ChinmayC Blog

A Hero adoration, fascination and love for whom never left my heart—from my childhood days to the present day. Yes, the Hero for me! Embodiment of a person I could trust and depend upon since my tenderest years! Let it be just a screen person or an image only, he lived in my heart like the dearest member of the family! Yes, he's been family, also like a father figure, like my own father! A protector, the He-Man who destroys evil with his bare hands; an umbrella that covers the weak or the vulnerable at every dark corner; and the Hero who conquers all obstacles and hurdles with smiling ease! Dharmendra ! The name itself is a legacy and the countless images that follow and immerse the legacy in colorful vastness! My heart housed in an ageing frame now is still immersed in the legacy! What a hero Dharmendra (1935--2025) has been! Almost hero-worshiped him @5 and still adoring him @65, and mourning his loss today with an inconsolable heart! Kudos for one of the greatest movie heroes o...

It's really heartbreaking that a powerful character actor should pass away at the age of just 55 while in prime as far the career goes or the huge promise of a lot more to come. Ashish Warang , an actor of Bollywood and the Marathi film industry , had suddenly passed away on Friday, the 5th of September, 2025. There was a total lack of clarity about his demise initially; only today his friends have come out with a statement that he had not been well for some time. First he had jaundice and although he'd recovered from the disease more complications followed in the next few months, finally leading to a cardiac arrest that proved fatal for the sturdy actor.  Ashish Warang acted with most of the leading Bollywood stars in supporting roles--almost always as a cop. I immensely liked his performances; however, those were very brief roles which didn't linger on in my mind enough to enable me to associate his name with the roles. His face has been very familiar to me, but unfort...

The Golden Jubilee of the iconic Hindi movie ' Sholay ' was celebrated by the Maharashtra Postal Circle of India Post at an event organized in Mumbai today. On this auspicious occasion the Maharashtra Postal Circle released two specially designed picture postcards and a presentation pack, featuring an exclusive golden cancellation . The event marked 50 years of the cult classic 'Sholay' since its original release on August 15, 1975.  Amitabh Singh , Chief Postmaster General, Maharashtra Circle, officially unveiled the commemorative items and presented the first album to Ramesh Sippy , the acclaimed director of 'Sholay' . The ceremony was attended by noted personalities including Shehzad Sippy , Rohan Sippy , Kiran Joneja Sippy and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur . Senior postal officers, Kaiya Arora , Director of Postal Services (Mumbai Region), Simran Kaur , Director of Postal Services (Headquarters), Maharashtra Circle and Rekha Rizvi , Director, Mumbai GPO we...

Rohit Shetty’s directorial abilities are at stake, as far as the supposed OTT version of his famed police franchise is concerned. The first and the best movie of the franchise continues to remain to be Singham (2011); even though the Singham sequels and other movies like Simmba (2018) and Suryavanshi (2021) are fairly gripping and absorbing. But Indian Police Force-Season 1 (IPF)  that release on Amazon Prime Video recently is not. Obviously, the ebullient director has not properly concentrated on developing the plot and the script. His favorite scenes of cars crashing and blasting in air, punchy fights and elaborate gun-fights and chases are all there; but he should’ve understood that such scenes, though very well shot, do not create the desired effect on the small screen as these do on the big screens of PVRs, INOXs, Cinepolis’s and so on. Even if we overlook this particular aspect, we’re in for further disappointment as the action drama unfolds. There’s just no suspense in the...

  There should absolutely be no doubt that our intention here is not to discuss or re-review the all-time epic movie ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991). However, we still hope to derive some brownie points from the movie title about our proposed speculation on the phenomena of the silences of any kind—wholly related to the animal world. Now, this ‘silence’ of the ‘lambs’ is very clear in its obvious manifestation of a paralyzing terrifyingly petrifying fear of the profoundest kind, because the lambs are basically defenseless animals having no effective systems to ward off the free-flowing predators. They have no other option but to remain silent which is not so often of the discreet or non-discreet variety, because, again, they have no other practical choice. Unless, of course, should some marauding defenders appear in great numbers to fight for the rights of the lambs.   As our fully intended title suggests, it’s about the silence of any other species of animals except ...

Many years back I wrote a piece titled 'Populated Movies' that was later included in my first book ' Laugh and Let Laugh ' in 2017. In that piece I argued that since India is an overpopulated country with high unemployment rates the creative art forms do adjust to that reality by trying to generate maximum employment opportunities in their projects. For example the goons in a mainstream Hindi movie: whereas just one bullet through the head by one villain is enough to kill the hero or the protagonist, the chief antagonist or the main villain sends an army of goons armed with an assortment of weapons for the job. I argued that this is done with a view to generate more employment. But I was mistaken, and so I just want to admit this here.  My argument got almost fatally shot after I watched all the three movies of the 'John Wick Franchise' (2014 onward). I failed to keep count, but hundreds of hapless goons got killed in each of the movies at the hands of the '...

The Web Series Hush Hush Season 1 started streaming on Prime Video from the 22 nd of September 2022. It has at least three very important reasons for being watched eagerly by a lot of viewers. First, filmmaker Tanuja Chandra whose intense flick Dushman (1998) is still remembered by movie fans features as one of the directors and producers in a clearly women-oriented story with mostly women in the crew too. Second, the cast is tremendously interesting and exciting with two of the most beloved babes of Bollywood since the eighties Juhi Chawla and Ayesha Jhulka coming back/appearing on the OTT Platform for the first time, and joined by the immensely talented Soha Ali Khan , Shahana Goswami , Kritika Kamra and Karishma Tanna . Third, the story begins on a very taut and promising note, seemingly doing justice for a mature series in the Suspense genre . But unfortunately, that lasts only till the third episode, and then, rather inexplicably, the storytelling breaks up and meanders to...

If you had ever got the idea of perceiving ‘divorce’ as one of the funniest and craziest words or concepts in human conjugal life and then had dismissed the idea as a wild one…well, you were not entirely wrong. For your solace or rather vindication we have here a movie titled Jugjugg Jeeyo (correct Hindi form is ‘Jug Jug Jeeyo’ meaning ‘live long and prosperous,) that reduces ‘divorce’ to the kind you’d perceived, doesn’t matter if you’d done so with experience leaking or not as the movie itself doesn’t bother about that either. Your conviction is further heightened by the fact that the movie is not of the ordinary type, having the iconic Karan Johar as one of the producers and his famous banner ‘Dharma Productions’ to boot. And then, the star-cast is really mouthwatering with the ever popular veterans Anil Kapoor and Neetu Singh along with the immensely talented actors of the younger generation—Varun Dhawan and Kiara Advani in the lead roles—supported well by the ebullient television ...

Based on my lifelong experience as a rather discerning and somewhat fastidious movie buff I beg to offer here a few of my rather bovine (no necessarily offending anyone) observations about movie watching. You may or may not agree with these which is quite natural, movie watching being kinda of subjective entertainment. You can also choose the near-absent option of putting your views too here in a way to enrich or annihilate my observations. My observations here dwell on characteristics that adversely affect the viewing pleasure which are more important, because the absence of those acts on the positive side. Ø   In quite a few movies I fervently expect something to happen at some point of the narration, and if that takes too long a time or doesn’t happen at all I get impatient and immediately try confirming again the genre of the film. Most often, I find Suspense as the one. Well, heady kind of suspense that! This phenomenon mostly happens in Hollywood productions where the filmma...

In all my Bollywood , read Hindi movies , viewing experience this should be the first movie with a serious attempt to deal with an air disaster or a possible air disaster, a genre that the commercial Hindi films never really tried to explore barring a few on plane hijack, most prominently the intense drama of Neerja (2016) based on a real-life brave air hostess. The movie Runway 34 , also loosely based on true incidents and released on the occasion of Eid in April-end this year, tells the story of a flight from Dubai to Cochin that entered the vortex of a raging cyclone nearly crash-landing in the Trivandrum airport with 150 passengers on board, and then followed by the grueling investigation into the near-crash. The first half of the film dwells entirely on the flight starting at the wee hours from Dubai and is a gripping saga of what happened on its course from the takeoff onward, told with the required details and intensity that are always missing in most commercial Bollywood m...

There was an ugly kind of mad expression just the day before the Kolkata concert of the famous Bollywood playback singer Krishnakumar Kunnath (KK) who succumbed to a heart attack immediately after that fateful concert, held in a jammed auditorium in extreme humid heat conditions. Due to the lack of space we couldn’t mention it and discuss about this particular madness, obviously a pandemic -induced one to a large extent, in our earlier piece . It came from a well-known Bangla artiste -singer in the form of an enraged expression. He questioned as to who is KK indeed, that why should there be so much craze for such Bollywood singers like him and that there are more talented singers than him available locally in Bengal . No doubt, his comments were condemned in all quarters including the social media . The artiste himself apologized for his behavior and later expressed his terrible shock over the tragedy that followed the concert.   However, this kind of ugly conduct cannot be w...

I had the misfortune of going for a movie in 2019 in a big theatre before the Pandemic put a stop to it, titled Pagalpanti (Madness) and was nearly driven mad. It was not my fault as the movie was having a lot of superstars and we went particularly because of Anil Kapoor . But now, after watching the new movie Heropanti-2 (heroism or hero antics) the previous movie seemed to have at least some kind of a method. The question arises then as to why I’ve made the mistake again! Well, firstly it was streaming free where I can ruthlessly go forward at will. And most importantly because I love the kid Tiger Shroff , son of my beloved Jackie Shroff , and ironically, Heropanti (2014) was Tiger’s debut film where his athletic and gymnastic skills plus his lithe, dancing and almost flying body were noticed. I watched only parts of that film some of which seemed a bit sensible, giving Tiger some scope to showcase his acting skills too, perhaps because it was a remake of a Telugu film . Of cours...