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An Eye Candy Post to Begin Shammi Kapoor Week
Over a year ago, my husband remarked, “You’ve done special weeks on Robert Mitchum and Tyrone Power. You’re also going to be doing one on Johnny Walker. But what about your favourite actor? Don’t you...
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Dil Deke Dekho (1959)
Dil Deke Dekho isn’t quite the perfect film I’d like to make it out to be. (a) The story isn’t exactly original (Nasir Hussain had already used it in Tumsa Nahin Dekha. He also went on to use it in Jab...
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Kashmir ki Kali (1964)
This particular Shammi Kapoor film has a very special place in my heart – because Yeh chaand sa roshan chehra was one of the first Hindi film songs I ever learnt to sing. I must’ve been about eight...
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Ten of my favourite Shammi Kapoor roles
It seems a bit of a paradox that Tumsa Nahin Dekha was both good and bad for Shammi Kapoor. Good, because it turned him from a wannabe to a big star. Bad, because it created a certain persona – the...
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Junglee (1961)
For a lot of people of my generation – or those younger than me, who have seen Shammi Kapoor in his earlier films, this is the film that is probably representative of Shammi Kapoor: the ‘Yahoo! Kapoor’...
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Professor (1962)
The first time I watched this film was on TV, back in the mid-80s. Luckily enough, our TV was hooked up to a VCR, and a blank tape was in the VCR – so we recorded Professor. I loved the film so much, I...
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Ten of my favourite Shammi Kapoor songs
My sister keeps a stack of CDs in her car. Often, when she gives me a lift, she puts a CD into the stereo and we listen as she drives along. The CDs are a mixed lot: Harry Belafonte, Simon and...
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Tengoku to Jigoku (1963)
This blog’s been focussing on Hindi cinema for a while now, so I decided it was time to get back to being a bit more diverse. And this time with a film from one director whose work I admire a lot:...
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Celebrating the Uncelebrated: Ten of my favourite songs by lesser-known...
This blog hosted a ‘Classic Bollywood Quiz’ a while back. In true film awards style (and we have pacifist to thank for this idea), everybody who submitted answers got a prize. The winner, Anoushka, got...
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Midnight Lace (1960)
“Racy stuff, eh?” said my husband, when I told him the name of the film I was going to review next. No. Not at all. In fact, Midnight Lace has nothing steamy about it except a rather stylish black top...
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Insaan Jaag Utha (1959)
The main reason I rented this film was that the credits were so absolutely mouthwatering. A cast that included Sunil Dutt, Madhubala, Minoo Mumtaz, Madan Puri and Nishi Kohli. Music by S D Burman....
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High Noon (1952)
I was – at least as far as emotional maturity is concerned – a baby when I first saw High Noon, and I didn’t care for it much then. Not that I wasn’t fond of Westerns; I adored Westerns. In book form,...
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Ten of my favourite saheli songs
(And a very brief tribute to Dev Anand, 1923-2011). This is the second of my ‘prize posts’ for the Classic Bollywood Quiz. The first of these posts was dedicated to Karthik, who’d once suggested I do a...
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Dev Anand in Ten Moods
As teenagers, my friends and I were unanimous about one thing: there was no beating Shammi Kapoor and Dev Anand as the most watchable stars. Not that they were then in their prime; this was in the very...
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Paths of Glory (1957)
We’ve been on a spate of tributes all this month. First, it was a farewell for Dev Anand, the man who embodied ‘leading man’ for so many Indians across generations. Then, there were birthdays – for the...
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Book Review: Sidharth Bhatia’s Cinema Modern: The Navketan Story
A few days back, an editor from The Indian Express phoned to ask me if I’d like to review a book for them. Which book? Sidharth Bhatia’s Cinema Modern: The Navketan Story. Too mouthwatering an...
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Taj Mahal (1963)
I ended up re-watching this film in a roundabout sort of way, which is a story in itself. A few months back, my sister (a historian, whose PhD was on 19th century Delhi) remarked, “I’d like to watch...
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Don Camillo (1952)
I am not a party animal. I do not drink. I have two left feet. Loud music makes my head throb. I find it difficult to keep awake after 11 PM. So when friends ask, “What’re you doing on New Year’s Eve?”...
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The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
Ever since I began this blog, I’ve maintained one annual tradition: on my birthday, I post a review of a film featuring a film personality who shares my birthday. I’ve reviewed Ittefaq (starring...
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Maya (1961)
A wealthy young man strikes out on his own to see how the rest of the world lives. He pretends to be poor, goes to live in a community of poor people, and falls in love with a poor girl who doesn’t...
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