Baghban – Pretty and Preposterous

  Look at those two.   Don’t they look perfect?   When this movie came out in 2003, I remember reading stories that said the picture had been exceedingly well received by Indian overseas audiences, especially in the U.S., whereas response was tepid, at best, in India.    They went on to say that the […]

Who says Bombay is rude ?

Just around the same time that Bombay was bottoming out on Readers’ Digest rudeness survey, I had a very friendly email from Bombay Addict  –  who writes about movies and Bombay –  inviting me as a guest to his blog and proposing that we collaborate in an online discussion of his native city and how […]

Krrish! Krrash! Hrithik in a flash!

  In the most recent episode of the HBO series Entourage that aired in the U.S. last weekend, Vince and his buddies go through opening day of the actor’s big budget release  Aquaman, tracking the opening grosses and comparing them to the opening weekend of Spiderman.   Initially, only E is interested in how the […]

This is where it all began

  It started in earnest August 1997. An ad appeared on the weekend morning Indian shows for Pardes and I noticed that the theater was only 15 minutes away, so off I went. People stared a bit as I merged into the crowd, the only gringa on line for the 9p.m. showing, but I wasn’t […]

Amar, Akbar, Anthony: Wait, wait, WAIT!

  Amar, Akbar, Anthony, Manmohan Desai’s 1977 movie  takes the separated-at-birth, double role device prevalent in many Hindi movies over the years and puts a twist on it.   The set-up is this:    driver Kishenlal (played by Pran), just home from having taken the fall for his boss, Robert, and gone to jail, finds […]