TOP 10 ROAD TRIP MOVIES OF THIS CENTURY

Guest post by: Arnab Maity

Arnab is at simultaneously a photographer, a seasoned traveler and a software analyst from Bangalore who also delights his readers and photography enthusiasts regularly at his own blog: www.arnabmaity.com His never ending wanderlust has contributed to making him develop a keen taste for road movies. Fly away with him and his list of Top 10 Road Trips of the Century from all over the world, which features a couple of our own Hindi language favorites.

We all love our road trips, don’t we? That orifice to vent out the vapors of our day to day chores, to bring us out into the open, sometimes gifting unusual sights and sometimes making us meet unusual people, who leave a mark throughout our lives.

We all have such road trips in our lives, which had changed many a thing about us and there are many such movies which have inspired us to leave our couches and get onto to the road!

This compilation consists of those movies, which had left us thinking and made us pack our bags, to explore the unexplored and meet the unknown.

Read more>>

An Unmissable KAHAANI! - Film Review

Shah Rukh Khan once said about his co-star Madhuri Dixit: "Madhuri is the most solid man I've met in the industry. Yeah, you heard right. She's truly like a man. She's the most solid thinker, solid emotionally, solid believer (...) She's the complete Indian film heroine."

The above quote today inevitably brings to the mind current "hero-ine" Vidya Balan. In a male centered film industry, her sound script sense and her talent currently make her one of Bollywood's most regarded professionals, up there with the sharpness of the market-savviest male stars or the talent of the best actors in the industry. She has turned the audience's focus to women characters with a solid hand, making men and women alike love her for it. After Ishqiya, No One Killed Jessica and The Dirty Picture, it is today Kahaani's turn to blow the spectator away with Balan's ability to subtly perform within a team, focusing on her characters as individuals more than as female roles, while intelligently allowing her co-stars to shine along with her too.

Kahaani is the story of Vidya Bagchi (Vidya Balan), a 7-month pregnant woman who arrives in Kolkata from London to look for her missing husband but is confronted with clues that her husband in reality does not exist. It is natural to feel for a Vidya who struggles to know who is telling the truth while the story effectively morphs into a suspense-thriller, with the audience hanging on to every moment hoping to unravel the mystery and wishing that the main character will manage to keep her and her unborn baby safe.

Read more>>

WHEN WILL OSCAR LOVE BOLLYWOOD?

A movie buff usually plans the Oscars soirée in advance and spends hours glued to the TV screen rooting for his/her favorites.

I am however one movie buff who barely remembers the last time she sat down to watch the Oscars. My love for films and good stories currently only motivates me to follow the Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Picture and then the list of actual winners for all categories once the gala is over.  "Why?", I have been asked time and again. This would seem a simple question to answer but, upon second thought, it sort of opens a pandora box of thoughts regarding cinema in general, Academy award policies and, last but not least, Indian cinema.

Read more>>

EK MAIN AUR EKK TU: When Kareena met Imran (and vice versa)

It had been talked about long and plenty. Ever since Imran Khan had graced the screen in JTYJN, he had expressed his wish of starring alongside Kareena Kapoor in the future while Kareena remained nonetheless religiously faithful to the sure career-building value of the older Khan heroes whether it be Salman, Shah Rukh, Aamir or her beau, Saif Ali Khan.

 
When she finally and fortunately agreed to sharing screen space with a male lead of her age once again (her last great performance with a co-star her age having won her many Jab We Met accolades), Imran Khan was thankfully the natural choice. And we the audience have absolutely no regrets.

 

Read more>> 

LOVING SANJAY DUTT = LOVING KANCHA?

 Guest Post by: Diwali

Diwali is an enthusiastic Sanjay Dutt supporter who has agreed to give us her take on Kancha, Sanjay Dutt's newest character in the acclaimed Agneepath, directed by Karan Malhotra. The Hindi Cinema Blog thanks her for her valuable contribution to more literature on this amazing actor and is glad to leave more detailed introductions to Diwali herself. :-)

 

Okay, for the record and for those who don't know me: I love Sanju. However, I do not call myself a "fan" – I prefer the attribute "supporter" for that is what I do: I support Sanju for better and for worse. Sure, you might point out that I was crazy enough to fly down to Mumbai from Germany for only a two day stay (!) two years ago just because I got an invitation to meet Sanjay Dutt. On the other side, this meeting confirmed my opinions about the human being Sanju (I always cared more for the human being than for the actor) and so I keep on supporting him running my website www.sanjay-dutt.info and my Twitter fanclub SanjayDuttFC for him. Even a series of flops (not undeserved in the case of those mindless comedies in 2011) cannot change my affection for him given that, as I said, the man means more to me than his movies.

When the news was out that Sanju would play the role of the villain Kancha in Karan Johar's Agneepath I got the immediate feeling that this could turn out to be one of his best movies. My confidence grew when I heard that he should go bald for Kancha for this sounded just too good. I guess I should add that I do not belong to those film fans who always want their favorites to look good/dashing/sexy/hot or whatever on screen. I love actors who don't care about how they look in their films and who do not shy away from ugliness if the role requires it. And Sanju is such an actor. He has proved it again and again since his early years in the industry. He never wanted to be a star given that, as he once said, stars fade while actors stay forever.

Read more>>