The newest Fan Trailer was launched a little bit ago, I already put up a post analysing it second by second. But that’s only half the story, the other part is the massive, MASSIVE trailer launch.
2 Shahrukhs! What could be better! It’s like Duplicate, but less stupid!
Just a few quick headlines to start off the week! All of which will be getting more substantive follow-up once more data is available!
I am so glad I wasn’t born on February 29th! On the one hand, you are always only a quarter of your real age. But on the other hand, only a quarter as many birthday presents! Anyway, I got curious about famous Indian performers who were leap year babies, and sure enough, I found one!
Finally! Something HAPPY! Which is an odd thing to say about a film on the War on Terror including a sociopathic CIA agent, a homicidal and delusional Obama, and several varities of terrorists. But oh my gosh, it was FUNNY! Super super funny! Not as good as Tere Bin Laden, but nothing’s going to be that good. But it was in the same taboo-breaking nothing sacred territory.
Going into it’s second weekend, Neerja is poised to do even better than it did during it’s first. And not just because of good word of mouth.
Raghil in comments said that if I liked Ohm Shanti Oshaana, I should watch Thattathin Marayathu. So I did, and I did like it! Not as much as Ohm Shanti Oshaana, but it is definitely in the same family.
Oscar time again! And once again, I have seen basically none of the nominees. And I especially haven’t seen the foreign film nominees. And nor has anyone else. I don’t mean that they don’t play widely in America, for the most part the kind of films that get an Oscar nomination do pretty well in the art theaters around the country. But they don’t play around the world. Hollywood, Hong Kong, and India are objectively and demonstrability the most watched film industries in the world (with maybe Korea and Nigeria just barely beginning to give them a run for their money), and only one of them ever makes it to the Academy Awards. But I actually think there are some reasonable reasons for that. Not good, but reasonable.
(Mother India is, of course, the closest India has ever come to wining. Lost by a hair to Nights in Cabiria. Stupid Fellini)
Big news that is dominating the Indian film media today, SANJU BABA IS FINALLY OUT OF JAIL!!! After almost 3 years in jail, plus 18 months served back in the 90s, Sanjay Dutt is finally free of court cases and punishment and anything else! There has been so much coverage, that I really can’t do it all justice. So instead, I’ll just pick a couple of cool things that were reported, and then give the 6 reasons that I, personally, am glad he is out.
Well, “steady”. With the understanding that the box office is always going to drop off a little after the weekend. But it didn’t drop off nearly as much as it could have.
So, Lisa, my Malayalam expert commentator has been pushing me for weeks and weeks and weeks to see Manichitrathazhu. And I finally did! It was a nice break from all my Neerja posts. Next I am going to watch Thattathin marayathu from my other Malayalam expert commentator. And then maybe just go through this whole list from Midukki that a friend pointed me too. By the way, if you are enjoying my Malayalam posts but wishing I knew a lot more, or had a bigger archive, or anything, you should definitely check her out. And also this blog.
Karan just released yet another Kapoor and Sons song video on his twitter this morning, and there have been a whole bunch of other song video releases I didn’t even notice (because Karan didn’t tweet them), but I should really talk about. Because it’s almost Cricket season, authorized song videos are going to be all we have to entertain us for a while.
I posted the first half, up to intermission, already. The second half is a little harder for me to remember in detail, some pieces kind of blurred together, or were purposefully repetitive. But I will do the best I can. And if I missed something important or put it in the wrong order, say something in the comments.
I’m done! With the dozen films I randomly checked out from the library just because they had Malayalam in the description. I regret nothing! Some of them were good, some were bad, but I ended up with a fairly broad idea of Malayalam film and culture, instead of the narrow perspective I would have gotten by just watching the very newest, very highest quality, films. And for the grande finale, I got to watch a film that was actually pretty close to what I would have chosen on purpose!
I was trying to come up with a theme for this, like court cases or messy break-ups or something, but I couldn’t quite make it work. Court cases and also messy break-ups that could or could not involve court cases in future and have already involved court cases in the past? Nah, not worth it!
I already put up two regular Neerja reviews, one with spoilers and one without. But now it is time for a full summary. I don’t know if I will really be able to do it justice in a description, but I will do my best!
Continue reading
The overseas figures are published in detail, yay!!!! And, as always, thank you BollywoodHungama. Oh, and the figures are so above average, I actually checked my math twice.
BollywoodHungama has the figures for the first 3 days, and they are really interesting. Both inside and outside India.
I finally finished with the pile of random library movies! Thank goodness! So I can start watching the ones people have been recommending to me in the comments! These last two, though, were really important and I am so glad I watched them!
Well, “identified”. In case you don’t remember, at the end of the film, the cab driver Dopinder who was listening to the Shree 420 song at the beginning comes back at the end and is listening to another song that isn’t nearly as familiar (well, what is as familiar as “Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani”? When I was writing my thesis, I read an article that claims you just need to listen to it once to understand all of Indian film). I was hoping I would be able to indentify the other song just by listening, but no luck! So I cheated and just stayed all the way through the end credits until I saw the name of the other song.
So, yesterday I was digging around looking for new Dilwale fanvids. And I ran across all of these awesome videos for fandoms I didn’t even know existed! Or that I knew existed, but I thought were too classy for fanvids (Aamir fans, I am looking at you!)
I already posted the spoiler-less review earlier. Although that is kind of pointless, we all know how it goes and how it ends. And we are supposed to know, the film promotions have been mostly constant repetitions of the real life story until it is burned into our brains when we walk in the theater. So I am putting spoilers in here, but they are more spoilers for the specific way this story is told, not for what the story is.
I saw Neerja! And it was just as high quality and emotional and so on as I was expecting. That sounds not so complimentary, but the fact that it was able to meet my expectations is really something, because they were sky high. Oh! I made a pun! I would laugh, but I am still too emotional.
The acting, the peaceful message, the uncontrollable sobbing, all of that I was expecting. But what I was not expecting was how feminist and female focused it was. They really did a remarkable job of showing the value of the female perspective and involvement in the world, and how toxic an all male environment can be. Fascinating!
My randomly organized stack of all the Malayalam movies owned by my library has finally turned up something from the past 10 years! And it even stars a guy I have seen before, Fahadh Faasil from Bangelore Days (and apparently in real life he is married to Nazriya Nazim? Who I love forever because of Ohm Shanti Oshaana). It was good, and definitely similar to the other modern movies I had seen, but just not quite as spectacularly good as they were. And that’s actually what I wanted, to experience something not spectacularly good.
I saw a thing about Dilwale being available so soon on streaming, because Shahrukh wanted to make it available for the international audience who didn’t get it in their countries ASAP, even faster than DVDs could get there. And by what I can see on youtube, he definitely has an international audience, and they definitely started streaming the movie IMMEDIATELY. And then illegally ripped the files and started making their own fanvids.
dontcallitbollywood 