The Official Arbelos Films Thread

[moviegeek1992]

Originally Posted by Hindustani

The Guru Dutt Trilogy is a must

PYAASA (1957) (means PARCHED aka extremely thirsty)

SAHIB BIBI AUR GHULAM (1962) (means MASTER, MADAM and SERVENT)

KAAGAZ KE PHOOL (1959) in Cinemascope (means PAPER FLOWERS)



besides this.

Cinelicious Should look into....

SHOLAY (1975)(2014 Dolby Atmos release). Its a Kurasawa seven samurai bollywood curry wester. A landmark motion picture event in history of Bollywood. It recently was re-release after complete digital restoration, 3D tranfer and Dolby Atmos upgrade to its original 70mm 6-track stereophonic sound.



MUGHAL E AZAM (1960) (means THE GREAT MUGHALS). A BEN-HUR, GONE WITH THE WIND type epic. Brilliantly written, shot and acted. It went complete Digital Restoration in B & W and technicolor (partly shot in Technicolor) in 2004.


PAAKEEZAH (1972) in Cinemascope (means PURITY). Another early landmark, color "cinemascope" masterpiece on the courtesan culture similar to Geisha culture in east and lesser form of prostitution culture in the West. Film renouned for incredible performances, musical score and breath taking songs. Just recently went complete Digital Restoration by Shemaroo Studios based in Mumbai, India.

Criterion has been seriously missing out on rest of the Indian classics as they solely focus on Satyajit Ray's work only.

Cinelicious can make serious inroads into Classical Indian Cinema by releasing atleast 1 of the above mentioned 6 masterpieces.

There is a huge BluRay and future 4K UHD BluRay market for Classic Indian Cinema worldwide all the way upto Trinidad & Tobago in the west where there is still massive Indian diaspora.

Sorry, but I don't agree with this. There are many Indians or South East Asians all over the world but hardly many are interested in blu-rays let alone blu-rays of the films you have mentioned.

The Indian dvd industry is already in decline to the point where a title sometimes appears on TV the same time as it's dvd release. One of the biggest distributors for Bollywood films, Eros International (who released the first Bollywood blu-ray) have abandoned blu-ray in favour of their own on-demnd website, and another giant Shemaroo are probably seeing more revenue through ads as they slowly upload their catalogue to YouTube than dvd sales for those individual titles would have attained.

To top it all off, these distributors are extremely protective of their properties and are unlikely to license out to anyone else, Mughal-E-Azam and Sholay being prime examples.

Sure blu-ray labels can make deals with more independent filmmakers after their films appear at various film festivals for a blu-ray release beyond that if the respective rights owners don't release a blu-ray of the films you mentioned themselves, then it's never gonna happen. Think of this way, over in the US, every crappy movie makes its way to blu-ray (including Syfy channel schlock) yet the total number of Bollywood blu-rays probably isn't more than 150 (if that), and that's from 2007 till now!