Happy Monday! And Recognition in an Appropriate Way of Memorial Day. I really want to say “Happy”, but I am trying to be more aware. Anyway, I’m happy today because I don’t have to work and I am going to have a wonderful productive day.
Ask me anything! The history of Memorial Day, why Shahrukh hasn’t announced his next movie yet, what is the best Indian movie to watch online, and so on.
And now I shall ask myself a question: “Margaret, what are you doing this three day weekend?”
I am so glad you asked me that Self! I am doing so much!!! I went to a podiatrist (surgery needed, boo!), and we had our second to last doggie class, and I went to a party. Most importantly, I got rid of my old futon and yesterday my parents helped my build my fancy new one! It is so nice. And equally exciting, today I have cleaners coming for a “deep clean”. Doesn’t that sound nice? Like a shampoo at a hair salon. But they won’t lift anything more than 25 pounds (which seems fair), so I had to do a lot of cleaning off of surfaces and furniture rearranging before they could do the real cleaning. Anyway, by the end of this weekend I will have a new sofa, a sparkling clean apartment, and a dog that is one class short of perfection.
What are you all in America doing with your 3 day weekend? And folks in the rest of the world with their normal weekend?
dontcallitbollywood 
I was talking to a friend who just got a new dog, but one that already had a name. What’s the dog’s name I ask. “Hazel” is the reply. What are the chances of two ‘dog Hazels’ (of beloved memory)? I think the question may be not “why hasn’t Shah Rukh announced his next movie” but rather is Shah Rukh going to return to movies any time soon?” Producer, talk show host…maybe his current plan.
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Thank goodness current Albie Dog has a name so specific it is unlikely to be duplicated!
May be the question should be “why hasn’t Shahrukh announced his next project?” Movie role, opening another theme park, producing another talk show, it could be anything. I just feel like he is flying around too much and doing too many meetings to not have something big going.
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He has announced or Red Chilies has, another Netflix original production and he is filming TEDTalks as we speak, so that’s something.
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Oh no, I don’t want to watch more TED Talks!!!!! Please don’t make me. They are sooooooooo superficial. Why does everything have to have a cool outside of the box solution that would fix everything immediately if we just did it? Why can’t some things just be a little more complicated than that?
On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 9:30 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I JUST had this conversation with my husband. (about American ones; he hasn’t watched the Indian version) He said the exact same thing!! I like them and watch all the time, but I do have to respect the opinion of the two of you!!
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I didn’t watch a single episode and have no interest in the 2nd season either. It won’t take up too much time. Apparently the filming is only for 12 days and he’s been doing it for the last few days so maybe a week more. It must be good money for not a lot of work.
About movies, I guess this time he wants to make a well thought out and calculated decision instead of just going with what his heart wants. Zero was a big failure so he must be taking stock and trying to figure out the best way to proceed.
Red Chillies has 3 Netflix productions and one theatrical (Operation Khukri) coming up. Maybe he will just go ahead and do Operation Khukri. It’s a heroic army story which would be mounted on a big scale and it seems like the appropriate thing that would work in today’s time.
In other news, I read that Vicky Kaushal agreed to do that Rakesh Sharma space movie and then dumped it. They have decided to shelve it for now because it’s becoming a laughingstock.
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Yeah, I’m going back to thinking there is something really wrong with that Rakesh Sharma movie. Why else would 3 people consider and then drop it?
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Probably because the budget is too high for a movie that won’t get mass acceptance. It’s a boring story built on one line said to Indira Gandhi and nowadays the Gandhis and Congress are also very out of fashion.
This story would have been an uphill climb anyway and the political climate is not conducive either.
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Have you seen the “new and improved”(tm) Zero on Netflix? New starting scene, voiceovers added to start and end, and several scenes edited in the second half (possibly in the first half as well, but more subtly so). Probably can’t say more without spoiling. Probably can say that it now feels more like a story but less like an adventure/experience/thrill ride. For better or worse, I miss the way it unfolded in the original. I believe the original version is still on Einthusan, for those that want to compare.
Would love to discuss further if you rereview it. Or should we use the spoiler review post of the original to discuss the changes?
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Ooo! This is the perfect day for it!!! I need to rewatch the whole Netflix thing with notes to be sure I am correct in what was added and removed, and it’s been hard to find 2 and a half hours to sit there. But I think I can today! Stay tuned!
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Regarding your apartamiento getting a cleaning, did you see the story about the guy whose house was broken into? Nothing was stolen, but his house was immaculate. Why can’t that happen to me?
https://www.insideedition.com/man-says-intruder-cleaned-his-entire-house-and-left-toilet-paper-roses-53179
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That sounds amazing!!!! I want that to happen to me too.
On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 11:35 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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More of Cat’s most pressing questions:
1. Did Dev get paid alimony after the divorce?
2. What is the wristband thingy Rohitt Shetty always wears, and why were SRK and Varun wearing them in Dilwale?
3. Is the puffy guy hair thing a thing because all the guys are short and the girls are all tall?
4. WHY are the guys all short and the girls are all tall? Where are they importing these girls from? Shouldn’t there be tall-er guys if the girls are tall-er these days? So much confusion.
5. Am I the only one with a strange aversion/fascination to/with Aamir Khan’s ears? (Is it mean that I immediately thought of that Indian Coldplay video in regard to Aamir’s ears?)
6. Am I the only one who feels insanely inferior when Margaret points out small things in a movie I *completely* missed? I need to go to learn how to watch movies properly. How about weekly posts teaching us the *how* of movie watching? You could even assign homework. I’d totally do it!
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1. I assume “no”, which is why he took a job far away that would pay enough for his Apartment of Depression. Same for Maya, still working full time with her little Apartment of Depression. I also wonder if Dev still had money left over from when he was earning. Probably, right? He couldn’t have gone through it all that fast.
2. It looks like it might just be something he thinks is cool that he has his actors wear as an inside thing, or it might be some kind of sacred thread. I’m 50/50 either way.
3. I think it’s because all the guys have thinning hair and are trying to hide it.
4. I wrote a whole paper on this! Short answer, in the mid-90s Femina magazine which ran the India branch of Miss World competitions decided they wanted to compete on a global stage and create a “new” Indian woman. Juhi Chawla, adorable round short Juhi, won Miss India back in the 80s. That was the ideal woman for decades. But starting in the 90s, as global influence hit India more and more and Indian society generally welcomed this as a “good” thing, in order to even pass the first application round for Miss India, you had to be over 5’6″. Miss India was the flagship brand of female beauty, but everything else fell into line, suddenly all the advertisements (especially in the North) had these tall willowy types. More than height, there is the whole look. Back in the 80s and early 90s, heroine’s didn’t even bother with make-up all the time during films. They didn’t shave, let alone wax. Their hair tended to be long and natural (that is, not the “blown out” look). And of course the clothes were modest and Indian made. Suddenly starting in the late 90s, all the heroines began to be very very thin and very very tall and very very Western. This whole thing is also why we have so many heroines now who are from the very very top of society and have almost no connection to “real” India. With the expectation of a certain look and certain attitude, the lower class woman or even regular middle class women were excluded.
5. Definitely not! His ears are fascinating.
6. Oh, you don’t want that! I took my first film class when I was 16 and it ruined my ability to watch movies for pleasure. My brain is always working, it is exhausting. This is why it has taken me 3 tries to start rewatching the Netflix Zero.
On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 12:26 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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My brain never shuts off, but I’m used to it. I always need to learn more, know more, understand more. However, because I tend to vibe very strongly about things, I deliberately try to just watch movies as they’re presented. The same is true with books – I consciously ignore hints and clues and things like that so I can “enjoy” the movie/book/ending.
My kids SUCK at this. They can drop an entire plot and ending within 5 minutes and blow the whole experience. My son has an English degree, and wants to teach creative writing. What he should be is a damn film critic. He drives me batshit complaining about this overused trope and that tired not-really-feminist-but-pretending-to-be-uplifting situation and yada yada yada. He’s super hard to just enjoy movies with, but I suspect you two would get along like a house on fire! I have one daughter who, at the ripe old age of 3 (THREE!), toddled downstairs, looked up at the movie we were watching and observed in what can only be described as a disgusted tone, “Those two people love each other, why don’t they just say it?” Sigh … ‘Cause that’s not the point!!!
I was super thrilled that my middle kid *completely* missed the twist in Don. She usually catches everything. (She was wayyy ahead of the game for Don 2. She said she‘ debentures scarred by the first one.) She wants to be a crime scene investigator. I suppose it makes sense. I’m gonna make her watch Anhadhun tonight and see how that goes! (Sadly, even I with blinders firmly in place, guessed the ending in Badla. Such a bummer.)
Anywaaaaayyyyysssss … all that to say I really mean it! I’m on DDLJ post 20 an enjoying every little thing about framing scenes and color and dichotomy and all. F’real!
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See, my goal is when you reach an even higher level. You start enjoying the film as it was made, then you start to see through the tricks and understand the magic, but then you go even farther than that and start to appreciate the skill with which this fake magic was created. Like watching a magician, you start out just believing the tricks blindly. Then you see through them and are bored. But eventually you start to see how hard it is to create these fake tricks and appreciate it on that level. Which is why I enjoyed Badla even though I spoiled myself before I watched it. I knew the twist, but I could still appreciate how beautifully the twist was put together.
On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 2:11 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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What is happening in the world?
Well here in Finland there has been two straight days of celebrating since our national hockey team ‘Leijonat’ or ‘Lions’ won the Hockey World Championships against Canada with a 1-3 victory on Sunday!!
There has been a lot of drinking, naked people in the central square and swimming in a fountain in Helsinki and gathering all around, the Finnish way of celebrating is WILD! It’s all on par for the course and I went to celebrate in Helsinki yesterday and today as well. 😀
The last time we won was 8 years ago and we take ice hockey seriously so this is a big thing to celebrate for us all. So yeah, that’s all the news from here and from me from what all Finnish presumed to be just an ordinary weekend until we WON!
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I am so excited for you!!!! That sounds super fun and joyful. Congrats!!!!!
On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 4:35 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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May be you can do an article/101 on war (Border, etc.)/patriotic or biographic (Mother India, Legend of Bhagat Singh, Gandhi, Mangal Pandey etc.)/half-patriotic+half-fiction (Gaddar, Ghazi Attack, etc.) or new rightist patriotism (Sarfarosh, Gaddar, etc.)
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Hi, Margaret! No questions, but just to say my WP feed was super weird this weekend. I kept coming to look for the FAN re-post and didn’t see it until yesterday. Hence no commentary. And now the Zero post is up. I’ve re-watched the theatrical version (on Google Play) and the Netflix version, and my memory of changes is different. Looking forward to commenting on both, but no idea when I’ll get the chance. Too much work! The downside of a 3 day weekend.
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My WP administrator app updated over the weekend, so I suspect they were rolling out updates to all their sites and apps and they are STUPID.
Anyway, yes, Fan post is up and so is the Zero changes post. I have to admit that I didn’t buy Zero on itunes or google play for comparison (because I am cheap cheap cheap), so most of the changes I picked out I am not really sure about.
On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 8:43 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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No reason that you should buy a movie that you didn’t like! 🙂
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That’s what I thought! And I think this also triggers the illogical penny pinching side of me that makes me wait in line for a nickel when the cashier at the grocery store shortchanges me. It’s my nickel!!!!!
On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 8:55 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Movies about the girls rejected many times as a bride. I can think only about Tabu in KK and Mawra Hocane in Sanam Teri Kasam. Do you know others?
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It’s a big part of the Manichtrazhu plot, the girl being “Manglik”. I am sure there are others, especially with “Manglik” heroines, but I am drawing a blank at the moment. I guess it’s a small part of the Socha Na Tha plot? Ayesha and Abhay meet for a bride viewing and it is extra stressful because Ayesha has already been rejected multiple times. And then other complications spin off of that.
On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 8:56 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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