china town 1962

Shammi Kapoor has always been a favourite of mine. I can't claim to be a fan, but I did admire him. This week I started a small Shammi Kapoor fiesta to celebrate his early movies and the surprising acclaim he achieved through them. I'm doing this in no particular order and so I start with China Town. 

One of the reasons I love this movie is because it's set in the Calcutta of the 60s. It was a much prettier city back then- cleaner, richer and more mysterious. The club setting of the mafia gang-like organisation fit right in with those times. The mobster hats were especially cool.

The story starts in a club in China Town where Suzie (Helen) sings china town, dressed in a neatly cut kimono, to happily nodding rich people and dances prettily with a feathered fan. The club owner Wong (Madan Puri) watches and then goes to a couple of his men and asks them where Mike is. Mike (Shammi Kapoor) is lying in a tub completely indifferent to the time, because 'Mike doesn't move for time, time moves for Mike!' Wong persuades him to get ready and leave to meet their smuggling associates at the Kidderpore docks. Suzie comes into his room and says that everyone praised her dancing a lot- Mike sneers and says that they only praise her because she entertains them.
"Mike," says Suzie, hurt. "You're always rude to me. You keep breaking my heart."
Mike looks knowingly at her. "Maybe. But I mend it too." Then he does his trademark Mike-gesture, which is something like a short dismissive wave with a "Pchh". (I think this gesture's been grossly overdone in the movie, though it does give you an understanding of exactly how mean Mike is). 

Aruna Irani in Andaz (1971)

 I have never appreciated her more than in this one movie where she was allowed to display her potent charm fully and given enough screen time for us to bond with her, not as a minor character, but as a girl with a story of her own!

Seventeen Again

This was one cool movie. The idea was not something that hadn't been visited a gazillion times before- no matter how frustrated you are with life, the choices that brought you your family are always the right one\ you can't live in the past, can't live in regrets or the present will hold nothing for you at all\blah blah- but the two actors they got to play the adult and teenage Mike O'Donnell were fantastic!

Solva Saal (a 1958 romantic classic)

Starring a very young Waheeda Rehman and a charmingly boyish Dev Anand, who had not yet cast himself into a rigid stereotype, Solva Saal is one of my favourite movies of the black and white era!

Victoria & Albert the 2001 TV series

If you have watched The Young Victoria then maybe you will wonder how certain events in this two-part series were depicted years before, after or not at all, but truth be told- this lavish and ponderous creation delves deeper into Victoria's early years of reign and her relationship with Albert, than the movie ever could\did.

James and Lily Potter

  Why were they middle aged in the movies? The books made it clear that James and Lily married almost right out of school and had Harry when they were all of twenty or twenty-one! I get so mad when I see the celluloid version of these characters. What were the directors thinking? They made Lily a pale, fading sort of house-wifey woman and James a professorial sort of man with flat, thin hair and a generic kindly, fatherly face!
What the hell? Lily was a really strong willed girl as was James- a hell-raiser and a rebel! They were at the forefront of the resistance when Voldemort was in power and the best aurors along with the Longbottoms that the Order of Phoenix had as members!
Why were they made so vapid and retiring? Ugh! Did the directors think that portraying a couple in twenties who died in the first year of their child's life would pain emotional parents across the globe, or did they assume that sticking to the books' version of things would be promoting early marriage between young couples?
Whatever their reason, I can't help but feeling the tiniest bit betrayed that Rowling allowed it.
I know the protest comes too late from me, and that others may have already mentioned it, but still! I've read that Rowling approved the script and she had creative inputs in the movies- she even had a hand in casting, so why, oh why, didn't she object?
She was offered Lily's cameo in the first movie- the appearacnce in the Mirror of Erised, but she backed off. Couldn't she have made it clear then, that the ages of those two characters were important?
I suppose I feel strongly about James and Lily because what little Rowling has written of their love story was touching, sweet and totally entrancing. I want more. Even if she never wrote another book about Harry Potter, I do hope she some day writes a little more on Lily Evans and James Potter and if possible, a little more on Sirius Black.
Its heart-wrenching that they died so young, but it would be a terrible thing if their story was never told in a telling that was only for them.

  

See what I mean?

                                                        This is how they OUGHT to be!!

This was Ok. Sort of. Bleh.

The King's Speech

You can hate the movie but you can't- I guarantee- hate Colin Firth as King George VI! I don't say that you will like the man- I frowned quite consistently through certain parts of the movie at him- silently reproving the man- but as an actor- Oh, man!- he was the shiniest penny in the room and he would NOT be ignored.

The movie began with a speech in Wembley stadium at the close of the British Empire Exhibition in 1925.

Guess who was supposed to give it?

Oh, you're brilliant! Yes, it was Prince Bertie. In his middle age and very used to his inability to speak in public or even to his family without long pauses and tripping over words.

But his father wouldn't give up trying to cure him of it through forced exposure. King George V believed in tough love and the dutiful Bertie obliged to embarrassing effects. 

He stood in front of a thousand men and women of his kingdom and couldn't utter the word 'king'.

His brother Edward fell in love with a Mrs Simpson. It was nothing unusual, the heir-apparent liked married women.