New YouTube Video! Padmavat Box Office, With a Little Bit of Dog

New YouTube Video!  With a dog head in it for a half second.  Oh well.  Anyway, it’s the video version of this post here.

Continue reading

Box Office: Padmavat and 3rd Generation Immigrants

There isn’t much to analyze this week, Padmavat is doing crazy good everywhere, you can just sort of accept that.  And also, secondly, Bhagamathie is also doing good.  But, WHY?  I am going to take a massive logical leap and you can decide if it makes sense or not.

Continue reading

Bad Rom-Coms With Great Soundtracks

It’s like a whole genre, right?  I think this every time I update my Saavn playlist.  If you are a fan of light happy songs (which I am), a large number of wonderful light happy songs end up living within bad movies.  Specifically, rom-coms that aspire to be light and happy but never manage to live up to their soundtrack.

Continue reading

Padmavat Full Summary (SPOILERS) Part 3: A Lot of Filler, and then a Bad Life Lesson

Next part!  I think I am on the downward stretch now.  Partly because there is an awful lot of what feels like “filler” starting with this section.  So I can skip all kinds of things, or at least only deal with them briefly. (full index of Padmavat here)

Continue reading

Monday Malayalam: Godha, a Snow White in Kerala

This film FINALLY made it’s way to einthusan.  And it is just as wonderful as Angie promised me. Not as spectacularly well-made and imaginative as Ohm Shanti Oshaana, but that same totally satisfying feel of a female protagonist going after what she wants and getting it in a completely happy way.  Everyone happy, really.

Continue reading

Hindi Film 101 Swara and a Reply to Swara About Padmavat as a Case Study in Appropriate and Inappropriate Public Discussion

I’m not going to get into the presentation of Jahuar in Padmavat again, I touched on it in my no spoilers review, and I will get to it possibly tomorrow in my full SPOILER summary.  But I do want to have a conversation about conversation, and how it works and how it starts and spreads, based on Swara Bhaskar’s open letter objecting to Jahuar in Padmavat versus the response to it that is being sent around today.

Continue reading

Monday Morning Questions! With a Question for YOU! How Many People Can You Love?

Angie and Niki and I started going back and forth on the Wednesday post last week about whether it is possible to be a fan of multiple people/sports teams at once.  Which began to make me realize that there might be multiple ways of being fans.  And I am curious, out of the 3 categories I am thinking of, which you might identify for yourself.  Oh, and this is also the weekly post to bring up any general discussion topics you might want to talk about!

Continue reading

Padmavat Summary, WHOLE THING, (SPOILERS), Part 2

Part 1 came out yesterday, moving right along to part 2.  This isn’t a real “scene by scene”, not the way I have done it in the past with every line and every shot considered.  This is more a summary of the film with some minor discussion, similar to what I did for Bajirao. (full index of summary here)

Continue reading

Padmavat WHOLE THING! Part 1 (SPOILERS): Ostriches and Pearls and Brahmins, Oh My!

This is a tricky one, on the one hand there is so much in it that I really want to go through step by step and make sure I don’t miss anything.  On the other hand, there isn’t enough in it (and I don’t want to spend so much time) for me to do a “real” scene by scene, shot by shot, style discussion.  So I’m gonna do kind of a half one.  Sort of like I did for Bajirao.  Go through everything that happened, but not in super detail. (no spoiler review is here)

Continue reading

Padmavat Review (NO SPOILERS): Intent Versus Effect

I saw it!  Not opening night, but soon enough.  Theater was half full, half the audience was talking and the other half was shushing them, very odd dynamic.  I’m used to all talking or no one, not this mix and match.  Which kind of fit the mix and match I saw within the film.

Continue reading

TGIF: FilmFare! Who Wore it Best Which Year? Madhuri versus Madhuri, Dia versus Dia, Sonam versus Sonam, Rekha versus Rekha, Shahrukh versus Shahrukh, and Ranveer versus Ranveer

In our discussion on this year’s FilmFare post, we ended up linking back to previous years for reference, which made me think of a TGIF theme!  Why not put up photos from previous years and have people compete with themselves? (index of all TGIF posts here)

Continue reading

Friday New Classic: Shirin Farhad Ki Nikal Padi, a New Interpretation of a Classic Love Poem

This is just a fun happy movie that I felt like talking about because it is the complete opposite of the big dramatic movie that came out last night and which I will be seeing tonight.  And they are both based on classic poems!

Continue reading

FanVid Post! To Feed Our Shahrukh Urges

You probably haven’t noticed, but I am trying to be an “adult”, and do straight adult analysis and stuff lately, no fun TGIF, less sexy FanFic, and so on.  And it’s HARD.  I don’t like it!  So my girly fan stuff is bursting out of me, and I have to do an all SRK fanvid post!

Continue reading

News Round-Up: Arjun Reddy Remake, Karan Johar Paan, and Sanju Madhuri

Finally, some interesting news stories!  I’ve been checking for days, and there hasn’t been anything that I consider juicy (no, rumors of possible conflict, and discussion of something someone said that might be offensive are not juicy).  But today, lots of actual industrial news!  So happy!

Continue reading

Hindi Film 101/DDLJ Part 44: The Rescue of Amrish Puri and the Tragedy of the Fearful Immigrant

Well, this turned into a whole thing!  I started just wanting to establish Amrish’s character journey at this part in the film, and I just ended up going on and on until it went way beyond the usual Scene By Scene and turned into a screed on the tragedy and trauma of the immigrant (full index of DDLJ posts here)

Continue reading