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Subhash K Jha turns the spotlight on the brilliance of Dilip Kumar on reel as one of the finest actors, comedy and drama and everything in between, in the world.

He didn’t act. He reacted. Dilip Kumar was to the acting profession what Lata Mangeshkar was to playback singing. Take them away, and what are we left with in Hindi cinema?

Born as Yusuf Khan in a family of 12 children, the future doyen of on-screen dramatics moved with his family from his native town in Peshawar to Mumbai, where the Khans made a living as fruit sellers. For a brief while, Yusuf Khan even worked in an army canteen, when Devika Rani, the wife of the legendary Himanshu Rai of the Bombay Talkies studios, spotted the lanky but intense young man in a crowd.

Yusuf Khan was re-christened Dilip Kumar by Hindi litterateur Bhagwati Charan Verma. He made his...

Hansal Mehta has been a prominent filmmaker for over three decades, and some of his most well-known titles include Shahid, Aligarh, and The Buckingham Murders, among many other incredible films. He is also widely known for Scam 1992, a show that ranked third on the list of the IMDb Top 50 Most Popular Indian Web Series of All Time. Mehta recently curated a list of his all time favourite Indian male actors, listed alphabetically, exclusively on IMDb.

The list includes new actors, established stars, and yesteryear icons like Balraj Sahni, Dilip Kumar, Motilal, Om Puri, Sanjeev Kumar, Satish Kaushik, Shashi Kapoor, and Utpal Dutt.

Of course, the director has already worked with 10 of the actors, including Adarsh Gourav, Gagandev Riar, Manav Kaul, Manoj Bajpayee, Mithun Chakraborty, Nana Patekar, Naseeeruddin Shah, Pratik Gandhi, Rajkummar Rao, and Satish Kaushik.

This truly was a list that encompassed all the film industries in India. Along with the Hindi film actors,...

Who says the Indian entertainment industry is bolstered by nepotism? The track record during the last 60 years shows the outsider as the No.1 among the male superstars.

Rajesh Khanna, for whom the term ‘superstar’ was invented, had no connection whatsoever with the Hindi film industry when he stormed into the No.1 slot in 1969 with Aradhana, followed by a slew of blockbusters, which left the competition looking hopelessly inadequate. Among those actors whose careers suffered a massive setback due to the Khanna wave were the scions of Raj Kapoor’s empire, brothers Shammi and Shashi Kapoor.

This was the first occasion when nepotism in the Hindi film industry got a big jolt. Then came Amitabh Bachchan, who replaced Rajesh Khanna. The Big B arrived in the film industry armed with no recommendation except a letter from Mrs Indira Gandhi, which got him an early break in Sunil Dutt’s Reshma Aur Shera.

Her incandescent beauty, innocent sensuality, and effervescent persona still send hearts aflutter and earned her the sobriquet of “Venus of Indian films”, but Madhubala’s enigmatic and beguiling smile and charm masked a lifetime of pain and suffering.

Madhubala, who passed away on this day (February 23) in 1969, earned tributes that have rarely been matched, leave alone surpassed.

She acted in a film named after her when she was not even midway through her career, was being copied or parodied when she was still acting, and is possibly the only Indian, film or otherwise, with a song dedicated to her being played at the Olympics.

She was also compared to the near-contemporary Marilyn Monroe – the two would pass away within a few years of each other, both aged 36, but did not welcome this as she did not consider herself a sex symbol.

Performances as the captivating but star-crossed Anarkali of “Mughal-e-Azam...

"I found Bimal Roy at his desk, writing something, when I entered his cabin. As he stopped writing and looked up, he appeared to be taken aback. He fixed me with a steady gaze and kept staring at me in silence… After a while, he turned to the people seated at the rear end of the cabin and said to them in Bengali: ‘Is this the man you had in mind? What sort of a joke are you playing on me?’

"Apparently, he wasn’t aware that I knew Bengali. Without even offering me a seat, he said to me, ‘Mr. Sahni, my men have made a mistake. I can see that you are totally unsuited to play the sort of role I wish to present in my film’," Balraj Sahni wrote in his autobiography ‘Meri Filmi Atamkatha’.

A shattered Sahni managed to ask what role it was and Roy...

She had a film named after her even before she hit her career’s peak, was being parodied when she was still active, and is the only Indian film actress who has a song to her played at the Olympics. That was the spell of Madhubala, whose angelic features, beguiling yet enigmatic smile, and incandescent beauty, coupled with her restrained but undeniable talent, made her part of some of Hindi cinema’s most iconic films.

While she is imprinted in the hearts and minds of film-watchers as the winsome, entrancing but star-crossed Anarkali of “Mughal-e-Azam” (1960), as the entrancing nightclub singer in “Howrah Bridge”, and for her exuberant, effusive, and elfin charm in romantic comedies “Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi” (1958), “Jhumroo” (1961) and “Half Ticket” (1962), she left her mark across film genres from ghost/gothic stories to comic crime capers to film noir, beyond the usual romantic dramas in a relatively short career.

Kalank has unfortunately turned into an ?epic? disappointment, the author feels that if the story of Kalank - the mega budget multi star period drama helmed by the 2 States fame Abhishek Varman that boasted names like Madhuri Dixit, Sonakshi Sinha, Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sanjay Dutt and Kunal Kemmu would have been the way re imagined, retold over here by taking liberties after watching the original in theatres, things could have been different.

Here goes the re-imagined Kalank

Opening scene

A dying Satya (Sonakshi Sinha) makes her last wish and asks her younger sister Roop (Alia Bhatt) to marry her husband Dev (Aditya Roy Kapur), (keep reading for more) the period is the same 1945 and it?s Lahore in Pakistan.

(Read More:?Kalank: Major flaws that destroyed the movie)

Roop gets married to Dev

It?s a grand event in Lahore, The Chaudhry?s are a respected aristocratic family,...

Film: 'My Friend Pinto'; Cast: Prateik, Kalki Koechlin, Arjun Mathur, Shruti Seth, Makrand Deshpande, Divya Dutta; Written and Directed by Raghav Dar; Rating: ***1/2 - A night of adventure in Mumbai.

'Zindagi khwab hai khwab mein sach hai kya aur bhala jhooth hai kya?' Remember Motilal's staggering existentialism in 1956's 'Jagte Raho'? Some such philosophy underlines the key goings-on in 'My Friend Pinto' -- a wispy, nostalgic comedy about a Goan simpleton's one night of zany adventures in the mad mad bustle of Mumbai during New Year's eve.

This isn't the first film that explores Mumbai by.