Monday Morning Questions Post, Diwali Week! With an Interesting Question for You!

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Happy Monday!  And happy 3 days to Diwali!  Or 17 days to Shahrukh’s birthday.  Or 4 days to Secret Superstar comes out.  Or until Golmaal 4 comes out.  Whichever is most important to you.

As always, you can ask me any question from the personal (“which are you more excited about?”) to the specific and factual (“what is Diwali?”) to the general discussion (“will Golmaal 4 or Secret Superstar do better at the box office?”).

The only rule is, you have to let me answer first!  It’s more fun for me that way, plus the discussion seems to go better.  But once I give my answer, feel free to jump in and give your own.

 

And now, as sometimes happens on Mondays, I have a question for you!  Joyomama and Filmilibrarian have talking about watching every film of an actor or other filmmaker in order.  It’s an interesting challenge, it can help you better appreciate the development of a particular actor, and if you choose the right person, it can also serve as a way to give you a guide through film history, a purposefully random view as a career rises and falls.

So, what would be an interesting actor to pick?  Ideally not someone overwhelming (Anupam Kher, for instance, would be interesting but also prohibitively time consuming and difficult).  But also not someone too simple, Aditya Chopra for instance has only made 4 films, all interesting, but not a very long journey.

Some thoughts I had: Shabana Azmi might be interesting, she’s had a varied career and is always excellent.  Kajol would be another good one, a career that went from the wild days of the early 90s through to the sleek and sophisticated present day.  Yash Chopra would be really interesting.  Long, and varied, career.

What do you think?  Who is a good artist to follow through a career of at least a few decades, but hopefully less than 100 films?

25 thoughts on “Monday Morning Questions Post, Diwali Week! With an Interesting Question for You!”

  1. On whom to watch:

    1. Kamal Hassan — you can just stick to the Hindi or Hindi dubbed films if you find his entire filmography too overwhelming.

    2. Mani Ratnam (because you’ve pretty much finished his filmography anyway 🙂 )

    3. Smita Patil — at least her filmography won’t be overwhelming since she died young. 😦 I think it will give you a better handle on the “art film” industry than following Shabana Azmi.

    4. Jaya Bhaduri/Bachchan — Not an overwhelming filmography, but one that spans several decades and several styles of film making. Also include her Bengali films to get the total picture.

    Moving on to directors —

    5. Hrishikesh Mukherjee — I really love his films, don’t know if you’ll care for them. Again, you can just stick to the Hindi films.

    6. Manmohan Desai — if you like his kind of films. I don’t, but there’s no doubt he’s an influential figure.

    And now for something completely different —

    7. All the films of Salim – Javed, then the films written just by Salim and just by Javed, to see how their writing changed when they were writing individually and not as a team. Then, as an exercise, go back and try to figure out from their joint films which parts were written by whom. 🙂

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    • Not sure if I am up for doing a full filmography watch the way other people are considering. But I am planning to finish off Mani Ratnam at some point, I think I just have 3 movies left at this point so I might as well.

      I really like the Salim Javed idea! I just checked their filmography, and I’m half done already, and of course everything they touched is a classic, so they are already on my long term “I should watch that sometime” list.

      On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 6:48 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  3. Also, 7 DAYS TO PRABHAS’ Birthday!!!

    Kajol is an amazing actress for the challenge. For actor, Prabhas! ( not because I am obsesssed with him) but because he genuinely improved with every movie and he is different from his first movie to his latest!!
    Director: Bhansali?

    Thanks for being awesome!!

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    • Both excellent options! Which I think most people, including myself, have come close to doing already. Bhansali is fascinating, to me it feels like he peaked at Devdas. Not necessarily like it is his best movie, but it is the movie he wanted to make all along. Everything until then was leading up to it, and everything since then has been an imitation of it.

      And thank you for the Prabhas reminder! I think I almost forgot last year, and I know I already forgot poor Nivin this year.

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  4. I think Prithviraj is today. He’d be another hard one to do the whole filmography since it’s like 100 films or something. Mohanlal would be insane.

    I really like the Salim Javed idea!

    My question — has any star or studio “owned” Diwali holiday in the way that Aamir had Christmas (although he’s taking Diwali this year) or Salman has Eid?

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    • Diwale has been Shahrukh’s since DDLJ I think. But it’s interesting, in a broader sense, the 3 Khans were the first generation to really be able to “own” a holiday like that. Because it was the first era of wide releases, before then movies would just come out and if they were good, they would still be running whenever the next holiday happened to occur. So pretty naturally then ended up dividing the year. To the point where there’s talk of Shahrukh asking Salman if Eid is free, and vice versa. It’s just sort of assumed between them and by the industry, they have right of first refusal on their holidays.

      This year Salman is taking both Eid and Christmas, Aamir is taking Diwale, and Shahrukh bowed out entirely and opted for Republic Day and Independence Day instead, less pressure holidays.

      On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 5:33 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  5. Hmm…I guess MGR would be an interesting actor. Only because I’ve seen so few of his films and he casts a pretty big shadow on Tamil cinema. Also, I think it’d be interesting to see the transformation from normal actor to political mouthpiece to political leader. But he does have a ridiculous number of films though so it would be a huge undertaking.

    Amitabh would be interesting too but again – huge undertaking.

    So what films are on your agenda for this week to watch?

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    • I don’t like to tell you because then you will get excited and I may not follow through! But I can tell you I just watched A Gentleman for the second time with my friend that I have been telling about it since it came out. And obviously I will be seeing Secret Superstar!!! Thursday if I can find a showtime that will work, otherwise Friday.

      On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 7:14 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • Hmmm….I think I may have an inkling here…lol. You kind of amaze me with just the sheer amount of films you manage to get through in a week so whatever you can get through, I’ll be happy. 🙂

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  6. `
    Question about your blog advertisements. I know with WordPress you don’t have any control over them. But, there seems to have been a change recently. These video ads pop up and there’s no way to stop them or mute them or even scroll past them. Is anybody else having this problem?

    –

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  8. You should go through Rajamouli’s filmography. You can see the journey from a normal masala filmaker to a passionate visionary. I think he’s made like 11 movies total so it isn’t too much. He also choreographed the action for one of his father’s films and produced a film so you could include those as well.

    Another interesting choice would be Nani. He’s been in 19 movies in 9 years, and they are varied types of movies. He’s acted in a few Tamil films too.

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