This  wonderful (though too short) half-hour 1973 documentary written by James Ivory is included by Merchant Ivory Productions along with the DVD of Bombay Talkie. It opens with a mention of item girl, and dancer par excellence, Helen‘s 500-film milestone.    Over the next 30 minutes we hear  narrator Anthony Korner solemnly intone about […]

  What a difference it is to watch this 1970 Merchant Ivory production after Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.   There are the vaguest of similarities: they both deal with marital infidelity, and  both  cities their stories are based in look lovely (Bombay in this case, New York in Kabhi Alvida).   But there the likeness […]

  On August 14, 1981  Yash Chopra’s  romantic drama  Silsila was released, and ran a disappointing 16 weeks in Bombay.   In spite of a star line-up to die for – Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Badhuri (who came out of retirement for the film) and Rekha – as well as stylish wardrobes, picturesque locales  and on […]

  Like so many movies set in Bombay, G.P. Sippy’s 1992 release  Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman has at its center a young man leaving his family home (in this case, in Darjeeling) to make a bade admi out of himself in the big city.   The very likebale local hero starts out on the right […]

  For the past month, this city’s been in my head almost every day.   The days I spent  there earlier this year just reinforced my initial impression that it’s so thick with  striving people and quirky architectural details, and moments of beauty exist cheek by jowl with  ugliness.   On the train to and […]

  As fond as I am of many Hindi movies, I’ll also willingly admit that some of them have faults.   Fight sequences may be cartoonish, plot points  might be incredibly frail, some song picturizations  could be deemed too sweet and self-indulgent and way too long, but nonetheless, even if the movies  suffer from these […]