Browsing: Cinema

Indian Cinema, masala movies, Bollywood, interviews & videos with Indian stars & filmmakers.

f you’re a woman, ‘Lipstick Under my Burkha’ will certainly speak to you, no matter whether you’re a big city girl or a small town woman. After all, we all may not have worn physical burkhas, but nearly every woman has had to wear a mental burkha – a metaphorical confinement, a cover to who she really is.

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Once in a blue moon, these stars descend to earth and actually come and mingle – somewhat – with the common man, the diehard fan. This happened in the hot month of July, when IIFA came to New York and New Jersey with a whole gaggle of stars from Salman Khan to Katrina Kaif to Alia Bhatt.

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‘The Big Sick’ is a story for our times and what makes it kind of cool is that it’s a real life story – it actually happened and is not the figment of someone’s imagination. Yes, immigration, love, breakup and marriage, sickness and coma, terrorism and multiculturalism all come into it but it’s always upbeat, always funny. Big ambitious topics for a sweet little romantic tale but ‘The Big Sick’ pulls it off.

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Ritesh Batra proves himself adept at distilling people’s lives, no matter what their background. He captures, as in his previous film ‘The Lunchbox’, the minutiae of ordinary lives superbly, the subtle touches, a glance, a gesture. He manages to convey the complexities of the novel in the short span of the movie

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‘Growing Up Smith’ will surely hit a sweet spot – almost every Indian immigrant child has a memory of being the only brown-skinned student in the class, the one with the unpronounceable name and a lunch box from which emanated curry smells. ‘Growing Up Smith’ is a love poem to all those little kids who struggled to become ‘American’ and tried to straddle two cultures.

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Disney’s ‘The Hundred-Foot Journey’ is produced by Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and Juliet Blake and directed by Lasse Hallström; it has the music of maestro AR Rahman and the beauty of South of France; it’s a delightful comedy with enough gourmet food in it to get the mouths of all foodies watering, with Manish Dayal as the young culinary genius Hassan.
In this film Dayal gets to interact with topnotch stalwarts like the remarkable Helen Mirren – and the equally wonderful Om Puri, both embroiled in quite a rowdy Indo-French food fight. A report on the special tribute to Om Puri at the Museum of the Moving Image.

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‘Lion’ is a wonderful film which shows us that even the most nightmarish journeys can end well and if there’s a will, there’s a way to recover the past, to return home. Based on the compelling true story of Saroo Brierley who was lost as a child, the film tracks the journey the five-year-old must undertake alone in a relentless, uncaring world.

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She’s out of sight but not out of our minds – we’re talking of none other than the bubbly, ever vibrant superstar Madhuri Dixit. Well, here are some nuggets from a brief but fun interview she gave to me during her New York visit. What comes through is her warmth and easiness as she adapts avidly to a very un-Bollywood lifestyle.

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Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ -There could be few better ways to spend 170 minutes – it’s like traveling in an air-conditioned spaceship to another dimension where there is only beauty, youth and wealth. Jobs, work and family hassles don’t exist – it’s the proverbial Bollywood NRI golden life – dance, music, money.

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Rarely do you get to see that strong silent stunner Ajay Devgn in person. And when he’s accompanied by his wife, the wonderful Kajol, that’s a double bonus! The two celebrities were in New York in September to promote Ajay’s new film ‘Shivaay’ and the press got to meet them at a luncheon at the Pierre on Fifth Avenue

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Far from the 3 hour plus Bollywood extravaganzas, this little film is just 89 minutes but it packs a punch. It is in Marathi and set in small-town India where both lives and dreams are modest. 1000 Rupee Note is about the cost of being human, the price set on values.

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