Beth Loves Bollywood

When the Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit decreed that the mission for May was to write about snow and ice and other frosty fiends (MOSS has a cruel sense of humor), Gaddaar (1973, not the Suneil Shetty one) came to mind instantly. In an appropriately filmi coincidence, it also beckoned to fellow MOSS agent Todd, who has posted his writeup on Die Danger Die Die Kill here.



Gaddaar is maybe the best Hindi film of 1973, if not the first half of the 70s, that you probably haven't seen. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems that hardly anyone has watched this. Just yesterday I was bringing it to the attention of a full-time film critic who is a self-professed lover of the 70s, so it has somehow even escaped the notice of people who spend a lot time thinking about movies. But no more! I first learned of Gaddaar a few years ago when Memsaab, yet another fellow MOSS agent, wrote it up, and I thought "Where has this been all my life?" If you look at her post, you'll see sev…

I would like those 897 hours of my life back, please. In case you want to spend a little more time with it, I tweeted while watching it with Amrita and then collected those thoughts on Storify here. Warning: in case you couldn't tell from the first sentence of this post, we are not nice.

I'm just back from a strange cinema experience. Yesterday an acquaintance on twitter alerted me to the presence of Go Goa Gone at the multiplex that shows the occasional Indian film in a town about an hour's drive from here. To my knowledge, all the previous screenings of Indian movies have been organized by a very small handful of people who know how to work the local networks and get the word out. Based on the absence of electronic advertising in my town, and the fact that instead of just one screening it's playing multiple times a day for a whole week, I have to assume this one was brought in by the cinema itself (or the network of theaters that it's a part of). I dare not allow myself to hope this means that we're going to get Indian films in east-central Illinois on a regular basis with more than one screening per film. When I showed up for the 1:15 show today, I was the only person in a cinema seating probably 300. Oh dearie me.

Whatever implications this ha…

Midway through the day I was overcome with emotion at the very thought of it all, and I tweeted an ill-formed (and incomplete) list of things I like about Indian cinema. I then collected and illustrated them all on Storify. Click here for the experience.

At some point I will write something more than a few sentences about the centennial of Indian cinema, but there is just too much work this time of year for that to happen right now. We'll be celebrating for the rest of 2013, though, right? Right!