Because I'm on the topic, here are a few of my favorite Bollywood heroines - ( Item girls and character actresses will be for another day! )

A beautiful song from the classic Mughal-e-Azam, which colored my impressions of Jodhaa Akbar. I think I had been sobbing for an hour or so when this song is played in the movie. *sniff* The clip includes a couple of minutes of Prithviraj, as Akbar, talking with Madhubala.

Yes, I did watch Mughal-e-Azam last night instead of going to bed a reasonable hour. Wow! It was the Prithviraj and Madhubala powerhouse show! I literally cried right through the last 30 minutes or so and I haven't done that since I saw Rang de Basanti.

This song was the highlight of the film. Madhubala can't dance well, but her face carries such emotion and she is so graceful. Prithviraj gets more and more angry. Dilip Kumar is good, too, but not quite on their level. When she takes the knife from him!! EEEEEE!! Also, the cinematography is amzing! The use of the mirror room in this song and then later in the film is beautiful.

dangermousie, I can't believe you don't like this movie! It's a little slow moving at times, but the drama is so over the top: the battle of wills between Prithviraj and Dilip Kumar; Dilip Kumar's refusal to let Madhubala sacrifice herself; Madhubala's battle of wills with Prithviraj; Dilip's mother's choice between her husband and her son; and the sneaky, sneaky maid who wants to be queen and keeps foiling everyone.

The one thing I feel I need to mention is that Eros has put a really crappy copy of the film on DVD. I don't know if there is another version out there for purchase, but avoid the colorized one. It got really psychodelic at times where the colorizers had removed all shadows from an actor. And everything was in these lurid pinks and oranges. I got to kind of ignore it after a while, but it was really distracting at first. This copy also had terrible 90s synthesizer horns added to certain parts. I don't know if they did that because the DVD-monkey who made the transfer thought that he could improve upon a classic by getting rid of that pesky dramatic silence or what, but I wanted to reach though my screen and time travel to the past to slap him whenever that dreadful parping piped up. Ugh.

First the missing 20 minutes of Teesri Manzil and now this. Me and my pet dog could do a better job of DVD distribution than Eros.


( more pictures! )