Been busy.. or to quote Stephen King (or King as Richard Bachman)…. "I been as busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kickin’ contest"…. corny I know, but that line never fails to crack me up… come to think of it, I never fail to crack me up… but that one is reserved for another entry sometime…
Sourced some more movies this week…. and saw Reservoir Dogs… again… the scene where Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) hums and dances to "Stuck in the Middle" by Stealers Wheel while torturing the cop is one of the great moments of cinema….
Bo Bice still rocks!!! This week’s performance, especially the a capella rendition of In a Dream by Badlands, pretty much ensured that he makes it…. I know this sounds soppy and nebbish and screaming-crazed-fan like… but can”t help it! I think the dude’s really talented….
Had a very lively discussion about 80”s Hindi flicks, especially one’s starring Mithun Chakraborty in an e-group last week…. some of the guys, including me, got really nostalgic about the stuff that DD passed off as entertainment on Sunday Evening Specials…. in the mid 80”s, when Amitabh starred in movies like Shehenshah, Toofan and Jaadugar, when Chunky Pandey was monkeying around, when Govinda danced at frentic pace to Ghazal type music and Shabbir Kumar and Mohd. "Munna" Aziz were the best known playback singers – there was only one beacon of light that lit up the Hindi film landscape – Mithun Da – he strode like a Colossus over the B-Movie world in movies like Surakshaa, Disco Dancer, Dance Dance, Kasam Paida Karne Wale Ki, and countless others…..
And then there were the other flicks that most people have not even heard of….. movies like Watan ke Rakhwale, Maa Kasam, Jung, Janta ki Adalat, Aadmi, Goondaraj, Sone pe Suhaaga (in which Kimi Katkar or "Khatpar" is an Olympic gold medallist)… also the big 80”s action flicks.. generally starring Dharmendra….. Hukumat, Kaala Dhanda Gore Log (which featured a mongoloid-featured Amrish Puri and a frog eating Chinese giant!), Elaan-e-Jung…. Aag ka Gola, Aag hi Aag (Chunky’s debut)… Loha…. Zalzala…. Shapath… Gazab….
Anyone for the Ramsay bros.?…. Purani Haveli, Tehkhana, Purana Mandir, Veerana and the immortal Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche…… brings back memories……. "nakeeta jaago" was the immortal line from Veerana – and that heralded the entry of Rajesh Vivek – (the psychic cricketer with a long beard in Lagaan) into Hindi movies!! I was so fascinated by Veerana that I used to get the local video library guy to gimme video cassettes of all those Ramsay movies in the series and after a point got sick of them. Purani Haveli, Darwaaza, etc…. There was this Mithunda horror movie – Bees Saal Baad. Dimple Kapadia as a ghost was awesome – she wears a white crepe negligee type of dress. Oooh la la! There’s this scene where Dimple”s arms start extending the length of the room to strangle someone …. brilliant!…
I was a big fan of the southie-directed flicks which mostly starred Jeetendra…. Dosti Dushmani, Swarg Se Sundar… Pataal Bhairavi… and the two greatest… Himmatwala and Qaidi….. awesome!!!… Qaidi was based on Rambo: First Blood…. there was a scene in it where Jeetu literally flies thru the jungle by jumping down a hill… totally god level!!!…..
Ekta Kapoor gets her soap factory idea from the Jeetu series. They contained the same sets in Padmalaya Studios in Hyd, same character artistes, same director (usually Purnachandra Rao), same music director (Bappi) and they churned out movie after movie. Movies like Maqsad (absolute corny dialogues- Asrani tells Amjad Khan " lagta hai tera woh bahut chota ha". AK quickly covers his p*n*s. Asrani quickly corrects and says – abe woh nahin, Dil! Dil!"), Justice Chaudhari, Mawali, Tohfa (Shakti Kapoor”s – Aooo Lolita and the matkas with Jumping Jack”s jhatkas) and Suhagan. Qaidi was slightly different – it did not have Sridevi or Jayaprada. It had Hema Malini and Shotgun. Even Dilip Kumar got conned into acting in one of the southie hindi flicks…. he was the BMOC (big man on campus) of this village… dhoti-kurta-angocha- and choti getup….. there was this mind blowing scene where corrals a rampaging bull with a length of nada…. I have this vague feeling it was Dharmadhikari…. or was it?….. As for dialogues… Kadar Khan’s gaalis were absolutely phenomenal….."chaar din purani baasi khichdi mein basey hue keeday"….
