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FILM REVIEW   'Allo 'Allo! (BBC One, 1982-1992) For this week’s Overlooked/Forgotten Films and Television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom , I have written about the "little-known" British sitcom 'Allo 'Allo! one of the funniest serials I saw in the 1990s. British sitcoms lack the finesse and the glamour that American serials usually have but they more than make up for it with an abundance of humour, especially dark comedy, and a caboodle of oddball characters and their eccentricities that are quite enjoyable. ’Allo ’Allo! created by producer David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd and broadcast on BBC One from 1982 through 1992 is one such sitcom that looks at the funny side of Nazi occupation of France through the eyes and ears of its rather bizarre characters, albeit with an unmistakeable undertone of reality that isn’t lost on viewers. René François Artois (Gorden Kaye) is the squint-eyed owner of the town café who manages it with his wife Edith ...

MUSIC & LYRICS Lay All Your Love On Me by ABBA I was listening to this song even as I decided to do a post on it. Actually, the hit song playing in my ears was the inspiration for writing about Lay All Your Love On Me by Swedish pop group ABBA. It's part of their 1981 album Super Trouper and has been my favourite song by ABBA to this day. I like most of their love songs, some more than others, but this one I like the most. ABBA made good music with effective lyrics.  Many of the ABBA songs can pass off as disco numbers but to me the single most defining feature of ABBA is the way their music and lyrics blend with each other. Every song will have you humming the tune and your feet tapping to the beat. I wasn't jealous before we met  Now every woman I see is a potential threat  And I'm possessive, it isn't nice  You've heard me saying that smoking was my only vice  But now it isn't true  Now everything is new  And ...

BOOK BUYS When good books sell cheap There is no spectacle that is as terrifying as the sight of a guest in your house whom you catch staring at your books. — Attributed to Roger Rosenblatt, American journalist, author, playwright and teacher A couple of days ago, I visited the popular Crossword bookstore located within the sprawling Inorbit Mall in Malad, a northwest suburb of Bombay, and glanced through the wall-to-wall section on fiction. I was looking for the novels of three well-known authors—John le Carré, Tom Clancy and John Irving—and found them jostling for space on a couple of shelves. While many of their books were there, each priced at Rs.299 ($6), I was looking for specific titles like The Constant Gardener and The Tailor of Panama by le Carré, a few Op Centre novels by Clancy, and The Cider House Rules and A Son of the Circus by Irving.  I'd no intention of buying any. All I wanted to do was compare their prices with those I'd bought rec...

VINTAGE PICTURES Where Next? Where Next?: The gentleman in the picture is employed in a global banking firm that has forced him to go on a thirty-day privilege leave failing which he forfeits it, a company regulation. So he and his wife are pouring over a world map to decide where to go next on their annual vacation. The woman looks as if she has picked out a destination, perhaps  the Maldives   or   Seychelles   in the   Indian Ocean . In his Where Next art, I’m not sure if English landscape painter Edward Frederick Brewtnall (1846-1902) meant for the couple to visit either of the archipelagos.  But just look at that backdrop! Do they really need to go anywhere when the sea is coming right in to meet them? Source: Wikimedia Commons

BOOK REVIEW The Murder on the Links (1923) by Agatha Christie The hangover from last week’s Agatha Christie Week continues well into this one with a look at the mystery writer’s third novel for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase . ‘Yes,’ said Poirot doubtfully. ‘No one who knew would bury a body there unless they wanted it to be discovered. And that is clearly absurd, is it not?’   The Murder on the Links is considered to be one of the most gripping mysteries written by the Queen of Crime. Just when you thought you’d wrapped up the murder of wealthy businessman Paul Renauld and nailed the murderer, the Belgian detective works his “little grey cells, always the little grey cells” and produces a real humdinger—the history behind the mystery we’re reading and nothing is ever the same again. And all it takes Hercule Poirot is a little trip to Paris and Coventry. Poirot and his friend, Captain Hastings, rush to France soon after receiving a distres...

For this week’s Overlooked/Forgotten Films and Television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom , I’m going to let you have a peek into India’s 53-year old national television broadcaster and, as a bonus, one of its earliest English serials.  Doordarshan logo with Hindi lettering Television has been around in India since 1959 but the government-owned Doordarshan, or Far Sight, made real inroads into Indian households only in 1982, when DD, as it is known, changed from a transmitter-driven makeshift studio to a national broadcaster that took satellite television from the initial six or seven cities to the entire country. It was also the year colour television came to India. However, most Indians couldn't afford TV let alone colour TV until mid-1980. Till then, people without their own television invaded the privacy of their neighbours who did, usually at dinner time, and sat huddled around their black-and-white TV sets to watch primetime shows between 8 an...

The joy of reading comfort books In my earlier post on Agatha Christie for Friday's Forgotten Books, Mystica and Yvette commented that Christie's mysteries and the classics, like those by Jane Austen, were “comfort reads,” books they went back to again and again because they genuinely love those books and also in times of hardship. In stressful situations, people tend to read books that help them relax and take their mind off their immediate problems. It may act as a temporary balm but you look forward to those moments with certain books you enjoy reading more than others; solace reading as you might call it. I’m not talking about self-help, spiritual, and motivational books. They’re usually the first choice of the undiscerning reader. How many times have I put down a novel because it was too “heavy” and I was too “stressed” at the time to read even a few pages from it? Good number of times. I don’t find all the classics relaxing, or comfort reads, at least not the ...

BOOK REVIEW Agatha Christie and The Secret Adversary (1922) It’s Agatha Christie Week at Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase . Hop over and read other reviews, analyses and perspectives on the Queen of Crime and her immortal mysteries. “I found myself making up stories and acting the different parts. There's nothing like boredom to make you write,” Dame Agatha Christie said in an interview on BBC Radio in 1955. “So by the time I was 16 or 17, I'd written quite a number of short stories and one long, dreary novel. By the time I was 21, I had finished the first book of mine ever to be published, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. ” The writer An Agatha Christie Week is an imposing challenge. Can you say anything new about a writer who has probably been written about more than most writers of her period and whose books have plausibly been reviewed more than those of her contemporaries? While I visit fifty-odd blogs through the course of the...

FILM REVIEW  Notting Hill (1999) and Maid in Manhattan (2002) If it’s Tuesday, it’s Overlooked/Forgotten Films and Television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom . Don't forget to check out the other fascinating reviews over there. T here’s something quite charming about movies where the hero and heroine, in typical Bollywood fashion, profess their love for each other in a public place and in broad daylight, usually towards the fag end of the film. In Hindi films, for instance, it’s not uncommon to see the lovebirds—one of whom is always rich and the other always poor—declare their undying love (sic) for one another smack in the middle of a robust family reunion. Most Bollywood films end this way, on an unusually ecstatic note. I can think of at least two English romantic comedies that have tried the formula with reasonable success— Notting Hill (1999) and Maid in Manhattan (2002). The difference is that Hollywood does it with finesse, though, in recent years Boll...

Stamp of a Writer: Maxim Gorky "Why, (reading books) is the only pleasure I have. While I'm reading it is as if I were living in another city, and when I have come to the end, as if I were falling from the belfry." "The most beautiful words in the English language are 'not guilty'." "Many contemporary authors drink more than they write." "I caught a chill while I was tipsy. I had typhoid fever. When I began to get well—it was torture ! I lay quite alone all day and all night, and it seemed to me as if I were dumb and blind, thrown into a pit like a pup. Thanks to the doctor, he gave me books all the time, or else I'd have died of depression... I kept reading poetry... I read, and it was as sweet as if I were swallowing milk. There is, brother, such poetry, that when you read it, it's like your sweetheart kissing you. And sometimes a verse will give you such a blow on the heart: you blaze up as if it had struck a spark."...

BOOK REVIEW  Cape Fear (The Executioners), 1957,  by John D. MacDonald My maiden read and review of a John D. MacDonald thriller goes towards Friday's Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott's blog Pattinase which is being hosted by Todd Mason at his blog Sweet Freedom this week. Check out the two blogs for plenty of other great reviews. What do you do when an insane criminal threatens to destroy your family and the police are powerless to protect you?  My copy of Cape Fear ,  Coronet Books There is a scene in Friends where Chandler (Matthew Perry) is upset because he sees a video of Richard (Tom Selleck) having sex with a woman he mistakes for his girlfriend Monica (Courteney Cox). When he mentions the video to Monica and insists that Richard is holding on to it because he hasn't got over her, she runs the tape and finds that it isn't her at all. Chandler is ecstatic and blurts out, “Life is good again!”   It’s the sort ...

50 years of 007: Bond on Bond  “I don't believe in Bond as a hero. It's a load of nonsense. How can you be a spy when any bar you walk into, the bartender says, ‘Ah, Mr. Bond. Shaken, not stirred?’” — Sir Roger Moore   Ian Fleming's impression of James Bond. Source: Daily Express This morning Sergio Angelini, a discerning reviewer of books and films, reminded me that Friday, October 5, is the 50th anniversary of the James Bond films. In a well-written piece titled Fifty shades of James Bond, he tells us which 007 movies worked their magic the best. You can read his article over at his blog Tipping My Fedora . Jeff Flugel at The Stalking Moon gives us two opposing views of Bond films in twin posts titled Bottom of the Barrel Bonds and 50 Years of 007: My Best Bonds . If you want something official, then head over to 007 , the official James Bond site, and look Inside the World of Bond. If you’re looking for trivia, then you stay right here and check out w...