The fact that I have to start a discussion of Shalimar (1978) by specifying that this is the English-language version of the film, which is only 60% as long as the Hindi and therefore almost automatically makes less sense than the fuller work, tells you that we are […]
I’m not even sorry about that title. Boom (2003, directed and written by Kaizad Gustad) really is about a group of models behaving badly. But it’s also an artifact of one of the classic paths to stardom in Bollywood: the model-turned-actor. The models in the film have to […]
The works of Agatha Christie, like many other best-sellers in the English language, have been successfully translated into mainstream Indian cinema.* Gumnaam (1965) moves the stage version of And Then There Were None on a jungle- and ruin-covered island somewhere off the coast of India (and if you’ve […]
Chori Mera Kaam (Theft Is My Job, dir. Brij, 1975) is one of those movies that nobody talks about when hailing the masala golden age, but everybody should.
Beth Watkins brings Hindi film disco to the Wall Street Journal’s blog (with plenty of links). “Disco might just be the pop music soul mate of Hindi films, though it’s not like Bollywood ever needs an excuse to bust out the skin-tight shiny costumes, the opulent sets or […]