Bollywood in the Panic Room

re: Bollywood movies
There was a time i watched these movies (when i was growing up in India) mainly for the songs. Great singers like Md Rafi, Lata would even make a downright mediocre movie watchable. Some of these movies even had a plot.
Now-a-days, technology seems to have improved. Plot is the same. Gone are the great singers, so that all songs uniformly sukc (some are exceptions; i thought the film Sur with Lucky Ali in it had good songs). It is good that bollywood movies are being trashed by the public. It is high time this industry either improved its quality or perished. GOI has given it the industry status. Some of its ex-actors are ministers in the cabinet. What have they done for the film industry? I think the people are fed up of watching juvenile actors (sons and daughters of ex-actors) doing their monkey dance routine on the screen.
Some time ago i saw a good movie by Mani Ratnam. Made in Tamil, it is called ``Kannathil Muthamittal`` or ``Peck in the cheek``. It showed Militancy in Srilanka and some graphic details of how it has affected some people. I thought this movie should have been sent for Oscar rather than some SH!T like Devdas. GOI never learns. Also, it is influenced by mega-bucks. Bansali (Producer of Devdas) probably bought ministers with money. Anyway, the days of old bollywood movies are gone and it is now a question of improvise or perish.
Sridhar

Though I am not fan of Indian movies, yet I find them better that Pakistani movies. And I never watch Pakistani movies at home, because once u push the Fast Forward Button on the remote, it is next to impossible to take your finger of it till the film ends.

There are usually two reasons to watch PAkistani movies:
1. Either it is preceeded by marketing campaign claiming to use the latest technology (which by indian standards seems arcane). This is a pathetic reason to watch the movie. Once I watched a movie said to be the first digital movie ``teray pyar mein``. The only thing different from other run of the mill movies was that for a half a minute, the heroine ran and for that 30 seconds u can hear her steps pounding on the ground and not some background music. These are big budgeted flops.

2. Or there are articles in the newspaper that the censor board had been very negligent with this movie. THIS IS THE MOVIE TO WATCH. If the story is somewhat digestable, the movie might make money

Other than these, the remaining are the usual run of the mill stuff with nothing to go for. And dont watch them at home because u wont be able to switch to normal playback once u Fast Forward it.

At least India still has a thriving movie industry.

Pakistan needs to revive its own because it has the talent.

Pakistani TV dramas are great.


Ras

I agree1 What they need is to make ORIGINAL FILMS with ORIGINAL plots. Probably the best South Asian film I have seen recently is Usman Peerzada`s Zar Gul. A brilliant film (I don`t think it is on general release yet; I saw it at the Commonwealth Film Festival) which was on a par with Hollywood and European films.

It is quality NOT quantity. Also I think that Pakistan should look towards the Iranian film industry and not produce second-rate clones of second-rate Hindi films!

I thought Devdas was atrocious and at times embarassingly garish! Yet this film wins all the Filmfare awards?!

Idyllic settings, gorgeous leading pairs, skimpy dresses and lots of ass-shaking do not a good movie make! People are becoming more sophisticated now! Also I find that Indian films are trying to be more Western than the West and the result is absurd: step forward Kaante!

Try Mughal e Azam and Pakeezah for two GREAT movies.

I don`t think it has as much to do with starkids as much as it has to do with the industry`s reluctance to try out new filmmakers. A good director can make even the most mediocre actor do their bit if he casts them right. Even Tabu, who`s quite a smart actress, did her share of Ruk Baba Ruk Gimme a Look before she did a Maachis or a Chandni Bar.

Where are the film-makers that were responsible for the art film movement? Shyam Benegal, Sai Paranjpye, Ketan Mehta, Kalpana Lajmi, Govind Nihalani, Saeed Mirza, Kundan Shah.

Ya agar inko (aur inke ronay dhonay waali filmon ko) bhi chorein and we look to more mainstream directors like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee (or was it Bhattacharya?), Gulzar who took common subjects and wove memorable stories out of them. Why did those film work then? What sort of artistic integrity ensured the survival of that work, so that it pleases even today, while newer films expire within days of release?

A major problem with Bollywood nowadays is that stars of the 60s and 70s have started promoting their good-for-nothing, mummy-daddy kids in the film industry (Kareena, Esha, Tushal et al). This new breed of actors and actresses can`t act to save their lives. All they`re good for is waving their cellulite-free asses, bumping and grinding against each other in some insane song (dil ding dong ding dolay - jesus!), and act pretty for the camera.

New-age Bollywood and scud missiles work on the same principles...

Umer M.

PS. I forgot to mention; anyone have any news on the Iranian film industry?

PPS. Did anyone go to watch that $hithole of a film, `yeh dil aap ka hua`? I went up to the place, paid for a ticket and came out. I only did it to do my part to support, what I consider and hope, a growing industry.

Umer M.

How much backing and support would a young S. Ray get nowadays?

Over here, many of us consider Hollywood itself a behemoth that delivers little originality-there is a respectable audience for the indie film, the indie film company, the impresarios who get them to us; i.e. Robert Redford, Independent Film Channel, Tribeca Film Festivals-least of all the international filim festivals that make it to our big cities.

Who are the indie filmmakers in India?

The problem with Bollywood is that the current producers` parents who themselves were making movies in the 1930s saw a few Hollywood musicals. Unable to conceptualize anything other than the musical format, these idiots have churned out thousands of crappy musicals over the years. Just as people were willing to sit through a 5-minute movie of a train in the early days of movies, the Indian audience put up with crap. The moviemakers made movies with mythological themes and a hundred songs and for want of anything else, the Indian audience went to these movies for 50 years, This has convinced the Bollywood idiots that they have the key to making money; even worse, they think their movies have the potential to get an Oscar. They have made the enormous mistake of believing in their own bullshit. Just as the Star Wars series in a Western in a different setting, today`s Bollywood movies are the same mythologicals in a different setting. Nothing else can explain an Amitabh Bachchhan single-handedly taking on a hundred thugs in a fist fight and winning. So long as this trend continues, Bollywood has no future.

The real trouble is that India is a land of Rip van Winkles. Indians see something, copy it, are able to sell it for a few years and then refuse to alter anything in the product. Thus you still have the 1954 Oxford Morris being made in India as the Hindustan Ambassador or the original WWII Jeep made in an outdated factory. Idiots who have no concept of what a modern telephone system looks like order cross-bar switches for telephone exchanges. They might as well go to sleep for 20 years and wake up, for all the ``progress`` they have made.

This also explains why you find every insurance company in the US and Europe is able to open up shop in India and sell insurance. One would think that selling insurance to a willing public would be an easy task. But the same people who refuse to buy a policy from Life Insurance Corporation, the state monopoly for 45 years now, are willingly buying insurance from foreign companies. The reason of course is that once you buy a policy and make payments to the LIC, the policy folders have the nasty habit of disappearing when the insured makes a claim. This happens because computers were not allowed to be used for a long time and your folder can be lost in the millions of file cabinets.... of course, Indians haven`t heard of filing alpabetically by name or sequentially by policy number.

The real joke in this is that these clowns now claim to be the back-office service providers for US and European companies. I think if those US and European companies walk through any Indian company, they would take back any idea of locating their back offices in India.

In summary, be it Bollywood or any other enterprise, Indians have the enormous capacity to fcuk things up beyond all recognition. This is why any Indian who is able to escape from this Planet of the Apes does so at the earliest opportunity.

It is time to change the name of the country to FUBAR.

Thank you all for your comments on the article.

FarooqA Saheb is right. Bollywood still works around the fairytale storylines in most of the cases. The industry seems to be reeling under a crisis of ideas, and therefore, returns with rehashed stories time and again. Ana_deborah`s suggestion of benefiting from the rich literature of the subcontinent would appeal to every sane person. But I guess Hindi film producers lack in that faculty. Nevertheless, some serious filmmakers do dabble in that but unfortunately they are on the fringe.

Yesterday ``Devdas`` almost swept the Filmfare Awards. That clearly shows where the heart of the industry lies. God save Bollywood!

Zafar

Too true. It`s not like they don`t have the talent. Why they insist on repeating the same hackneyed themes over and over and over again is beyond me.

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Tushar, Kareena, Fardeen and Esha should be publicly hanged!

I agree with the last part of this article. Not only does `Bollywood` need good writers, but there is so much literary wealth within India itself to do adaptations from without having to resort to copying Hollywood movies. Agni Varsha, for example, was adapted from a play, was it not, and I thought that was very well done. just my few cents worth.

Despite the fact that the bollywood movies have today carved a niche in as unlikley markets as West Africa and Russia, I believe they still lack the most vital element, that is sanity. These movies present a totally unrealistic and exagerated version of life. Devdas might have fetched the producer a huge profit but it was no exception, apart from the lavish sets the movie had no attributes to write home about.