Category Archives: Film

“Steamboat Willie” to be re-named “Steamboat Vijay?”

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No, I don’t think Disney would take it quite that far, but the company does want to start making some Indian animated films. Its about damn time. I think there should be more animated characters who look even remotely like Princess Jasmine. Wow…that sounded awfully desperate of me. From The Financial Express:

The Walt Disney Company wants to make original desi animation films and TV shows in India for the world market, as against the outsourcing model prevalent in the industry, it is learnt. In effect, everything will be Indian, from start to finish, in these films.

The possibilities are endless with stories from India’s rich mythology to draw from. And while we are on the subject of India and animation it is worth pointing out that Disney’s Pixar studio will be releasing a dubbed version of the current box-office hit The Incredibles, retitled Hum Hain Lajawaab (somebody please translate for me). Guess whose voice will be cast in the lead role? No really, just guess.

“Veer-Zaara” Storms U.S. With Impressive Opening Weekend

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veerzaara300x250.jpg“Veer-Zaara” made a strong debut last weekend, opening on more North American screens than any previous Bollywood release and finishing 15th among all films at the domestic box office.

Starring the ever-popular Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta, “Veer-Zaara” took in an estimated $903,010 during the four-day period beginning on Nov. 11. Its per-screen average of $10,261 was among the highest of the weekend, bested by only two other films in the top 25.

Shiraz Jivani of Naz8 Cinemas told the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News that he expects the three-hour film to break box office records for Bollywood releases in the U.S.

“We have it, and we’re going to be playing it around the clock, 24 hours a day,” Jivani told the newspaper. His chain of Calif.-based theaters expects to collect $1.2 million over the film’s six-week run. The final tally will receive a bump from ticket prices that were increased just for the film.

No word yet on how pirated copies of “Veer-Zaara” fared at unscrupulous video rental shops, as such businesses are only required to report their earnings to hell’s despotic overlords.

Box Office Mojo: Gross Tracking for “Veer-Zaara”
San Jose Mercury News: High Hopes for Bollywood Musical (Registration Required)
The Chief Report: Review of “Veer-Zaara”
Naz8 Cinemas: Official Site
“Veer-Zaara”: Official Site

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Suketu Mehta on Bollywood

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Suketu Mehta scribes in the magazine of another maximum city about the film industry of the Mumbai (via Amardeep). He describes it as a love affair with an international beauty:

The Soviets gave us arms; we gave them our kitsch movies in return. Israelis watch them. Palestinians watch them… Dominicans and Haitians watch them. Iraqis watch them. Iranians watch them. In a building full of immigrants in Queens, an Uzbek man once cornered me in a dark stairwell… As he towered over me, he started singing, “Ichak dana, bichak dana…”

The initial flush of romance, often consummated in what used to be a porn theater, the Eagle in Jackson Heights:

Why do I love Bollywood movies? To an Indian, that’s like asking why we love our mothers; we don’t have a choice. We were born of them.

The unreality of the affair:

My aunt’s family emigrated to Uganda from India a century ago; she now lives in England and has never been to India… none of the children under 5 in her extended family spoke English… The children, two or three generations removed from India, were living in this simulated Indiaworld.

Falling out of love:

It was not until graduate school that I became cynical about Bollywood movies. I too began to think that the plots were weak, melodramatic. At the University of Iowa’s student-run movie theater, the Bijou, I could see two movies for five dollars, most of them European. I was introduced to Renoir, Fellini, Fassbinder, De Sica… the Indian movies seemed pointless and absurd to me…

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‘Did my Indian balls come in?’

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Mira Nair writes in the New York Times Magazine about the chaat-fueled filming of Hysterical Blindness. We apparently share a favorite snack, kachoris from Jersey City’s Little India:

As others tucked into Krispy Kremes, I’d pop the just-made almond kachori in my mouth, no cutlery needed, licking the sour-sweet taste of tamarind chutney off my fingers… Uma [Thurman] would sidle over to me in her ripped Joan Jett T-shirt and blue eye shadow to ask, “Is it samosa time yet?”… I would pop kachoris directly into Juliette Lewis’s rosebud mouth so not to disturb her lipstick. The gaffers and grips would holler across to me, “Did my Indian balls come in?” Soon the little box of snacks from Rajbhog grew into a stack, and kachoris conquered Krispy Kremes.

Batman and Rushdie

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The ever-illuminating Shashwati has a precious find: the Hot Spot reviews International Gorillay, a paranoid Lollywood fantasy about assassinating Salman Rushdie (circa 1990). With disco. And batsuits. Aw, yeah! Praise the Lord and pass the cheese.

Rushdie plans to drive the final nails into the coffin of Islam by opening a new chain of Casino’s and Disco’s spreading contemptable vice and debauchery. Mustafa Qureshi… decides to call it a day with his day job at the Police station and induct his unemployed brothers to create a Mujahid (God’s soldiers) trio whose sole aim is to seek out and destroy the despised Salman Rushdie before he manages to destory all virtue and decency on the planet. The trio have a personal axe to grind as their beloved family cherub was recently slaughtered by Rushdie’s men while protesting Satanic Verses… The direction is sledgehammer subtle as is the norm for Punjabi cinema and the one-liners have to be delivered slowly and deliberately and sometimes even three times in a row so as to not miss their point!

Rushdie is eventually offed by a laser beam to the head from four flying Korans (watch the cheesy special effects). The Koran as a directed-energy weapon: Isn’t that, um, a bit sacrilegious? But wait, there’s a subtext — the film functions as sly literary criticism:

… Rushdie… is of course a man of unsurpassed evil and tortures his hapless victims by forcing them to listen to chapters from his fatwa-inducing book…

I can think of several desi authors, the reading of whose works would qualify as torture. Rushdie ain’t one of them. Ironically, this film was banned in the UK, a country which defended Rushdie against censorship for years. The ban was eventually lifted at the behest of the author himself. Apparently, Rushdie wasn’t too worried about death by killer lasers from levitating religious screeds.

Don’t miss Bubonic Films’ archive of cheesy Bollywood clips and Lollywood horror films. The scariest things about these movies are the hairstyles.

Photos From the IAAC Film Festival

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iaac250x155.jpgHollywood Masala has a pair of photo journals documenting the recently completed Fourth Annual IAAC Film Festival in New York. The photos were taken by writer-director-actor Nikhil Kamkolkar, whose feature film Indian Cowboy screened during the four-day festival. His shots include the opening night gala, which honored Shabana Azmi, Mira Nair, Salman Rushdie and Ismail Merchant for their support of South Asian artists.

Photo Journals:
Opening Night Gala – 9 photos
Various Festival – 13 photos

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DesiPr0n

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The latest market to fall prey to the vicious outsourcing demon – Desi pornstars get on top : HTTabloid.com

‘Be Indian, Buy Indian’ when it comes to porn. A newfound lust for the dark-skinned woman is fuelling a demand for desi pornstars not only within the country, but also abroad. …popular titles include Mr and Mrs Bollywood, Private Fantasies, Delhi Babes, Saree Strippers, Agni Pushpam, Yamni and Ratree Milan. Even films made years ago are staging a comeback. Looking Eyes, originally shot in Malyalam some ten years back, has now been dubbed in Hindi due to incessant demand. …Interestingly, desi porn seems to have found a dedicated following in the West as well. “To be honest, European girls look more like fresh ham, while the women from India are far sexier,” insists an NRI who watches porn regularly.

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An economist waxes poetic about Bollywood

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Economist Tyler Cowen goes Bollycrazy on a visit to Delhi:

If you don’t already know Indian movies you should… Don’t think that Lagaan (or Satyajit Ray, for that matter) is the real thing, or that Blockbuster will do you any good. Cut to the songs. The use of color, cinematography, and orchestration of scenes will blow your mind. Allow yourself to be mesmerized. Compare them to your dreams at night, not to other movies you know, and pretend it is the only air-conditioned place in town.

I would go much, much further. There are only a couple of quality Bollywood films out every year, you’ll kiss a lot of frogs along the way. But the good ones handle emotion in a way far superior to that of the best of American cinema. Hollywood movies are rife with scenes which ought to be laden with emotion, but the filmmakers invariably affect a detached tone. And it’s not purposely understated, stoic or ironic detachment; it’s incompetent writing, it’s wooden and absurd.

You’ll often see a mother sending her son off to war or certain death with a stiff ‘you must go now,’ cut, end of scene. There’s a fine line between avoiding schmaltz and copping out on emotion altogether. Mainstream American films often feel hollow, $100M in effects with atrocious writing, the blowdried-fake-tan-colored-contacts version of worship in the darkened temple of cinema. And so even fairly cerebral films with any emotional content at all (Sideways, Eternal Sunshine) seem like blazing, Oscar-worthy paragons of passion.

Is this just cultural? Probably, for the films explicitly pitched as Oscar bait; it reflects a culture with lower emotionality than desi culture. With mainstream films, in contrast, a major part of the problem is market consolidation. When you’re chasing high revenues, you inject high investment; when you’ve committed a lot of money, you target the broadest market; for the largest market, you talk only to the reptilian sub-brain with boobs and bombs. Finely-modulated emotions are too risky an investment.

Sorry, guys. I’ve already seen Bollywood.

Previous posts on Cowen’s India trip: 1, 2