Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani, Review: All rhyme, no reason When a film tries too hard to please too many viewers, it shows. When it has too many stars, including stars of yesteryear, predictably, its length grows. When the maker goes back three generations and sets one chunk of the story in 1978, the public knows. When a layman at a bus-stop on a rainy night tells you lots about a film he has not seen because, perhaps, he has seen the trailer and read stuff about the movie, you know that&rs...

Case Toh Banta Hai, Trailer Launch and Press Conference: Courting laughter Trials and tribulations continue on the web. The genre has attracted Banijay Asia production house to create a show based on weird and ludicrous allegations levelled against film personalities that are debated and judged by TV/film/web veterans. A 'notice' of things to come was served to us today at the J.W. Marriott Hotel, Juhu, Mumbai. Some of the persons associated with the show were present, and many others...

Aakhri Shama completes 50 years; film actor Kanwaljit Singh plays Ghalib Nostalgia that tugged at the very core of your heart surfaced on 16 February 2019 at the Rang Sharda auditorium, where I witnessed a show of the play Aakhri Shama (Last Candle), staged by the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA)’s Mumbai unit. With this show, the play completed a mind-boggling 50 years, having been first staged at the Red Fort, Delhi’s Deevaan-e-Aam (public hall), in 1969. That wa...

Farouque Shaikh: Memories and musings on his 70th birth anniversary My earliest memories of the fresh and confident Farouque date back to the time when he was a senior at the elitist St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and I was a junior at the then humble National College, circa 1970-72. Among his contemporaries were Shabana Azmi, Satish Shah (Farouque was rather close to Satish), Pankaj Udhas, Anuradha (Paudwal) and Sharada (Kavita) Krishnamurthy, all celebrities in waiting. The college had...

The Black Prince who walked the Red Carpet at Cannes Very little is known about Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of Punjab with his capital at Lahore, who is said to have gifted the invaluable Koh-i-Noor diamond to Queen Victoria, while a young boy. Time and again, a lobby is raised in India to try and get it back from Britain, only to fizzle out. Dalip Singh remains an enigmatic figure, a missing chapter from India’s colonial history. All that is set to change with oncoming rel...

Siraj Syed reviews Raees: Contentious content, alias “Don’t call me Battery” Ra.One did it. Don 2 had done it. Raees, wherein he plays a Don once more, adds to his raeesy. Superstar ShahRukh Khan must be a happy man these days, heading in the right direction, hitting the road to Hitsville.Touted as the block-buster of the year, Raees, about a small-time bootlegger who wrangles his way to the top and becomes not only raees (Urdu for ‘rich’) but filthy rich, has no...

Bimal Roy Film Festival: Dharmendra, Helen, Ameen Sayani honoured Cinemas in Mumbai usually play the country’s national anthem, ‘Jana gana mana’, written by Rabindranath Tagore, before the feature film, a practice mandated by the government. Two weeks ago, at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (BVB) in south Mumbai, which is not a regular cinema hall, the song was played as part of the Bengali film that had incorporated it in its credit titles. Udayer Pathe (on the way to enlightenm...