Chamko – Fixes all spots

चमको - Fixes all spots

A topical in context of the ongoing IPL spot fixing brouhaha. This is from one of the most fondly remembered scenes from Sai Paranjpye’s very loveable 1981 comedy Chashme Buddoor. Watch in the video embedded below.

Inside the original Bombay Talkies (photograph from 1942)

Inside the original Bombay Talkies (photograph from 1942)

The 2013 movie Bombay Talkies couldn’t live up to the standards set by the original Bombay Talkies, the film studio founded by Himanshu Rai in 1934, at the then remote Bombay suburb of Malad. In two decades of its functional existence, Bombay Talkies produced tens of landmark films, the biggest of them was, of course, [...]

100 years of Indian cinema: The big Bollywood poster collage

100 years of Indian cinema: The big Bollywood poster collage

Phata poster, nikle saikro hero (heroine aur villain bhi) If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed the grey background image on my profile page and the Technicolor version is the cover image of Cutting the Chai’s Facebook page. This collage is made up of 782 Bollywood posters, most of them hand-painted (the [...]

Bombay Talkies: Only Anurag Kashyap’s Murabba gets the taste right

Bombay Talkies: Only Anurag Kashyap's Murabba gets the taste right

Wasn’t Bombay Talkies supposed to be a celebration of the 100 years of Indian cinema? Then what was Karan Johar’s Ajeeb Dastaan Hain Yeh doing in there? A mere insertion of a hit number from the yesteryears and a character with a roomful of vintage film music, doesn’t make it a tribute to cinema. Irrespective [...]

Meet the original Revolver Rani from 1971 – Vijayalalitha

Meet the original Revolver Rani from 1971 - Vijayalalitha

Kangana Ranaut is playing the title role of Revolver Rani in Sai Kabir’s forthcoming film co-produced by Tigmanshu Dhulia and Rahul Mittra. The film also stars Vir Das. But the original Revolver Rani is from over four decades ago. Vijayalalitha with both guns blazing was quite a ‘female James Bond’ in a number of Telugu [...]

100 years of Indian cinema: ‘Raja Harishchandra’ unofficial Google doodle

100 years of Indian cinema: Unofficial 'Raja Harishchandra' Google doodle

Google doodled Alam Ara, Google doodled Ray and because Google didn’t doodle the 100th anniversary of the release of the first Indian movie – Raja Harishchandra, Cutting the Chai has. This 100 years of Indian cinema unofficial Google doodle is a mosaic image made up of over 1500 individual frames from DG Phalke’s 1913 movie, [...]

Cinema century: May 3, 1913 – Raja Harishchandra and the beginnings of a national obsession

Cinema century: 3 May, 1913 - Raja Harishchandra and the beginnings of a national obsession

(This is an edited version of a post first published on April 21, 2012, that was also cross-posted on my other blog at IBNLive.com) In India, cinema isn’t just a passion. It is an obsession. We have perhaps inherited this acute addiction from the man who started it all, 100 years ago – the Father [...]