Nutan mania
I've decided to become a full-fledged promoter of Nutan! Below you'll find pictures of her I've collected since I've started watching films with her. For those who are fed up with her, you can go here (for example!)
Practical Info
About me
I'm a French lover of Indian cinema, but I'm also interested in literature, science, art, and reflection in general. This blog will reflect these tastes more or less!
Categories
- letstalkaboutbollywood (47)
- film reviews (93)
- practical info (1)
- Book reviews (18)
- miscellaneous (3)
- Trip to India (8)
Nutan photos
Bolly blogs I visit
- Greta's Memsaabstory
- Madhulika's Dustedoff
- Bollyviewer's Old is gold
- Sharmi's old films and me
- Bollywooddeewana
- Carla's blog Filmigeek
- Beth loves Bollywood
- A2line's Bollyblog
- Amodini's movie reviews
- Anu's conversations over chai
- Daddy's girl's Dharmendra praise blog
- The fabulous Pitu
- Harvey's blog
- Satyam's blog
- Shweta's Apni EA Company
- Julie and Jenny's Diablog
- Post-punk CC
- Nida's Bitten by Bollywood
- Sanni's So they dance
- Stephen 's Bollywood banter
- Blissful Nirvana
- Maria's Filmiholic
- Philip Lutgendorf 's fil-ums
- Darshit's dunkdaft
- Ajnabi's Paisa Vasool - or not
- Shell's Bollyworld
- The BollywoodFan
- Alan's Bellevue to Bollywood
- Pessimisissimo's Exotic entertainment
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Latest posts
- Their hands can see: Sparsh
- Peepli live: long live the media!
- Subarnarekha, Ritwick Ghatak's ode to Life
- Chhalia, Nutan's contribution to the Indo-pakistani peace process
- Mera Naam Joker: too big? Too much?
- Kanchanjungha, the moment of revelation
- Dhobi ghat, looking for a new centre
- Yeh raate, yeh mausam
- Ram teri Ganga maili, RK's last opus
- Abhijan, a remarkable moral fable
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- août 2010 (8)
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- février 2007 (7)
- janvier 2007 (5)
Lundi 8 juin 2009
1
08
/06
/Juin
/2009
15:09
Basant (1960) is a loony movie where what you see is more important than what you understand. There is a story, sort of, (tolerably interesting in the first half but totally zany in the second!) but you must forget about it, because the chief interest of this golden Bollywood of yore is the main actors’ charm, the very pleasant humour (thanks Johnny Walker!), the magic of the sets and of course, the music and dances! So after having only said this much, I’m just going to celebrate Nutan’s charms. I’ll leave Memsaab tell you the story, and rave about Shammi Kapoor, whom I find rather stilted and even pompous at times (but hey, I’m nothing but a man), and most of all, who cannot really […]
Lundi 1 juin 2009
1
01
/06
/Juin
/2009
22:05
“Vishvam (Naseeruddin Shah) is one of four brothers who rule their feudal village in pre-independence India with an iron grip. They execute various criminal schemes to increase their own wealth at the expense of the villagers, with the village priest and constable powerless to stop them. However unlike his brothers he tries to lead a relatively restrained life, and at the start of the film we see him married and refraining from drinking and smoking. His brothers regularly exercise their “droit du seigneur”, ordering villagers to send their wives and daughters to the haveli so that they can be raped at leisure. At first Vishvam, restrained by his wife (played by beautiful and brilliant […]
Mardi 26 mai 2009
2
26
/05
/Mai
/2009
10:42
I recently heard a journalist ask the question « Is Bollywood nothing more than a cinema made for India, or is there something universal about it?” – and I thought this question deserved a little post. Every one knows for a fact that the Indian cinema is the most productive one in the world, because of the amount of movies a year (is it still 800?) and of course the sheer size of the audiences. I say audiences because the crowds in the South, East and Centre are almost as huge as in the North, and from what I’m told, the penetration of US movies as yet cannot rival. So this raises the question of its local dimension, its adaptation to a public who needs a certain type of entertainment, […]
Mercredi 20 mai 2009
3
20
/05
/Mai
/2009
23:05
For me the yearly Cannes festival is not much more than an industry's self-celebration which is probably best left unwatched, but these days, it’s difficult to miss Cannes photos and interviews even if you’re only slightly interested in Bollywood. Aish comes every year to France, and being a Frenchman, I feel pleased that she does. But I wouldn’t have said anything about it if there hadn’t been two or three rather injurious remarks levelled at her, which I heard and made me feel rather embarrassed, and I wouldn’t like people to think that all French people, whom Aish always thank so warmly for their welcome, should be categorised in the same bunch as some of them. First interview, at […]
Lundi 18 mai 2009
1
18
/05
/Mai
/2009
17:30
I remember feeling annoyed when, a few years ago, somebody to whom I was voicing my pleasure at recently discovered Bollywood movies, bluntly told me: “oh yes, but Indian movies now… you want to see those from the 60s and the 70s!” Whether he was right or not is probably more a question of taste, but certainly, if he’d had such films as Bimal Roy’s Bandini (1963) in mind, I understand now why he would have said that. Having fallen for Nutan’s charm when watching Dilli ka thug, I wanted to see others of her films, and landed on this. “This” is a rare little jewel. Like Teesri Kasam, like, like… hum, I’m finding it rather hard to liken it to many other films I’ve seen. Unless… there is a […]
Lundi 4 mai 2009
1
04
/05
/Mai
/2009
13:30
This 1958 film, Satyajit Ray’s fourth, might seem to us, 50 years away from it, a strange and slow vestige of a time when the cinema was sadly deprived of the wizardry we now love so much in it. The narration seems clumsy; the lighting is handicapped by too much or too little contrast; the characters have very little to say or do; even the story seems hackneyed and ordinary: an ageing zamindar, Huzur Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas), reminiscing about his past glorious life as he used to entertain the classy neighbourhood with quality concerts in his mansion’s Music Room (the Jalsaghar), thus squandering the estate money to the point that he loses all, including wife and child (some of […]
Jeudi 9 avril 2009
4
09
/04
/Avr
/2009
22:30
Aakrosh (1980) by Govind Nihalani (whose first film it was, and who had won acclaim as Shyam Benegal’s photographer) is a sparsely told parable about the foundation of justice: should men follow the law at the expense of truth, or should they seek truth at the expense of the law? Here’s the story, told by rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com) at IMDB (many thanks to him!): “After working with his mentor and Public Prosecutor Dushane (Amrish Puri) for many years, Advocate Bhaskar Kulkarni (Nasseruddin Shah) is assigned a legal aid case of Bhiku Lahanya (Om Puri), who is accused of brutally killing his wife, Nagi (Smita Patil) (1). Bhiku remains silent when asked to plead guilty or otherwise. […]
Samedi 28 mars 2009
6
28
/03
/Mars
/2009
18:24
Dilli ka thug (1958) might be tossed aside as a jumble of loosely connected narrative titbits that have been put together for two main purposes: Kishore Kumar’s clowning, and Nutan’s youthful charm. A messy God seems to have been presiding over this movie, viz the DVD box received from Nehaflix, where the title reads “Dilli ka thag, starring Kishore Kumar and Mala Sinha”… It tells the story of a petty “Dilli” thief who falls in love with the girl he was supposed to be engaged with but whose family rejected him for some obscure reason, and this takes place in the context of a fabricated medicine scandal. Kishore the apprentice thug will become the hero who will expose the real thugs, […]
Lundi 16 février 2009
1
16
/02
/Fév
/2009
22:00
Khaled Hosseini is not an Indian writer, but an Afghan-American writer. But having read The kite runner (2003), I wanted to include my review of it here, because it’s a book about the region, and I know that a lot of people have read it in and around India. The literary phenomenon which the book represents, along with Hosseini’s second opus, A thousand splendid suns, also explains my breach of practice. The kite runner has the charm, the naturalness and the emotionality of great works of world fiction, but its first quality is its obviousness: you start reading it, and you’re immediately at home. There’s no artistic pretexts, no frills, no style, almost. Hosseini, unlike so many […]
Dimanche 8 février 2009
7
08
/02
/Fév
/2009
01:01
Mother India…That title resonates like everything a Bollywood-lover should pine for: aren’t we all somehow in love with Bharat mata? Aren’t we all her children up to some extent? As for me, I’d say that ever since I’ve been writing this blog (more than 2 years now), it’s been winding up to Mother India. First Nargis is one of my great heroines, and if I’ve come across Mehboob Khan’s movies only once so far, it’s enough to say he’s one of the greatest. This epic movie is like his final tribute to the Cinema: after a long career of about 100 films, and mastering his art to the full (we’ll detail this later), the master gives us his grandiose masterpiece. Where do I start? Perhaps with […]
Vendredi 2 janvier 2009
5
02
/01
/Jan
/2009
18:16
I don’t know how many of Raj Kapoor’s movies are called “his best”. This one belongs to that collection, judging by most IMDb user comments (on the other hand, very few bloggers have written about it…). Sangam (“Confluence” in English), which came out in 1964 is perhaps not Raj Kapoor’s best movie, but it has some excellent credentials to the title. At the time, the actor/director had broken up with Nargis and struck up an affair with Vijayantimala, who stars in Sangam. Certainly, Raj Kapoor’s genius cannot be limited only to a reflexion about love and desire, but I believe that his relationships with women or models have had a great role in the shaping of his art. By the way, this […]
Mardi 2 décembre 2008
2
02
/12
/Déc
/2008
22:40
The critical fame of Teesri Kasam, the 1966 film by Basu Bhattacharya, starring Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman, is absolutely justified; it’s a tale of love and sadness, of beauty and melancholy; it enchants you, it pulls you along, it arrests you: in short it’s a little jewel. The blend of simplicity, poignancy and musicality is unparalleled, I think. It has a charm only equalled by the best Indian movies, such as Shri 420. The story is rather simple: Hiraman, a cart-driver who is involved in black-marketing is almost caught by the police, and, upon escaping, vows he’ll never trade smuggled goods any more. He then reverts to bamboo trafficking, but that’s also a failure, and similarly […]
Lundi 24 novembre 2008
1
24
/11
/Nov
/2008
23:00
« Meenaxi, tale of three cities » by M.F. Husain (2004), is exactly that, a Bollywoodian befuddlement. The film is a pathetic attempt at building “something else” than a traditional love-story, and, because of lack of inspiration or lack of artistic common sense, the result is just a bad film. There’s everything it needs to be bad: no story, instead an arty reflexion on story-telling, elaborate touting technique, using sexy actors, suggestive but unconnected symbolism, and glossy photography (the film’s only merit). The whole thing reminds me of Shabd, another very boring movie where Aishwarya Rai and Sanjay Dutt were striving to do their best in a writer’s filmed “experiment”. The […]
Mardi 18 novembre 2008
2
18
/11
/Nov
/2008
22:55
Well! I’m pleased to announce that I too have escalated the Everest… Er, I mean I finally read Vikram Seth’s 1472 page novel “A suitable boy”, and that it has been a fascinating experience: thanks M. Seth! Such a length is said to be unparalleled in English literature, and indeed the length in itself is amazing. Fancy actually writing that incredibly long story, and controlling it from beginning to end. It took him seven years to complete, he said (and three to recover). Some people actually complained it strained their wrists, LOL. But there you are, if you are a lover of classic writing (some have said Austenian), if you love reading beautifully well developed prose, you’re the one […]
Lundi 13 octobre 2008
1
13
/10
/Oct
/2008
01:23
While I was reading about Satyajit Ray’s Charulata (1964), and thinking of Pakeezah (1972), critics mentioned Abrar Alvi's (or Guru Dutt’s - he apparently was almost as much behind the camera) Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) as a paradigmatic sort of film. So I thought I had to check it out! Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam is a meditation on Initiation (1). The film starts at the end, with a mature engineer meditating on time and experience, as he re-discovers a ruined building in which he had lived fundamental things in his youth. Sorrow and nostalgia pervade the scene, and soon memory takes the lead. The long flashback begins. The young and naïve Bhootnath (Guru Dutt), not yet an engineer, who […]