Bollywood

My today’s blog is on Bollywood, ie Hindi Film Industry. In the last few days there were few items from Bollywood which came into lime light.

1. Death of Shashi Kapoor- he was son of Prithiraj Kapoor and younger brother of Raj Kapoor & Shammi Kapoor. The Kapoor family is known as First Family of Bollywood. Although general public think Film Graph of Kapoors started with Prithviraj, in fact his father Bisheshwarnath also loved acting as a hobby and had acted in Raj Kapoor’s film Awara as Judge. Therefore five generations of Kapoors have been involved with Bollywood. Raj, Shammi & Shashi Kapoor, Geeta Bali(Shammi’s wife) & Jennifer (Shashi’s wife) represented 3rd generation, 4th generation is represented by Randhir, Rishi & Rajiv Kapoor (sons of Raj Kapoor), Babita (wife of Randhir) ,Neetu(wife of Rishi),even children of Shammi & Shashi also tried in Bollywood but they were not successful and finally 5th generation is represented by Karishma, Kareena and Ranbir Kapoor. Such is the illustrious family of Kapoors. With the death of Shashi Kapoor the 3rd generations of Kapoors is finished.
When Shashi Kapoor started his acting career, he had to live upto people’s expectations because of Kapoor family label and it is to his credit he could find his niche as a leading star of hindi films at the time when Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor were established super star and Rajendra Kumar, Sunil Dutt were on the way to super stardom. Shashi along with Dharmendra and Manoj Kumar were the next in line of stars. Shashi with his jovial nature acted as happy go lucky character in most of his films, he did play some serious role also. He immortalised the dialogue ” Mere Paas Maa Hai” from film Deewar. In the later years of his career he became film producer and produced meaningful parallel cinema films like Junoon, Kalyug & Utsav. He along with his wife Jennifer revived his father’s stage company and founded Prithvi Theatre in Juhu, Mumbai and gave the big platform to hindi stage play troupes. He was bestowed with Padma Bhushan and Dada Saheb Phalke Award by the Govt. In his death Bollywood has lost a person who gave his life to films and theatre.

2. The next main news about Bollywood is about controversy on Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s films Padmavati. Before the movie could release, it has generated too much controversy regarding the character pf Rani Padmavati’s depiction in the movie. First the protesters claimed that there was dream sequence between Khilji and Padmavati, which was denied by Film maker and actors. Then they said in Rajput history no queen danced in open court, which has been shown in trailer in the song “Ghoomar”. The film was to be released on 8th Dec and has been postponed as Censor board has still not cleared the film. The latest on the film is that the Information and Broadcasting Minister has asked from HRD Minister the list of historians who should vet this film before Censor board can certify. I think with this action of I & B Ministry, it is very clear that hence forth no film maker will attempt to make film on historical characters, fearing that some community or other will start protesting and film’s business will be harmed. Next in the line is film on Jhansi Ki Rani being made by Kangana Ranaut, and I keep my finger crossed about its fate.

In the end waiting for your feed backs and comments.