Customer Rating: 
Summary: For academics only
Comment: It's conceivable that some scholarly professor living in some dimly-lit library on some hermetically-sealed university campus will be able to decipher this jargon-filled tome. For the rest of us, this book is a virtually unreadable barrage of dry, dismal, academic slang without even a single moment of levity. It's two-hundred-plus pages of "crucial cultural intertexts" and "structural homology" and "strucural displacement" -- and those three phrases came from ONE SENTENCE on page four!
How is it possible to write a book about Bollywood that is so utterly devoid of color and joy? The author has accomplished exactly that. It could be that this book might contain a few tangible ideas or meaningful illuminations, but they're buried so deeply under the weight of such pompous verbage that they'll never see the light of day. Bollywood has never been so tediously presented!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wholeheartedly Recommended.
Comment: When I started this book, I had not imagined that this is going to be such a detailed analysis of characters, scenes and the movies themselves from Indian Cinema. It is such a wonderful attempt at explaining Indian Cinema that I simply couldn't help praising Vijay Mishra, and thanking him at the same time for my broadened horizons and perspective. But I may add, get this book only if you know about Bollywood in little detail. This is not a text introducing Indian Cinema to someone unfamiliar to it. If you are a hindi movie fan, its a must must read, and I am quite sure you will find it very interesting and informative as well. I personally wholeheartedly recommend this book to everyone who wants to know about Bollywood and understand its psychology.
