Happy Monday! I survived the weekend! It was very hot and I saw two movies and taught Sunday School and lead a meeting and met up with my parents and my uncle who was in town. And now I’m back at work and the week is all downhill from here.
Now, questions! You can ask me anything from the personal (“what movies did you watch this weekend?”) to the specific and factual (“What movies were out this weekend?”) to the general discussion (“What movie should I have seen this weekend?”)
Only rule is, you have to let me answer first! The discussion just goes better that way. But once I answer, please feel free to leap in and join the conversation.
Oh, and question for you! This is a simple one I’m just curious about. What is your favorite non-Indian movie?
Easy answer for me, Singin’ in the Rain. Has been my favorite movie since I was 6 years old and I don’t see any reason to change. They haven’t come out with anything better in the past 27 years. Oh, and if you absolutely forced me to pick something additional, the Tobey McGuire Spider-man movie. The “real” Spider-man movie.
dontcallitbollywood 
What movies are you planning to see this weekend?
My favorite non-Indian film would probably be The Lion In Winter. But my top ten would also include The Last of the Mohicans, Dirty Dancing, Firelight, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Head On (German), The Philadelphia Story, In the Name of the Father, The Commitments, and a million other costume dramas, rom-coms, Oscar-bait dramas, and foreign language films depending on when you ask!
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I’m planning to see Batti Gul Meter Chalu, but I may have to skip it because I think watching one more poorly acted soft message film would just about kill Dina. So either I go by myself (no fun!) or I find another movie in theaters that she would actually enjoy, or we watch something at home.
Ditto on The Last of the Mohicans! It’s such a great movie.
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 8:34 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I love LotM! The score is spellbinding, as are the actors and the story.
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Did you also get a little shock when the distinctive score popped up in the middle of Darr? I usually don’t care/notice the music plagerism, but the LOTM sound is so specific, it took me out of the film a bit to hear it.
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 2:21 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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No, I haven’t seen Darr yet, but I noticed this week that it’s now on either Netflix or Amazon, so now I have to skim it just to have this experience!
But I had a similar kind of experience last night… I pressed play on Maine Pyar Kiya for the first time in my life, only to find Stevie Wonder’s “I just called to say I love you” literally translated to Hindi with no other changes, other than the absence of Stevie wonder himself, in the opening credits. The power of synth music to travel the globe unaltered! The accompanying “contemporary” dancing couple were unintentionally hilarious too, especially the male, dancing with 10,000% commitment, completely out-commitment-ing the female dancer. I ended up skimming the film, mostly to admire bhagyashree and the young, almost bug-eyed, salman.
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Bhagyashree in Maine Pyar Kiya: Greatest Hair in the History of Indian Film.
I am so tone deaf, someone else had to point out to me the origin of the song. However, I noticed for myself that the female dancer is wearing a full body suit that wrinkles and bunches hilariously as she dances. Why? Why not just let her wear clothes instead of so poorly implying nudity?
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 8:45 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I saw the move singing in the rain…its was superb movie..its a full package of #comedy,#dance,#singing and #emotions…
#gene kelly,#debbie reynold,#donald o ‘connor.
#the rain dance.superbb..movie.🙌🌂🎶🎺🎻🎭🎦📺📼
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My favorite depends on what’s my mood when you ask me. I know that my answer used to be “A Room With A View” (a merchant ivory film from the late 80s) for a good ten years. That’s the longest I’ve stuck with one pick. It’s a deceptively funny movie – it’s the only movie I’ve ever seen where you don’t really laugh upon the first viewing, then on the second viewing your laugh is on time delay because it takes a few seconds for your brain to register that you just witnessed/heard something funny, then on the third viewing you LOL the whole way through. Plus full male nudity (incl frontal) in a cheeky hilarious scene in the middle of the film, in which the two of the three nude males are young and hot. 30 years later, if this film had come out today, it would still be ahead of its time on that score.
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I still haven’t seen Room With a View, although I have been hearing about it for years. That was one of my biggest adjustments when getting into Indian film, I thought of Merchant-Ivory as the classy period drama people, and then I discovered their early Hindi content, the cheeky sensitive stripped down films. Although now that I think about it, I haven’t seen their period dramas either, maybe they are more cheeky and free thinking than I gave them credit for.
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 2:18 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I liked the book, and tried to watch the movie some time ago, but I wasn’t in a mood and stopped. Now I feel I should try again.
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My mind is so focused on indian cinema it’s hard to recall non indian movies I liked, but Dirty Dancing is my favourite for sure. And the other title I can think is The wedding singer with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler (don’t judge me). I’m sure there are many other, better movies but now I remamber only those 2.
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Both of which have been remade in India! Pooja Bhatt’s “Holiday” and a Rani-Salman film I can’t remember the title of.
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 3:33 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Holiday – I have seen, bad movie
The wedding singer – I didn’t have idea it was remade! Google told me the title is Kahin Pyaar Na Ho Jaaye, and no way it can be good movie. The wedding singer was great because of music and 80′ nostalgia. Hindi remake has nothing like that. It looks like another boy loves girl, Salman takes his shirt off movie (only good thing it has Mohnish Bahl! but everytime I think about him I’m angry we can’t see him more often)
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I think we lost Mohnish Behl to TV, they appreciate him more there.
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 3:50 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I have never given much thought to best non-Indian movie that I have liked.
I grew up on a diet of Jackie Chan movies and hence like movies such as the Karate Kid (original)
a couple of movies that I enjoy watching everytime I view them are Die Hard & The Hunted 1995
if you have not watched The Hunted do give it a chance. It has a little bit of everything 🙂 — like a well made masala movie really
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Love Jackie Chan. Supercop is one of my favorite action movies of all time. It was how I discovered Michelle Yeoh, which then led me to Wing Chun, also one of my all time favorites and really funny along with the amazing fight scenes.
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Die Hard is a shockingly good movie, clever and well-constructed and tense but not too tense and with a perfect cast.
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 10:50 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Since we had the whole discussion about Netflix in India…I saw this news about Netflix starting to get serious about making original shows and movies in the Nigerian industry (aka “Nollywood”), and wondered if you have any thoughts about the idea of all of these industries coming together on the same platforms to compete for the global streaming audience? Or is the global streaming audience a niche made of people who don’t mind subtitles and this is all a bubble that will burst, taking the new original content with it?
https://qz.com/africa/1384217/netflix-buys-nollywood-movie-lionheart-by-genevieve-nnaji/
Also, for future discussion movies, can I nominate OK Kanmani and Piku? That counts as a question, right? 🙂
Favorite movies for me are tied to the phase of my life when I saw them. High school is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Strictly Ballroom during the Aussie boom years, and I really love A River Runs Through It beyond all reason. There was a brief Argentinian period around when I was living in Spain, Son of the Bride and Nine Queens. Moonstruck, when I rewatched it after moving to New York, I never realized how great it was. Singin’ in the Rain definitely one of the best ever, happy to say I got my kids hooked early, and Bringing Up Baby, which they don’t appreciate yet.
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really surprised Netflix is moving into Nigeria. I didn’t think they had enough of a market base to make it worthwhile, which probably shows my ignorance as much as anything else. I believe the Nigerian films are watched through out the region, so this could be a move after the general African market? I don’t see it as competing for the global audience so much as competing for their own local audience and the diaspora. I am assuming the goal is segmented audience in a predictable pattern.
I also went through a Strictly Ballroom period! I watched it when I was a kid when it first came out, and then about ten years ago a group of friends and I stumbled on it and started watching it obsessively. Bringing of Baby is another one like that for me, I watched it as a kid and was so-so on it, and then years later I saw it in a theater with an audience and it was a whole different experience, suddenly I understood how the jokes were built and why they landed and so on.
Oh, and Nine Queens was semi-remade as Bluffmaster in Hindi, if you want to check it out. Great soundtrack.
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 11:30 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Non-Indian movie for me would be Wuthering Heights,
just for Olivier. (His eyes!) Also add me to the Last of the Mohicans list. And The Black Stallion – a gorgeous film and a gorgeous horse.
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I love The Black Stallion! That is a movie that I am surprised has kind of disappeared. My parents saw it in theaters and always remembered it, and then showed it to us when we were kids, but I think if they hadn’t happened to watch it back then I might never have heard about it. So well made, wonderful cast, and beautiful story, and yet I don’t see it talked about much. It also started me down the road of reading the whole book series. Which is not nearly as good as the film, definitely a case where the movie added depth to the book instead of removing it like usual.
Ditto for Last of the Mohicans now that I think about it. I had to read the book in an English class in college, and it was fun once I really got into it, but the plot kind of meanders and the characters never make complete sense. The movie is much stronger.
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 3:05 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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