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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
(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 [...]
Aamir Khan goes to great lengths to promote his films. This trend might have very well started 25 years ago when a teaser campaign prior to the announcement of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988) caught the interest of many. Qayamat se Qayamat Tak (QSQT) ran a teaser ad campaign to promote the film. It was [...]
Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti (1982) isn’t as much about the Amitabh Bachchan and Smita Patil on-screen romance, as the on-screen histrionics of the Big B and and the Big D – Dilip Kumar. In a rare drift away from the moral weave of the movies of that period Sippy didn’t shy away from portraying a live-in [...]
RIP Yash Chopra of the Swiss Alps, of chiffon sarees and Deewar.
The attention that The Indian Public Domain Project is getting in the mainstream media sometimes seems a little disproportionate to me given that I’ve posted only a couple of movies here. Here’s what the film magazine Cine Blitz has to say on the project in its July 2012 issue: Rare Gems What an idea, sirji! [...]
The Hindi daily Amar Ujala (April 23, 2012) carried a home page anchor story on Cutting the Chai making Raja Harishchandra 3D 99 years after its first screening. Ravi Buleiy’s story repeats much of what is mentioned in the Raja Harishchandra (1913) on India Public Domain Movie Project (and in 3D) post, but adds an [...]
In India, cinema isn’t just a passion. It is frenzical. We have perhaps inherited this acute addiction from the man who started it all, 99 years ago – the Father of Indian Cinema Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (1870-1944). Dadasaheb Phalke as we better know him as, held the first show of Raja Harishchandra what is widely [...]
The recently launched India Public Domain Movie Project is getting some much needed publicity. Today’s Sunday Mid Day has a story on the story behind this Cutting the Chai project. HE MAKES INDIAN CLASSICS CLICK Ghaziabad-based blogger Soumyadip Choudhury has started a project to upload old Indian films — no longer under copyright — online [...]