Hooray for Bollywood!
Aug. 6th, 2007 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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jennetj pursuant to a conversation in Stratford, but I'm assuming that all y'all are just fascinated by my every wierdness and opinion. :>
Bollywood Movies What I Recommend:
Lagaan - the granddaddy of 'em all; the one that got me and many another person into Bollywood. (And if you were a Dresden Files fan, the same guy who played Harry plays the villain in this. And in Bollywood, the villains are amazing stinkers.) Back in the days of the British Raj, the young man of the Indian village has had enough of being smacked around by the snotty British leader of the local outpost. A cricket challenge is proposed. If the Indians win, they get off from paying their taxes (lagaan) for the year. If they lose, they owe triple.
For Bollywood, this is low on random melodrama and pasted-on songs. The plot keeps ticking along, throwing in wrinkle after wrinkle. It's an Indian movie made in India about Indians - is it really a surprise how the game turns out? - but the movie still had me on the edge of my seat for every wicket.
Lage Raho Munna Bhai - another gateway movie that I recommend. Much lighter than Lagaan, this is about a low-level hoodlum who has a crush on a DJ. When she announces that the winner of a contest about the life of Ghandi will get to meet her in the studio, Munna Bhai rigs the result. He manages to impress her so much that she invites him to start giving discussions on Ghandi. To make sure that he isn't outed, he starts studying... to the point that he suddenly finds Ghandi himself appearing to give him advice.
This is a flat-out comedy, and thus the plot isn't as tight at Lagaan's. But it's really hilarious, so if your interests are lighter, go for it as your gateway.
Mujshe Dosti Karoge - Cyrano de Bergerac, with a gender flip and as a comedy. Three kids were growing up together; the boy moves to England, asking the pretty girl to keep in contact with him. It's her "plainer" friend who actually does all the writing for the next 10 years, but does he realize that when he comes back to India? Does she declare herself? Not with 2 more hours of movie to go!
Chori Chori - a ripoff of an American movie that I've never seen, he's an architect who's building his dreamhouse. She's a con artist who needs a new place to stay in a hurry, so she heads out to the remote village where his house stands and announces that she's his wife while he's away...
Kuch Kuch Hota Hai Very famous. Very corny. Very fun. Boy has a tomboy best friend in college who loves him, but *he* loves the pretty girl. So when he proposes to her, the tomboy takes herself out of his life. But the pretty girl dies in childbirth, leaving behind eight letters for her daughter, to be read on her birthday. Letter number eight tells the story of their college days, and orders the child to find the tomboy and make sure they marry...
The fromage factor is huge, but how can you not love a movie that has a scene of a woman playing basketball in full sari?
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge - reputedly the longest running movie in the world. If you liked the couple from the previous movie, here they are back again in a different movie. (Not as the same people.) She promises her ultra-traditional father that she will go to India for the marriage he arranged if he'll only give her one last thing - a trip to Europe with her college friends. While on the trip she meets a loud, rude, annoying (besotted) boy who will follow her to India, promising to marry her, but only when he can convince her father to agree to the wedding. The fromage factor is HUGE, the the dance numbers colorful, and the plot is both thin and rather incomprehensible... but you'll be having too much fun to quibble.
Some of these movies I've also reviewed under the Bollywood tag. All of them are available on Netflix.
jennetj pursuant to a conversation in Stratford, but I'm assuming that all y'all are just fascinated by my every wierdness and opinion. :>Bollywood Movies What I Recommend:
Lagaan - the granddaddy of 'em all; the one that got me and many another person into Bollywood. (And if you were a Dresden Files fan, the same guy who played Harry plays the villain in this. And in Bollywood, the villains are amazing stinkers.) Back in the days of the British Raj, the young man of the Indian village has had enough of being smacked around by the snotty British leader of the local outpost. A cricket challenge is proposed. If the Indians win, they get off from paying their taxes (lagaan) for the year. If they lose, they owe triple.
For Bollywood, this is low on random melodrama and pasted-on songs. The plot keeps ticking along, throwing in wrinkle after wrinkle. It's an Indian movie made in India about Indians - is it really a surprise how the game turns out? - but the movie still had me on the edge of my seat for every wicket.
Lage Raho Munna Bhai - another gateway movie that I recommend. Much lighter than Lagaan, this is about a low-level hoodlum who has a crush on a DJ. When she announces that the winner of a contest about the life of Ghandi will get to meet her in the studio, Munna Bhai rigs the result. He manages to impress her so much that she invites him to start giving discussions on Ghandi. To make sure that he isn't outed, he starts studying... to the point that he suddenly finds Ghandi himself appearing to give him advice.
This is a flat-out comedy, and thus the plot isn't as tight at Lagaan's. But it's really hilarious, so if your interests are lighter, go for it as your gateway.
Mujshe Dosti Karoge - Cyrano de Bergerac, with a gender flip and as a comedy. Three kids were growing up together; the boy moves to England, asking the pretty girl to keep in contact with him. It's her "plainer" friend who actually does all the writing for the next 10 years, but does he realize that when he comes back to India? Does she declare herself? Not with 2 more hours of movie to go!
Chori Chori - a ripoff of an American movie that I've never seen, he's an architect who's building his dreamhouse. She's a con artist who needs a new place to stay in a hurry, so she heads out to the remote village where his house stands and announces that she's his wife while he's away...
Kuch Kuch Hota Hai Very famous. Very corny. Very fun. Boy has a tomboy best friend in college who loves him, but *he* loves the pretty girl. So when he proposes to her, the tomboy takes herself out of his life. But the pretty girl dies in childbirth, leaving behind eight letters for her daughter, to be read on her birthday. Letter number eight tells the story of their college days, and orders the child to find the tomboy and make sure they marry...
The fromage factor is huge, but how can you not love a movie that has a scene of a woman playing basketball in full sari?
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge - reputedly the longest running movie in the world. If you liked the couple from the previous movie, here they are back again in a different movie. (Not as the same people.) She promises her ultra-traditional father that she will go to India for the marriage he arranged if he'll only give her one last thing - a trip to Europe with her college friends. While on the trip she meets a loud, rude, annoying (besotted) boy who will follow her to India, promising to marry her, but only when he can convince her father to agree to the wedding. The fromage factor is HUGE, the the dance numbers colorful, and the plot is both thin and rather incomprehensible... but you'll be having too much fun to quibble.
Some of these movies I've also reviewed under the Bollywood tag. All of them are available on Netflix.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 03:49 am (UTC)Somehow, I only recently saw Lagaan for the first time. Absolutely beautiful.
My favorite gateway movie maybe doesn't exactly qualify as Bollywood, more of a Bolly-tribute. I adore Bride and Prejudice. Combine my great loves of B'wood and Jane Austen, throw in some Sayid from Lost dancing and singing and I'm in love. Ok, so Aishwarya is entirely too pretty to play Lizzy/Lalita. Don't care. I love watching that woman- she is a work of art.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 10:26 am (UTC)Ash is *amazing* and arguably the most beautiful woman in the world!
I've got a "So You Wanna Learn Hindi" CD. I'll see if I want to take it past there. I think there are Hindi classes at the local temple (which is surprisingly close) but I haven't made up my mind yet. I'm pretty crap at languages.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 10:06 pm (UTC)Ash is mesmerizing, American audiences really need to get to know her better.
I like the Pimsleur course, the bookchip by Audiofy is good for getting basic conversations pretty fast. Learning to read and write the devanagari alphabet is where I got bogged down far more than speaking and understanding. But then, my friend refers to me as the Polyglut Linguaphile - a linguaphile being a lover of words and languages, and a polyglut being "a person who knows a little about a lot of languages and may be multilingual to the point of incoherence."
Yep. Good definition for me, then.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 10:27 am (UTC)Ghost World, eh? *opens tab to Netflix*
no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 12:25 pm (UTC)I had to turn the movie into a miniseries, and watched it in three separate sessions. Which worked remarkably well -- I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm not sure I'd have had the endurance to sit through it all at once.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 03:39 pm (UTC)Hai Hai
Date: 2007-08-10 09:55 pm (UTC)I loved DDLJ and used it to pimp a couple people at work. The scene with Kajol (one of my favorites) and her mom, when she's about to be unhappily married, is devastating.
I'd add Swades to the list above, too. It's predictable in the way every SRK movie is, but it's powerful, and moving. I read Indian newspapers every day, and the concept of NRIs (non-resident Indians) is a vital one; the definition of NRIs (non-returning Indians) is the threat Swades addresses. With songs!
Re: Hai Hai
Date: 2007-08-10 11:32 pm (UTC)Hmmmm... I hadn't thought about it like that. There's a point there - although many of the cornier comedies (my favorite kind) seem to have much of their conflict out of "My daughter will never marry the likes of YOU!"
Haven't seen Swades or Devdas (*scoots to netflix*) I do have Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, but haven't seen it yet. Ditto Indian Fish in American Waters, both of which seem to deal with Indian identity in a variety of places.
So many movies are being shot outside India now
I'm particularly fond of the fusion movies, too - Bride and Prejudice, Bend It Like Beckham, The Guru. (Dang, I need to give The Guru its own post!)
Re: Hai Hai
Date: 2007-08-10 11:45 pm (UTC)Oh, no! Sometimes it's "My son will never marry the likes of YOU!" :-)
The romantic conventions are just so different.
Re: Hai Hai
Date: 2007-08-12 01:06 am (UTC)