Blog Posts by Vishwas Kulkarni

  • DVD Watch: Carnage

    By Vishwas Kulkarni | Yahoo! India Movies – Tue 6 Mar, 2012 12:38 PM IST

    Carnage
    There is something about a Roman Polanski film that spells doom for the characters it portrays. Over the swathe of his narratives, its characters shift from being despicable to pathetic and vice-versa. Carnage is no different, though many critics feel that it lacks the patented nastiness that make Polanski's films such as a squirmy, sadistic delight for cinephiles.

    The plot is simple and reminiscent of a day-glo Who's Afraid of Virigina Woolf (with the latter, trust us, you never want to be invited to an after-party thrown by Liz Taylor and Richard Burton ever again). In Carnage, the parents of two squabbling high school kids meet over 'espresso' to discuss a possible rapprochement between the victim and the culprit. The first couple (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) has a son who has broken two teeth of his classmate in a scuffle in the neighbourhood park.

    The victim's parents are played by Jodie Foster and John C Reilly. Given that Reilly has only recently played the typical

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  • Vanishing act of the vamps

    By Vishwas Kulkarni | Yahoo! India Movies – Mon 5 Mar, 2012 5:47 PM IST

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     What exactly happened to the busty Vamp? Why is there no place for her in the contemporary syntax of Hindi films? Find out

     Cleavage spoke volumes of a woman’s character in Hindi films once. It was a topographic indicator of how low a woman could fall. Today, the Vamp in Hindi cinema has been banished from Bollywood’s geography, fumigated with Vedic pest control. The voluptuous Venus, the singer with soul, the hooker with heart – these characters are now retro-relics in Bollywood. So what exactly happened to the busty Vamp? Why is there no place for her in the contemporary syntax of Hindi films?

    Vamps added significant texture to Bollywood films. Bindu, Prema Narayan, Kalpana Iyer, Padma Khanna, Helen had distinctive characters, and features for that matter. In analyzing the decline of the Westernized Vamp, it is important to keep in mind that Vamps were auxiliary manifestations of Bollywood Star System and the socio-political climate that informed this Star System. Vamps

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  • 11 Bollywood stars who went naked

    By Vishwas Kulkarni | Pop Vulture – Wed 22 Feb, 2012 12:55 PM IST

    With Ashmit Patel posing in the buff for an underwear campaign in a men’s magazine recently, we bring you 10 Bollywooders who went naked before the camera

    The actress had a rendezvous with Shashi Kapoor in Siddhartha that raised quite a few eyebrows in the ‘70s

    1.Simi Garewal in ‘Mera Naam Joker’ and ‘Siddhartha’ (1972) – Newly returned from England, Simi Garewal bagged some of the most prestigious films from her generation, though she never found the commercial success of her peers. In both ‘Mera Naam Joker’ by Raj Kapoor and ‘Siddhartha’, a film adapted from Hermann Hesse’s novel of the same name (both 1972), she sheds her quintessential whites and pretty much everything else too.

    Protima Bedi stirred a hornet's nest with her morning jog in 1974

    2.Protima Bedi in the Cine Blitz promotional campaign (1974) – Celebrated danseuse and Kabir Bedi’s bohemian wife stripped down to nothing and ran naked on Juhu beach as part of a promotional campaign to launch filmi rag Cine Blitz in 1974. She made headlines, naturally.

    Dimple’s sarong getting undone led to a nude scene that lasted less than a second. Yet, it was the most rewound scene of 1985.
    3. Dimple Kapadia in ‘Saagar’ (1985) – Her introduction to Rishi Kapoor in the film went like this: a young village belle goes for a dip in the

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  • In Bed with Bollywood

    By Vishwas Kulkarni | Yahoo! India Movies – Tue 14 Feb, 2012 1:22 PM IST

    The Top 15 bedroom scenes that changed the way the Hindi film industry (and you) view sex on screen
    With Kareena finally agreeing to do a steamy bedroom scene in 'Heroine', we give you a list of Top 15 turning points in Bollywood sexuality, from controversial romps in the cave to plagiarized scenes from Kim Basinger starrer '9 ½ Weeks'…

     1.    Parveen Babi and Amitabh Bachchan in Deewar (1975) – While an actual romp was not pictured in the film, Parveen Babi enjoying a post-coital cigarette while resting her head on Amitabh Bachchan’s hirsute chest heralded a new era for the sexually liberated urban woman in Indira Gandhi’s Emergency-riddled India.

    2.    Zeenat Aman and Shashi Kapoor in Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) – Raj Kapoor’s most controversial film had this couple making out in a cave next to a waterfall. The film fell into trouble with the Censor Board in 1978. It finally opened to a lukewarm response from audiences and critics. However, to date, this remains a benchmark for

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  • The Bollywood Fight Club

    By Vishwas Kulkarni | Yahoo! India Movies – Wed 1 Feb, 2012 3:10 PM IST

    Following the SRK-Shirish Kunder ‘Slapgate’, we have compiled a list of the Top 10 fights from tinsel town's history book...

    Sanjay Khan-Zeenat Aman:
    Zeenat Aman was already married to Sanjay Khan, via an impulsive romance on the sets of ‘Abdullah’. On returning to Bombay, he refused to accept this. So one night, Zeenat Aman in rebellion ended up visiting a party that Sanjay Khan and his wife Zarine had thrown as a ‘couple’ at the Taj. Enraged at this, Sanjay Khan bashed up Zeenat Aman so badly that she permanently damaged her eye; this in view of the who’s who of Bollywood. The incident is so sordid that it even finds mention in Shobhaa De’s celebrated memoir Selective Memory. Years later, Sanjay’s son Zayed was also involved in a drunken brawl in a suburban night club where he was accused of smashing someone’s nose and leaving the venue in a rage. So much for inheritance.

    Rishi Kapoor-Neetu Singh:
    In the small hours of November 1, 1997, Bandra police station

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Pagination

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