Beth Loves Bollywood

Rakesh Kumar, director of Do aur Do Paanch
K. K. Shukla, writer/scenario-creator of Mard, Suhaag, Amar Akbar Anthony, and Parvarish
Kader Khan, dialogues of Parvarish, Dharam Veer, Muqaddar ka Sikandar, and zillions of others
Prakash Mehra, director or producer of things like Zanjeer and Namak Halaal
Amitabh as avenger and deadpan comic
Vinod in a leather suit with leopard-fur collar and cuffs
Nirupa Roy as Maa
Rekha in full-on feistiness
Aruna Irani and Asrani in serious roles
Kader Khan as the supreme bad guy
Ranjeet refusing to button his shirt
+ Moti the wonder horse
a whole lotta nothin'

How all these wonderful ingredients turned into such a lackluster film, I do not know. This was even more disappointing than Ram Balram; while the latter is decidedly a worse film, Khoon Pasina had many more fine ingredients, and thus the letdown was greater and more tragicaly wasteful. Look what it had going for it!

Childhood friends of different faiths
get separated by violence instigated by an evil bad…

Naach is not one of Ram Gopal Varma's thrillers, but it sure presents viewers with a humdinger of a mystery: why, in the name of Helen above, would anyone cast Abhishek Bachchan (aspiring film star Abhinav) in a movie whose central motif is dance in films?

Antara is also curious.
I love the man dearly. He's very talented and effective in many ways as a performer - including bodily physical expression when channeled for anger or humor (or even when dancing in a deliberately comic way, like in "Kajra Re" or his mini-AB MotoRockr ad) - but he cannot dance. He certainly tries, which is more than can be said for many heroes of past generations, but it just doesn't work most of the time. Here's some evidence by way of Filmi Girl's fantastic setting of Abhishek clips to "Pappu Can't Dance," in case you've forgotten or remain unconvinced.


Okay, so Naach isn't really about dancing. It's about creating opportunities for the camera to leer at…