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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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 […]
Lundi 6 octobre 2008
1
06
/10
/Oct
/2008
13:00
Yash Chopra… Say this name and immediately vast landscapes appear, green slopes where lovers mirror their gaze in the other’s eyes, enchanting music lifts up a crowd of spring birds, dark men march towards their destiny, violence smoulders in the heart, suffering mothers obey their dharma, and love reigns supreme in spite of all odds. Mr Chopra’s reputation as an incurable romantic is so ingrained that it’s difficult to start with something very different! You might as well adore him or hate him, in fact. YC is Bollywood at its best, or at its worst. And love, melodrama… with so banal a theme, such a typically Bollywoodian feature, why does the man stand out? Where does the legend (and […]
Jeudi 4 septembre 2008
4
04
/09
/Sep
/2008
01:03
What attracts one to Juhi Chawla is her absolutely irresistible smile. Okay, she was “only” a Miss India (1984), but frankly, Yash Chopra’s idea to cast her as Shahruhk Khan’s idol in Darr is not a bad one, far from it. I believe one can really fall passionately, desperately in love, and perhaps go as far as kill if that passion is not satisfied. I know this does sound extreme in today’s easy-going, emotionally relaxed world, but many works of world literature testify to that possibility. Juhi Chawla’s glow, her warm expressive eyes, her girlish ways, her adorable face (I’m trying not to add anything!) – well, she’s certainly way up in the “most lovable” feminine All Time list. And for […]
Jeudi 28 août 2008
4
28
/08
/Août
/2008
19:06
The Stranger (1991) is an atomic experiment. Satyajit Ray imagines what might happen when a normal urban family of three (the target) is bombarded with a high-energy free electron in the shape of a long lost uncle who enters their lives from outer space, and decides to hit them full blast. Will the target be disintegrated? Will it resist, and if so, what changes will it suffer? What by-products will be created in the collision? Ray knows that we "civilised" people have a number of protections against invasions from alien elements: politeness, customs, a well established identity, social practices, etc. When somebody barges into the fabric of a given society, the society defends itself, […]
Vendredi 22 août 2008
5
22
/08
/Août
/2008
01:35
Here’s another beginner – after Aag – Shyam Benegal’s first long feature film shot in 1973, after he had finally got enough appraisal for his work shooting advertisements (apparently more than 900!) and documentaries. Ankur means “seedling”: some people wonder exactly what Benegal had in mind when naming his film; we’ll come back to that, but certainly it’s a good title for the first film in a long series of socially-oriented, politically-committed movies. The quartet of Ankur (1973), Nishant (1975), Mathan (1976) and Bhumika (1977) are well-known for having introduced what is called “Middle cinema” (cf. also New Indian Cinema). The film is also a beginner as it’s Shabana Azmi’s first […]
Mardi 12 août 2008
2
12
/08
/Août
/2008
23:56
Aag: fire. In this Early Raj Kapoor Movie, fire is a symbol of love, naturally, but also creation and destruction. It is fit that this film stands at the beginning of Raj Kapoor’s career (his first movie as an adult was in 1943), since there is a strong stance on the autonomy of the artist and creator. Indeed, doesn’t Kewar (Raj Kapoor) refuse to follow the path laid down for him by his family, and justify it by insisting on freedom and the refusal of the easy but inauthentic future? Similarly, Raj Kapoor’s cinema probably wanted to affirm its independence at a time when young India emerged on the world scene. But let me give you the story. It’s in fact a long flashback, told by a […]
Jeudi 31 juillet 2008
4
31
/07
/Juil
/2008
17:58
I’d seen other films with her before, but I really discovered Tabu thanks to Cheeni kum. “Cheeni Kum” means “less sugar”. And that’s what Bollywood has to offer with Tabu: a less sugary actress! With Tabu, the sweetness of many other mainstream actresses is absent: there is no exuberant emotionality, no fits, none of that Bollywood nonsense which we like so much. The colourful and musical extragavaganza seems out of place… Even if recently so. Because Tabu has been in the past an actress like the score of others who have thrived in the escapist, glamorous, emotional, action-packed products which are as quickly forgotten as they are watched. Her image today is that of a concentrated, […]
Mardi 22 juillet 2008
2
22
/07
/Juil
/2008
23:06
Of all the commentaries I have read about Kamal Amrohi’s 1972 movie Pakeezah, this one (Upperstall.com) corresponds most to what I thought of it : “Pakeezah is a stylized, larger than life mythicization of the familiar tale of the prostitute with the heart of gold (…)In the film Amrohi turns to the milieu and culture he is a product of - Uttar Pradesh's feudal elite, its life of ease and elegance, of romantic love, poetry and mujras. Its decadence is not without a touch of class and has sometimes resulted in much creative upsurge. Pakeezah inherits that legacy. There is grandeur in Amrohi's filmmaking - an epic magnitude of treatment. The evocative songs and the background music create […]
Jeudi 10 juillet 2008
4
10
/07
/Juil
/2008
17:24
Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, 1977. Nanda Kaul, an old solitary lady lives in her house on the mountainside. Something depressing about her presence there, as if she was hiding away from some family secret. The house: a witness of generations of Colonial time residents, when British gentlemen and ladies used to entertain soldiers and organise parties for the rich expatriates there. Then came Independence. 1947. Everything stopped, and the house was vacated. That old lady bought it probably in the sixties, to settle away from her previous life. She appreciates the emptiness of the place, its solitude, the parched hillsides. She feels pacified when listening to “the scented sibilance of the […]
Jeudi 3 juillet 2008
4
03
/07
/Juil
/2008
22:27
It’s become a recurrent syndrome: I need a second viewing or reading to appreciate some of India’s prominent masterpieces! (For it has been recognised as such, see this link, or this one for example). This has been very true for Charulata (charu = attractive, beautiful), Satyajit Ray’s 1964 shooting of the Tagore novel (Nashta Neer, the broken nest). On first viewing, I was only fairly moved towards the story of this “lonely wife”. The fact that, for example, her attraction towards her brother in law is shown purely through her beautiful black eyes: - I was telling myself that this story-telling had the immense quality of real life, where love happens mostly via little signs which the […]
Jeudi 26 juin 2008
4
26
/06
/Juin
/2008
12:54
It took me a long time to finish The Inheritance of Loss. Not only because there has been so many things to do in the past months, but also because somehow the novel didn’t correspond to what I am at ease with, a real storyline evolving around recognisable characters, or perhaps actual characters making the story move, something like that (you can also have a look at this (negative) review). Instead, the story is brought forward through a series of touches, short chapters one after the other, none having more importance than the preceding, and the more important ones almost indistinguishable among the less important. The book starts with the “attack” of the house where all the action […]
Dimanche 22 juin 2008
7
22
/06
/Juin
/2008
00:36
I watched Calcutta Mail on Jaman (Jaman.com) because of Sudhir Mishra and the good memories I had of Dharavi, Main zinda hoon and Chameli. All three movies are urban movies, and deal with the impact that cities have on the individual, or perhaps rather on the consequences on the individual of the urban dimension within him. What sort of individual is the Indian urbanite, asks Sudhir Mishra; what does the fact of having an urban environment, urban pressure, urban possibilities mean, in terms of living together today in India? Well, Calcutta mail also deals with urban matters, and in fact describes the life of an ordinary man who was going to the metropolis for a job, and who gets […]
Mercredi 18 juin 2008
3
18
/06
/Juin
/2008
00:53
Hi everyone… Here’s that detailed observation of the dream-sequence in Raj Kapoor’s Awara which I had promised you! I’m in fact quite pleased I had set that aside, because there is so much in it, and even more than what my Western perspective can divine, I presume, because of the Indian references I don’t know. First the context: the scene takes place as Raj, who has spent the day out with his sweetheart Rita (the boat scene), walks home that night, and is stopped by a blade pointed at him: his guru Jagga was waiting for him. The latter suspects him of softening and forgetting his old “friends”. Raj lies to him, and assures him he has a plan: he’s only visiting Rita’s rich household to […]
Mardi 3 juin 2008
2
03
/06
/Juin
/2008
23:29
Like perhaps a number of you, I discovered Manisha Koirala in Dil se, by Mani Ratnam, and was attracted by that irritating mousy character of the terrorised terrorist, who with her distant but intense eyes tries to escape Shahrukh’s advances, but not the spectators’. She’s great in that movie, she has a presence, which is at the same time a distance; she teases, she annoys, she leaves you panting. I remember wowing! And a woman terrorist! So tragic… So all that sadness, that drama: that was my first taste of the Nepali beauty seen later in a number of other films, and sufficiently good ones too, to make me wonder recently how come I hadn’t yet contemplated writing something about her. […]
Jeudi 22 mai 2008
4
22
/05
/Mai
/2008
22:19
“Oh World, I am a wanderer in your puzzle!” So sings Awaara, Raj the vagabond, as he leaves the prison, and winds his way through village streets and benevolent humanity, his newly found freedom and his good nature hiding the deep wounds of a wrecked childhood. “Don’t sin any more!” the warden had said, as he was sent out of jail. But his tragic fate is fixed: once a thief, always a thief. There’s no way out of crime for him, says Jagga his evil guru. Raj is thrown into the world only to wander from one misery to the next, from one loss to another: why is he thus chosen as God’s toy? He was born with a good heart, but is slave to the torment and horror of evil. Why is there no escape […]