DesiDabba - Boss, Thoda Sa Roomani Ho Jaye
To put it simply, DesiDabba is our effort to be your one-stop guide into one of the world's most lucrative television market, The Indian Television Industry. So enjoy and bring on the traffic. More about Desi Dabba
Bollywood Movies - Ever So Predictable !
Like all fellow Indians (well , the majority of them anyway! ) I am also a fan of Bollywood movies. If one has been a regular watcher of Hindi movies (my reference here is to commercial or mainstram cinema ) over the years, one would be familiar by now, with certain situations and certain traits in characters, which are constantly repeated in most of these movies.
The Chase- Talking of movies of 60s and 70s , one very common scene would be the car chase and the arrival of police at the end of the movie when the hero would have (what the police should have done ! ) chased and caught the culprits ! The car chase would invariably have all the important characters bundled into several vehicles (cars, trucks,motorcycles, jeeps, & sometimes even a tonga ! )and following the hero’s car who in turn would be chasing the villians ! The background music would be one of 100s of violins screeching ! ( not playing !) to give the desired climax effect ! The cops would arrive on the scene just in time to wrap up the movie , with the inspector ordering “ inke haath me hathkadi pehna do “- needless to say ,the actor in the role of the officer would have only this dialogue ,which, he would deliver to the best of his ability (in the hope that some director would notice him and offer him the hero’s role in his next movie !).
Bollywood Evolution - Plaits to Buffont to Silky Tresses
The advantage of having a set top box is the choice available to the viewer of not only multiple movie channels, but also , thanks to Zee network, various categories of movie channels e.g. Zee Premier , Zee cinema , Zee Classics. Indeed the viewer is really and truly spoilt for choice !
Watching Zee Network’s different movie channels last week I was fascinated with the evolution of the heroine’s crowning glory over the years in Bollywood movies ( a trait which I share with members of my sex, and one that is totally alien to men!).
Indeed we have come a long way since the time when one important physical asset of the Indian woman was her long and lustrous thick black hair- the heroine (of movies of 40s & 50s) would be portrayed as the true Bharatiya Nari sporting a long and thick plait (which would have put fairy tale character Rapunzel of long locks fame to shame!).
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Vintage Movies - Norms Of The Day
My excitement knew no bounds when ,at the annual general body meeting of our society it was decided to install set top boxes in all the flats .Visions of viewing multiple channels in multiple languages floated in my mind .With my better half viewing all those gory action movies for a couple of hours after he returned from office (mostly late ! ) and my daughter virtually ignoring the idiot box during the week except on weekends , to watch some DVD , the idiot box was virtually mine almost for the entire day during the week!
Zee Classic being a favourite channel, watching movies of sixties & seventies was like reliving life as a carefree teenager. Indeed movies those days portrayed even emotions in a very subtle manner. The Indian audience were for years subjected to generous doses of discreet symbolism, and sometimes blatant uniform code portrayal. just by looking at the characters one could make out who was who and just by the setting one could decipher the situation on hand.
Fashion @ Filmfare
Though I’m not big on Bollywood, I am big on Fashion - and the 53rd Annual Filmfare awards is as big as it gets when it comes to spotting all the Bollywood biggies in their black tie best all under one roof (this time, it was the Yash Raj Studios roof!).
The awards which are being telecast tonight on Sony Entertainment, saw most actors & actresses in their finery, doing no wrong. From Kangana Raut in full flowing white to Preity Zinta (who imo, always comes out tops) in velvety deep purple, most of the celebs played it safe whether western or Indian and came out looking brilliant.
Except perhaps Deepika Padukone - who won for “Fresh Face” - perhaps you can’t make out in all the long shots, but the close ups will show you her face was anything but fresh - in face she was more made up than a Matryoshka doll! Seriously girl, you are so pretty, you don’t need to put on so many layers of make up, it’ll just make you look old!
Review Mithya : Now This I Like.
Rajat Kapoor as a director never impressed me much; Raghu Romeo was weird and Mixed Doubles was ridicules. But with his latest release Mithya, I believe he has finally hit the jackpot – creatively if not monetarily.
Mithya is based on Underworld-meets-Bollywood subject – a struggling actor, gang war, sexy mistress and a plan. This quirky screenplay has been jointly written by the director himself and another known actor, Saurabh Shukla. Now Shukla is one dude I really like; be it his (tiny but done to perfection) roles in main-stream films, stage plays or his creativity with the pen, he has always been a cinema lover’s delight.
