In 2001, the film Dil Chahta Hai was at least a minor revelation. Made with a technical skill and a disregard for many common Hindi film wisdoms, it set the bar for the many youthful movies in the following decade and beyond. At the time, one of the major reasons it caught the attention of…
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In 1996, Sunil Shetty had more than half a dozen film releases. They were all likely action/revenge/angry-young-man pot-boilers of various kinds, and Shastra was one of them. I’ve never seen the film, from what I can remember, and it is difficult to remember because so many of these very similar products were released in the…
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There are some films that are a huge deal when they are released, and fade away into obscurity over time. Sometimes it’s because of the marketing machine and sometimes the film is something different enough for people to take notice, but there are always ever shinier trinkets to pay attention to and their time in…
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Songs stick in our memory and become important to us for various reasons, often coloured by our associations with them, rather than the songs themselves. In my case, there are a whole range of old Hindi songs that have childhood memories for me, to do with when I first heard them or how. Ajeeb dastan…
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Being one of only three of the dozens of major Indian languages I can claim to know, I’ve always been curious about Marathi cinema. I watched my fair share on the TV in the good old days of Doordarshan, but all that taught me was that I was almost always in for either utter tragedy…
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