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Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Woman's divine double nature
My first impression upon viewing Raj Kapoor’s mythical Satyam shivam sundaram, an impression shared by many other bloggers, is that the Showman had purely and simply been manipulated by his lecherous...
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Kapurush (The coward), or: women's own right to happiness
Do you have an hour to spare? 74 minutes to be precise? WATCH THIS NOW. And then come back to read. « This » is Satyajit Ray’s little marvel called Kapurush (1965, The Coward), a marvel of economy and...
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Mahapurush, or religious profiteering
After having watched Kapurush (see previous instalment), I was strongly urged to see Mahapurush, Satyajit Ray’s twin production in the tandem that came out in 1965. The theme of the manipulative bigot...
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If music be the food of love... Shabab
This 1954 film by M. Sadiq has qualities I wasn’t expecting. With movies that no one is reviewing or speaking about, you are faced with the unnerving problem of wondering whether you aren’t giving...
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Thanks Memsaab - a tribute from your fan
You probably all know - but I don't care: Memsaab's latest instalment is a hard day's scanning work of 75 pages of text and awesome portraits from a 1952 book by Baburao and Sushila Rani Patel’s...
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BR Chopra's Naya Daur: the prophecy of a new India
The Brave New World of Naya Daur (New Era, BR Chopra 1957) opens with a striking quote by Mahatma Gandhi: So from the start we know that the film is going to be about the biological (bios = life)...
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Indian cinema on stamps
Hi, sorry to have been away so long, too many things in the going. This one took me some time assembling and researching, but was great fun! When I was a boy, my...
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Yash Chopra, the power of Passion
Yash Chopra passed today; because of the importance of the guy, I decided to post this eulogy of him written some time ago, but which I still feel is appropriate. Yash Chopra… Say this name and...
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Mr & Mrs 55, Guru Dutt's love-dallying
Reading about Mr. & Mrs 55, Guru Dutt’s 1955 sparkling romantic comedy on the net, in order to prepare this review, has been very pleasant; this devil of a director has produced some insightful...
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Rishte Naate (1965), a quiet family drama
Rishte Naate (family relationships) is a 1965 Gopalakrishnan movie, with Raj Kumar, Nutan, Nazir Hussain, Jamuna and Ameeta as main actors. It does seem like I’m exhausting my reserves of Nutan...
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Bobby: Raj Kapoor lapsing into... (what?)
(Could this be this what happened to the great RK???) For Raj Kapoor the director, Bobby appeared in 1973 between Mera naam joker (1972) and Satyam shivam sundaram (1978) and so I was rather...
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The cloud-capped star: Heaven and earth's glory
One cloud-capped day, somewhere along the bank of a Bengali river where waterfowl chirp their little bedeep, bedeep, a young woman clad in white walks out of the canopy of some century-old oaks that...
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Devi: can religious belief be inhuman?
I think I can safely say that Satyajit Ray all his life tried to fight for individual rights and a critical outlook on traditions. If you have in mind the film Ganashatru (An enemy of the people),...
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Umrao Jaan: does beauty lead to sorrow?
Umrao Jaan (Muzzafar Ali, 1981) belongs to the genre of tragedies which describe the destiny of a doomed character in a beautifully told narrative such as will bring out the pity and sorrow necessary...
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A nutty Nutan!
Hello all, It's been some time I wanted to share with you some of the clownish photos of Nutan that I've collecting, and well, why not the occasion of her death anniversary coming up this Feb 23rd?...
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A film auditioning in 1951
Thanks to Ashok I have been fortunate to discover the treasure trove of these Old Indian photos, where much more than what will be discussed here is to be found: it’s a real Ali Baba’s Cave. But going...
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Midnight's children
Famous, witty, challenging… and brilliant in the way some works of genius are, but Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie pleases and displeases at the same time. It certainly strikes the reader as a...
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Nutan film posters
Hello, well, it seems that only Nutan ki janmadin can rouse me from my silence these days! Sorry to say, but there's just too much OTHER stuff to do, sigh! Anyway, I had been collecting these for the...
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Baarish (1957) no rain, but drenched in beauty and fun
I’d been wanting to watch Baarish (1957, Shankar Mukherjee) for a long time, but as there were no subtitles, I knew I was in for a more strenuous viewing than usual. Still, this film was a little like...
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Pratidwandi (The Adversary) - an exploration of the self
There isn’t much of a story in Satyajit Ray's Pratidwandi (the Adversary, 1970): because of social and economic disruption in Bengal, young Siddharta (Dhritiman Chatterjee) and his family (mother,...
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