Tag Archives: Peepli Live

Jan 5 2011

Bollywood Wishlist

 

Expectations from the Hindi Film Industry in the next decade

Tabu in The Namesake

A lot has changed in Bollywood in the last decade and most of it for good. While bad films continued to pour in like a plague, there were many innovations and experiments that took the ‘industry’ to the next level…

Good writing finally gained the importance it deserves; casting started happening according to the characters and not based on the star power, and of course the technical improvements; Bollywood flicks covered a lot of ground in the last ten years. Specifically in 2010, the industry woke up to the power of small films that shadowed the biggies and hope this trend continues where content is the king. However, with so many improvements, there are still some irritants that we can do without.

Here’s my wish-list for Bollywood in the next decade:

Better roles for better actors: There are many good actors but a lot of times they do not get the right roles to play due to silly factors like star camps, favoritism and the actors’ own choices. Case in point Rani Mukherji, a supremely talented actress who did not get any powerful roles post 2005 when she was seen in Black, Bunty aur Babli and Paheli. Hopefully No One Killed Jessica works for her and she gets better films than the Hadippas andChunari Ka Daags of the world.

Similarly for Amitabh Bachchan, it is time that he only takes up quality work and avoids films like Teen Patti, Aladinand God Tussi Great Ho. Another fine actress, Tabu deserves better roles; her performances in Maqbool, Cheeni Kum and Chandni Bar were outstanding and with The Namesake, she garnered international acclaim. She has been signed on by none other than Ang Lee for his ambitious 3D project, Life of Pi; let’s hope that Bollywood also wakes up again to her talent.

Click here to read full post that appeared on nowrunning.com on January 3.

 

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Dec 7 2010

Small Films, Big Impact

 

Low budget films worked where star studded mega-budget ventures failed in 2010

Tere Bin Laden; Source: Wikipedia

Every year there are mega-budget Bollywood films that shatter existing box office records but unfortunately there are only a handful of them; for every blockbuster like Dabangg, there is a mega-dud like Kites also.

Then there are big commercial hits that are so bad that their success can only be termed as embarrassing. As usual, this year also had a mix of such films, more debacles than successes in terms of the content or the box office performance. However, this year, we saw a number of small budget films where the content was the ultimate winner and they performed decently well commercially also; keeping in mind their low production costs and revenues through theatrical run and satellite rights.

It would be right to say that 2010 belongs to these well made gems that delivered on the promise of good cinema.

Topping my list is director, Vikramaditya Motwane’’s debut film Udaan. Click here to read full post on nowrunning.com where the article originally appeared on December 5, 2010.