Our community has been known to gift Bollywood some seriously talented and critically acclaimed artists and personalities including Boman Irani, Ronnie Screwvala, Nauheed Cyrusi, Shiamak Davar, Perizaad Zorabian and Amyra Dastur, to name a few. Two names to watch out for, that add to this booming clique of budding Parsis in Bollywood, are Cyrus Dastur, […]
Meherbai and Merwanji loved movies, not just Bollywood and Hollywood but even World Cinema. They relished movies from various parts of the world as well as Tamil, Telugu and Bengali ones at various film-societies, plus at the NCPA which was their second home in the evenings. For Merwanji, once he saw a movie, that was […]
Meherwanji read out a headline from a newspaper to Meherbai which said, ‘Short naps can make you happier.’ Meherbai: It says ‘short’ naps whereas you have breakfast and doze-off till lunch, after which you snore like a Ghat Nu Engine till tea-time! Meherwanji: Maybe that’s why I’m happy despite insomnia at night! Meherbai: What insomnia? After eating and sleeping the […]
“Rocky, tumhein wahaan nahin jaana chaahiye”, with these seductive words and accompanied by trendsetter Rahul Dev Burman’s pulsating background score (no doubt, aided by Cawas, Kersi and Burjor Lord) does the film begin. Hindi cinema’s leading femme fatale, the Franco-Burmese Helen was at the pinnacle of her career when she got to speak the opening […]
The film is out, and so are the reviews and the verdict. While the critics’ reviews have been mixed, audience reactions in general have been encouraging. That the film is based on the celebrated Nanavati case was never in doubt. While the actual events of the late 50s and the early 60s had political undertones […]
Originally planned to be titled ‘Dolly Lahore Mein’, ‘Happy Bhag Jayegi’ is a carefree, nonchalant film which promises much but fails to go the distance. Harpreet ‘Happy’ Kaur (Diana Penty) is a feisty and plucky bride-to-be who decides to play the vanishing trick on her wedding day in Amritsar. Jumping into a truck laden with […]
Whatever happened to the winsome comedies starring Boman Irani and Arshad Warsi, two of our most gifted comedians? That they both require a good script is stating the obvious—the Munnabhai films, Jolly LLB, where they shared screen space. Arshad Warsi is Michael Misra (yes, we are told the ‘h’ is absent), who is a wannabe […]
Accompanying Jason Bourne this week in losing his memory is Armin Salem (Rajeev Khandelwal) who meets with a car accident on a lonely road in picturesque Switzerland. Attending to him there is Dr. David Roy (Victor Banerjee) who asks him all the right questions but fails to ignite his memory. ‘It’s a brain injury,’ the […]
The interview was scheduled for noon on 22nd July at the Filmalaya Studio, Andheri. I realized I would miss the press show of Kabali at 11:00. No problem… Rajnikanth can wait… I reached a half-hour early. Akshay was shooting for the sequel of the successful ‘Jolly LLB’. I settled myself down in the dimly lit […]
OK. The opening and closing frames of the film couldn’t have been more reprehensible — John Abraham (Kabir), a crack member of the Special Task Force and the blue-eyed boy of the External Affairs Ministry (the Minister is a woman, of course!) is shown smoking in an elevator and flicking a lit cigarette at the […]
An interesting plot, impressive performances and original jokes are some of the ingredients for a commendable film. Sadly, ‘Grate’ Grand Masti has none of the above. The opening frames of the film, with Riteish Deshmukh and Farzin Pardiwalla, is a pointer to how the rest of the film would pan out and offers the viewers […]