Hasrat Jaipuri‘s playful lyrics for Woh Chand Khila Woh Taare Hanse are an enduring legacy of the 1959 Hindi film Anari, this in addition to the classic nature of the movie and the star power of Nutan and Raj Kapoor. Lata Mangeshkar‘s bright singing, supported by a single line from Mukesh really bring Shankar-Jaikishan‘s classic…
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In 2008, when the creative flair of the early 2000s Hindi cinema had all but died down, Farhan Akhtar once again brought us an unexpected film in Rock On!!. Only this time he was not directing, but acting on screen and singing and it was all quite enjoyable. True to its name, the film had…
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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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Dil Chahta Hai will remain a landmark film in the world of Hind cinema for many reasons. While it didn’t have the sheer bravado of something like Lagaan from earlier that year, this 2001 film included a change in what was possible within the old tropes, it introduced some important players, and it re-introduced some…
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By the time the 1959 film Anari came along, Raj Kapoor was a well established presence in the Hindi film world, as was his his slightly-awkward and naive Chaplinesque on-screen persona, made famous by such films as Awaara (1951). So perhaps in some ways he was playing to type in this mix of romance and…
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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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In the black and white Hindi films of the 1950s, it was fairly common for them to shoot a scene or two, or at least a song, on the streets of Bombay. Part of it was probably the relative ease of taking over a little piece of side-street in some suburb for the shooting while…
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Known mostly for his over-the-top Rajnikant extravaganzas, Sivaji and Enthiran, S. Shankar has had a much longer career as director. He’s even strayed away from Tamil and made a Hindi film with Nayak, and he’s made plenty of bizarre Tamil films in the past too. One such is the 2005 film Anniyan, which I have…
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