such a beautiful song...
but yes, been thinking about this movie still. all of it but most recently that entire stretch with anjali (viji) and her husband. and anjali ameer's meera...
indian popular cinema
Re: indian popular cinema
but yes, been thinking about this movie still. all of it but most recently that entire stretch with anjali (viji) and her husband. and anjali ameer's meera...
i'd say it's a rather small group of people, just a few from india, who post relatively actively on the subject.
for context i'd say that we've only had two indian directors in the polls, satyajit ray (always the token inclusion, which isn't to deny his merits as director etc) and mani kaul (who had somewhat limited participation). even very proflific, popular indian filmmakers like mani ratnam, hrishikesh mukhrejee, basu chatterjee, yash chopra, rgv etc would barely get the numbers to qualify if at all.
Few maybe but an influential group of people posting on Indian films. I'm really happy to see the posts since there was just so little info available to get into Indian movies other than more or less randomly by what was available at really good video stores or in the early years of Netflix. Now that Indian films are easy to find, having NRH and everyone else offering great background info and reviews is really great. Learning more about Indian films right now is my main area of interest, though in my usual haphazard manner rather than by a path favoring critical merit.
i just watch anything that has srk in it
Speaking of popular Indian actors, any thoughts on Aamir Khan? A couple people on another site are just nuts about him. Nuts in the best commercial "star" actor in the business anywhere kind of way. I like Khan well enough, but that level of enthusiasm surprised me.
i like aamir a lot in his early years. rangeela is one of the great hindi films of its era, jo jeeta wohi sikandar and qayamat se qayamat tak are great and by all accounts he held an at least partial auteur role in making them. you have a lot of dull films - he doesn't quite have the srk/salman star signature to help him power through something indifferent - but also things like earth scattered throughout.greg x wrote: ↑Thu Mar 21, 2019 2:46 pm Speaking of popular Indian actors, any thoughts on Aamir Khan? A couple people on another site are just nuts about him. Nuts in the best commercial "star" actor in the business anywhere kind of way. I like Khan well enough, but that level of enthusiasm surprised me.
since his late '90s post divorce hiatus he very consciously moved into being a reliably middle class, multiplex focused star, starting with lagaan and dil chahta hai. at worst this ends up in saccharine, pandering films the hiranis and the genuinely awful taare zameen paar (which he took over as director). there are still interesting smaller films here and there (delhi belly, talaash, dhobhi gaat, etc) but his reputation lies mostly with 3 idiots and such.
indian popular film culture can be sort of obsessed with box office and star ranking so his extremely consistent success (up till thugs of course) is part of the story too. salman used ghajini template to revitalize his career. srk was surely thinking of aamir with chak de! and swades.
the whole "aamir is huge in china" thing though, that i find really weird...
-
Last edited by roujin on Thu Jun 13, 2019 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
What surprised me was that at least a couple people who were so taken by Aamir had it happen so quickly and from movies like Taare Zameen Paar, 3 Idiots and Lagaan. Whatever it is, Aamir seems to really grab some people. I can kinda see how in some ways, I mean when you compare him to the rest of what goes on in Dhoom 3 Aamir shines, but that's a low bar to cross. I haven't seen him be bad in anything myself, but when I heard he was going to be starring in a Hindi take on Forrest Gump next, my reaction was of course he is, that's a role that almost had to happen.
(And i'm not putting on airs here, I mean I enjoyed both Lagaan and 3 Idiots enough myself in their crowd pleasing manners)
(And i'm not putting on airs here, I mean I enjoyed both Lagaan and 3 Idiots enough myself in their crowd pleasing manners)
i was psyched to see farah khan's name under the choreography credit in kabhi haan kabhi naa! not just cuz i really enjoy her flicks, but also cuz i'm starting to recognize names and faces in a film industry that used to be totally alien to me (and still is in countless ways)
-
liquidnature
- Posts: 556
- Joined: Tue Dec 11, 2018 3:44 am
was curious about this as well, as the knowledge and love for Indian cinema here is incredible. Who here is Indian or has Indian ancestry? don't have to answer if it is too personal
I'm not of Indian ancestry nor have even had the chance to visit but some of my friends' families are connected to the Tamil film industry so being around them, plus being blown away by a series of classic Bollywood films back in 2014, spurred my own interest in learning more about its various national cinemas.liquidnature wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2019 5:52 pmwas curious about this as well, as the knowledge and love for Indian cinema here is incredible. Who here is Indian or has Indian ancestry? don't have to answer if it is too personal
i came to this forum precisely bc of its active engagement w/ indian cinema.. not indian/desi, just a rando from minnesotaliquidnature wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2019 5:52 pmwas curious about this as well, as the knowledge and love for Indian cinema here is incredible. Who here is Indian or has Indian ancestry? don't have to answer if it is too personal
according to my 23 and me results, i have zero indian in me. also, i'm apparently prone to diabetes. but that's ok cuz i'm also supposed to get alzheimer's, so i won't remember that i have diabetes. thank god for genetic tests
i am half indian/pakistani (grandparents were indian nationals but born in sindh) but i have almost no knowledge of indian cinema outside of ray/kapoor...it's something i'm working onliquidnature wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2019 5:52 pmwas curious about this as well, as the knowledge and love for Indian cinema here is incredible. Who here is Indian or has Indian ancestry? don't have to answer if it is too personal
quite very white, and had almost zero knowledge of indian film until making a lot of effort to fix that a few years ago, with much help from seema...
watched ek hasina thi, the debut film by sriraram raghavan (whose andhadhun at least a few people here have seen) and one of the most fondly remembered films produced by rgv's factory productions in the early 2000s.
this is a kind of revenge drama set among the outskirts of '90s bombay gangland mythology - young woman urmila is seduced by oily stranger saif; after he ends up getting her stuck in jail she breaks out with intent to get even. like in johnny gaddar and even agent vinod raghavan has a weird ability to charge the film with a breathless, exciting pulp energy and invest it with a weird kind of moral weight at the same time. on p***e and highly recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo8lI8eOd90
had figured that mysskin's mugamoodi would be an auteurist curiosity at best - one of those films where a young arty director gets access to a much higher budget after a few big hits, spends years developing a more commercial property, and ends up with both a critical and commercial failure on his hand. and even more so this is mysskin making a superhero movie (!) on one hand and a bruce lee tribute (!!) on the other, so even beyond failure a certain kind of embarrassment is possible.
but this is a totally fascinating movie, careening wildly through tones and genres but held together by mysskin's really bizarre decoupage sense and seeming belief in pulp as fount of endless possibility. here you get masked robbery/murder ninja syndicate operating in the basement lair of a chennai kung fu academy, the rooftops of the city a playground for the fantastic in the mode of feuillade, a homemade superhero costume created by two eccentric old men and a hunchbacked assistant, kung fu as the cause and solution for all of life's problems, and more then anything mysskin's ability to create a sense of langian dread by shooting a garbage truck idling at the far end of a quiet street at night.
very telling that the transition from kung fu early portions to superhero later portions is done with two children asking to be told a story; in its embrace of the inherent goofiness of the genre (while refusing to wink or laugh at that) this is the antithesis of the marvel or nolan movies of the time, so of course it was totally rejected. still a fairly flawed movie though, for lots of reasons - the romance doesn't work, some really awkward compositing in some of the more ambitious fight sequences later on, director kind of loses touch with the intrigue of the early sections once everything is explained and the villain's mask is fully off. but the complaints seem minor compared to how rare a thing this is. on netflix of all things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3-3zw6pbVE
ghatak: lethal from '96. i find santoshi's films from this period really interesting, in that they seem both totally of their time and weirdly out of it. this has sunny deol bringing his adopted father amrish puri from benares to bombay for medical treatment, only to find that the area they are to stay in is being terrorized by cossack hat wearing danny denzongpa and his 6 brothers, who stage to the death underground wrestling matches where the losers are fed to the lions.
in a certain way it's all ridiculous, a very tired '70s plot and sunny deol (who starts out doing a very winning aw shucks out of town boy thing) morphing into his punjabi superman bit. but there is real catharsis in these old setups, having these veteran actors helps a lot (om puri and tinnu anand are there too), and santoshi takes the form quite seriously in as much as every required song number/action sequence/character beat/etc are pulled of with great imagination and rigor.
also like that this is secretly a wrestling movie! sunny is a steel worker who wrestles in benares and of course the villains hold wrestling matches and don't believe in using guns (until the finale but that's more swords than anything). and in that way feels even more old fashioned, like a tribute to the forgotten '60s dara singh movies. minor but of interest...
dev.d (anurag kashyap) at first, i vacillated on this one. sometimes while watching it, i luved it. sometimes, i started to get disgusted. all the time, it's beautiful to look at. finally, its pushes and pulls won me over. since i'm still so new to this film region, i wasn't expecting something so visceral, something so visually sumptuous (eat your heart out, luca guadagnino), yet so willing to get deep in the muck. it's a rough watch at times, but you can't look away cuz there's just so much passion on the screen in every single shot. abhay deol gives a really good perf as the protag, and anyone that doesn't crush hard on kalki koechlin simply doesn't have blood running through their veins
haven't seen dev d. yet but have you seen any of the other devdas versions? it's probably the most adapted non-mythological indian book, so he's assuming extreme familiarity with the material he's playing off of...
i haven't. tbh i didn't even know it was based on such highly adapted material until after i watched dev.d, and subsequently started reading more about it. idk if it's the case with the book, since i know basically nothing about it, but dev.d felt almost dostoevskian
I read somewhere that Dev D was believed to be a reaction against the exceptionally popular 2002 version of Devdas, for its rather more grandiose take on the story, which is both fair and maybe a bit mistaken in some ways, maybe...
Anyway, the 2002 Devdas might be worth seeing because it is so wildly different and looks great, even as it does also raise some serious problems for some in its take on the story, glamorizing it instead of Dev D's more raw approach. (I've only seen part of Dev D myself, the DVD I had was marred so I couldn't finish it, but I think I got the basic difference in tone and attitude well enough.)
Anyway, the 2002 Devdas might be worth seeing because it is so wildly different and looks great, even as it does also raise some serious problems for some in its take on the story, glamorizing it instead of Dev D's more raw approach. (I've only seen part of Dev D myself, the DVD I had was marred so I couldn't finish it, but I think I got the basic difference in tone and attitude well enough.)
i watched saheb, biwi aur gangster. you can probably guess the plot! the original sahib, bibi aur ghulam from 1962 is very romantic
this one is more...psychotic. it must be popular as it has two sequels! the young guy looks something like mark wahlberg -- which seemed appropriate
this one is more...psychotic. it must be popular as it has two sequels! the young guy looks something like mark wahlberg -- which seemed appropriate
watched bala's avan ivan for the 2011 poll. it's a supposed comedy he made between the famously bleak naan kadavul and paradesi, about two feuding half brothers from an age old thieving family (one wants nothing more but to dress up in women's clothing and dance, the other takes pride at his lock picking skills), and the old aging zamindar who long since gave away all his feudal power and sort of treats them like family.
it's kind of extraordinary? it just rambles on in this strange, shaggy dog manner, all loopy digression, striking image, extravagant dialogue. this bizarre version of the world just seems fully formed and lived in. and his command of physical gesture - not just in the dance and the fights but the increasingly stylized gesticulations of his actors - is really something. it's bala so ends on a tragic/violent note, which both seems a little forced but is also kind of perfect...
-
Last edited by roujin on Thu Jun 13, 2019 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
raman raghav 2.0 (anurag kashyap) bad lieutenant: port of call mumbai. tagline: in india, no one screams. cuz idkw but for some reason no one ever does. even when they're about to get their head bashed in by an iron rod. not even then. needless to say, this was a big disappointment. especially after the rapturous dev.d. the concept of the cop who doesn't give a shit and his search for the killer who cares wayyy too much is kinda sorta interesting, but unfortunately it's mostly a minor motif in a fairly staid and standard thriller, like se7en-era david fincher meets handheld camera-era steven soderbergh, which just gets lamer and more cliched the longer it goes on. this is what kashyap gets for breaking up with kalki koechlin
Re-watched Esthappan on a lovely new print. First time I watched it, the image quality was garbage and I checked out early. I was much more engaged this time round.
ugly (anurag kashyap) yo kashyap kinda sorta suxks tho. seriously. idk if this is worse than rr2.0, but i'll be damned if it ain't close. leave it to imdb and boxd peeps to prop it up like it's decent. personally, i'm gonna go back to sticking with nrh recs
hm haven't seen ugly but i know it's one of seema's least favorite of all movies. saw rr 2.0 in theater though, unfortunately. too long kashyap thoughts...
kashyap is a weirdo. he's too talented to write off - the rgv projects (satya, shool, kaun?), black friday, dev d, gangs, manmarziyaan, are all good to great. mukkabaaz doesn't quite work but it's fascinating.
no smoking, rr 2.0, girl with the yellow boots, ugly (if what you guys say is right which i'm guessing it is) are not only bad but bad in such irritating, insidious ways that you start to doubt the value of the movies by the director you like (bombay velvet, his big budget karan johar produced flop, is kind of another thing, where the scale of the production just seems to have overwhelmed him).
i think it's telling all of the good films are either collaborations or based off of very strong source material or both. the more he's left to his own devices the worse he gets, which is why his worst films usually follow his best, since he uses the creative capital to indulge. if you read his interviews or follow him on twitter you know he's kind of a doofus. but then even a truly terrible film like rr has some incredible sequences.
what's really insidious about kashyap is that's he's an incredible self promoter. he was the only indian filmmaker of his generation to really figure out how to work the festival system at all (this is changing slightly). i've seen him hailed as a rockstar by 20 something indian kids at q&as. he's almost invariably one of the very first indian filmmakers white film kids encounter.
manmarziyaan was terrific so i'm dreading his next movie (called...womaniya????). but i'll probably convince myself to see it in the theater...
edit - completely forgot about the tv series sacred games, but i didn't finish it and like the book too much (and read it too closely to seeing the series) to have an objective opinion.
kashyap is a weirdo. he's too talented to write off - the rgv projects (satya, shool, kaun?), black friday, dev d, gangs, manmarziyaan, are all good to great. mukkabaaz doesn't quite work but it's fascinating.
no smoking, rr 2.0, girl with the yellow boots, ugly (if what you guys say is right which i'm guessing it is) are not only bad but bad in such irritating, insidious ways that you start to doubt the value of the movies by the director you like (bombay velvet, his big budget karan johar produced flop, is kind of another thing, where the scale of the production just seems to have overwhelmed him).
i think it's telling all of the good films are either collaborations or based off of very strong source material or both. the more he's left to his own devices the worse he gets, which is why his worst films usually follow his best, since he uses the creative capital to indulge. if you read his interviews or follow him on twitter you know he's kind of a doofus. but then even a truly terrible film like rr has some incredible sequences.
what's really insidious about kashyap is that's he's an incredible self promoter. he was the only indian filmmaker of his generation to really figure out how to work the festival system at all (this is changing slightly). i've seen him hailed as a rockstar by 20 something indian kids at q&as. he's almost invariably one of the very first indian filmmakers white film kids encounter.
manmarziyaan was terrific so i'm dreading his next movie (called...womaniya????). but i'll probably convince myself to see it in the theater...
edit - completely forgot about the tv series sacred games, but i didn't finish it and like the book too much (and read it too closely to seeing the series) to have an objective opinion.
what's most striking to me is how aesthetically uninteresting ugly was in particular (as uninteresting as rr2.0 turned out to be story-wise, it at least had some pretty decent shots and sequences throughout), especially coming from the same dude that did dev.d. in reading more though, i see that rajeev ravi was the cinematog for dev.d (as well as for kashyap's other films that you cite as some of his better work), but not ugly or rr2.0, which makes me think the visual grandeur of dev.d was mostly due to ravi. also, it doesn't surprise me that kashyap is the dir that most western kids comes across first. ugly and rr2.0 both reek of standard hollywood thrillers, as if kashyap was trying desperately to make a run at breaking into the biz stateside. i mentioned the imdb and boxd ratings in my previous post, and while i'm not necessarily surprised about ugly's highly rated reception, i was a bit taken aback by how highly rated it appears to be, particularly on boxd. i was perfectly content to grant it an unenthusiastic two out of five, but then it ended, and ugh, i was more than happy to tap that one star, and leave it at that. i'd rather watch rohit shetty's dilwale again than sit through ugly ever again. i mean, at least dilwale has srk...