Read this post on the website: Chamko – Fixes all spots

A topical in context of the ongoing IPL spot fixing brouhaha. This is from one of the most fondly remembered scenes from Sai Paranjpye’s very loveable 1981 comedy Chashme Buddoor. Watch in the video embedded below.

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: Inside the original Bombay Talkies (photograph from 1942)

The 2013 movie Bombay Talkies couldn’t live up to the standards set by the original Bombay Talkies, the film studio founded by Himanshu Rai in 1934, at the then remote Bombay suburb of Malad. In two decades of its functional existence, Bombay Talkies produced tens of landmark films, the biggest of them was, of course, [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: 100 years of Indian cinema: The big Bollywood poster collage

Phata poster, nikle saikro hero (heroine aur villain bhi) If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed the grey background image on my profile page and the Technicolor version is the cover image of Cutting the Chai’s Facebook page. This collage is made up of 782 Bollywood posters, most of them hand-painted (the [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: Bombay Talkies: Only Anurag Kashyap’s Murabba gets the taste right

Wasn’t Bombay Talkies supposed to be a celebration of the 100 years of Indian cinema? Then what was Karan Johar’s Ajeeb Dastaan Hain Yeh doing in there? A mere insertion of a hit number from the yesteryears and a character with a roomful of vintage film music, doesn’t make it a tribute to cinema. Irrespective [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: Meet the original Revolver Rani from 1971 – Vijayalalitha

Kangana Ranaut is playing the title role of Revolver Rani in Sai Kabir’s forthcoming film co-produced by Tigmanshu Dhulia and Rahul Mittra. The film also stars Vir Das. But the original Revolver Rani is from over four decades ago. Vijayalalitha with both guns blazing was quite a ‘female James Bond’ in a number of Telugu [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: 100 years of Indian cinema: ‘Raja Harishchandra’ unofficial Google doodle

Google doodled Alam Ara, Google doodled Ray and because Google didn’t doodle the 100th anniversary of the release of the first Indian movie – Raja Harishchandra, Cutting the Chai has. This 100 years of Indian cinema unofficial Google doodle is a mosaic image made up of over 1500 individual frames from DG Phalke’s 1913 movie, [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: ‘Who is Aamir Khan?’ asked an ad ahead of ‘Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak’ release

Aamir Khan goes to great lengths to promote his films. This trend might have very well started 25 years ago when a teaser campaign prior to the announcement of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988) caught the interest of many. Qayamat se Qayamat Tak (QSQT) ran a teaser ad campaign to promote the film. It was [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: Sultry Amitabh Bachchan-Smita Patil poster makes ‘Shakti’ (1982) look like a skin flick

Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti (1982) isn’t as much about the Amitabh Bachchan and Smita Patil on-screen romance, as the on-screen histrionics of the Big B and and the Big D – Dilip Kumar. In a rare drift away from the moral weave of the movies of that period Sippy didn’t shy away from portraying a live-in [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.

Read this post on the website: 1977 newspaper clipping: Shakuntala Devi’s (1929-2013) famous 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds

During my childhood, there were only two things that could function faster than a computer one Chacha Chaudhary’s brain and the other was Shakuntala Devi. I did not care much about Pran’s sub-standard comics but Shakuntala Devi’s mathematical abilities was something else. Something beyond comprehension and almost bordering on the mythical. But the evidence was [...]

Cutting the Chai - India's original potpourri blog. Bringing to you vintage Indian ads, tech, movies and more since 2005.