Friday 28 December 2012

Dance with Dad, Sing with Son

Hema Malini had a great achievement of working as a heroine opposite to Raj Kapoor, his two younger brothers and his two sons! Now, that was indeed covering three generations of heroes on the silver screen. Right from Sapno ka Saudagar(1968) opposite Raj Kapoor, she featured against the youngest brother Shashi in Abhinetri(1970), middle brother Shammi in Andaaz(1971) to Raj’s eldest son Randhir in Haath ki safai(1974) and then much later in the 80s against Raj’s second son Rishi in Ek chadar maili si.



Saturday 15 December 2012

Alarming Decline in Periodical Patriotic Movies

In 2001, Gadar and Lagan were released on the same day, with the similar patriotic doses and still became super duper hits without eating each other’s pie out. Kargil war was just over and the patriotic sensation in the country was very high. The spirit continued for a couple of  years more with a string of Bhagat Singh movies released and some more genuine patriotic doses like LOC Kargil(2004), Swadesh(2004) and Mangal Pandey(2005).
It is very obvious now that periodical patriotic movies are at the ebb currently. Even though there had been some major attacks in India post-2005, like the Pune blast, The Mumbai attacks etc, the number of patriotic movies made were very thin and number of them running successfully, even thinner. Rather, NRI lifestyle, post-marital love stories or even sometimes justifying terrorism (New York) or befriending enemies (Main Hoon Na, Ek Tha Tiger) have become the order of the day. Genuine attempts of depicting sacrifices during the freedom struggle stumbled at the box office- Khele Hum Jee Jaan Se(2010) and Chittagong(2012)- both based upon the Great Chittagong Uprising of the 1930s against the British- failed to create any movement at the box office whatsoever. One may argue about the quality of them as movies, but, then, I fail to see anything more special in the older lot of J P Dutta and Anil Sharma movies which made bucks at the B.O on patriotism.


Friday 7 December 2012

Ek hi mara par solid mara...

There have been many albums which were dominated by a single artist. Talk of Ijazat where none but Asha Bhosle was the only singer with a string of solos to her credit. You will also find albums like Teesri Manzil where you will find Mohd Rafi in each and every song, some solos and some duets with Asha Bhosle. There are some albums, where in spite of being various artists, one artist emerged out as the dominant voice- Lata Mangeshkar in Madhumati, Manna De in Basant Bahar, Mukesh in Anand or Kishore Kumar in Safar are just some of the examples.
However, there have been certain instances where a singer had only one song in a whole album but that song emerged out to be the winner out of all the other songs in that album. In Hindi, we term this as “Ek maara par solid maara”. Can you think of such instances in Hindi film music? Let me help you a bit in your thinking process: