14^th May 2024

“Remembering our dad,
K. Amarnath,
On his 41^st Death Anniversary”

My dad will always remain alive through all his wonderful old classic movies & unforgettable songs

Whenever I want to watch any of my dad’s movies or songs from his films, my go-to channels are Thomas Daniel’s two YouTube channels – tommydan55 for movies and tommydan333 for songs.

Thomas Daniel is a retired American residing in Hawaii, who pursues this wonderful hobby of digitally restoring and enhancing old classic movies.

Personally, I can compare my experience of watching tommydan’s enhanced versions of my dad’s movies, to a fairy tale, wherein, with a wave of the wand, things get magically transformed into something beautiful & enchanting.

The old grainy VHS tapes and DVDs are magically transformed into pristine copies with clean and sharp images accompanied by an absolutely clear audio – how the movies must have originally looked like when projected on the theatre screen nearly 75 years ago. Some of these digital copies are even better in quality than the originals !!

This transformation is not an easy task. It is a labour of love and perseverance for which I shall be eternally grateful to Thomas Daniel, as I am sure my father, K.Amarnath, would have been too. He too would have appreciated all the hard work involved in restoring some of his old classical movies.

This painstaking process of restoration is meticulously explained in an article written by Divya Sethu, excerpts of which are quoted below:

“Thomas Daniel, a resident of Hawaii, shares why he started his YouTube channel tommydan55, which is an extensive compendium of forgotten and old Indian classic movies, and the hard work that goes behind restoring each of the 200 movies on his channel……”

“……he combs through these films three separate times, frame by frame. He removes scratches, dirt and other artefacts on the frames, and tries to smooth over missing frames, with special attention to the opening credits. Then, he fixes the brightness and darkness levels, corrects volume levels, edits the subtitles to near perfection, and then reviews the final product carefully to weed out other errors…..”

You can read more about Thomas Daniel on this link here.

Once again, thank you “tommydan”, for including my dad’s movies and songs in your precious collection and giving them a new lease on life.

I can now safely say:

All is not Lost – these restored copies are worth preserving for future generations to enjoy.

May Thomas Daniel continue his wonderful hobby and passion and may he get due credit from the Indian Film Industry.

Links to some of my dad’s movies restored by tommydan:

1947  Mirza Sahiban – Noor Jehan, Trilok Kapoor (youtube.com)

1949  Bazaar – 1949 – Shyam, Nigar Sultana (youtube.com)

1950  Beqasoor – Madhubala, Ajit (youtube.com)

1953  Laila Majnu – 1953 – Shammi Kapoor, Nutan (youtube.com)

1956  Naya Andaz – Meena Kumari, Kishore Kumar (youtube.com)

1957  Bada Bhai – Ajit, Kamini Kaushal (youtube.com)

PUBLISHED: 14^th MAY 2024

REFERENCES & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS