Datablue pointed out that I completely forgot Hrithik in my last week’s “men in uniform” TGIF post. I was all set to remedy that, when I remembered his birthday was coming up! What could be a better gift to us all in honor of the occasion than an entirely Hrithik TGIF post?
NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! New An Unsuitable Boy quotes leaked, confirming that Karan and Kajol are officially over!!!!!! My heart is BROKEN!!!!
Really, this isn’t fair, it’s a tie between this movie and The Fog With Irfaan Khan. But I don’t remember The Fog With Irfaan Khan as well, so you have to be contented with just Bal Brahmachari.
Happy Lohri! Which is a Winter Solstice holiday in the Punjab, usually celebrated with a big bonfire! There are of course plenty of Lohri specific songs in Indian films, but they would be super hard to track down, plus I wouldn’t like all of them!
Instead, to celebrate this Punjabi holiday, I am just going to post my all time favorite Bhangra/Punjabi songs, counting down from number 5 to number 1. There are a lot of them, because there are a lot of Punjabi refugees who ended up in the Bombay film industry. Because they needed jobs, and also Punjabis are HOTT. For proof of this second statement, see songs below and image above. (Garam Dharam indeed!)
(This is a Repost from last year, the top 5 are the same, but I added and removed some of the bonus songs) Continue reading
Badshah had a baby! Not much more to say besides that, but I felt you all should know. And I suppose this give me as much a reason as any to post some possible lullabies her father might sing her.
I am making an exception and putting up two 101 posts in one day! Because I want to finish off the Kapoors all nice and tidy on a Thursday, so I can start fresh with somebody else next week. Speaking off, there will be a poll at the end of this entry for you to decide who you want to read about next. (also, after some nagging and requests, I have set up a menu area for Hindi Film 101, you can see them all here)
My almost final Kapoor post! Yaaaay! I figured I couldn’t be done with the family without dealing with their distant relations, “the other Kapoors”. Or, as I think of it, the Surinder Kapoor family. (If you want to read the other posts, I have finally given in and created a Hindi Film 101 area of the menu here)
Yes, even sexier than Hrithik flirting with Amisha Patel in Aap Mujhe Aache Lagne Lage. And I don’t usually find Garba’s sexy!
If you are a regular blog follower, you know that my 2017 started with a bang when I lost my floors through a massive leak and pipe disaster that was conveyed to me by my landlord through a series of escalating phone calls while I was at work, culminating in my going straight from work to my parent’s apartment, to stay for 9 days. But now I am home! Finally! And it is dusty and gross and my air conditioner is sitting in the middle of my living room for some reason. But still, home!
I gave you a few extra days, but I think everyone has now had more than enough time to respond to my voting post here, and it is time for me to tally and summarize the results! Which took me much longer than I expected, Math is hard! Although, there is one thing that became abundantly clear as soon as I started reading them over. Neerja really was the film of the year.
I have a very very very very very very very hard time promoting myself. Which is why half the time my own family doesn’t notice me at the dinner table. But I really really really really want more people to find my blog so I can talk to them and they can talk to me and we can be a nice community!
And I also want more people to find my book, so they will learn about Indian film and come to love it like we do, and join our nice community.
Since I will just never be able to promote myself, it’s not in my nature, I am going to ask you all to do me a BIG BIG favor and promote on my behalf. And then I will love you SO MUCH, that I will just have to send you one of my custom Valentine’s cards in gratitude.
Molly in comments, and also Ryan C lately, have been keeping me up to date on what they have been watching and doing and thinking about as they dive into these movies. Super fun for me! I’m learning new things from them, and seeing old familiar films with new eyes. And so, to make it a little easier so we don’t have to keep hoping post to post with their reports and my responses, I am putting up a new area just to talk about the films you are watching. Also, this now means I have a regular scheduled post for every weekday (Monday Questions, Tuesday and Thursday 101, and TGIF photos). Yay! No more need for originality
Is this my first Chiranjeevi movie? That can’t be right! And yet a search of my archives for “Chiranjeevi” comes up empty! Oh! Magadheera! He had a little cameo in that, right? Okay, so I’ve seen him in one movie.
I am trying to keep each of these posts to around 2,000 words, just seems like anything more would be too over-whelming! Which means I had to break Ranbir off from his Dad. But, as a bonus, I am tossing in his youngest uncle (not much to say about Rajiv). And I will be back on Thursday to deal with the “other” Kapoors, Anil and Sonam and their clan. (part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here)
Happy 43rd Birthday Hrithik! This is an UPDATED post from last year, last year I did 15 reasons for the number of years since you were launched, this year I am doing 26 for your age when you were launched. And maybe this year I can resist posting that photo of you as a teenager with the Khans. (Spoiler: Most of my reasons are dances)
Continue reading
I finished it! Thanks to my disastrous start to the new year (landlord says maybe I can move back in on Tuesday), I spent the weekend huddled in my parents’ guest room, with nothing to do but watch Pakistani soap opera’s on Netflix (yes, I did start Zindagi Gulzar Hai also). And so I finished 23 episodes on 24 hours. Which doesn’t sound that impressive until you remember to subtract sleep time. Well, not that much sleep time. Like 5 hours.
I can never say that title without the big yelling-it-out-into-the-world defiance, AG-NEE-PATH!!!! Anyhoo, I think it’s Hrithik’s greatest performance, and the greatest movie he has been in (well, except for Bang Bang, my heart’s choice). And what makes it really impressive is that he (and the filmmakers) were actually able to improve on an Amitabh movie, one of the Amitabhiest of them.
Well, this was FASCINATING!!! I’m watching them out of order, so I just finished the Jackie and Sid episode, which was a bit tricky because there isn’t much that the audience was interested in learning about them. In comparison with Shahid and Mira, where we want to know EVERYTHING.
This was an interesting episode! Mostly because of the challenge it posed to Karan, how is he going to get the audience interested in these two people that we just don’t really care about that much? It’s the same problem he had with Parineeti and Aditya Roy Kapoor, but I think he handled it better this time.
Okay, could I fly to India on January 15th, buy An Unsuitable Boy in the airport, and then fly home immediately? That would be a reasonable expense, right? It’s not supposed to come out in America until March last I saw, and I am going to DIE! Especially now that excerpts have started being printed. And they are SO GOOD.
In preparation for Raees, I am zipping through Humsafar, the show that made Mahira Khan famous. It was a bit of a slog at first, but now I am addicted and am rapidly making my way to the end. Along the way, I wanted to pause and give some summary and discussion of the episodes. I already did 1-8 here, now it’s time to move on to 8-14.
I still haven’t tallied the final votes from my polling post on my 2016 film awards (still time to vote! I’ll be tallying and putting together the results post late tonight), but it looks like there is a strong trend in one direction for the Best Film choice, and it is the same movie that I keep returning to…Neerja.
As I am sure many of you know, the two big hit Pakistani soap operas, Humsafar and Zindagi Gulzar Hai, were just added to Netflix. They’ve been available through other less-good sources (ErosNow, youtube) for a while, plus of course their original broadcast, so there is a good chance some of you are ahead of me in watching them. Anyway, since enough people are seeing them now, and especially because Mahira Khan starred in Humsafar and is about to star in Raees, I am putting out a review/summary of the episodes in 3 parts, starting with the first 8. There will be a little bit of non-spoiler to start if you want to decide if the show is for you before reading on.
Oh this is just too hard! Out of all the movies from 2016, which one is my absolute favorite? Hmmm. Oh! I just remembered a loophole! Oh good, I’m all set then. I get to talk about my favorite films that weren’t mainstream Hindi and didn’t necessarily get a big release, and why I loved them anyway. And why you should love them (and see them) too.
dontcallitbollywood 