Longtime Mutineer Desi Dude in Austin left a tip on our news tab, which immediately got my attention:
Rajnikath don’t need no Fair and Lovely…not when he has 25 CGI artists lighten his complexion frame-by-frame for a song-and-dance sequence in his latest sambaar-mix potboiler Sivaji.
Say what?! I neither know nor care about either Sivaji the fillum or its rotund ishtar, but following the link DDiA left took me here:
If you have watched Sivaji..You have observed the fair complexion of Rajinikanth in the song Oru koodai Sunlight.Everyone thought it was make-up that made Superstar Rajinikanth look like a European in that song, but the secret is something else. [Naachgaana]
Yindeed, the secret is far more time-consuming and technologically advanced than some pancake from Max Faktor.
The secret of actor Rajinikanth’s ‘white’ tan in the song sequence “Style†in the ‘Sivaji’ was not the result of any fairness cream or cosmetic touch-up but an entire year of Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) work by city-based firm Indian Arts.
The colour tone of one of the U.K.-based dancers in the background of the song was used to turn up the tone of the actor, frame by frame. The post-production for the 6,000 plus frames took a year to complete, as computer graphics artists from Indian Arts toiled to make Rajinikanth the “Vellai Tamizhanâ€. [The Hindu]
According to the article from our new tab, a total of 6,700 frames were painstakingly altered, to give the second-highest paid actor in Asia skin as pale as the complexion of one of his Gori backup dancers. Okay, that sentence was awkward as kundi. I’ll just quote something, instead, yes?
Once Indian Artist was selected for the job, Mr. Anand immediately knew that the CGI team would require a ‘reference’ for their work. So the team selected one of the dancers flown in from London for the song on location in Spain. So every shot that featured Rajinikanth was re-shot with the dancer and sent to Indian Arts. Mr. Anand explained that it was required because the skin tone would appear differently in indoor and outdoor shots, and a lot would depend on shadows. [The Hindu]
Apparently, this was the director’s way of “thinking big”:
Mr. Anand pointed out that it was one of the original concepts of director Shankar, who is known for his grand ways of shooting songs. “He was thinking about the way people admire Rajinikanth’s dark tan and wanted to show how the superstar would look had he been a European.â€[The Hindu]
I know that colorism is a hotly-debated issue both on this site and within our community, so I promise that I am extra careful whenever I make statements about what I think is attractive and isn’t, especially after being on the receiving end of some unbelievably hurtful bullshit myself (another time, another post).
People on either end of the spectrum get nastiness hurled their way, so let’s declare decisively that this is not the special olympics of victim hood. I have uber-pasty, 100% Desi friends who get asked “And when or why did someone like you get interested in Indian culture?”, as if they were a White person, when they go to brown events. They feel just as miserable as I do when I’m told, “For a very dark girl, you’re pretty!”. This is sensitive territory and I hope that if lurking/commenting on or hating this blog inspires anything within you, it’s a sensitivity towards the colorS of our skin.
Whew, that was a lot of “fine-print”. 😉 But wait– here’s more! What I’m about to state has nothing to do with either my own relatively dark, izhnerum skin OR my uncontrollable affection for hot-hot-hot chocolaty actor Sunkrish Bala, it’s from a pure place in my dil, I assure you– I think Rajnikant looks better dark, no diggity, y’all. Not that I find him attractive at any shade, but if he ever reads this post, and he asks me…
sivappaana aangal ingae silakoadi undu
karuppaana ennaik kandu kan vaiththadhenna
I will truthfully trill back, in my most high-pitched attempt at breaking the eardrums of small canines,
kadal vannam vaanin vannam karuvannam dhaanae
kadal vaanam kaanumboadhu unaikkandaen naanae
::
For those who don’t know Tamizzhrrzh:
There are a few crore fair skinned men here
Why did you pick me – a dark skinned man
The sea, The Sky, they are all dark
when I see the sky and the sea, I am reminded of you
More than 2 month or so — in a Tamil channel they should the making of Shivaji and explained the 64000 frames used to whiten him. So this posting is kind of old.
I am surprised nobody other than Vaishnavi (message 5) seems to have seen the movie and mentioned the context. The whole movie takes you to a fantasy world — so there is nothing to take it seriously. Nothing to do with dravida, race, region etc. What was really disconcerting was Rajnikant in an earlier sequence was taken to meet to very dark girls (in contrast to the actress), this was considered really racist.
The movie was noisy, full of fights and interesting. The first half is draggy and it really picks up after that. You have to see it twice to really enjoy it.
Apparently a Hindi version will be due around Diwali time. Just in case folks don’t know — Rajnikant is a Marathi.
The song sets are even better than even hollywood — you have to really see to believe it.
I forgot to mention.
IF you see all the songs and their picturization in this movie, they are all stand out for their whimsical qualities, technical brilliance and just the sheer scope of the setting is overwhelming.
You have to see Rajni’s white face song in that context. Just of one among the many dazzling/weird/noisy/sometimes brilliant/staggering song sequences in the movie.
I don’t know much about Indian movies but I agree with Anna that although I wouldn’t say this actor is particularly attractive if he were any color (purple included) he does look better in his natural brown state. I, too, was the ‘dark’ one of the family. 🙂
Venkat, I just felt that explaining the situation and discussing the context of the movie would deprive this post of an interesting discussion like what we see right now. The thread has a lot of ‘Thalaiva’ fans and the bigger picture is just not Sivaji bashing….
Venkat…it may be “old news” to you, but it was just put on the news tab yesterday. That was mentioned in the post.
Also, the point of the post was the shock over
wastingspending a year to lighten someone’s skin, when a few hours of makeup would’ve done the same. This is not about skin color or even the merits of the movie– just that one tiny fact, which if you were paying attention, was what was on the news tab. The link provided there was to a site (Naachgaana) which had posted this news yesterday. So you may have been well-aware of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to discuss it now.Eggsactly, The whole exercise was to generate hype and add to the ‘Sivaji-mania’. For a 5 min dance sequence they could have well done with the make-up artist. But this just gave them a chance to splurge some dough and exhibit their creative skills. It also made way for a 30 min segment on the making of the movie that soared the TRP ratings that evening. SunTV had exxclusive telecast rights and every household/tea stall/pan shop watched in awe.
It all paid of in the end with the movie taking the biggest opening any Indian movie has ever taken! mission accomplished…..
A similar argument could me made for many of the crappy Hollywood movies and their budgets that are close to GDPs of some poorer nations. All for what – 2 hrs of escapist entertainment for Amreekans? :p
Agree wholeheartedly. I am one of the (few?) hardcore Rajini fans in the mutineer fraternity. I paid up to watch the first ever premiere in North America, thanks to the time zone differences and bought my ticket online from the distributor’s special mailing list barely an hour after tickets were available. And I was not disappointed. I may not agree with a lot of things in the movie, for e.g. the fixation with skin color and the overall simplification of issues and their resolution, not to mention a blatant disregard for reality. But having said all that, the movie’s strong point is the self effacing humor (some of it is very localized to Tams). Others may beg to disagree but I am merely stating my opinion. I live in a part of this country where Himesh Reshammiya was invited for an encore concert last year barely a couple of months after the first, so please allow me some liberty to enjoy what I enjoy.
One of my concerns upon seeing this post was that this thread could be over-run by the hordes of trolls who usually land up on any thread/forum that discusses Rajini movies to diss him repeatedly. He seems to evoke such visceral reactions in some people that veers the conversation away toward border-line hate speak about South Indians (for evidence, please look at various threads on Rediff and on other sites like the Chennai metblog). People assume intellect over his fans and again I was worried that my BP would shoot up due to this post.
Yes. For those of you who haven’t had the chance to indulge in the mindless fun that is a “Thalaivar padam”, this particular one has him mimicing a few of the yesteryear (and current) superstars of Tamil and Telugu cinema (in the respective versions of this movie). So along that same lines, it has been announced that for the Hindi version, the relevant scenes (3 sequences of about a minute each I think) are being shot afresh with him mimicking “Saarookkan” (as they call him back home in chennai), Dev Anand and Shammi Kapoor). And the grapevine informs us that he refused to spoof Amitabh.
I recently read about this Tamil guy who opened up two South Indian restaurants in Japan, but was having little success until he started playing Rajni films: ‘‘As the crowd flowed in, I sold my dosas and vadas to them. Now vadas and chutney are the favourite food of the Japanese and I make good money. I owe it all to Rajni and his fans.’’ (From a blog called Chennai Snippets) Makes your heart just sing, doesn’t it?
I think the scene where Rajni is lightened is a joke on the lady-love who says she doesn’t want to be with him because she thinks he’s too dark. Have I understood this correctly, Superstarksa?
“Most of the Hollywood leading men are not only over 40 (Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Russell Crowe), but really established one are quite old (Harrison Ford, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery).”
This is a baby-boomer phenomenon, much less true prior to the 70s. The [men] refuse to give up their youthful prerogative and became directors and producers so they could keep their saggy jowls on lead parade. In the 50s, Jimmy Stewart, still a very big name, did not want to do a certain film with a young actress because he thought he was too old for her. So did Alfred Hitchcock when casting him for another film. Stewart swore he would never do another film as the aging leading man. Nowadays they have no class. They want to assure us that 60 year old men can still get any girl they want. Actually, if they keep trying, like maybe every night at bar, double on weekends, and flash the money, they often can. Within in reason, you get what you want if you try hard enough.
its all about drty rich old men…
THANKYOU for validating my own experience!
They romance women who are within 10 years of their age range. Mr. and Mrs. Smith – both are around the same age. Romancing the Stone – same. The Breakup – same. Zorro – same.
You don’t see too many movies where the hero is 57 and the heroine 25. More like 40 and 35 or 37 and 28.
Technical brilliance is overstating it. The movie had the polish of a direct to cable movie in the US. Actually the editing and speedup techniques seemed to have been done by a monkey on meth who escaped from the Madras Zoo. Instead of spending all that money on some unconvincing CGI to lighten his skin, they could have hired a good makeup artist for the song and a good editor for the movie. And maybe Shankar could have paid for a quickie class with Robert Rodriguez on how to make a flashy action movie on a budget.
There were some lavish set designs for the songs. But the vocals just didn’t fit Rajnikanth. In fact, I notice that a lot of the new singers have voices that seem pretty incompatible with the old heroes.
I still sort of liked the movie as I am a sucker for anti corruption movies and I like Rajnikanth.
The director of this movie is a shrewd man who knows how to spend other people’s money. If someone else produces the movie, he’d goto Spain, spend many man-years worth of graphics , show all the wonders of the world in one song (Jeans), garner publicity and add to the aura surrounding the movie. But if it is his own production (like Kaathal, pulikesi) he’d use new faces, good and young directors, shoot in villages..
I think they included the scenes ridiculing the dark skin of men/women on purpose.
Hye, if Dennis Kucinich can marry a good looking woman in her mid 20s, why can’t rajni romance a 20 something woman in a movie.
Prolly that is where ‘Thalaiva’ stands above the rest. While most heroes tend to slapstick humor and resort to hitting the comic sidekick, Rajni sheds his hero image in comic sequences. In some scenes he plays Vivek’s sidekick and that is the best part for me.
There has been a mad rush for some ‘Thalaivar’ bashing and this post evoked the strongest response. I’ve seen a trend in Rajni haters and though this may not be the right place to discuss it I’ll go ahead and list them. 1) people who haven’t had the real experience of a ‘thalaivar padam’, their ignorance clearly steers them towards hating anything from the stables of south indian cinema 2) people who watch south indian movies and may secretly even like them, but it’s cool to hate south indian cinema and make fun of anything even remotely connected to it.
I think they tried to have it both ways with the color issue. There were scenes where Rajni tells his mom why she made him so dark in a self deprecating humorous way. Then they had the woman use the skin color thing as an excuse, but the tone of the scene was even if she was using it as an excuse, it could have been a valid reason for rejecting him. Then they show her later as saying that she liked him dark all along. But in between, tehre is a scene where they make fun of a unibrowed dark set of twin sisters. The lightening scenes were admittedly comical.
And Hollywood women are known for their relationships with much younger men. Lucky girls!
And the leading Hollywood women are also nearing or over 40 – Angelina, Halle, Jennifer, Julia, etc.
Men and women are at their hottest between 35 – 45.
But come on, a 60 year old man pretending to be 29/30 and wooing a young woman in her 20’s? That is just corny, yo.
Indian movies have actors in their late 30’s pretending to be 21 year old college students.
At least in Hollywood the actors play parts that are congruent with their real age and looks.
Brad Pitt would not play a college student at his age.
re: the latter part of my post, wrt colorism
If I don’t painstakingly explain what I mean, what my inentions are and how it’s all not as offensive as some could interpret it to be, then the thread inevitably turns in to a tatti-storm. If I had just cavalierly said, “Thalaivar looks better dark”, I would’ve had some very fair person comment on reverse-colorism and how their pain isn’t validated, much in the same way that people who are mocked for being too skinny are told to suck it up and not complain. “Oh, you get told you’re too fair? Cry me a fucking river.” etc.
I wasn’t trying to say anything about the movie and colorism, except that in my opinion, a year of CGI is excessive for what the result was…but now that I know that there was a “making of-” special, everything makes sense. See? This is why these discussions are great; one of you is always guaranteed to know the scoop. 🙂
I had no idea people were so anti-Rajnikant! That almost makes me protective of him (I’m already trying to figure out which of his movies I should view first…and then how the hell to do that). I officially withdraw my “rotund”. He’s in great shape for someone old enough to be my mom. 😉 Cool, eh?
Not saying that Rajini fans are not intelligent or anything, but they really, really don’t help their cause when they do paal abhishekam for a Rajinikanth cutout. The sneering attitude that you mentioned may not be specific to Rajinikanth – it may just be towards this fanboy mentality. I’m sure that there are other fans for other Tamil movie stars (I remember there used to be temples for MGR and Khushboo, don’t know if they’re still around), or even non-desi things like Apple (“Ooh! Rounded corners! Shiny!”) or Linux (“Dude! I installed Gentoo on my toaster! I can change the setting with a shell script! Awesome!”) or Star Trek (“And then Geordi reversed the polarity of the flux capacitor and sent an antimatter pulse on the tachyon beam from the field emitter array”). It’s fairly easy to spot fanboys – they hang around in large numbers on Slashdot and Digg.
my office firewall blocks youtube and metacafe, however when I get home I’ll try to post the vids of ‘the making’ that show the whole imagery process and how the song was shot.
You’re welcome!
I’m not exactly BFF with the man (although I’ve seen him and I’m SO voting for him in primaries!) but from what I have read and understand, he didn’t sexually harass her into finally giving in to him. There’s a difference.
You don’t see too many movies where the hero is 57 and the heroine 25
Entrapment, but they are far and few between.
Tamil version of Rajni imitating Tamil superstars http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ZJuEPnS8c
Telugu version of Rajni imitating Telugu superstars http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCJzQ8_G5FY&mode=related&search=
If you go on Youtube, you see a lot of bigoted comments by North Indians regarding South Indians whenever they troll the south indian video entries.
Since Rajni wears a wig, why did they not just shave his head for the final half hour instead of putting that fakeass bald prosthetic. Another example of low production values when the alternative was cheaper and more natural.
Er, there’s a difference. In Entrapment, the characters both act their ages, and there is an age difference between the characters as well as the actors. The question here is one of the actors having a generation’s age difference but playing characters of roughly the same age – whether that happens disproportionately more in Indian movies or not.
One other thing – in many interviews of Tamil actors & actresses, the person being interviewed will refer to their co-star “Rajini sir” or “Kamal sir”. You don’t find that in Hollywood interviews, where people refer to each other by their first names (“Dustin was great! He had all this energy blahblahblah…”) even if they’re a generation apart. That sort of makes it a little easier to swallow the Hollywood age difference relative to the Tamil movie age difference, since there’s no jarring age-specific term like “sir” being mentioned in the Hollywood interview.
On the last Koffee wid Karan, shahrukh khan accuses himself of child molesting while acting with deepika padukone more here. I guess the industry is slowly moving away from hero-centric stories and actors seem to be acting to their age. However it would take some time before we see Kamal hassan, Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna and Balakrishna in roles that are closer to their real age.
It does.
That also adds to the “ewww” factor. The respect and deference given to elders makes one thing of anyone 10 years or older as an “uncle” or “auntie”. So when you see these couples on screen with alot of years between them, it makes your skin crawl like “ewwww, dirty uncle is after young neice” or something.
Maybe that skin crawling effect would be less so if in the wider culture there was not such a deference or reverence for elders and people got on as “equals”.
Even though the characters he or other actors may be playing are supposed to be late twenties/early thirties, you are sitting in the audience knowing their real age and it’s just creepy, given the whole gender/age/respect dynamic of the wider culture.
Now if he played a character closer to his own real age who was indeed wooing a much younger woman, and the movie revolved around the issues involving such a dynamic, that might be different, depending on how it’s portrayed.
Oh, I agree. But the intensity of the reaction that is specific to someone like Rajini baffles me, more so because it is hate. Yup, the fawning is apparent, but the fawning is in the same level as the other film stars. It’s the hate that sets Rajini apart. Btw, now that I think of it, in the Tamil film music (TFM) forums, I have seen such a reaction from old school TFM fans towards A R Rahman, who is seen as a harbringer of some kind of technological musical hell.
Praveen, there could be a more old school (personal) reasoning involved. In my own family, my uncles are mostly bald, but they still get hair cut’s with a frequency that is borderline comical. And that’s because, in South India, shaving one’s head is frowned upon unless it’s an offering to god. Rajini is known to be a deeply spiritual/religious man (who never flouts his beliefs, after that disaster of a movie a few years ago) and that COULD have been a reason.
And the movie American Beauty was DISGUSTING for precisely this very reason.
As if pedophiles and child molesters need validation!
Thanks for not including Gizmodo, Autoblog and Boing Boing on that list 😉 Whew!
A cursory search for “older man younger woman” at imdb results in 200+ titles, most of them Hollywood movies. Here are a few:
The Human Stain Autumn in New York Sin City Lost in Translation As Good As It Gets The Squid and the Whale Lolita Secretary My First Mister Fracture Shopgirl Down in the Valley Six Days Seven Nights
Yup. BW does have a longer shelf-life for actors than actresses, which results in Nutan, Hema Malini, Meenakshi Sheshadri and Sridevi as leading ladies for Amitabh Bachchan.
They’re called actors for a reason – it’s all make-believe. Sometimes it’s convincing, sometimes it’s not. 😉 (e.g. I bought Aamir Khan’s role in RDB, but it was a stretch to see Ajay Devgan in Yuva) And more power to women like Demi Moore and Halle Berry who are in a relationship with younger men.
Russell Crowe played a college student in A Beautiful Mind.
Yeah, you won’t see North Indians complaining about Bachan”JI” dancing with hiw own daughter in law. Oh wait, he is not dark.
Not cool, dude. Not cool at all. Don’t start that argument HERE!
And he also played a middle aged and old man in same movie.
DIFFERENCE much?
true, that is totally uncalled for….
also SUPERSTARksa, given that there seem to be very few SS suporters in this thread it may turn ugly as well….
I think some parts of India take the reverence too far, but at the same time I think there should definitely be some respect for older people. I like the fact that a 45 year old and a 30 year old are not social equals in India (all other things being equal). As it is, in our generation of DBDs raised in big cities, there is so much westernised informality creeping into relationships. How many people dispense with terms like ‘bhabhi’ for example and just call everyone by name?
I know, I must seem like some kind of throwback to the Stone Ages…but I actually like some of these traits we have in our culture.
Do you have a point here? How could he play an old man? He’s physically not that old as his role demanded. So you like to see actors play a role very near to their age, and I’m willing to cut them some slack depending on how convincing they are. Different strokes. shrug
Another of my concerns initially when I saw this post. But we are doing just fine I think, even with my usual off-topic comments.
Not on my watch, BOSS.
That was lost on me. Care to explain in reference to what I said? While I’m not a huge fan of Rajni, I like his style in movies and have nothing against him.
Thank you Anna…..
I’ve luved this post and commenting on it, thank you for everything…..
I just think he is overrated. Went to his show recently. Even Hariharan couldn’t save it. It sucked so fiercely, we had to walk out.
Coming in mid-thread again, but ‘Lolita’ is hardly ‘older man younger woman’. It’s ‘middle aged man and twelve year old’. So that’s something in itself, and should not be seen in the same light as the others. ‘The Human Stain’ has roughly the same age difference, 30s-60s, but: a) the actors look the age of the characters b) the age-difference plays a fairly central part in the story line. And as I remember it, ‘My first Mister’ showed a platonic relationship, rather more like a mentorship than a romance.
Virtually every single one of Woody Allen’s movies, though, has him with a much younger woman. And he often ages within the movie, so he plays all kinds of ages in it; and he has been doing that for a long time; and what’s more there are interesting parallels to his real life in the movies he makes.
Shodan: I heart Rajini/Chiranjeevi/older AB Sr. movies. And I think Himesh Reshammiya is intolerable. To each his own. But I am guessing that you do not understand Tamil. This is a very innocent guess. And any discussion between us is going to be off topic. Let’s leave it for another day, shall we?
Sin City? who? Hardigan and Nancy? the Mickey Rourke char and Goldie?
As an African American, I’m feeling everything you guys are talking about. At least you don’t have the color thing AND the hair thing like we do!! As the golden brown daughter of a very fair (could pass for white ) mother and a very dark father, I’m relieved to say that we have gotten over this to some extent, withthe help of the Black Panthers, James Brown (Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud!), and Essence Magazine. I think that Essence, more than anything else, helped African American women to love themselves in every color.
The woman who plays his mate also plays a college girl, middle aged woman and elderly woman in the movie as well.
That’s my point.
i volunteer to start the ‘brown panthers’ party. people will fear puli.