Turner Classic Movies is showing a dozen Bollywood classics on Thursdays in June, introduced by Ismail Merchant. As might be expected whenever Merchant’s involved, the movie menu reads somewhere between vegetarian and vegan: noble, needs some spice, and definitely not enough cheese.
But that’s just how it looks to a guy who discovered Bollywood through Diesel Jeans commercials and Namaste America, an Indian music video show on NYC’s public access channel Saturday mornings. Merchant/Ivory’s own meta-Bollywood film, Bombay Talkie is good, too, but unfortunately, it’s not in the series.