Harsh P

There have been many iconic villains in Bollywood right from Gabbar Singh to Shakaal to Mogambo. We have had great actors like Pran, Ajit,Prem Chopra, Danny Denzongpa, Amrish Puri, Anupam Kher, Paresh Rawal, Shakti Kapoor, Gulshan Grover and many others. Here, we will discuss 3 bollywood villains who made splashing debuts and the characters are remembered till date but unfortunately despite a great debut they could not get the success they deserved and their debut performances still rank as their best. Although, it is of course not possible to get a lifetime role every time and they would still rank as successful actors but their potential has been largely unutilized. 1. Ashutosh Rana as Gokul Pandit in Dushman  - An NSD graduate, Ashutosh Rana started his career with television with Swabhimaan's Tyagi being his most well known character.His turn as the sadistic rapist having incontrollable sexual appetite send shivers down the spine and it was very uneasy to watch him which i...

There are many actors in Bollywood who have made an impact in just 1 scene. Although the list is long, here I will mention the ones only from 90s and early 2000s who made made an impact with just 1/ few scenes. 1. Snehal Dabi in Hera Pheri - The 1st one in this would be Snehal Dabi in Hera Pheri. Who can forget the hillarious scene where he mistakes the legendary comedian Asrani (who was playing a Bank Manager) as a pimp when Asrani was trying to convince Tabu to make peace with Sunil Shetty with her charms.Dabi has some other notable roles too to his credit like Aaj Kapoor in Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega,  Habiba in Ek Chalis Ki Last Local, Satya, Welcome amongst others. 2. Unknown actor screaming "25" in Ishq - From years, have been trying to find this actor's name but havent' been able to find it. In the movie, he was seen screaming "25" near a manhole and when Tiku Talsania's character asks him why he is screaming "25" continuously he poin...

There have been many cricketers who fizzled after a very promising start. Some prominent names  which instantly come to mind are Sanjay Manjrekar(hailed as next Sunil Gavaskar),Vinod Kambli (still remembered for his 2 back to back double hundreds against England and Zimbabwe) and Irfan  Pathan( expected to fill the genuine all rounder slot after Kapil Dev). There were some others also like Robin Singh who got inducted only at an age where they had only few years of cricketing left still but made a lasting impact. But three biggest  one match wonders in my opinion in the last 3 decades are following: 1) Narendra Hirwani - He made unarguably one of the  best debuts in cricketing history by taking  16 wickets in his debut test match against the mighty West Indies and troubled probably the best batting line up of that time with his leg breaks, flippers and googlies.  Unfortunately, apart from this   and successful home series against New Zealand he w...

In my opinion, Mithun Chakraborty is the most enigmatic superstar of Bollywood. His choice of movies have oscillated between best to worst. The 3 time National Award winner has some great Bengali movies in his kitty and at the same time some very atrocious movies too and somewhere in between are his conventional commercial Bollywood movies which made him the star he is. Mithun' s struggle and rags to riches story is really inspiring and it is very surprising that someone who with such a fighting spirit overcame his struggles and become one of the country's biggest superstars largely wasted his potential and could have done much much more. After grabbing a National Award in his debut movie Mrigya, the next few years till 1982 he mostly starred in small movies and quite a few of them were successes too especially Suraksha. Till Disco Dancer happened,he was seen not seen as an A Lister. Disco Dancer in 1982 however catapulted him to stardom and from 1982 to 1987 he was the top act...

In the early 90s, Indipop came as a breath of fresh air and was poised to co-exist with the Bollywood and gave listeners a lot of genre of songs to chose from. Singers like Biddu, Alisha Chinai, Daler Mehndi, Mohit Chauhan, Shweta Shetty, Sunita Rao and bands like Euphoria, Aryans, Stereo Nation made some beautiful music and sold like hot cakes. The era had some amazingly  good music videos. One thing which worked also worked in favour of Indipop was that it coincided with launch of satellite channels in India. Music channels like MTV, Channel V and others contributed hugely to the rise of Indipop. For a decade they co-existed with Bollywood music beautifully and in fact all the top playback singers of that time -Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan, Alka Yagnik, Abhijeet, Sonu Nigam, Hariharan and legendary Asha Bhonsle also explored the genre and came up with their music albums and it seemed that Indipop is here to stay. However, unfortunately Indipop couldnt' stay for very long and there ar...

During the pandemic, one big change which happened in the entertainment industry was the release of movies on the OTT platforms.Although, it helped Bollywood minimise its lossed due to the shutdown of the theatres the overall impact of it on the industry and starts has been/would be detrimental. There are quite a few reasons for this.Movie stars enjoy such an adulation because right from the advent of movies because people made efforts to watch them. In the earlier times, it was standing in the ticket que for hours and later too even when the online ticketing options started one has to go to a platform to book a ticket and make an effort to watch the stars. But when movies of starts like Amitabh Bacchan,Akshay Kumar,Sanjay Dutt,Alia Bhatt,Vidya Balan come to your phone/laptop/tv directly with their new proposition then the aura is lost.One can argue that they anyways come to our TV everyday in form of re-runs but those are old content which people have already watched. With due respect...

 1.  Stoneman Murders  - Arguably, one of the best thrillers of Bollywood. Inspired by real life events of Mumbai (Bombay that time) when mysterious serial killings of ragpickers and street beggars in the Sion-Matunga belt. A total of 12 killings happened where these suspecting people were attacked and killed by a heavy stone.The movie succeeds in keeping the suspense till the end and stays away from any sub plots or songs and hence the impact is not diluted. The linear narrative makes it a compelling watch and viewers get a shock when they know of the real killer and his motive.  The director Manish Gupta  and script are the real heroes here and of course backed by a nuanced performance by Kay Kay Menon.  He is ably supported by Vikram Gokhale and Virendra Saxena's performances. I was fortunate to see this movie in the theatre and had planned a repeat watch but unfortunately the movie did not run for very long in the theatres which is a pity given the fine...

Remember Milind Soman,Madhu Sapre, Mark Robinson, Jas Arora, Bikram Saluja,Aditi Gowtrikar, Helen Brodie et all Supermodels used to be big heartthrobs during 80s and 90s and used to have their own fan following.  While in 80s and till mid 90s they were mainly visible through print and tv ads.But with satellite television boom in early and mid 90s as well rise of Indipop,they started appearing in music videos too starring in some of the most popular songs of the 90s. Moving into Bollyowood was a natural progression for them and most of them tried their luck in Bollywood too but apart from some exceptions like John Abraham,Arjun Rampal, Bipasha Basu most of them didnt' succeed and they subsequently moved to other professions like grooming new models, launching a fashion or fitness label or like Milind Soman became a brand in itself by becoming a fitness icon. Now coming to the question of why we dont' have supermodels anymore and it is only the top most Bollywood or Sports Icons ...

1. Uttam Singh - Uttam Singh as an independent music director (after having an illustrious career as a music arranger)made a splashing debut with Yash Chopra's Dil To Pagal Hai which will always feature amongst the best bollywood albums. Although he had started as a music before long ago too with his partner and they used to compose as Uttam-Jagdish but his career prior to Dil To Pagal Hai was largely as a music arranger. Post his debut,the other popular albums of him were Dushman and Gadar and to some extent Hero: Love story of a spy. Apart from these most of his post hardly had any hummable tunes.We really hope he makes a  great comeback some day. 2. Ismail Darbar - After having a successful career as a violinist, he got a big break in form of  Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Hum Dil De Chuke Sana with great success. Unforunately,post that apart from Devdaas and to some extent Tera Jaadu Chal Gaya none of his albums were anything to home about. He later landed into a big controvers...

1. Kabzaa The team of Naam – Mahesh Bhatt, Salim Khan and Sanjay Dutt teamed for Mukesh Bhatt’s1st home production The film stands out to due to its engaging screenplay and the performances of the actors- Sanjay Dutt, Raj Babbar,Paresh Rawal and Alok Nath. There are many stand out scenes like the opening credits, the confontation scene between Dutt and Alok Nath, Dutt and Babbar when Dutt confronts him on working with a gangster. The whole transformation of Sanjay Dutt from a good for nothing guy to the one who is willing to risk his life for a social cause was handled beautifully. The film was again remade as Ghulam which was a bigger commercial success than the predecessor although Dutt’s performance would be rated better than Aamir. 2. Kurukshetra Mahesh Manjrekar is one of the few directors who always extracts great performance from Sanjay Dutt . Dutt delivers one of his best performances as a no-nonsense and brave cop in this done to death good versus bad story The story is the us...