about bollywood films…

Bollywood (Hindi: बॉलीवुड, Urdu: بالی وڈ) is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry in India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema. Bollywood is only a part of the Indian film industry.

The name is a portmanteau of Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry. Though some deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood, it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Bollywood is commonly referred to as Hindi cinema, even though Hindustani, the substratum common to both Hindi and Urdu, might be more accurate. Bollywood consists of the languages of Hindi, Urdu and English. The use of poetic Urdu words is fairly common. The connection between Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani is an extremely contentious matter and is discussed at length in the linked articles relating specifically to the languages.

There has been a growing presence of Indian English in dialogue and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see films that feature dialogue with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. There is growing number of English films. A few films are also made in two or even three languages (either using subtitles, or several soundtracks).

Bollywood film music is called filmi music (from Hindi, meaning “of films”).

Songs from Bollywood movies are generally pre-recorded by professional playback singers, with the actors then lip synching the words to the song on-screen, often while dancing. While most actors, especially today, are excellent dancers, few are also singers. One notable exception was Kishore Kumar, who starred in several major films in the 1950s while also having a stellar career as a playback singer. K. L. Saigal, Suraiyya, and Noor Jehan were also known as both singers and actors. Some actors in the last thirty years have sung one or more songs themselves; for a list, see Singing actors and actresses in Indian cinema.

Playback singers are prominently featured in the opening credits and have their own fans who will go to an otherwise lacklustre movie just to hear their favourites. Going by the quality as well as the quantity of the songs they rendered, most notable singers of Bollywood are Suraiyya, Noor Jehan, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum, Alka Yagnik, etc among female playback singers and K. L. Saigal, Talat Mahmood, Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan, Sonu Nigam among male playback singers. Mohammed Rafi is often considered the arguably finest of the singers that sung for Bollywood, followed by Lata Mangeshkar, who, through the course of a career spanning over six decades, has recorded thousands of songs for Indian movies. The composers of film music, known as music directors, are also well-known. Their songs can make or break a film and usually do. Remixing of filmi songs with modern beats and rhythms is a common occurrence today, and producers may even release remixed versions of some of their films’ songs along with the films’ regular soundtrack albums.

 

The dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily modelled on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans (tawaif), or folk dances. In modern films, Indian dance elements often blend with Western dance styles (as seen on MTV or in Broadway musicals), though it is not unusual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with a troupe of supporting dancers. Many song-and-dance routines in Indian films feature unrealistically instantaneous shifts of location and/or changes of costume between verses of a song. If the hero and heroine dance and sing a pas-de-deux (a dance and ballet term, meaning “dance of two”), it is often staged in beautiful natural surroundings or architecturally grand settings. This staging is referred to as a “picturisation”.

Songs typically comment on the action taking place in the movie, in several ways. Sometimes, a song is worked into the plot, so that a character has a reason to sing; other times, a song is an externalisation of a character’s thoughts, or presages an event that has not occurred yet in the plot of the movie. In this case, the event is almost always two characters falling in love.

Bollywood films have always used what are now called “item numbers“. A physically attractive female character (the “item girl”), often completely unrelated to the main cast and plot of the film, performs a catchy song and dance number in the film. In older films, the “item number” may be performed by a courtesan (tawaif) dancing for a rich client or as part of a cabaret show. The dancer Helen was famous for her cabaret numbers. In modern films, item numbers may be inserted as discotheque sequences, dancing at celebrations, or as stage shows.

For the last few decades Bollywood producers have been releasing the film’s soundtrack, as tapes or CDs, before the main movie release, hoping that the music will pull audiences into the cinema later. Often times the soundtrack is more popular than the movie. In the last few years some producers have also been releasing music videos, usually featuring a song from the film. However, some promotional videos feature a song which is not included in the movie.

[edit] Dialogues and lyrics

Main article: Bollywood songs

The film script or lines of dialogue (called “dialogues” in Indian English) and the song lyrics are often written by different people.

Dialogues are usually written in an unadorned Hindi or Hindustani that would be understood by the largest possible audience. Some movies, however, have used regional dialects to evoke a village setting, or old-fashioned courtly Urdu in Mughal-era historical films. Contemporary mainstream movies also make great use of English. In fact, many movie scripts are first written in English, and then translated into Hindi.

Cinematic language, whether in dialogues or lyrics, is often melodramatic and invokes God, family, mother, duty, and self-sacrifice liberally.

Music directors often prefer working with certain lyricists, to the point that the lyricist and composer are seen as a team. This phenomenon is not unlike the pairings of American composers and songwriters that created old-time Broadway musicals (e.g., Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, or Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe). Song lyrics are usually about love. Bollywood song lyrics, especially in the old movies, frequently use Arabo-Persic Urdu vocabulary.

                 

Bichhdey abhi to hum, bas kal parso,

jiyoongi main kaisey, is haal mein barson?

Maut na aayi, teri yaad kyon aayi,

Haaye, lambi judaayi!

              We have been separated just a day or two,

How am I going to go on this way for years?

Death doesn’t come; why, instead, do these memories of you?

Oh; this long separation!

Sanjay Dutt (born 29 July 1959) is an Indian Bollywood actor. A two time Filmfare Awards winner, he is the son of Bollywood stars Sunil Dutt and Nargis. On 31 July 2007, Sanjay Dutt was sentenced to a jail term of 6 years for illegal possession of firearms acquired from terrorist acquaintances, who were responsible for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts.

Early days

Sanjay Dutt was born to one of Bollywood’s most well-known star couples, Nargis Dutt and Sunil Dutt. He has two sisters, Priya Dutt and Namrata Dutt. He was educated at the Lawrence School Sanawar. At the age of 12 he made his first film appearance in his father’s film Reshma Aur Shera where he had a small role as a qawali singer.

While he was still in high school, Sanjay Dutt became a drug addict, probably as he was unable to handle the pressure of being the child of two celebrities.^[2] His drug problems worsened his mother’s health, who was already diagnosed with cancer. Nargis Dutt died a few weeks before Sanjay Dutt’s first film, Rocky, was to be released. A heartbroken Dutt took to doing more drugs. His father sent him to a rehab center in Miami. After attending a rehabilitation program in the United States, a sober Dutt started working in films again.

Rise as a notable actor

Sanjay Dutt acted in several successful films in the 1980s, including Vidhaata (1982), Naam (1986), and Hathyar (1989). He was reportedly director Subhash Ghai’s first choice to play the lead in Hero (1983), but after witnessing Sanjay Dutt in his drug phase during the shooting of Vidhaata, Ghai picked Jackie Shroff in his place. Sanjay Dutt married Richa Sharma in 1987 (a small-time actress discovered by Dev Anand) who had nursed him back from a lung injury. A year later, the couple had a baby girl, Trishala. Just two months after Trishala’s birth, Risha was diagnosed with cancer and the couple separated. Richa moved to United States with her daughter to live with her parents while Dutt pursued his career in Bollywood. After his wife succumbed to brain tumor in 1996, a bitter custody battle between Dutt and his in-laws over the custody of his only daughter ensued, which Dutt lost. Sanjay Dutt’s sister, Namrata, married actor Kumar Gaurav, the son of yesteryears Bollywood star Rajendra Kumar.

Sanjay Dutt resurrected his cinema career with movies like Sadak (1991) and Saajan (1991). He received his first Filmfare nomination for the best actor in a lead role, for the film Saajan. His breakthrough role came in Subhash Ghai’s Khalnayak (1993), which became a huge hit and gave his career a boost. He received a filmfare nomination for the film.

Vishal Devgan, born (April 2, 1967 in Delhi, India), popularly known as Ajay Devgan is a two-time National Film Award-winning actor who appears in Bollywood films. Beginning as an action hero in the early 1990s, Devgan matured early in his career, as is widely regarded now as one of the finest and the most serious actors in the indian industry.

Aamir Hussain Khan (/ɑːmir xɑːn/; Hindi: आमिर ख़ान, Urdu: عامر حسین خان) (born March 14, 1965) in Mumbai, India, is a highly acclaimed and a National Film Award-winning Indian film actor and producer.

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Ving Rhames

A burly, bald black actor of stage, screen, and television, Ving Rhames specializes in playing villains and, indeed, having grown up on Harlem’s meanest streets, is no stranger to violence. His onscreen persona, however, is no match for his real-life reputation as a deeply compassionate man, seriously dedicated to his profession. The actor ably demonstrated his capacity for abundant generosity during the 1998 Golden Globes ceremony when he handed over the award he had just won for portraying the title character of the cable film Don King: Only in America to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon, simply because he felt Lemmon’s contributions to film exceeded his own.  Though his upbringing in Harlem was rife with many temptations to engage in easy money criminal ventures, the deeply religious Rhames separated himself from street riffraff at a young age and focused his energies on school. It was his ninth grade English teacher who steered the sensitive young man toward acting, in large part because Rhames was unusually well spoken, frequently earning praise for his clear elocution. Inspired by a poetry reading he had attended with schoolmates, Rhames successfully auditioned for entrance into New York’s prestigious High School for the Performing Arts. Once enrolled, he immersed himself in his studies and fell in love with acting. Following graduation in 1978, he attended the Juilliard School of Drama on a scholarship and focused his studies there on classical theater. After graduating from Juilliard in 1983, he went on to perform in Shakespeare in the Park productions. In 1984, Rhames made his television debut in Go Tell It on the Mountain and, the following year, landed his first Broadway role starring opposite Matt Dillon in The Winter Boys. Thus began a steady, fruitful theater career augmented by recurring roles on such daily soap operas as Another World and Guiding Light, and guest-starring parts on such primetime series as Miami Vice. He entered films in Native Son (1986), following that up with appearances in a series of modest films and television movies. Rather than getting a single big break into stardom, he made a gradual ascent that began with his appearance in Brian De Palma’s grim Vietnam War saga Casualties of War (1989).Rhames again worked with Matt Dillon in 1993 on The Saint of Fort Washington. While filming on location in New York, Dillon introduced him to a man who had approached him, asking about the actor’s involvement with Rhames on Broadway. It turned out that the stranger was Rhames’ long-estranged older brother, Junior, who had lost contact with the family while serving in Vietnam. Troubled and unable to reintegrate into mainstream society, he had been living in a nearby homeless shelter. The compassionate Rhames was thrilled to see his big brother and promptly moved him into his apartment, helped him get a job, and later bought a home for his brother and parents to share.In 1994, Rhames gained considerable acclaim for his disturbingly convincing portrayal of the sadistic Marsellus Wallace in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. His performance paved the way for supporting roles opposite some of Hollywood’s most popular stars in such big budget features as Mission Impossible (1996) (as well as John Woo’s 2000 sequel to the film), Con Air (1997), Out of Sight (1998), and Entrapment (1999). In addition to his film credits, Rhames has also continued to appear frequently on such television shows as E.R. Rhames’ performance as a former gangster turned honest, hardworking man proved a highlight of Boyz N the Hood director John Singleton’s 2001 drama Baby Boy, and after lending his distinctive voice to the computer animated box-office disaster Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within the actor returned to the small screen for a pair of made-for-television features. If subsequent efforts such as Undisputed failed to make a sizable dent at the box office, Rhames continued to impress with contributions to such features as Lilo and Stitch (again providing vocals for the animated film) and as a conscientious cop in the 2002 police drama Dark Blue. A role opposite Gary Oldman in the 2003 crime drama Sin flew under the radar of most mainstream film audiences, and in early 2004 Rhames took up arms against the hungry legions of the undead in the eagerly anticipated remake Dawn of the Dead. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide LAST NEWS FROM VING RHAMES:  LOS ANGELES – Two dogs belonging to actor Ving Rhames apparently mauled a man to death at the star’s home Friday, authorities said. if(window.yzq_d==null)window.yzq_d=new Object(); window.yzq_d[\\\\\'tm6FQULEYrA-\\\\\']=\\\\\’&U=13brdbtpf%2fN%3dtm6FQULEYrA-%2fC%3d576373.11029372.11736878.2896325%2fD%3dLREC%2fB%3d4794336\\\\\’; The 40-year-old victim, who has not been identified, had lived on the property and worked as a caretaker at the home for about two years, police said. He was among those responsible for caring for the dogs, said Los Angeles police Officer Sandra Gonzalez. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. Three bull mastiffs and an English bulldog were seized by animal services, police said. “Two of those dogs appeared to be responsible for the tragic death,” said Officer Jason Lee, adding that several dogs remain at the property.Police were called at about 7:15 a.m. by someone reporting a dead body at the home in Brentwood. Gonzalez didn’t know who made the call. “The victim had a large number of bites and scratches which appear to be dog bites,” Lt. Ray Lombardo said during a press conference. According to TMZ.com[5], police say the dogs are very friendly, and police are not aware of any previous problems. Los Angeles County ordinances limit homeowners to only three dogs per household without further permits.[6] Rhames is not expected to have charges filed against him in what police called a “pure accident.”[7] Rhames wasn’t home at the time of the incident because he was in Bulgaria shooting The Tournament.