Bollywood Raj- The History Of Bollywood

Bollywood seems to be one of the reasons why India is so prominent on the global map.

True, there are other reasons for it but none of them are as glamorous as the world of Lights, Camera, Action! Bollywood has nowadays become synonymous with instant celebrityhood.

Bollywood has witnessed a lot of progress from its nascent years. It has been continuously evolving, at times for the better and at times just to deteriorate. Such is the power of Bollywood that it can make or break a man in a matter of days. Bollywood fascinates one and all; it has captivated the hearts of millions of viewers in India and abroad.

Talk of Bollywood and you get to hear of nepotism, the ill famed casting couch, fickle arrogant actors and et cetera. But all this still fails to take away the sheen from the lustrous Bollywood.

Bollywood had humble beginnings. Raja Hrishchandra was the first silent feature film made way back in 1913. Ardeshir Irani’s Alam Ara (1931) was the first sound film. This was just the beginning of what would later become revered as Bollywood. It has seen a monstrous growth ever since.

Almost every child has nurtured dreams of becoming a Shah Rukh Khan or an Aishwarya Rai. Hundreds make their annual pilgrimage to Bollywood with dreams of achieving stardom. Hundreds come and hundreds go, and a select few stay. The great Indian Bollywood saga is more enchanting than a fairy tale, spicier than Indian food.

Think Bollywood and what first comes to mind is the good Samaritan hero, the poor damsel in distress, unending song and dance routines, slapstick comedies, the bad villain who will be slaughtered by the good hero, the mad in love couple and there stern unreasonable parents and the rich boy poor girl in love story.

But like everything else in the cosmos, Bollywood too refuses to be categorized into a tight genre and often, a brave man willing to take a few risks ventures out into unsheltered territory to make a masterpiece. In the recent past, we have seen incredible movies like Lagaan, Taare Zameen Par, Chak De! India, Rang De Basanti which went on a path less travelled.

Bollywood’s evolution with time can provide enough fodder for a million books to be written, odes to be sung or dung bombs to be hurled.

Till 1960, most of the Bollywood movies were black and white.

Melodramas and over the top musicals were the order of the day. In 1930s, movies like Toofan Mail, Devdas, Pukar set the bandwagon rolling.

1940s saw movies like Shaheed, Barsaat, Mahal, Andaaz etc shine at the box office. At that time, stars like Ashok Kumar, Nargis, Dilip Kumar, Nimmi, and Madhubala ruled the roost. In the beginning, women from “good families” did not dare venture into the labyrinths of Bollywood. Actresses were generally those women who were going through hard times and had to support their families.

Come1950s and movies like Mother India, Aan, Chalti ka Naam Gaadi, Baazi, Awara, Sujata, Do Aankhen Barah Haath, Kagaz Ke Phool, Chori Chori, and Shree 420 saw the light of the day. All these movies were dramas which threw light on the vulnerability of humans and the trials, tribulations and subsequent rise of the underdog. Nargis and Raj Kapoor and their alleged affair provided a lot of fuel to the gossip mongers and their firehouse chemistry also set the screens on fire.

1960s ushered in movies like Mughal-E-Azam,Guide, Aradhana, Sahib Bibi aur Gulaam, An evening in Paris etc. Mughal-e-Azam broke box office records for the highest grossing film till 1975. It played upon the conscience of the Indian cinema lover. The love story of the demure Aanarkali and Jahangir and fate’s cruelty to them had everyone mesmerized. In fact, even today, we can sometimes hear people sing “Jab Pyaar Kiya Toh Darna Kya”.The song almost became an alternative anthem for Indians.

Arundathi - Movie Review

Forum was no longer a happy place after Kslp left to USA. An year long separation was becoming very difficult for either parties. So much was it's agony that it burnt itself throwing the movie lovers out of the PVR half way into the their movie. With the events taking a serious turn, he had to come back to Bangalore and here he was this Monday. So, he had to call upon the PVR and that couldn't wait till the weekend. As PVR extended the invitation with 'Arundathi' on the cards, he was unstoppable and so was me with it's mention. Yesterday night, we did reach there well before 10 P.M and rushed off to the ticket counter.

With Kslp not wanting to miss even the trailers and the ads that run before the movie, we walked in soon. After the first ad, I got a blank face when I asked him what it was. Actually, I can't deny the anticipation that exists for the movie trailers that are played before the movie. Probably because they challenge our imagination to build the movie from a 2 minute teaser.


And so the movie started to a crowd that wanted to save some bucks by watching it on a weekday. Soon as the movie opened with Sathi pandu (Satyanarayana) walking into his house, I was anticipating his death. That's of course what happens when you walk into the theater knowing it's gonna be a horror movie. When Sathi stayed alive even after 5 minutes into the movie, it wasn't horror anymore. The introduction of Arundathi is awesome. Alas, the three second introduction is followed by a five minute stupid song. Even before i get back to senses, there's another tiny song that has nothing but the word 'Jejamma'(Yes, just keep reciting it in rythm). Anushka didn't completely justify her character. Especially the song where she had to dance to the sound of drums. Sonu Sood is at his best in is role if not for too loud voice lent for him. The music in the movie doesn't accentuate the horror levels at all. It probably pacified the scenes that are horrifying in visuals. Sayaji Shinde is ok in his role. The movie is good if you don't walk in with too much of expectations. But if you do, reading all the reviews that crowned it, you might come a bit disappointed.

Apart from that, watching it on a week day did no good for us. Having given 500 bucks for couple of tickets at the counter, we forgot to take back the change. That's spending 250 bucks for each ticket that costs 120 bucks. I only realized it this morning when i was looking for the change. At least, i could manage to pay for the coconut. And on the way back home we had to brave the cold without the gear.

Koncham Istam Koncham Kastam - Movie Review

Here I sit down to write the review of this movie with Pradeep and Subba sitting on either sides, the one with whom I have watched the movie today afternoon at Fame Cinemas in Lido Mall.

The movie opens with Subramanyam(Nazar) trying to convince Geetha(Tammanna) for her higher studies in Hyderabad. Actually that’s where we walked into the theater after a slight delay in the food court. So there goes the heroine to Hyd staying with Gachi Bowli Diwakar(Brahmam) and studying in a college where Rajya Lakshmi(Ramya Krishna) is a professor. Ramya’s son Siddu(Siddharth) is a flirt like any other hero in half of the love stories. After initial aversion towards siddu, Geetha falls for him in no time.

It ain't easy to recollect the story of the first half. Probably because there isn’t much going on with respect to it. However, the whole half moves on so pleasantly with abundant humour sprinkled into it. At least for the first half, I have to deny that this is a serious one. Most of the scenes that involve Brahmam, Venu Madhav and Siddharth leaves the audience in splits. There are plenty of times that I laughed out loud to the frustration of friends sitting besides me.

The second half of the movie moves fine for a while but gets to test the patience as the movie progresses. It appeared to be dragged towards the end and the scenes that unite Siddu’s parents look far from convincing.

Over all there are many lovely scenes that are humorous. The cinematography deserves a pat. The whole movie is very colorful and a treat to the eyes. Prakash Raj as Siddu’s father is apt for the role while Ramya’s role as Siddu's mother wasn’t etched right. Siddharth and Tamanna excel in their roles. If not for the end that dragged, this would have been an awesome one.

Not easy to write when the one on the right(Pradeep) keeps criticizing every word and line that I write.

Dev D

It was the Wednesday night. It was 9:10 P.M. We were in our home and there was just another 50 minutes for the movie to begin in PVR. We didn't have the tickets. Booking tickets before hand was deemed unnecessary for a weekday by Kslp. As we geared up to have our dinner, he reminded me of how the movie would rock after a couple of drinks and so in the next 10 minutes, i gulped down a couple along with some roti and rice before we rushed off to PVR. Soon as we entered into the parking lot, Uttam and Venky went ahead to the theaters to book tickets. As we took the parking ticket and started looking for space, the message reached us. There were no tickets for the show. That's when the burn in the gut started to surface.. Well, with nothing to do, we returned back after paying for the parking without even parking :) The next day, tickets were booked online in advance and we reached INOX, Jayanagar in time for the 10 P.M show.


The story is no different from the original Devdas except for a sweet surprise that you would love to watch on screen. The movie mostly revolves around Dev (Abay Deol) running after his Paro(Mahi Gill) till the little misunderstandings and his ego leave him high(actually low) on drinks and drugs in the streets of Delhi. From the other way comes Chanda played beautifully by Kalki Koechlin, caught in a MMS sex scandal leaving her parents distraught and ending up in the same streets of Delhi as a sex worker when left with no other path to take.

I have nothing but praises for the movie. It isn't just one or two departments that excelled. Everything in the movie is a work of perfection. The first thing that i liked about the movie is the music. The music is awesome and the songs don't abruptly give a break to the narration. Running in the background, they elevate the narration. Next come the visuals. They are just amazing and am sure that everyone would love it. Even with such brilliant visuals through out the whole movie, there are certain scenes that stand out amidst all. All the characters are perfect and Abay stands out. I can't think of any one who could carry the role the same way he did. There can be a time where you could feel that the second half is losing it's pace, but it would bounce back in no time.

Unless you are taken aback by the explicit sexual content in it, it's just impossible to stop falling in love with the movie. To me, the movie just tells one thing. Love can happen to anyone at any time and any times. :)

13b

Vikram K Kumar's 13B did what a horror movie needs to do – gave goosebumps at every turn in the first half. It is shot in monochrome and the background score puts a chill into the mundane.

But as it moves into flashback mode and an agitated Madhavan tries to save his family, there are too many twists and the story starts losing credibility.  The story is all over the place and the eerie quality created right at the start is soon forgotten.

An abnormally happy joint family (do they even exist these days?), move into a posh apartment numbered 13B.  The milk curdles daily; Manu’s (Madhavan) pics taken on his camphone inside the apartment are always distorted; they can’t drive a nail in the puja room; the elevator never works only for Manu forcing him to take the stairs (terrifying indeed!!!); the neighbour’s dog refuses to enter their apartment and the television automatically switches to channel 13 at 13:00 hours to a program that is exclusively aired for their family.

Though the women in the house are ga-ga over the show Sab Khairiyat Hai, it is only Manu who realizes that their life is dictated by that show.  He drags into this supernatural mess, his police officer friend Shiva and starts putting together the pieces. A gory massacre of a family; a murderer still out free while the family’s mentally ill brother (Deepak Dobriyal) is accused of the crime; a spurned lover and the television’s part in the crime is what they uncover.

The blindman and the rest of the cast’s roles were trivial while Madhavan was the only one with something to do in the movie.

Give it a miss. Doesn’t captivate.

Kisse Pyaar Karoon

Banner	K Sera Sera
Genre	Comedy
Year	2009
Cast	Arshad Warsi, Ashish Choudhary, Yash Tonk, Aarti Chabbria, Shweta Menon and Udita Goswami
Director	Ajay Chandok
Music Director	Dabboo Malik

Sitting through this inane film is an absolute torture and one should consider himself lucky he comes out of the hall without a headache.

The film throws together an apology of a plot, hamming actors, plenty of double innuendo dialogues, badly picturised songs and a director who doesn’t know his job. If this all has not put off you already about the film then read ahead what this mega torture is all about. 

Thick friends Arshad Warsi, Yash Tonk and Ashish Choudhary are good for nothing overgrown college kids (???) who have their own unique (?) characteristics! 

While Arshad finds tremendous glee in pornography, Yash Tonk is completely his opposite as he simply hates girls. Ashish is madly in love with Aarti Chabbria but she doesn’t care a hoot about him. To make him smile, Arshad and Yash hook him up with Udita Goswami. But Udita is instrumental in distancing him away from his best friends. 

She feels Arshad and Yash spell no class and Ashish is better off from them. To turn things around for the better for themselves, they bring in a prostitute Chameli aka Julie (Shweta Menon). Udita’s underworld don brother, Shakti Kapoor too joins in to spoil the fun. What chaos it all leads to forms the rest of the film.

Few minutes into the film and you will realize the makers clearly have aimed it for the masses who frequent single screens in the B and C centers. The crass language used by the characters and the pathetic screenplay is enough for anyone to lose his cool and demand his money back for unleashing insufferable pain in the name of entertainment. 

The basic plot is lifted from Hollywood comedy Saving Silverman which in turn was also the main theme of 2008’s flop comedy De Taali starring Ritesh Deshmukh, Aftab Shivdasani and Ayesha Takia. But here instead of capitalising on a fairly okay plot the makers have messed it for the worse. The laughs fall flat and songs attempt to put you off to sleep. But wait! the background music is loud enough to keep you off from even dozing off! Ajay Chandok who gave us yet another pathetic comedy before, Nehle Pe Dehla still hasn’t learnt his ropes about direction it seems. Anything happens anytime with lack of direction visible clearly! 

Karma Aur Holi

Banner	Saregama
Genre	Drama
Year	2009
Cast	Sushmita Sen, Randeep Hooda, Drena DeNiro, Naomi Campbell, Suresh Oberoi, Rati Agnihotri, Suchitra Krishnamoorthy and Deepal Shaw
Director	Manish Gupta
Music Director	Raju Singh and Vishal Bhardwaj

produced by legendary Hollywood actor Robert De Niro’s daughter Drena De Niro, Karma Aur Holi (earlier titled Karma Confessions and Holi) is not your typical NRI flick that tries to force the message down your throat about how better India is than the USA or how one is struggling to find his own identity in the land of Uncle Sam, but then it is again not a very engaging film that can be you focused for its two hour running time.

Meera (Sushmita) is a financial consultant cum yoga teacher and her hubby Dev (Hooda) runs publishing house. They have a great huge house and everything seems to be going picture perfect or is it really? 

They plan to throw a Holi bash for their friends and relatives at their new mansion and all the guests assemble the evening before the Holi party. Amongst them are Meera’s ever worrying sister Vani (Rati) and her mature hubby Shekhar (Oberoi) and their 17 year old son Vikram (Chandan), there is a male chauvinist Dr Nimish with his docile wife Sujata (Suchitra) and her sister Preeti (Deepal), there is Meera’s wannabe filmmaker friend Javed (Armin Amiri) and his girlfriend Jennifer (Naomi), Dev’s associate Geentanjali (Maya) and Meera’s tarot reader friend Megan (Drena).

As the evening begins to unfold, skeletons start tumbling out of each of these characters’ bags and leads to complicated situations. How those close to them and around them get affected by these and what solutions come out of them when the Holi day arrives forms the rest of the film. 

The concept of the film is nice but it hasn’t really been developed much. Lack of creative writing is seen at every step. The film tends to get too much talkative with nothing much happening beyond the four walls of the mansion. Then again, most of the problems or dilemmas faced by the characters are plain clichéd like for example the MCP Dr Nimish and his docile wife track. You very well guess it that towards the end she is going to walk out on him in the end. 

But what keeps you some what attentive is the acting. Sushmita Sen rocks with her no pretentious NRI accent act. She is perhaps the most loveable thing in the film. Also, her topless act in the shower followed by her smoochathon with Randeep gets many wolf whistles in the auditorium. 

Shilpa’s pre-Holi bash for Rajasthan Royals

Shilpa Shetty who is currently in Jaipur to shoot a special music album for her team Rajasthan Royals will be back in Mumbai on March 10th to celebrate the festival of colours with her team.

Shilpa confirms, “Yes I will be back on March 10 to celebrate the big festival. It will be a pre-Holi celebration but without colors.” The celebrations will take place at Grand Hyatt, Mumbai and there will be everything including music, food and the complete Holi delicacies, informs Shilpa.

Shilpa also tells us that she is all set to face competition. She informs that more than anything else her focus will be on the game and her team’s performance. She is also excited about the unveiling of her team’s new jerseys in Jaipur.

Currently shooting for an album with director Ken Ghosh Shilpa informs that the song has been sung by Sunidhi Chauhan and choreographed by Ahmed Khan.

Imran can fight, saala!

What mamu Aamir Khan can do, bhanja Imran Khan can aspire to copy. For starters, the boy’s taking his role as an actor just as seriously as Aamir does.

So when producer Dhilin Mehta signed Imran for director Soham Shah’s action-adventure Luck opposite childhood friend Shruti Hassan, Imran decided to get into the skin of the character. For that, this is what he did: three months of strict dieting, body building, cable training, sky and deep-sea water diving, and more than that, preparing himself mentally to do dangerous stunts for the film.

“We were canning the climax with a fight scene on a burning train. I would have used a duplicate but, to my surprise, Imran was standing above the flaming train ready to give the shot,” said Soham. The producer had to be convinced by Imran to let him do the stunts himself. “He had to jump off a moving plane onto the train where massive explosions were taking place and do the fight scene. Imran did it in just three takes,” informed Soham. “He told me, ‘I will do it myself — a duplicate won’t look convincing.’ He is a determined boy.”

The film co-stars Sanjay Dutt, Mithun Chakraborthy, Danny Denzongpa and Ravi Kisshen. We are wondering why Sanju Baba allowed Imran to go ahead and do the shot without a double. When they made Kidnap together, Dutt not only forbade the young actor for attempting stunts himself, but also called Aamir and gave the mamu a piece of his mind.

Karan parties Hollywood style!

SRK’s close brush with Holly-town beauties wasn’t enough, his best buddy, Karan Johar’s super-stylish way is no less than our Western counterpart (assuming the Holly-Bolly much-awaited shaadi has happened, finally).

Post the grand Idea Filmfare Awards night, Karan threw a big bash for all the filmis at a suburban hotel. So very Oscarish, huh? When KJo hosts a party, all the movie makers and shakers turn up in huge numbers. There were the usual suspects (SRK-Gauri, Saif-Kareena, Karisma, Lara-Dino, Priyanka-Shahid, Ritiesh, Genelia, Arjun-Mehr, Uday Chopra, Parmeshwar Godrej) plus more glitterati that rocked the party.

Of course, it was minus paparazzi, so the stars could let their hair down without making any news splash. Ah, the poor photogs! The goss is that Karan plans to hosts a post-awards party every year; the filmi folks loved it so much that they’re insisting that he starts this trend. By the time we’re ready for the next awards, well, we think he’ll have a few Hollywood divas on the guest list, too. Yeh toh hona hi hai. Right KJo?

In the News

Two otherwise sober actors - Irrfan Khan and Divya Dutta – have shot , perhaps the longest ever, a lip-locked scene in Bollywood. The scene was shot in Kerala sometime ago. Though both Irrfan and Divya had reservations about shooting the scene initially, as it was very long and passionate lip-lock and that too in the presence of the entire unit. However, they had to do it on the advice of the film's director. The director, Jennifer Lynch, instructed them to remain in that position and not to break the lip-lock until she asked them to do so. Incidentally, Irrfan has done it again but earlier it wasn't that long, after 'Namesake'. He says he has shot it for the film's sake
To allay the actors' fears, the director assured them that the same would be shot aesthetically! Justifying his passionate act, Irrfan Khan says that it was the need of the script. "In the film we both go through some crisis and the love-making scene happens after that", he adds. Isn't it amazing that the film that stars bold and sexy Mallika Sherawat in a venomous 'nagin' avatar, has the sober actors like Irrfan and Divya getting raunchy! Pity Irrfan and Divya!