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Shikast (1953)
There is a story behind how I ended up watching this film last week. I had first seen Shikast on TV years ago. I was a pre-teen, and didn’t much care for the film: it was too tragic, too angst-ridden,...
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Gojira (1954)
Aka Godzilla. I was in the mood for watching something different. This film seemed to fit the bill: the first old Japanese film I’ve seen that wasn’t directed by Akira Kurosawa, and the first monster...
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Asha in Ten Moods
A couple of months back, blog reader Shalini alerted me to the fact that this year was Asha Bhonsle’s 80th birthday. Would I be doing a special post to mark the occasion? I hadn’t known that it was...
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Dharmputra (1961)
Several readers have told me, over the past couple of years, that I should watch this film. It is, if you go by just the details of cast, crew, and awards won, a promising film. Directed by Yash...
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Charly (1968)
This was not the film I’d been intending to review this weekend. The film I’d meant to watch was, instead, quite a different one: a Viking/King Arthur historical, the Robert Wagner-Janet Leigh-Debra...
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Waaris (1954)
As frequent visitors to this blog would know by now, one of my weaknesses is good music—and there have been, over the years, dozens of films that I’ve watched primarily because they had good scores. In...
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Ten of my favourite boat songs
Some of you may know that I’ve recently returned from an exhilarating time at the Bangalore Literature Festival—one of the highlights (at least for a cinema fanatic like me!) of which was that I got to...
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Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959)
This is the 400th post on this blog. And, what with my penchant for honouring precedents, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to watch a film that has that number—400—in its title. Les Quatre Cents...
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Manna Dey: In Tribute
I am listening to Poochho na kaise maine rain bitaayi as I write this. I am hearing Manna Dey’s voice, bringing so much emotion, so much frustrated longing into “Ut jale deepak, it mann mera; phir bhi...
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Railway Platform (1955)
Railway Platform begins, not on a platform, but in a train. It starts with a song, Basti-basti parbat-parbat gaata jaaye banjaara, lip-synched by a philosopher and poet (Manmohan Krishna) as he rides...
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This blog is 5 years old
Yes. The first post on Dusted Off was published on November 4, 2008. It wasn’t as if I’d woken up suddenly one day with an epiphany and decided I had to create a blog. It just so happened that...
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Boot Polish (1954)
When I reviewed Les Quatre Cents Coups a couple of weeks back, I was mentally riffling through the list of good films with child protagonists that I’d seen. I couldn’t, sadly, think of many. There were...
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12 Angry Men (1957)
I’ve lost track of the number of people who’ve recommended this film to me. Sabrina Mathew’s blog was where I first read a review of 12 Angry Men (and a comparison to Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, which I’d seen...
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Ten of my favourite ‘Who’s that lip-synching?’ songs
If the title of this post stumps you, let me explain. Anybody who’s seen Hindi films (especially from the 1940s onward, when playback singing became widespread) knows that most actors and actresses...
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Raj Hath (1956)
Despite my love for historicals and Madhubala, I was surprised when Ava mentioned this film on her blog. A historical (and a Sohrab Modi one, too), with Madhubala, and I’d never heard of it? Ava...
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The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The other day, someone commented on my long-ago list of ten favourite Robert Mitchum roles. It reminded me that I hadn’t watched a Mitchum film in a long, long time (unpardonable, considering he’s one...
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In Memoriam: Eleanor Parker (June 26, 1922- December 9, 2013)
On my laptop, I have a bunch of wallpapers of some of my favourite actors and actresses. Every now and then, depending upon whose films I’ve been watching—and therefore, who’s my current favourite—the...
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Random thoughts on lives, deaths, and tributes
This was not the post I had intended for this week. As a matter of fact, I had not given any thought to what I’d write about, but I had imagined it would be something light-hearted (perhaps a song list...
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Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
Aka Indiscretion, which doesn’t sound quite so Christmassy (in fact, it sounds rather more like a Hitchcock film) but describes this one better. Because this film, while it is about an eventful...
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Ten of my favourite filmi wedding songs
It’s wedding season in Delhi (has been, in fact, for the past couple of months). Almost every night, there’s a large shamiana at our local municipal park. There are traffic jams because of huge...
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