s rather funny). From multiplex romantic fare like Pyar Ka Punchnama to horror like Ragini MMS (I shall not dignify Murder 2 by mentioning it here) what is really emergent as a set of cultural choices for the present is the ‘sex’ on screen far more than the usage of expletives which barring Delhi Belly is typically available on-screen in certain ‘low-life’ contexts and hence indexed to class. Which is of course why the latter offends those ‘censors’ of bourgeois culture far less than the former!

Whats ur favourite Twist/shyamlan/o henry Ending in a book/short story/movie?

I love movies with twist ending, which shake the very foundation of the movie, sometimes it may turn it too crap, sometimes can be a masterstroke. I have used shyamlan/o henry as both are famous for their twist and endings, i hope u guys can suggest some/few more to me. And share ur favourite twist endings.

Wahan ke Log (1967) — classic movie trailer

thanks to Aajkaarjun..

The unthought in Shakti…

Perhaps Shakti, a film very much inferior to Deewar as socio-political critique and indeed far less dynamic or nuanced as narrative, can nonetheless be rescued in a very specific sense as the radicalization of that older work. If the scale here seems diminished compared to that most foundational of films and if the possibilities of resistance seem to be compromised to the larger necessity of pitting two film titans against each other all of this too enables a certain space to open up. In the received version it is about the clash of two generations represented of course by the dominant star-actors of each era. One at the peak of his stardom and cementing his claim as the greatest of all stars while the other collecting interest on his ‘legend’ and trying rather hard to upend the ‘actor’ in his cross-generational rival. Dilip Kumar then becomes the bourgeois machine by way of which the past is to be reasserted and judged superior. By those purveyors of this hegemony who had always been very uneasy about the upheavals engendered by the ‘angry young man’. In a structure that had a certain force at one point in these histories the older ‘actor’ was forever opposed to the newer ‘star’ whose greater valence of stardom could always be chalked upto a Faustian pact with ‘violence’ and therefore an ‘irresponsible’ cinema whereas the older status quo-maintaining ‘actor’ could then be judged the perennial element of sanity and reason across the ages of different stars. Shakti became in large part a vehicle for this kind of superficial biographical ‘clash’ to take place and the script seemed to have little ambition to widen its horizons beyond this.

Vintage classics to watch out for (Part-1 …. personal collections)

not in any serial order:

1. Jaane bhi do yaaron