I just got a panicked text from a friend “Om Puri died?!?!?” And then another text with every emoticon available. Which is kind of how I feel. Confused, sad, angry, unsure. I liked a lot of Om Puri’s characters, and he was a good actor. But his personal life was confusing and unpleasant in a way that kind of affected his characters for me.
2 weeks into my new series, and I am getting decent views and comments. Yay! I will tentatively continue. In case you are new to this, the idea is that if you didn’t grow up surrounded by Hindi film, it can be hard to learn all the things that small children in India just know by osmosis. And so I am giving you a little “101” course on the things you need to learn. Kind of a follow up on the basic grounding I gave in my book. (part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here) Starting with the Kapoors, because where else?
I was debating who to give this to, Anushka or Alia or Shahrukh, and then I realized, just because I was thinking of them, that meant they were ineligible. Because in every part I was very aware of who was playing the role. No, the real best actor of 2016 is one who was in 4 of the biggest hits of the year, and you didn’t even realize it was the same person.
Yay, the Raees love song! I could do with a little more guyliner, but otherwise it’s pretty great! There’s even a wet white shirt scene, which adds a touch of class to any pictuarization.
The tagline was “Love Him. Hate Him. Judge Him”. And I do all those things! Except the first one. I judge Azhar to be a truly terrible move in every single possible way, and also I hate it.
2017 is not starting out well for me! Which normally I would keep from all you nice people, but there is a good chance it is going to start affecting my posting schedule, so I thought I might as well tell you. Plus, I kind of wanted to vent.
Thank goodness I am not alone in this, on my Readers Choice post, I have already gotten a few comments voting for this as the least favorite film of the year. (Don’t forget to VOTE HERE if you haven’t already!) This is one of those “personal feeling” categories, not objective quality, so everyone has a different reason for hating it. Read on if you want to know my reasons!
Okay, I was thinking this would be a nice easy starting point for my new Hindi Film 101 series, and it is taking FOREVER. But I’m glad I’m doing it this way, because each of these branches and generations really needs their own focus area. And (hopefully) it will make it easier for you to refer back to them (part 1 with Prithviraj, Shammi, and Shashi here, part 2 with Raj and Nargis here)
Is that right? That’s what Wikipedia says, that they had both acted before (in child roles for Sridevi, and in smaller parts for Rajnikanth), but this was the first movie for both in which they were lead characters. Which is UNBELIEVABLE!!! Not just because they are so good, but because they are already so uniquely themselves, the personalities and personas familiar to me now, 40 years later.
Way back when I woke up this morning, I saw the new Raees poster. And then I didn’t exactly forget about it (how could I? It’s my new computer wallpaper!), but I forgot to do a blog post on it. Until now!
I went back and forth on this one. I really really wanted to do Nargis Farkri, because she drives me crazy, but that didn’t seem fair. Because she was kind of set up to fail in her movie roles, with a bunch of characters that never made sense and no real direction, so she was left to sort of pouting her way through the part as best she could. No, I want to give it to someone who had a good script backed role and failed to manage it. (did that header trick you into thinking it might be Kat? No! She actually did a pretty good job in her movies this year)
Happy Monday! I am working, unlike 90% of people in America, because it didn’t occur to my boss to give me the day off. This is the curse of working for a small business with no regular Holiday schedule. Of course, the blessing of working for a small business is that I only ever work 8 hours a day and I am home by 5:30 most nights.
It’s a race to the middle! And be warned, there is math involved in this calculation (blech, math!) This is just the “editor’s choice” option, remember. Go here to put in your vote for the readers’ choice for all 9 categories. I’ll be tallying votes at the end of the week and putting up another series of posts for each category.
If you remember, yesterday I announced Datablue as the winner of the last Christmas Giveaway. But also announced that I was out of original cards, so Datablue would get to pick her favorite out of all the remaining ones. And the winner is……
2016 is over! Yaaaaaay! Now, let’s try to remember what was good about it. Here is every new Hindi releases that I saw in theaters and wrote a review of, in chronological order. And you get to vote on them! I’ll be putting up my own “Editor’s Choice” type Awards over the next week, and then at the end of the week I will post the results from this.
SO EXCITING! Don’t feel too bad if you didn’t win (although I think most of the regular commentators did), I’ll be coming up with some other kind of give-away for Valentine’s cards in a few weeks. (week 1 here, week 2 here, week 3 here, week 4 here, week 5 here, week 6 here, week 7 here, and week 8 here)
If you recall, way back when the blog started, I laid out the different kinds of FanVids. My favorite were the ones that told a whole story. So, to start off 2017, I thought I would give you some of those.
Thanks to badgering (in a nice way) from the comments section, I finally got around to watching this, my first Ram Gopal Verma Telugu film, and my first RGV Sridevi film. And it was a revelation! Not that different from his later Hindi stuff, but different enough that it made me look at his whole career in a new way.
When I was putting together the post for last Friday, I ran across a photo of Salman with a puppy. Which lead me down a bit of a movie-stars-and-puppies rabbit hole. And what a lovely way to enter the New Years weekend, with a bunch of movie star and puppy photos!
Kajol has signed another movie! And one that no one expected from her. I am very very curious how it will turn out.
I finally watched Bommarillu! The movie that I was told is like Boys, and like Happy, and like Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana, only better. And it really was better! Or at least just as good.
I am trying a new thing, sort of cliff notes version of Hindi film history. Not the actual history (“Bombay Talkies studio was founded by Harivanshri Rai and Devika Rani…”), but the gossip history that everyone kind of knows if they’ve grown up with the films or if they’ve been following them for years. But I know that isn’t true for some of my readers and so, just for you, I am giving you the kind of informal oral history. Starting with the Kapoor Family (part 1 here).
Yesterday I did a brief post on Carrie Fisher and mentioned that I feel a much deeper connection to her mother, Debbie Reynolds. Which is true. And now Debbie is gone, and my farewell post will be a lot more in depth and personal. But not terribly sad, because she had a long and wonderful life.
Christmas is over, which is sad, but it means I have a lot of new presents to play with (check them all out here!), and it means I can go back to listening to Saavn and my Indian music instead of Christmas carols. In early November, when I start my Christmas channels, it feels all refreshing to listen to White People Music (as I think of it) for a little bit. But by December 26th, I am ready to go back to my Indian stuff. And for my first playlist, I went with the theme of “good songs from not good movies.”
dontcallitbollywood 