Bollywood Cinema Club

Koi… Mil Gaya was a boy-meets-alien family film; its sequel is a superhero picture, and that turn is the strangest franchise pivot either of us can name. Rakesh Roshan's Krrish sends Hrithik Roshan's Krishna into the wilderness with his grandmother, then to Singapore after Priyanka Chopra. The superhero business fills about a third of a two-and-three-quarter-hour film, and the rest is romance and musical numbers. Is that a flaw, or the most interesting thing about it?The Bollywood Cinema Club's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Richard Hatem (screenwriter and producer) talk the missing chemistry at the film's center, comic-book fight scenes against the brooding Nolan model, why Krishna is barely a character in a film named after him, and what the 2013 sequel might do next.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com

Two sets of twins, separated at birth, one of them running a circus. Rohit Shetty's Cirkus is the fifth Golmaal picture and, ultimately, Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. It gives Ranveer Singh a double role and very little to do with either half. The plot is complicated to the point of near-unintelligibility, and the mustaches are the only reliable way to tell the brothers apart.The Bollywood Cinema Club's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Heather Drain (Noise Junkies) talk Ranveer's charisma going to waste, why mistaken-identity comedy leaves them both cold, Gully Boy as the Ranveer film to watch instead, what remakes do to a comedy, and Netflix pulling the film the same day they recorded.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com

Hrithik Roshan versus Tiger Shroff, and for most of the running time you think you know which one is the villain. Siddharth Anand's War closes out what was, at the time of recording, the whole YRF Spy Universe. It borrows face-swap surgery from Die Another Day and swings from one twist to the next, and it rewards going in knowing nothing.The Bollywood Cinema Club's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Dustin Rutledge (Scary Stories We Tell) talk Tiger Shroff against Jean-Claude Van Damme, Hrithik's charisma, the four-act structure, whether Western stars belong in Indian action cinema, and why anyone who won't read subtitles deserves to miss films like this one.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com

A small-time crook takes one last job and lands in a town where a husband and a wife each try to hire him to kill the other. Sanjay Gupta's Musafir is billed as a remake of Oliver Stone's U Turn, but the film is really about Anil Kapoor's Lucky and Sanjay Dutt's Billa. The cross-cut double pitch is a move U Turn never makes.In a Kulturecast crossover closing out a month of Sanjay Dutt, Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Cullen Gallagher (Pulp Serenade) talk noir archetypes, a hero the film wants you to like, the agency it gives its femme fatale (and the ending that subverts it), and why Sanjay Dutt is the film's MVP.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com

"Bullets cannot pierce the chest of an Indian police." Subhash Ghai's Khal Nayak puts Sanjay Dutt's Ballu against Jackie Shroff's Inspector Ram, childhood friends who don't know it. Madhuri Dixit's Ganga sits between them in a love triangle that drives the whole film. It runs long, it goes to some very strange places, and it does everything a 1990s Hindi action film should.In a Kulturecast crossover, Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Josh Hurtado (who programmed Khal Nayak at Fantastic Fest) talk punch dialogues, the romance and song-and-dance as part of the action, Madhuri's well-written heroine, and why this is the film to show someone who thinks they don't like Indian cinema.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com

Maneesh Sharma's Fan casts Shah Rukh Khan twice: as Aryan Khanna, a movie star, and, behind a digitally reworked face, as Gaurav, a Delhi kid whose whole life is impersonating him. When Aryan brushes him off, the fan turns stalker. Described in a sentence it sounds absurd, yet it works far better than it has any right to, and the question is why the film never fully commits to the psychological thriller it keeps edging toward.In a Kulturecast crossover, Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Heather Drain (Noise Junkies) and Mike White (The Projection Booth) talk SRK's performance behind a CG mask and the Benjamin Button comparison, a film that never acknowledges how alike the two men look, Single White Female and Fade to Black, action scenes that clash with the rest of the film, making a living as a star impersonator, and the moments when Gaurav switches on the full Shah Rukh.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com

Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider moves Hamlet to Kashmir in 1995: Shahid Kapoor's Haider comes home to find his father disappeared, his mother, played by Tabu, drawing close to his uncle, played by Kay Kay Menon, and Irrfan Khan bringing word from the dead. The episode lands on a hard question: does telling the Kashmir conflict through Shakespeare serve the subject or trivialize it, and what happens to a tragedy that changes its ending?In a Kulturecast crossover, Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Spencer Parsons (filmmaker) talk Shakespeare and the colonial legacy, the ghost as one of the disappeared, Aristotle, Oedipus and what tragedy is for, Shraddha Kapoor's Ophelia-Horatio figure sidelined in the second half, a "to be or not to be" about a whole people, and Bhardwaj's zooms.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com

Karan Johar's first film as director in seven years is big in every direction: opulent sets, huge characters, a love story between two families who can't stand each other. Ranveer Singh's Rocky meets Alia Bhatt's Rani while chasing his grandfather's lost love. The two lovers have to win over each other's families, and the film does it with a social message that never turns preachy.In a Kulturecast crossover, Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Josh Hurtado (longtime Indian-film critic) talk Johar's grasp of melodrama, the film's twists, pretty people on snowy mountainsides (and the one button on Rocky's shirt), and why this is a good first Hindi romance for newcomers.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com

Rakesh Roshan's Koi... Mil Gaya stars his son Hrithik Roshan as Rohit, a man with an intellectual disability who befriends Jaadoo, a stranded alien, while falling for Preity Zinta's Nisha. The first half is a romantic comedy; the alien doesn't arrive until the intermission. Rakesh Roshan has downplayed the comparison, but the question is how much of this is E.T., and whether a grown man with the heart of a child makes for a better version of that story.The Bollywood Cinema Club's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Richard Hatem (screenwriter and producer) talk the scenes lifted from E.T., Hrithik's dancing, a thirty-year-old bully who carries a basketball everywhere, Rekha's long-suffering mother and her big speech, a basketball game straight out of a Disney Dexter Riley picture, and the extra thumb that Hrithik and Jaadoo share.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com

Amitabh Bachchan walks the path of fire in Mukul S. Anand's 1990 cult classic. Vijay Dinanath Chauhan's father is murdered and his family driven out of their village, and he comes back years later as a gangster with a white suit and a growl. The film is named for a poem by Amitabh's own father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, and it borrows liberally from Scarface.The Bollywood Cinema Club's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Heather Drain (Noise Junkies) talk Big B's intensity and who in the West compares, Danny Denzongpa's villain, Mithun Chakraborty as the nicest man in the film, the white suit and who else can pull one off, and the parts of the film that are there because they had to be.———Bollywood Cinema Club is a film podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, with a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Every episode is one film from Indian cinema that's worth your evening.New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bollywood-cinema-club/id1662966232Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZH148q8FUQKTDfB7xFMzUMore from the network → https://weirdingwaymedia.com