Boogieing to the Bollywood Beat

“Indian movies are extremely inane with no sense or story or message in them and it is time they stopped having silly songs.”, said a friend of mine to me. I was zapped momentarily at someone casting such aspersions on my favorite entertainment avenue!

“My dear friend”, I refuted him, “Bollywood is not a charity organization that makes movies for the sake of passing moral messages about righteousness or education or the evils of casteism or awareness about some obscure disease or empowerment. Movies are first supposed to be entertainment and then everything else is a bonus if it makes money. If they are not supposed to be entertaining, the producers might as well make documentaries which are a completely different genre. There have been wonderful commercial movies with meaningful social messages such as ‘3 Idiots’ on the education system, ‘Udaan’ on the ambitions of a young aspiring writer etc. However, if these social movies were not entertaining as well, who would watch them? The message wouldn’t hit the nail then anyway. A fantastic movie like Sholay would never have happened if it was only about the message.”

Melodrama, Romance, Music, Horror, Action, Titillation, Tragedy, Comedy, Meaningful cinema, Fantasy all bundled in one is one genre. Bollywood. In my head I agree though, sometimes movies get too silly for words. It is not uncommon to have a grisly death sequence in a comedy movie when the dying guy flashes back with his heroine dancing away on the Alps all of a sudden, and in the next moment onto the Pyramids with a retinue of dancers behind them! An audience not used to the Bollywood way of things might just get befuddled, but wait, there is more. As soon as the Hero’s ‘Mom’ is disparaged by the villain, the hero gets superpowers to thwart 10 goons against him, and he saves the heroine, the mom and everyone goes home happy while he goes to dance against the backdrop of an exotic waterfall with his heroine! But then, even Hollywood can boast of enough terrible movies. 2010 saw enough dumb movies such as Tron which was made from an old superflop, the Last Airbender by an otherwise wonderful director M Shyamlan, the Last Song, Sex and the City 2,..well you get the idea. For every one good movie, there are strings of ludicrous movies, be it Bollywood or Hollywood.

Scene from Raja Harishchandra, first Indian movie

The Indian Cinema industry has been prevalent for almost a century now with the first movie, Raja Harishchandra being made by Dadasaheb Phalke way back in 1913 (well, there’s a Marathi language movie on that too!). By 1930’s the industry was producing well over 200 movies per annum. And now, Bollywood comes up with more than 800 movies every year and that does not even include the other regional Indian cinema which has not all diminished in stature. Amazing. There certainly are reams that I can write on the history of Indian cinema and its development through the decades but you can just flip to Wikipedia for all that factual information. In a few lines, Hindi cinema has seen a wide variety of themes every decade, drawing inspiration and stories from epic tales such as the Ramayana and Mahabharta, history, social themes, books and ofcourse plenty from Hollywood including even the term Bollywood which has its roots in combining Bombay, the heart of Hindi cinema and Hollywood!

But what characterizes Hindi cinema, is its unique ability to be enjoyed by a widely different audience which I cannot stop emphasizing. Having studied marketing, I can well say, how difficult a task that must be. Catering to even slices of a teeming mass of culturally, politically, linguistically, economically, regionally, religiously and socially different billion people is certainly a daunting task. Just when I thought, Bollywood is transitioning to cater to a more urban intellectual and affluent audience that can afford expensive tickets at multiplexes and to international audiences targeting overseas sales, there came up ‘Dabangg’ a typical ‘formula’ movie with a super star as a cop hero, a villain with no scruples, interspersed with some unnecessary songs, an unnecessary heroine as an accessory, the omnipotent mother, plenty of action, melodrama and boom. A smashing hit! A movie liked by the so called urban intelligentsia as well as the rural masses. That is certainly tough to understand!



'Dola re dola' dance sequence from movie 'Devdas'


Refuting my friends point about not having the song and dance routines, “Well, that’s what Indian cinema is about!...I utterly detest the Indian movies without the songs and dances in them. All those beautiful haunting melodies by Lata, Asha, Mohd. Rafi etc, not ever existing! That’s unbelievable. And not having Shiela ki Jawani to save an utterly inane Tees Maar Khan or not having Dhan ta nan in Kaminey to keep the audiences grooving is terrible news too! Think about classics such as HAHK, DDLJ and all other fluffy SRK movies that the nation adored, and we are transported to exotic locales in Switzerland or US which most Indians would never have seen otherwise. No songs in those movies?! Bah! They wouldn’t be 1/10th as good as they are today. “

I guess, I am a die-hard bollywood buff with its melodrama and song and dance sequences and for all its detractors, I just need to say, we ought to be proud that our entertainment industry is one of the biggest in the world even as it caters to such difficult markets. Bollywood has so much potential to not just create entertainment, but also to showcase India’s rich culture in the international arena, delineate positively the burgeoning intelligent population and foster self confidence in Indians. Again, entertainment first, and then the messages!

Disney Magic

Cinderellas Caslte

What kind of superheroes will an Indian a la Disneyland have, I wondered, when I visited Disneyland in Orlando, Florida.  Some friends of mine instantly recalled our very own Chacha Chaudhari and Sabu.  Instead of the simulated launch on to Mars in the ‘Mission Space’, we could go to Jupiter ofcourse after traversing the planets that come in between. We could have a 3D movie with Sabu throwing off evil villains off peaks.

Or how about a Rajani ride…It would ofcourse include rides which would flout all laws by Newton, Einstein or any scientist!  If Disney had an Epcot World Showcase, our Bollypark could have all the locales which SRK spread out his arms and sang to his heroines. That would pretty much cover all the gorgeous places there are in the world.

Instead of delving into the fairy tales of Snow White, Cinderella, we can always dig into our treasure trove of popular mythological characters like Ganesh, Hanuman, Bhim, Ram, Krishna who have already been animated too.

Anyway, I guess, there is no point in me speculating about what can be, when I have just returned from a trip to this truly magic kingdom…a kingdom for the kids actually.  It was fun walking through the Main Street, Adventure Land, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Liberty Square, Mickeys Toontown and Tomorrowland in this fairyland.  It certainly made me wish I was back there as a kid.  However as an adult, I did enjoy the two Parades, the one in the day time and the electric parade at night, which were fabulous and I enjoyed watching them and calling out to my favorite characters swinging by me.  The electric parade was a dazzling display of illuminated floats and wonderful lighted up costumed dancers and characters.  The shows ended with a spectacular display of fireworks with the backdrop of Cinderella’s castle. Unforgettable. Amongst the rides and shows, I did enjoy the 3D movie with the popular Disney characters, the jungle cruise on the boat, and the Space Mountain rollercoaster ride.

But as an unfortunate adult in the world dominated by kids in this magical land,  most of the rides such as Winnie the Pooh, the Magic Alladin carpets, Peterpan, Snow-Whites adventure etc, were for ages 2-8.(we read to  our consternation after enjoying them earlier!). The lines were long and winding and the waits were intolerable 30-80 minutes for each ride.  Though after the first crazy wait, we discovered using our ‘Fastpass’ to beat the lines. And this was supposedly in the off-peak season.  I reckon, the lines would be even worse in the vacations and summers.

Epcot was the other Disney Park I visited, and though the Rain Gods spitefully tried to dampen our spirits and us all day, we still managed to have a great time, especially as the crowds thinned and there were no lines as compared to those in the Magic Kingdom!  Epcot was certainly one targeted to adults and teens and was an educational as well as a fun experience that helped kids and adults alike learn about a variety of burning issues.  It taught environmental consciousness through the ‘Circle of Life’ short film through the eyes of Simba, Timon and Pumba. Another show explained power and energy sources with the Ellen DeGeneres dream that took us through a journey from the Dinosaur jungles to the nuclear age today in a vast moving theater. The fun rides were the space mission ride to Mars, the fast paced drive on Test Track, the entertaining 3D video by the King of Pop Michael Jackson as Captain EO and the Soarin’ ride to California. However, the best part about Epcot was the World Showcase with its miniature country pavilions.  Dining at an Aztec temple in Mexico, riding a Norse boat in Norway, seeing miniatures of the Teracotta warriors, and learning about the various other cultures of France, Germany, Itay, Japan, Morocco, France, UK and Canada through short films in huge theaters were highlights.  I particularly enjoyed the China video that was very well done and was projected in a 360 degrees absolutely humongous theater. All in all, a wonderful experience for people of all ages. 

How I wish I were back there as a child! Some snapshots of my trip here.

Walt Disney- The Man behind it all.

And the fun started with the Parade!

The Genie to grant wishes with Alladin

Dancing with the stars

Lighting up the day at night!

Dazzling lights and illuminating memories

Hola! At an Aztec Temple

A German Square

A Japanese Pagoda

A spectacular show at the Magic Kingdom

The Epcot dome

"Lights, Camera, Action!"

'Lights Camera Action’…is virtually the only thing I knew went on behind the silver screen.  That changed, once I visited the Universal Studios at Los Angeles.  Movies are one thing, which all of us have grown up with, and totally taken for granted.  What went on behind the scenes was a new realization.  Hand drawn pictures and portraits were replaced by black and white cameras, which gave  birth to the pictures juxtaposed to give the silent movie which went on to become full blown color movies in high definition and sound which we see today, with 3D being the next generation.  I hope the characters never jump out of the screens for a live performance after that!

Apart from being entertaining, the whole Universal experience was highly educational when I further realized the rigor and genius that went behind creating those scenes which we absolutely fail to appreciate such as exploding cars and buildings, alien space ships flying, racing chases, swimming with man eating sharks, dinosaurs chomping away at people and the million other myriad things that we utterly take for granted.

The studio tour in itself was a revelation, knowing the dreadful Amity island beach of the shark thriller ‘Jaws’ was but a tiny pond, the shark was a mechanical equipment, the underwater shots were from a big tank! It was exceedingly interesting to learn about what brilliant camera work could magnify and the effects that it could produce.  I saw quaint European towns, New York city, Mexican villages, all in the course of that one hour!  It was a revelation seeing that all these cities were but facades and totally not real!  Explosions and floods being simulated seemed almost real and it was amazing to see just how catastrophic these could look on the big screen. 

This visit only cemented my belief that film ‘actors’ are just a piffling part of the entire cinema experience.  Though they are the face of the final product and get all the money, acclaim and fame, it’s the people who work behind the scenes such as the directors, cameramen, special effects peoples who are the real brains and heart of the entire movie.  Give anyone 10 years of experience, a 100 times and several hours to mouth one dialogue in multiple takes that too guided by a director, they better say it right atleast once! Well, if they don’t, God help such people! Fortuitously watching a painful film shooting for 8 hours with star acclaimed 'actors' mouthing one dialogue completely made me lose respect for all ‘actors’! But, well, we still have best actor awards for work being done by the directors and everyone else on the set. And that is why, I firmly want these so-called ‘actors’ with their humbug charms and supposed skills to be atleast good-looking, be able to dance well (for Bollywood atleast), maintain a good physique as ‘acting’ really isn’t an art anyway!

Well, now that I have finished venting on this long felt sentiment, back to the other highlights of the tour that I would like to remember forever.  Jurassic park was a major highlight of the Universal experience and the knowledge that the massive dinosaurs were actually extinct and I was looking at controlled machines, certainly helped manage those nerves! The 3D fight of KingKong and the dinosaurs was simply mind blowing and I certainly feel lucky to have survived in that jungle where that earth-shattering fight took place! Another of my favorite rides was the racy ride with the Simpsons in Krustyland where I thought I was on a roller coaster flying about  in that animated world, but it turned out that, I was in a car that just rocked in several directions while being in one single position while I looked at a giant domed screen! That certainly was brilliant. The rest of the shows on Shrek, the Mummy and the house of Horrors, etc entertained as well and there was nothing that I thought fell short of my expectations. 

All in all, a wonderful, fun and educational experience that I would highly recommend!  My rating would be 5 stars for Universal studios!

I wish I had a Time Machine

How I hate waking up in the morning and getting dressed to go to work. Maybe in the near future, we won’t have to go to offices anymore. Maybe we will have a few screens showing us the people installed in our homes for meetings and a robot to take down notes and email them to us after formatting them. Maybe we’ll have flying cars. Maybe shopping will be through simulated rooms with us experiencing even the feel of the fabric and not just plain online shopping. Perhaps we will be able to touch our near and dear ones from miles across on the computer or whatever becomes of it. Maybe we won’t need to know different languages. Speak in English at one end and have it translated and come out in perfect Chinese at the other end which is something I believe Google is working on.

Floppies have become pen drives and hard drives, desktops have become laptops and will soon be tablets or phones or something else totally. Landlines have become mobiles which in themselves are computers. Maybe we will be able to use any surface as a laptop with some projections out of thin air and of course we will have a robot cook and clean for us. I hope we don’t become all fat and wobbly creatures with all that work being automated and not having to step out. Post offices will cease to exist and philatelists (stamp collectors) will perish if they already haven’t.

Maybe schools will cease to exist and kids will be taught like they do in The Matrix..put in a CD through the brain and copy paste the ‘books’ or delete to make more room. No more mugging up History! Books, paper and pens of course will not exist and maybe even most trees won’t. Hopefully we will have travelled to some more inhabitable planets and shifted half the population there. Maybe we will be able to control rains and storms. Maybe we will never run out of food.

Maybe biodegradable only will be the only norm, maybe plastic will be abolished. Maybe the world will cease to have boundaries and maybe there will be no more terrorists. Maybe everyone who is corrupt will stop being so. Maybe there will be no more diseases.

Maybe there will be a nuclear war fought over water not oil. Maybe trees will be present only in Museums. Maybe there will be an ice age, or maybe the ozone layer will tear apart and half of the world will become uninhabitable. Maybe aliens will attack us. Maybe a new form of disease will come and eliminate humanity. Maybe the world will become a garbage dump. Maybe there will be no more room for more population on earth. Maybe, Frankenstein’s monster will become reality and Sarah Connor will not be born.

We are all getting so ahead of ourselves in Technology or maybe I was born just after the dinosaurs! Computers in all sizes, Google, smart phones, Global Satellite systems (GPS), Video conferencing, e-readers, Social Networking are exploding and the world is closer and more aware than it ever was before. What was unbelievable in the past is reality today and we are still in awe of the technology wave that is sweeping us. While the human race is not just ambling ahead, but taking great leaps racing ahead, let us remember the bleaker side and take steps starting with recycling, generating less waste, using fewer disposable things, saving electricity, planting trees and spreading the word in building this amazing future perfect world called Utopia!

Draculaaaaa

I am currently riding the Vampire wave which has caught the attention of readers and viewers alike. Stephanie Meyer with her Twilight series certainly caught the attention of young romantic readers with her thrills and chills in the backdrop of a soppy romance between a good-at-heart (if he has one) vampire, Edward Cullen and the still human teenager. This fascination around their world did not start with Buffy the teenager who stalked, staked and slayed vampires mercilessly in the late 90s and early 2000s but ever since Bram Stoker wrote the epic novel Dracula in 1897 which I read recently. There have been more than 700 movies that have been made on the topic (recent ones in this decade being the inane Twilight series, the hilarious spoof on them, Underworld, and several versions of the original Dracula. You can find the list of movies here http://www.uh.edu/~cfreelan/vampires/vampmovies.html). There has also been a recent spate of TV shows (popular being True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Angel Forever Knight, Blood Ties, Being Human, Being Dracula, Blade, Moonlight, Kindred-the Embraced) which continue to attract wide audiences. Dracula the literally immortal vampire, alone has been the central character in over 170 versions which makes him the most repeated subject in movies so far from the early 1900’s to 2011 in Fangland when Dracula comes to New York. Hats off to Bram Stoker for his fiery imagination that can still cast fear into the hearts of many after the turn of a century.

Vampires as they are known are blood sucking creatures that can transmute into bats or even into mist, control elements of nature, control evil animals, and raise an army by merely infecting more people. They sleep in coffins, cannot stand garlic, cannot stand light, cannot see their reflections in mirrors (poor female vampires) and are afraid of anything that is Holy. The only way to kill them is to drive a stake through them, behead them and stuff their mouths with garlic! The Un-Dead is a term coined for these creatures that have the wile and cunning of the living, powers gained on dying and immortality. It is not in the scary masks and made up faces apart from their malicious fangs, that they cast terror but in the fact that they look like all other humans, only more charming and connive to ensnare their victims into letting them drink their blood. Vampire lore has indeed come a long way from Count Dracula who was evil vampirified to Edward Cullen, the good vampire.

 

Duhh..are vampires for real? Well, I don’t think so despite the presence of the many websites which exhort ‘real vampires’ to join their communities and give helpful tips to identify people as vampires! Come to think of it, maybe real life vampires are just blood sucking leeches and mosquitoes! What do you think?

Here are some bloody cheesy vampire jokes:

Why is it a bad thing to tell a vampire to get a life?

Because it might decide to take YOURS.

What's the difference between a lawyer and a vampire?

A vampire only sucks blood at night.

How did the ghost say goodbye to the vampire?
So long sucker!

Why does Dracula consider himself an artist?
Because he likes to draw blood!

What is a vampire’s favorite holiday?
Fangs giving

Wat does a vampire fear most?

Tooth decay.

If you like Vampire stories, you might be interested in Zombie movies. Do check out this blog (after you share your views with me!) http://www.vinni.in/2010/07/the-greatest-zombie-movies-of-all-time/ for more to keep you awake!