Beth Loves Bollywood

Inquiring minds want to know: is there an Indian version of/remake of/homage to Star Wars ? If so, does Helen play Leia? If not, feel free to write in your suggested cast, director, and composer (we don't really want to trust John Williams with this project, do we?). FYI, a teaser for upcoming events: continuing on the express to Shashi Pradesh, Ajooba is tonight's viewing pleasure and Prem Patra is lined up for Saturday. The following weekend, the train will take a slight Shashitabh-inspired detour when Aspi and I go to the Chicago leg of the Unforgettable Tour . Tour prep includes: choosing outfit (something to complement Ritesh's red pleather, perhaps? definitely must allow for dancing), figuring out how to smuggle in a camera, and listening to Kamla's new interview with Abhishek . Update to post: well well well, look what just came up in a search for something almost entirely unrelated. (image courtesy of http://www.indien-netzwerk.de/navigation/humor/)

If Merchant, Ivory, and Jhabvala don't stop ripping out my dil and throwing it SPLAT onto the screen I'm going to have to stop watching their movies. And this time they messed with my head, too - and decked the whole tricky beast out in nawaby finery and 1920s party dresses. I ask you, what chance does a girl have? The narrative in Heat and Dust flips back and forth between present day and the last decades of the Raj, both in the same location in India. In the modern day, Anne (Julie Christie) has found letters written to her grandmother by her great-aunt Olivia (Greta Scacchi) about her life in India, beginning in the 1920s. When her husband, a lower-level official, is off working, Olivia gets to know the local community. She's not particularly interested in the other memsaabs, preferring instead the company of the Nawab (Shashi Kapoor) and his hanger-on Harry (Nickolas Grace).* Meanwhile, Anne tries to fill out the story in Olivia's letters. She begins her re

BLB is now on Twitter. You can find me here if you want to brave my experiments in trying to use this "mini-blogging tool," the most appealing of Twitter's self-descriptions, to do something creative, useful, and/or * gasp * interesting. Bite-sized movie thoughts, perhaps? No promises that all tweets will be movie-related. But at least they'll only be 140 c/s and cannot include gratuitous pictures of Shashi or Neetu. (Way to sell it!)

Alternate title: Can I get a witness? The next installment of the bilateral projects of the International Relations Ministry of Shashi Pradesh! PPCC joined me in watching the first of my new stash of Shashi. Bet you can tell what this is about, right? Behaving as people of faith in pluralistic communities. Recognizing higher powers. Witnesses-for-hire Mohan (Shashi) and Ahmed (Amitabh) regularly take oaths but spout lies in the courtroom. They're not really bad as much as they are opportunistic, as evidenced by the lengths they go to to help their neighbors, including the sweet Shyamlee (Aparna Sen). The stakes rise considerably when Kabir (Sanjeev Kumar), Shyamlee's fella and all-around inter/super-denomination religious philosopher, winds up on trial, and the rest of the story follows Mohan and Ahmed (and a few friends) as they take guidance from Kabir in their attempts to get eveyrone out of the messes caused by various bad guys in suits (Mac Mohan, Prem Chopra, Amrish

Another Guide -inspired thing that makes you go hmmm: have you ever been distracted from a film or performance by a star's hair, as I was by Dev's in Guide when he was supposed to be suffering spiritually but looked like he had been sleeping on orange juice cans? Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Rishi Kapoor's fluffy top in Doosra Aadmi , Manoj Kumar's high-rise architecture in Roti Kapada aur Makaan , and Bobby Deol's shaggy poodle thing in Jhoom Barabar Jhoom . Write in with your favorite egregious examples! This doesn't have to be a bad thing, aesthetically. Many, many are the times I have had to pause to bask in the glory of Shashi Kapoor's Shashilicious waves and curls. (Aside to Bobby's stylist: this is how you do curls, okay?) (This is a bad picture, but I like how Rakhee is petting his hair. Totally understandable.) And Abhishek's headband, which, inexplicably, I love - and I think suited oddball, too-cool-for-school Rik

A spin-off of the discussion of Guide , egged on by P essimisissimo : what's the worst movie you've sat through because of who starred or was involved in it? (This is not to be confused with "what's the worst movie you've sat through because everyone else said it was wonderful/because of who brought it over to your house and was sitting on the sofa watching it with you, gauging your reaciton/because the music was so great/because you paid good money to sit in the theater's air conditioning/because you can hardly believe how giddily ridiculous it is" etc.) #5: Aap ki Khatir The explanation writes itself. #4: Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham Darn you KJo and your stable of stars! SRK was the main appeal for me in this one because I saw it fairly early on and at that time he was the star I knew most about. If I I were to make this decision now, Kareena would likely have the same effect, as would SRK/Kajol together and Hrithik dancing. It should also be noted that

BLB has received a hot tip about Indomania (at least, I assume that's its name, based on the url), a Russian forum that has a treasure trove of interesting images. I don't read a lick of Russian (but my Hindi tutor does, conveniently!) and have been flipping through its pages randomly and with great glee. Among my favorite finds: gently aging Shashi, looking adorably happy, Preity in a funny hat, Neetu and Amitabh gettin' down, what must be the best Mithun movie EVER. Is it too much to ask that this is a scene from an actual movie and therefore there might be three more hours of similar fun? Pleeeeease? In other news, a shopping spree has yielded 15 new Shashi Kapoor movies, ranging from Dharmputra (1961) to Suhana Safa r (1970) to Ganga aur Suraj (1980). Don't say you weren't warned.