Archive for the ‘Corruption’ Category
Damini (1993): Honesty requires a lot of courage
On May 06, 2009 in Bollywood, Character, Classic, Corruption, Crime, Drama, Marriage, Movie, Music, Romance, Song, TV, Values, Video
Damini was a movie released in 1993, styled as the movie made about a courageous woman. At that time, it was common knowledge that Rajkumar Santoshi was extremely enamored of Meenakshi Seshadri, and this movie was a show of his dedication. It was a woman oriented film, a role that Meenakshi Seshadri had literally never got in her career; and the movie turned out to be a great movie. The movie starred, besides, Meenakshi, Rishi Kapoor (as her husband who is stuck in the moral land where he has to choose between his wife and his family), Sunny Deol (as the drunkard lawyer who is impressed by Damini and recovers to fight for her), Amrish Puri (as the lawyer fighting against Damini) and Kulbhushan Kharbanda (as her father-in-law who turns against her when she starts her fight for justice).
The movie had some great music by Nadeem Shravan and was produced by the combination of Aly Morani, Karim Morani and Bunty Soorma. The movie also earned Sunny Deol an award for his performance as Best Actor (Filmafare and National Award) in a supporting role. And of course, some of the dialogs in the movie that were spoken by Sunny Deol enhanced his reputation as a he-man; sample these:
Movie: Lage Raho Munnabhai – continuation of the Munnabhai series
On February 24, 2009 in Bollywood, Character, Classic, Comedy, Corruption, Mafia, Movie, Romance, Society, Song, Video
With the success of Munnabhai MBBS, it was clear that there would be a sequel, it was just waiting for the sequel to come. And so came the sequel in 2006, called Lage Raho Munnabhai (carry on Munnabhai). The movie starred the main set of 2 characters, Munnabhai (Sanjay Dutt) and his sidekick Circuit (Arshad Warsi). The movie showcases the story of a ruffian who becomes infused with Gandhian ideals (under the influence of the spirit of Gandhi), and tries to share the same with others around him, mixed with a Mumbai type way of speaking.
Sanjay Dutt is Munnabhai, a Mumbai don who indulges in the familiar show of force, and employs muscles to get his work done. He is also infatuated with a local radio jockey Janhavi (Vidya Balan) and wants to get to meet her. However, how to get a ruffian to meet a beautiful radio jockey is not easy to visualize, and then he hears of a contest where the first person to answer multiple questions asked by her gets to meet her. The contest is about answering questions on Mahatma Gandhi (Bapu), and this is where the mix with Gandhian ideology starts to happen.
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Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992)
On December 27, 2007 in Bollywood, Character, Corruption, Crime, Culture, Despair, Movie, Music, Romance, Society, Values
Ranju Ban Gaya Gentleman is one of the early Shahrukh movies, made before he became the King Khan and one of the hottest property of Bollywood. The movie has a fresh feel to it, being made (director: Aziz Mirza) when there was not so much money riding on Shahrukd Khan and movies could afford to skip the current formula of hard core masala, breakneck action, and so on. The movie has a nice flow to it, with a simplistic story set mainly around ambition. One needs to remember that this was 1992, when India was still totally under the grip of socialism, and movies high-lighted naked ambition as something bad and ugly, something that could cause a person to loose their morals and their bearings.
Tridev: A real masala movie
On October 05, 2007 in Action, Bollywood, Classic, Corruption, Crime, Drama, Masala, Melody, Movie, Police
At near the end of the 80’s came a movie that was every inch a masala movie. Tridev. It was a super-hit, with all the elements of a masala movie thrown in. There was revenge, romance, guns, explosions, a villain, a hero back from the dead, another hero who is a villager who falls for a rich and cultured girl, there is a villain who looks like a proper villain, and then there was the catchy songs. I remember that ‘Oye Oye’ was the most heard song when outside your house, being played in vehicles, in music stores, by shopkeepers, and for some time became the patron phrase of eve-teasers.
The movie was directed by Rajiv Rai and released in 1989, and it sort of also was the major movie in which Naseerudin Shah acts as a normal actor in a commercial movie, away from the art movies that he was so famous. There was some screaming from the art movie types about this betrayal, but I think that his response was to the effect that he also needs to be a success, and he does not see anything wrong in doing commercial movies.
