Happy Birthday Shotgun Sinha, Dia Mirza, Dino Morea, and Priya Gill! Phew! I’m exhausted! Obviously, they are not going to each get reasons I love them. Let’s see, how to be fair? Okay, each person gets 3 reasons, either 2 songs and one fact or two facts and one song. Whatever I feel like.
Thank goodness, Aditya Chopra is still capable of running his life and business! As trailer after trailer came out for Befikre, I kept thinking “really, Adi? You are betting the farm on this….thing?” But nope! He isn’t betting the farm, he is just betting, like, that one cow that doesn’t give very good milk any more.
It’s an epidemic! Of people publically acknowledging the problems in their marriages and taking legal action instead of just living in misery and hypocrisy! Oh, and also Dilip had another brush with illness, but is home again now.
Well, it’s only fair, right? Age before beauty and all that. But now Dharmendra is done and it’s Sharmila’s turn to get a post all to herself! Let’s see, how many reasons do I have to love her? How about 13, for the age you were when you made your debut?
So, back at Thanksgiving 2 weeks ago, I saw this movie for a second time. And I am just now getting around to writing about it, because Christmas and work and Dear Zindagi, and it’s all been a very stressful time. While I was visiting her for Thanksgiving, my sister and I had a wonderful time watching sappy romances, but it is always a bit of a quest to find a movie that would suck in my brother-in-law. Bahubaali worked wonders last year, and this year I did the “just keep us company for the first 5 minutes” trick with Bakshy!, and by ten minutes in, he was asking us to pause it when he ran into the kitchen for more pizza, because he didn’t want to miss a minute.
Okay, big day today, and really really big day tomorrow. But at least tomorrow I won’t feel guilty for sort of combining people, whereas today Dharmendra and Sharmila clearly deserve their very own posts! So, Dharam-Garam, here are 10 reasons I love you, one for every decade you’ve lived (counting the 9th one you are starting today) plus one to grow on.
SO GOOD!! And not just because the eyeliner/dorky 80s glasses is really working on Shahrukh. Well, that’s part of it. But there’s a lot of other good stuff too!
Ha! I originally had a typo of there, making it “the heat of Alia’s dysfunction”. Which sounds kind of sexy, but also kind of sci-fi-y. And, maybe, this scene is “sexy” in that caring and sensitive men are always “Sexy”, but it’s not sci-fi-y at all. So I went ahead and fixed the typo. (part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here)
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, which has allowed the news stories to build and build to the point where I have to deal with all of them at once. Or at least, all the ones that interest me (no, I am not going to touch Tamil politics with a ten-foot pole. Although my Iruvar review is getting all kinds of hits right now!)
I was debating what, if anything, to do for Manish. And then Filmilibrarian started a conversation on my Monday Questions post about costumes, and I have decided to ruthlessly re-purpose it for a post about costumes in honor of Manish. Sorry Filmilibrarian! Your question was just too good to resist!
Happy Monday! I’m sad the weekend is over, but glad I get to have coffee this morning! (5 more Christmas presents left to find and buy, 12 arriving by mail today, second Christmas party hosting tomorrow night, and Befikre comes out on Friday! And that’s not even mentioning the Raees trailer celebrations! I’m exhausted already and it’s still 20 days left) And I’m also happy that I get to put up a questions post, one of my favorite things! (previous posts here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here)
Huh. There really aren’t that many navy-based movies in India. At least compared to America. Although Navy-movies is kind of an odd genre, maybe it’s America that’s the weird one for having so many. On the other hand, plenty of songs with boats! Because, similar to songs with cars, it’s a nice way to get the hero and heroine alone.
It’s a good thing they are charming, because they aren’t really anything else. Not famous, not controversial, not really anything. But charming! Very enjoyable people to spend 45 minutes with.
The last section got a little extreme with the general thematic analysis. But this time, I am going to stay strictly focused on what happens in this actual section. Or at least, that’s the goal.
Thank goodness I am doing this give-away (if you are new to it, whoever makes the most comments each week gets a Christmas card)! Because I have sooooooooo much going on with Christmas, it is very nice to have a quick and easy thing to post. Today I picked up my rugs from the cleaners (so they will be clean by the time family starts arriving), put up all my decorations, bought snacks for the Christmas party I am hosting tomorrow, and got my car fixed (that last wasn’t Christmas related, it was just something I needed to do). And thus, fewer posts. But at least I can throw this up in between shopping online for all my relatives! (week 1 here, week 2 here, week 3 here, week 4 here)
I feel SO GUILTY about this, but I am going to re-purpose a question and my response from Monday Morning questions into a post. I’m sorry! I don’t mean to just use you guys for post fodder! But it was a really interesting thing to think about, I hadn’t compared the two before, and I think it’s kind of cool looking at them like that.
I have now seen this movie 4 times, which means in theory I should be able to remember in in exact detail and give a perfect summary. But in reality means I am going to mix up the order of a couple of scenes and forget an important line and stuff. Oh well, someday my brain-recorder technology will be perfected and I won’t have to worry about this any more. (SPOILER review here, non-spoiler here, and part 1 of the summary here)
Moimeme pointed out that my Superlative post was tragically lacking in some of the worthy old-timers. So I am giving our Evergreen heroes their very own post. Hopefully it will make you look at some of our current father-role actors and go “Hey! He used to be HOT!”
Not the easiest thing to see as “heroic” a figure who fought along side Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany! Yes, I understand the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” ideology, and that in many ways the evils of colonialism could be considered equal to the sins of Japan and the Nazis, or at least related. But supporting Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany still doesn’t seem like something to necessarily be proud of?
Thank you rediff! Yet another in depth thoughtful interview for me to pick through! This time with Gauri Shinde, talking about what I was just talking about in the first part of my Dear Zindagi summary, how funky and sidewise career paths can be in the Indian film industry. Along with other interesting things.
I just got an email from Howard Brown reminding me (donate to them! They do good stuff), and I thought it might be interesting to look at the few times Indian film as acknowledged the AIDs epidemic in the country. It’s about the same amount as American pop culture has acknowledged it, but more musical!
dontcallitbollywood 