Dialogue. Dialogue. Dialogue.

A few days back, my wife’s sister-in-law (who’s a kindred spirit when it comes to food and Bollywood) asked me to change my BB status message to my favourite Hindi film dialogue. And awakened a monster – albeit a friendly one. I got so excited that I was changing my Blackberry AND Facebook statuses every 15 minutes, even tweeting them for good measure!

When I asked people on Facebook if they agreed with my choice, I had 38 comments in a flash with mostly serious (and passionate) choices though the spell was nearly broken by my good friend, Arijit, who insisted “Mere do do baap. Mere do do baap.” from Gopi Kishen should be considered.

For a film line to be memorable beyond generations, languages, caste, creed and OBC quotas, it has to – in my humble opinion – have: 

• Performance – This is a no-brainer that if the performer does not deliver the line with aplomb, even the most jhakaas of lines will pass like a ship in the dark.  
• Immediate Impact – People in the theatre must sit up and say ‘WOW’ because of the situation in which the line is said.  
• Repeat Value – People should want to say it in real life. Most filmi dialogues are such bombastic that we never think of saying it in real life but it should make us want to.

With these in mind and picking from the suggestions received from friend, here is my assessment of the Most Impactful Lines in Bollywood (using a shortlist of 15 culled from responses on Facebook and Twitter).

Aapke pair bahut khubsoorat hain. Inhe zameen par mat rakhiyega. Mailey ho jayengey.

Performance – 8. Immediate Impact – 6. Repeat Value – 5. 

Total – 19 

Har aadmi ke liye ek aurat bani hain. Agar usse bach gaye toh samjho zindagi ban jayegi.

Performance – 7. Immediate Impact – 7. Repeat Value – 8. 

Total – 22

Hum woh hain jo kisi ke peechhe nahin khade hote. Hum jahan pe khade ho jaate hain, line wahin se shuru hoti hain.

Performance – 8. Immediate Impact – 7. Repeat Value – 7. 

Total – 22

Aansoo pochh dalo, Pushpa. I hate tears.

Performance – 7. Immediate Impact – 8. Repeat Value – 8. 

Total – 23

 Badi badi deshon mein aisi chhoti chhoti baatein hoti rehti hain, Senorita.

Performance – 7. Immediate Impact – 8. Repeat Value – 8. 

Total – 23 

Yeh haath mujhe de de, Thakur.

Performance – 10. Immediate Impact – 10. Repeat Value – 3. 

Total – 23

Khandaani chor hoon. Aaya hoon, kuchh to lootke jaoonga.

Performance – 8. Immediate Impact – 7. Repeat Value – 9. 

Total – 24 

Picture abhi baaki hain, mere dost.

Performance – 7. Immediate Impact – 7. Repeat Value – 10. 

Total – 24 

Thoda khao, thoda phneko.

Performance – 7. Immediate Impact – 7. Repeat Value – 10. 

Total – 24

 Kabhi kabhi jeetne ke liye kuch haarna padhta hain. Aur haarke jeetne wale ko baazigar kehte hain.

Performance – 8. Immediate Impact – 8. Repeat Value – 9.

Total – 25

Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hain.

Performance – 9 (AB)/6 (SRK). Immediate Impact – 8 (AB)/6 (SRK). Repeat Value – 8.

Total – 25 (AB)/20 (SRK). 

Shaant gadaadhari Bheem, shaant.

Performance – 8. Immediate Impact – 8. Repeat Value – 10. 

Total – 26

 Mere paas maa hain.

Performance – 9. Immediate Impact – 9. Repeat Value – 9.

Total – 27

 Mogambo khush hua.

Performance – 10. Immediate Impact – 10. Repeat Value – 8.  

Total – 28

Main aaj bhi phneke hue paise nahin uthata.

Performance – 10. Immediate Impact – 10. Repeat Value – 8. 

Total – 28

(Mere blog mein mera favourite No. 1 banega, samjhe? Pasand nahin aaya to apne blog mein apna favourite ko No. 1 banao! Mwahahahaha...) 

The Book Is Nearly Done!

Hey, what's up with your book?

Arre - read the title of this post, yaar! It is nearly done. 

Over the last seven-odd month, my editor has been hard at work trying to correct the million grammatical errors that I had made in the manuscript. 

I was hard at work calling producers asking for permission and high-res versions of stills from their films. 

In fact, I have worked harder at sourcing pictures to go with the text than I worked at writing the damn text. 

Though the consolation was that I got to speak / write to some of the biggest names of the country's film industry.

Some of the experiences were quite sad.

Some of them were very exciting. 

"I have selected the stills but I have to show them to Mani-sir once before I send them."
"Mani-sir? Mani Ratnam?"
"Yes, sir. He's on a location recce. He will be back on Tuesday."
"Location? Where?"
"I can't tell you, sir..."

Like the time I wrote to the CEO of a production house if he can share photographs or storyboards from an unmade film of theirs. And he replied... 

It is interesting that you are considering ***** in your chapter of 'unmade films' since it is back in development and therefore, we won't be able to share any related material. The tagline on the poster says pretty much everything we want to say at this point. I won't be able to comment on the plot right now.

These responses more than made up the frustration of having wait endlessly with some other houses.

Achha, all that is fine... but what is it going to be called? 

That is a million-dollar question. The 'working title' was The Book of Bollywood Lists which - while accurate and descriptive - wasn't likely to attract too many readers.

I asked the readers of this blog for names and I had some very interesting suggestions like: 

- Bolly Mera Naam 

- Matinee Matters

- Cine Maa: The Mother of Bollywood Lists

- BollyListic: 50 Bollywood Lists

- BollyFan: A Fan's Handbook to Bollywood

- Hi Fi List: Trivia from Hindi Films 

But the name (or part of it) that was suggested by the most number of people and because it is from a film that I just love, the name finally is (drum roll):

KITNAY AADMI THAY: COMPLETELY USELESS BOLLYWOOD TRIVIA. 

So, there... we have a name, we have almost fixed the designer for the cover and we are gunning for a May 2012 release - coinciding with the beginning of celebrations around 100 Years of Bollywood. (Yup, Raja Harishchandra released in May 1913 and Bollywood is gearing up to pay tribute for the entire year.)

Random Movies I Like: Shaan

Shaan - released five years after Sholay - holds the dubious distinction of being the movie that replaced its illustrious predecessor after a record-breaking run at Minerva. If it didn't, who knows? Sholay may still have been running there.
In terms of scale and grandeur, Shaan is about 10 times Sholay. If Sholay had everything, Shaan had everything 3G-enabled, wrinkle-free, loaded with micro-sculpting serum and with extra dust-busters. But the way products with many features often don't succeed because they don't connect to their users, Shaan too remained a mere product and did not become an icon, everyone hoped - and maybe even expected - it to be.

I love the scale of Shaan, its grandeur, its style. I like the way a filmmaker's passion for mounting a memorable product In short, I like the shaan of Shaan.

Sunil Dttt played the heroes' elder brother in the film, whose usual role in Hindi cinema is to die tragically so that the business end of the revenge drama can be taken up. Even he got two and a half kick-ass scenes before he was allowed to die.
He started off the film with a scene in which he diffused a hostage situation involving skyscraper construction sites, scaffolding, elevators and a massive water tank. Soon afterwards, he was kidnapped using 4 trailer trucks on a never-ending highway. And finally, he was chased by a packing of hunting dogs (shot from helicopters, trolleys, hand-helds and what not) before he was killed in a dreary seaside abyss. Wow!

The villain's den was on an island and was loaded with gizmos - completely on a different level altogether from the rocks of Ramanagaram.
The villain here also liked to play Russian Roulette with his untrustworthy henchmen but instead of ghumaoing the revolver's barrel, he ghumaoed the floor they stood on and ended the ordeal by depositing the errant one in the jaws of a salivating crocodile!
Like the scarily named Gabbar, the villain was the bald-headed Shaakaal - who chewed his words 32 times before allowing them to leave his lips to ensure better digestion of his messages. (Use this line to best demonstrate this: "Ab yeh zahreeli gas dheere dheere mehfil ko aur rangeen bana degi...")

Sholay - when launched - had one superstar couple, one major character actor, one heroine coming out of retirement and one unknown as second male lead. The villain was, of course, a debutant.
Shaan had substantially more star power with Amitabh Bachchan and Parveen Babi in 1980 probably being a bigger draw than Dharmendra-Hema in 1975. Shashi Kapoor was still a major star as was Sunil Dutt. Kulbhushan Kharbanda - after a stint with Shyam Benegal (Manthan, for example) - made his mainstream debut with style.
And the massive supporting casts of both films were studded with the who's who of Bollywood.

Shaan had phenomenal music - way better than Sholay. Sholay's real strength was its background score, supported by two big hits (Yeh dosti and Mehbooba).
Shaan - on the other hand - had a cracking title song (Doston se pyar kiya), a sort-of item number (Pyar karne wale), one romantic ditty (Jaanu mere jaan) and one prime example of that long-forgotten Bollywood furniture - the climax song (Yamma yamma).
If I go by the sheer popularity on FM radio channels, Shaan is one of RD Burman's most popular soundtracks, if not among his very best. It was the typical whistle-inducing, dance-floor-rocking soundtrack that still earns DJs their daily breads.

And finally, it had brilliant lines. Smart, cool lines. And nothing exemplifies the film better than my favourite line from the film.
When Parveen and Amitabh make a break after stealing a necklace during a brilliant song, he compliments her by saying: Samajh mein nahin aa raha hain aap ki gale ki taarif karoon ya aap ki haath ki, aap ki awaaz ki taarif karoon ya aap ki andaz ki, aap ki jeet ki taarif karoon ya aap ki haar ki.
Really, Shaan was such an overloaded film that you did not know what to praise. And it remains like a Dravid in the history of Bollywood - never appreciated enough but it is one of the most slick and entertaining films ever made.

So, let me end with a shot of the film from another film... you remember which one, don't you?

One

Being a father to a baby daughter is a daunting task. And full of contradictions.

On one hand, I get angry - no, make that livid - at insurance companies who want me to save for my son's education and daughter's wedding. On the other, I am more protective of my daughter than I ever was for my son. When my son was taken for his vaccinations, I held his legs down firmly as they poked him with needles. With my daughter, it almost brought tears to my eyes and I had to tell the other nurse to hold her.

On one hand, I hope - and pray - that she breaks all stereotypes and does not become a 'girl'. I hope she becomes something very macho like a Mechanical Engineer (ahem) or an Air Force pilot or something like that. On the other hand, I call her baby, shield her from sun in a car-ride and buy her pink dolls to play with.

On one hand, I promise to treat both my children equally and make no concessions for either. On the other hand, I let her get away with a lot more than my son ever did. My wife is convinced that I will let my daughter get away with murder and spoil her rotten as she grows up. I half-heartedly protest and promise myself this is not how it is going to be. But then, what do I know?

When my son turned one, I had written that he made me realise how strong I could be.
Over the last one year, my daughter made me realise how soft I really was.
I did not believe in love at first sight till I saw her. And I can't believe its been one year since I saw her first - swaddled in that green towel and with no nose or ears to speak of.
And in another blink of the eye, she will be standing before me with a man who will claim that he loves her more than I do.
Till that happens, I will enjoy my contradictions.

What do you do with a mother like mine?

I was entertaining myself today by posting silly Bollywood questions on Twitter and Facebook as an impromptu Friday Quiz.


The first question was very Google-able (since I did not know the answer myself). 
Who played Shukra in Satte Pe Satta? 

IMDb informs it is a gentleman by the name of Indrajeet (who's a very familiar face from 70s-80s Bollywood) though Pavan Jha (whose knowledge of Hindi cinema & music is ball-freezingly scary) thought it was Vimal Sahu and I usually side with him on these matters - IMDb or no IMDb!
BTW, you can check out Shukra in the picture (third from left) and add your comments.
And for future weekday-based quizzes, I have now prepared a cheat-sheet.


The second question was a little more Google-resistant. 
Chunnu chhabiley, Munnu hatiley, Chhotu rangeele, Gattu gathiley... who are these people?
The answers came thick and fast, though. For old people who know names like Shankar, Jaikishan, Rafi and Shammi, the answer is honking in the wind. For others, there is always YouTube.


The last question was impossible. Nobody attempted it, let alone even guess. When a dear friend's wife declared even my friend doesn't know, I decided to reveal the the answer to the question: In which film did the number 7396 play a pivotal role?
And I promptly got a scolding from my mother on Facebook "I knew the answer. Why did you give it out so fast?" Damn... of course, she knew. We saw this movie together and her memory in these matters is better than mine. 


Which reminded me of some of my past conversations or SMS exchanges with her.

SMS from me: Aradhana on Zee.

SMS reply: Watching MPK.

Mom: I thought Adnan Sami was married to Zeba Bakhtiar. Who is this Sabah now?

Me: He was first married to Zeba. This is his second marriage, which is now breaking.

Mom: Poor boy. Has a rather nasty luck for marriages.

Me giving her a copy of a new film magazine – Star Week – to her. After a while…

Mom: This is like Stardust of the olden days.

Me: This magazine is also from Nari Hira’s company.

Mom: Filmfare is rubbish. Except for their Awards issue, not one issue is worth reading.

Mom: Somebody slap Vijay Mallya. He is now maroing line on Katrina Kaif.

Me: Salman probably will.

Mom: But Salman and Katrina have split, I hear.

SMS from Me: Hey, there’s a show on Shakti Samanta happening on Times Now.

SMS reply: Oh yes, Total Recall. I know. About to switch on the TV. 


What, you still don't know the answer to 7396? Here, check it out. 7:00 onwards.
If my father had been around, he would have said, "7396 is square of 86. Who cares what film?"

Never Miss the End-credits

Just found out a treasure-trove of trivia from studying the credits of:

Om Shanti Om
We all know Farah Khan played an 'aggressive junior artiste' on the supposed sets of Karz. Apart from her, there were a host of technicians from the film who played bit parts.
Om's dead father (who only appeared in a picture in their shanty home) was Nakul Kamte, the sound designer.
The 'director' of the South-Indian 'Mind It' sequence was V Manikandan, the cinematographer.
A doctor on the sets of the burning village was Sabu Cyril, the production designer.
The director of Apaahij Pyar (the film in which OK played the triple-handicapped, Dard-e-Disco dancer) was Mayur Puri, the dialogue writer.
The screenplay writer (and SRK's hagiographer) Mushtaq Sheikh also appeared as a roadside sleeper, who interrupted SRK's passionate Filmfare-style drunken speech
And of course, the director of super-hero film (Mohabbat-Man) was Vishal Dadlani.

Guddi
A whole lot of stars appeared unbilled in the scenes where Guddi was given a tour of the sets.
In the credits, Rajesh Khanna, Pran, Om Prakash and Ashok Kumar were mentioned for 'friendly appearances'. I even found Nitin Mukesh among the Assistant Directors.
But the real star power was in the unbilled roster!  
Amitabh Bachchan was shooting a scene for Parwana.
Naveen Nischol was not shooting for Parwana (as I assumed earlier) but for something called Nadaan.
Shatrughan Sinha and Vinod Khanna were shooting for Mere Apne.
Biswajeet and Mala Sinha were shooting for an obscure film called Phir Kab Milogi (also directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee).
And if you are super-aggressive, hyper-obsessive trivia hunter, even dialogue director Biren Tripathy had a cameo (though I am unable to figure which one)!

Luck By Chance
You simply lose count of the stars in the interminable list  that follows 'Very Special Thanks'.
Manish Acharya, the writer of Loins of Punjab Presents, appeared as 'Junior Corporate' in Luck By Chance - one of the few people of the film fraternity who did not play himself in the film. He was the one who insisted that 'content in king' in Hollywood and wanted to look at 'properties'. ("Hollywood mein scripts ko property kehte hain...")
In a very cool sequence, the entire Bollywood brat pack spoke to the camera on why they couldn't accept the film Rishi Kapoor was producing.
Abhishek Bachchan said it would generate unnecessary controversy if he stepped in after Zaffar (Hrithik Roshan) moved out (and ended the meeting with "Dad said hi"). Viveik Oberoi said he has just done three dramatic roles and wanted to do something light. John Abraham wanted to do 'something experimental, you know' (which he did. No Smoking was directed by someone who had another cameo in LBC - Anurag Kashyap)! Ranbir Kapoor told Romi Rolly (Rishi Kapoor) "you are like a father to me" and agreed to start the film as soon as he had dates. In 2015.
And Akshaye Khanna never spoke. He thought and thought and thought...

Apart from these, you - of course - know that Salim Khan played Shammi Kapoor's friend in Teesri Manzil.
And Karan Johar made his acting debut in a television serial called Indradhanush (about a group of kids and the time machine they make).
Or Imran Khan has played the junior versions of his uncle in two films - QSQT and JJWS.
And a very slim & trim Subhash Ghai played Rajesh Khanna's friend in Aradhana - whose name was Prakash and his opening line "Pehle Prakash aata hain, phir Suraj nikalta hain" paved the way for Rajesh Khanna Mark II to appear in a blaze of glory. (Hey, did you guys read this?)

I wonder if there's any book where things like these are compiled. *nudge nudge wink wink*

The Zebra Stars

Recently, my friend Nilendu (whose blog is now defunct and cannot be linked to anymore) and I exchanged a few quick DMs on a subject that matched the usual standards of our eclectic standards. He suggested I do a post on white-striped wigs of Bollywood female leads. And while at it, I might as well throw in a couple of male leads as well!
So, here you go...
And before our wives ask, where the f*** do we get these ideas? I mean, really!

Hum
This has got to be the strangest 'zebra' with Amitabh becoming old with a solitary strand of white in his black mane

Sangeet
In one of her two roles, Madhuri Dixit played the elderly patron of dance while the younger MD was blind and pranced around on a nautanki stage. The elder MD was made to look distinguished with a 'dusting' of grey.

Yalgaar
When this film was made, Kabir Bedi must have been in his late-40s and Mukesh Khanna in his mid-30s. Kabir Bedi played father to Sanjay Dutt (in his early 30s) and Mukesh was Dyaaad to Feroze Khan (in his late 50s).
While Feroze and Sanjay sported snazzy, pitch-dark hair, Kabir and Mukesh were saddled with classic zebra wigs!

Khel
Mala Sinha wasn't the lead in this heist-caper of a film but her tufts of grey were too memorable to exclude!

Beta
Aruna Irani commandeered this film almost completely, matching Madhuri Dixit move for move, line for line. If she hadn't been handicapped with old age (as exemplified by her 'zebra'), she would have probably done a Dhak dhak as well!  

Aandhi
And finally, we have the most famous 'zebra' of Bollywood that could possibly be the most famous in this country's entire history as well. When Suchitra Sen played a charismatic woman politician, we couldn't think she played anybody else except...
Hell, even the name of the film rhymed with the famous surname!








Follow Nilendu on Twitter. He's currently on a mission to follow the '100 Smartest People on Twitter'. He does follow me but he pointed out his #Smartest100 is not with retrospective effect. Sigh. 

The Mine by Arnab Ray: A Review

I attended the Delhi launch of The Mine yesterday and had a good time. Arnab (a.k.a Greatbong) read Jaal's back-story from the book and ended the reading with the disconcerting revelation that every incident mentioned in the section (which described a riot situation) was true and had happened in India. During the reading, my wife was quite amused because of the rather colourful language that Arnab read out in the presence of his in-laws! 

After the reading, Arnab and Jai Arjun Singh discussed the lack of too many horror novels in India (probably because horror - made popular by Bollywood - in India isn't supposed to scary but quasi-funny), Arnab's influences (Agatha Christie, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe and even Mukesh Bhatt) and the cinematic quality of the book. 

I finished the book in one breathless burst and had tweeted my first reaction - "A mind-slashing thriller that grabs your balls and doesn't let go. Even after you finish it." And a few days on, that remains exactly my reaction.

The plot is about five shady characters being brought to a hi-tech mining facility ostensibly for expert advice and confronting their past in unimaginably gory ways. The book is written almost like a screenplay and instead of chapters, there are shorter 'scenes'. There are impressive 'dialogues' in true Bollywood style. The blurb ("The greatest evil lies deep inside.") is one such line. Another favourite of mine went something like this - "Necessity is the mother of invention. Cruelty is the father." The screenwriter's work is almost done here as the action moves breathtakingly fast and almost every 'scene' ends with a line conveying a deep sense of foreboding. 

Arnab opens up different strands of stories - sometimes innocuously - that get resolved so smartly that sometimes you have to go back to the earlier pages to confirm the sly detail he had slipped in. And the ones that he keeps unresolved are more of open strands, open to different kinds of interpretation rather than being merely loose ends.    

I also enjoyed how Arnab slipped in several references to popular culture and our growing-up years, which stood for something of a relief in the relentless bloodiness of the Mine.

A doctor named Anaida. Caligula, in the context of mass bestiality. Randeep Kalra, a film star who stood accused of rape by his maid. The concept of losing a talisman bringing about misfortune, made famous by the billa number 786 of Deewaar. The concept of ancient punishments being given a modern, wicked twist - made famous by South Indian director Shankar. 

Two acknowledged influences on the book are Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None as well as Mahabharat. One story is about a group of ten being meted out justice for their past sins. In the latter, the Mahaprasthan scene is all about the five brothers and their wife meeting their ends in a quest to go from darkness to light.  

The real horror of the story is - quite devastatingly - taken from our daily lives. Our day-to-day fears, paranoia, insecurities are exaggerated manifold to create a yarn that keeps coming back to you. Taking the visceral emotions of blood relationships (a father-daughter one, for example), Arnab twists them into a macabre tale and forces you to ask "what would I do in a situation like this?" 

And the horror is that the truth is not the answer you would like to hear. 

After I read the book, I had a reaction similar to the one demonstrated by Mr Krishnan Iyer MA in Agneepath (1990). Taking Vijay Chavan's son, he went around proudly proclaiming "mere family ka bachcha...". Coming from an earlier batch of Arnab's college, I also wanted to prance around saying the same. 

The bestselling novelist from Jadavpur University took a while to come but completely steamrolled the output from the IITs, now that it had! By the way, we of the Jadu bansha are no pushovers. Kunal Basu is also from our college, in fact from my department!

Dear Karan,

I am told that a production of yours that released today (and getting great reviews & collections) is a remake of the 1990 film, Agneepath. The media and people of this country are making this assumption because the names of the two films are same. But then, you produced a film called Dostana a few years back that had no resemblance to the story of the 1980 film of the same name.

I haven’t seen the latest Agneepath yet (and I don’t think I will, either). But the reviews – or more importantly in today’s Bollywood – the buzz seems to be quite positive. People, especially of the female persuasion, seem to have loved Hrithik Roshan’s ‘uber hot’ screen presence. The biggest praises are, however, reserved for Sanjay Dutt (playing Kancha Cheena) and Rishi Kapoor (playing Rauf Lala, who seems to be a new character). Nobody seems to have noticed Priyanka Chopra or missed Krishnan Iyer MA yet.

Which brings me to the question I want to ask you – why the hell are you calling this film a remake? Though to be fair, it is being said that Agneepath is not a ‘remake’ but a ‘tribute’… whatever that means. In that case, I must point out what – at least, what I feel – was the crux of the original Agneepath and what needed to be paid a tribute to.

When you pay tribute to an ‘angry’ film and the biggest pre-release buzz is about an item song, then one can safely say you’ve failed.

When the tribute is to a film with some of the most accomplished ‘dialogues’ in Bollywood and not a jot of the post-release chatter is about the lines the hero speaks, then you’ve failed.

When most people end up discussing Kancha Cheena’s unholy, hairless looks after the film and they don’t remember anything about the hero except the biceps, then you’ve failed spectacularly.

In paying a tribute, that is. I am sure that the film will succeed in every other way.

Also on a different level, the real Agneepath was about a producer’s courage.

Yash Johar took an ageing leading man and an insignificant heroine to lead his film. The leading man was known for his voice but for this film, but it replaced with a rasping, new voice. The hero was said to be nearly 37 years in the old. And the hero died a bloody death at his mother’s feet when all of Bollywood was singing ‘saanson ki zaroorat hain jaise…’ and riding into the sunset.

You pay a tribute to this risk by taking on Bollywood’s most conventional leading man and the No. 2 heroine. You then take on Bollywood’s No. 1 heroine to dance to one sizzling number, for good measure. And you promote the hell out of the song, using the money you’ve saved from not having to hire a dialogue writer.  

You could’ve made exactly the same film and called it Inteqaam or some such. I think the film would have been just as successful and the old fogeys (we, 35+ year old viewers and the producer of the original) wouldn’t have felt so restless.

Wishing you great success in all your films –

Dipta

(My earlier post on Agneepath - here.)

'Bad' Films

This post is that obvious publicity gimmick in today's Bollywood - the sequel (or the remake).
Even if you make a film that has a passing resemblance to an earlier classic, it is cool (and probably profitable) to call it a 'remake'. So, you have a remake of Agneepath - a film on the world's most articulate, angry, not-so-young man - that features only an item number (and a fleeting bedroom scene) in its promos.
For me, Agneepath (remake) is a bad film.
And this post is a genuine sequel of an earlier post on Bad Songs.

I define a bad film as one that fraudulently creates expectations contrary to its content. (I wrote about it some time back. For me, Aakarshan is a bad film because it bored me to death and tried to sneak in a story while only promising sizzling 'hot scenes'. Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna pretended to be a 'serious look' at marital infidelity while it was a comic-book on the topic.)
 
There is, however, another kind of films.. the So Bad Its Good (SoBig) genre. Just as one man's Kurosawa is another man's Kanti Shah, one woman's Bad is another woman's SoBig. Actually, one man's Good might be another man's Bad and yet another man's SoBig. While most people would puke in their own shirt pocket rather than watch Benaam Badshah, some people actually watch it willingly and even like it.

Whatever the label the film might be saddled with, there are increasingly large number of people who are willing to come out and say out aloud how much they love Mohan Bhakri. As I noted in an earlier post on Kanti Shah, it was not possible earlier. The ease of finding like-minded people on the great World Wide Web makes it possible for us to confess our guilty pleasures with confidence.

This post (and the long-winded introduction) was prompted by the latest issue of Open magazine, which contains a treatise on - what they call - C-grade cinema, profiling purveyors of this genre and their reasons for liking them.And I thought this is as good a reason as any to list down some of my favourite articles on good films, bad films and ugly films. Only the same film can be classified in each of the three categories by three different people.
So, here are five of my favourite articles on personal choices in Bollywood.

The first one is by Suketu Mehta, who wrote in The New York Times on why Indians loved movies. It had some of the pithy generalisations that become inevitable when explaining the concept of an ichhadhari nagin to an American audience but overall, the happiness and pride of seeing a second-grade school production in Brooklyn set to the music of Lagaan!

Anupama Chopra claims that having to review all films every week is a dirty job but somebody has to do it. She retains her sanity by remembering the really bad ones. And laughing out loud at Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyun. She - in a moment of possible blasphemy - laughs at Jimmy as well, possibly causing deep anguish to the devotees of Prabhuji.
Bonus Article: Her undying love affair, for the treasure trove of stories that abound around Bollywood.

Sandipan Deb recounts his love affair with Hindi cinema - which began with almost suicidal passion but had to meander and end because it remained one-sided for the most part of it. All of us would have given our all to the cause of Bollywood and only a few are lucky enough to have something to show for it.

One of the few people who do indeed have something to show for their childhood passion is Dibakar Banerjee. If a skinny Bong from Karol Bagh had to hold the attention of the likes of Conan the Barbarian of East Patel Nagar, he had to commandeer his entire learning gleaned from cinema shows at Liberty. The greatest screenwriter of our times honed his skills on Bus C2 and told us all about it.

And finally, you have Bollywood's hottest young Turk telling us about his guilty pleasures that made him the director that he is today. Anurag Kashyap is our Quentin Tarantino - who not only walks the far edges of creativity but eggs (and even funds) proteges to do the same. He should have named his article Tarantino Dhishum Dhishum!

Lovely, no?