Hi Every one,

This blog is for everyone to come and share about ideas and emotions connected to Indian cinema. 
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This is last month's most popular book review...
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And this is my favourite Indian movie:
 Can you guess which one it is?

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!

  • Roja: how can we love and live apart? (26/06/2009 )
    Roja is an excellent little movie made by Mani Ratnam back in 1992, starring Arvind Swami and Madhoo (Raghunath); it was a real pleasure to watch another of Mani Ratnam’s works. His intelligence, his realism, his careful balance of private and public issues which are typical of ...
  • Parshuramer Kuthar, motherhood and prostitution (17/06/2009 )
    This stunning little movie (65 minutes) made in 1989 by Nabyendu Chatterjee, who died recently (2005) tells the story of Laxmi (pronounced Loki), a Bengali village woman whose husband fell from a roof while she was expecting her first baby, and has remained cripple ever since. She ...
  • Nuts about Nutan! (08/06/2009 )
    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 ...
  • Nishaant, the brutality of male (and female) desire (01/06/2009 )
    “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 ...
  • Is Bollywood universal? (26/05/2009 )
    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 ...
  • Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Cannes bad taste (20/05/2009 )
    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 ...
  • Bandini, Bimal Roy's ode to purity (18/05/2009 )
    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 ...
  • Jalsaghar, the music-room of a monomaniac (04/05/2009 )
    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 ...
  • Aakrosh, cry of the wounded (09/04/2009 )
    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 ...
  • Dilli ka thug: a gallery of masks (28/03/2009 )
    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 ...
  • The Kite Runner (16/02/2009 )
    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 ...
  • Mother India, the mother of Indian movies (08/02/2009 )
    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 ...
  • Sangam, Raj Kapoor's murky waters (02/01/2009 )
    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), ...
  • Teesri kasam, melancholic delight! (02/12/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Meenaxi, tale of 3 cities: Bollywoodian befuddlement! (24/11/2008 )
      « 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 ...
  • A suitable boy (18/11/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Sahib bibi aur ghulam, an Initiation to Desire (13/10/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Yash Chopra, the power of Passion (06/10/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Juhi Chawla: what's behind that smile? (04/09/2008 )
    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, ...
  • The Stranger (Agantuk), Satyajit Ray's experiment on humanity (28/08/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Ankur: Shyam Benegal's + Shabana Azmi's manifesto (22/08/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Aag (1948): Raj Kapoor's burning idealism (12/08/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Tabu, the dark queen on the Bollywoodian chessboard (31/07/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Pakeezah, Meena Kumari's romantic Swan Song (22/07/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Fire on the Mountain (10/07/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Charulata, Satyajit Ray's masterpiece (03/07/2008 )
    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, Satyajit Ray’s 1964 shooting of the ...
  • The inheritance of loss (26/06/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Calcutta Mail, or why Sudhir Mishra's films have urban settings (22/06/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Awara's dream sequence: a metaphor of life (18/06/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Manisha Koirala: the fallen angel? (03/06/2008 )
    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 ...
  • Awara (1951): the world's most popular movie?! (22/05/2008 )
    “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 ...
  • Naseeruddin Shah: the fox is cleverer than the lion (14/05/2008 )
      I’ve been longing to write that LetsTalkAboutBollywood article about Naseeruddin Shah for a long time. He’s one of my favourite Indian actors, if not my favourite. Okay, let’s say he is my favourite actor (alive). I suppose it’s natural to take sides, so there, I ...
  • Guide (1965) Anand's romanticized version of Narayan's story (27/04/2008 )
    Some of you might remember that I had promised to watch Guide, by Vijay Anand, the movie based on R.K. Narayan’s novel which I had reviewed here. I had been encouraged by a number of blog reviews, but I must say that I have been rather disappointed. I had already been slightly ...
  • Ek chotisi love story: love and desire (20/04/2008 )
    « This is one of the worst Bollywood films ever made. It tells the sickening story of a 15 year old boy who loves a 26 year old women. Its weird, cos the boy is just so annoying and looks stupid. He spends long hours just spying on her with his ...
  • Akshaye Khanna: why is intelligence so sexy? (16/04/2008 )
    As soon as one pronounces the name “Akshaye Khanna”, a picture springs up, and one sees that curvy mouth, that dimpled chin, those square jaws and above all, the dark cunning eyes that half-smile, half gauge, as if to make sure the track is clear. Hmm, says one, he must ...
  • I love Rani Mukherjee's smile! (02/04/2008 )
      For a long time now I have been wanting to actually speak about Rani Mukherjee: suspicious, no? I had been doing these comments about all these books and films, which have nothing to do with her, and at the back, there had always been that lingering need to ...
  • Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray's little Song (27/03/2008 )
      Satyajit Ray’s 1955 “Song of the little road” is a quiet picture of little big events within a rural Bengali family, where the little happenings of childhood occur, and form that most profound event of any life: growing up. The film is part of a trilogy, the Apu trilogy; but ...
  • Kaala Patthar, Yash Chopra's Heart of Darkness (11/03/2008 )
    Kaala Patthar (“Black stone”) is a grandiose epic movie by Yash Chopra which is at the same time a political and social weapon against reckless capitalism and the exploitation of workers, a story of redemption and sacrifice, and a suspense-full entertainer, with action, love ...
  • The Guide (R.K. Narayan) (05/03/2008 )
    R.K. Narayan’s novel, The Guide, written in 1958, is recognised as one of the author’s best. (It’s selected within a collection of “1000 books to read during your lifetime” collection which some French publishers were selling over Christmas). It tells the story of Raju, ...
  • Ajay Devgan, Bollywood's dark prince (02/03/2008 )
    With his title “The dark prince” I am not referring to Ajay’s skin colour of course, even though there are only few among the best-known Bollywood stars that do have a dark skin, but more to his character, what I can guess of it. I’ve always felt in him a sort of broodiness, a ...

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