Happy Saturday! I have a headache and don’t feel like thinking. But you all can still have fun while I sit around and am lazy.
Turns out, I can’t see a movie on Thursday, stay up until 1am writing the review, and then get up at 6am to go to work and not feel sick afterwards. I just dragged through yesterday, slept in today, and I still feel lousy. So you all can just keep reading those Saaho reviews while I take naps and read books and drink tea and don’t stare at a computer until my eyes hurt.
Meantime, things to talk about!
I did a brief in depth analysis of “Hawayein”, which was fun for me. What other Shahrukh songs do you want me to analyze? Just the songs as independent pieces of art?
Finished Female Films Week, that was fun! What theme week should I do next? A topic, a star, a genre, an issue?
In America, it’s Labor Day on Monday! Because we aren’t Commies who celebrate it on May 1 like the rest of the world! Anyway, what are you doing to celebrate? I am spending the weekend at my parents’ house being lazy, and then going home Monday afternoon and doing the grand summer to winter clothing swap.
dontcallitbollywood 
Directors week! 🙋
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Would love a song analysis from Chaahat.
Random thought of the day; I noticed that SRK lost his lower eye lashes (seem completely gone) somewhere during the early millennium. It intensifies the embryonic appearance of his eyes.
Another random SRK observation: I’m not sure I’ve seen another actor with such elastic fingers… sometimes looks quite weird. And in that same vein, I noticed how he often presses down his cheeks in interviews with said weirdly hyper elastic finger. I wonder why he does that.
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I have not noticed either of those things! You are already leaping far ahead of the rest of us in your SRK analysis skills.
On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 1:16 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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For character development in songs, I can’t think of any better than JHMS. You could easily go deep in the same way with Radha and Raula. JHMS triptych?
Maybe Haule Haule from RNBDJ, that song holds a lot. Or Mahi Ve, if you could bear it. Mitwa too, I just don’t care as much about those characters. Ooh, or how about Tere Naina from MNIK?
The Raees songs are good, but don’t do as much to give us insight into his character. Kind of feel the same about Dilwale and HNY, but in those cases just because the characters themselves aren’t as deep, not many layers.
For a fantasy song that would be interesting for different reasons, Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte from RNBDJ would be fun. I would love to understand the references in that one better.
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Ooo, Phir Milenge might be a nice easy one for me! There aren’t really deep things to analyze, but it would be a kick to find the closest possible references for what it shows.
On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 1:57 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Any of the Dil Se songs would also be great. Especially Satrangi Re and Dil Se are.
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This is probably more of a Wednesday post than a Saturday post, but here goes.
I recently watched The Boys on Amazon. It’s an interesting premise and watch, well acted and scripted. But it leads me to realize my dilemma. Most of these Netflix/Amazon streaming series are High Concept, as is The Boys, and I think I’m getting tired of so much High Concept content. After a while it all feels so gimmicky, and a lot of it feels like Fan Fiction. You could say that The Boys is like a high concept fan fiction of the superhero genre. High concept , unless it is very good, feels like it is more for the writer’s creative satisfaction than for the viewer’s consumption. Maybe that’s what’s so refreshing about Fleabag. It’s all Low Concept, it’s all about the writing, the acting, the character arcs, the relationships, the emotions, and the original narrative technique. Whereas the same writer’s other show, killing eve, is very high concept.
Taking this to Indian film, I’m guessing that the vast majority of Indian film is Low Concept, with some Mid concept, which might be why I gravitate toward it. You could say that ayushmann khuranna specializes in Higher Concept films but which are rooted enough in characterization to not feel gimmicky. Maybe rajnikant akshay movie 2.0 and Jagga jasoos are high concept films that do feel gimmicky. Anyways I thought maybe you might find this an interesting idea to address, here in the comments, or in a future post.
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What an interesting thing to think about! Thank you!
I agree, and that’s part of why I don’t like streaming serieses. When they are good, they are good. But it is really easy for them to seem to be good when in fact all they are is a high concept. It’s easier to maintain a high concept over an open ended narrative than a closed one. Like, if it’s about Vampires and Werewolves, you can have the first season establishing the world, and then add on robots or something as a new villain in the second season, and then do a time jump, and so long as you keep piling on the concepts people will keep watching and never notice that characters and relationships are all stuck in place. You know? Whereas with a film, no matter how high the concept, you also have to have a beginning and middle and end.
Maybe that’s why Indian films tend to be low concept? The creative focus is always on the characters and relationships and a high concept risks taking away from that?
Or maybe it’s that the narrative structure includes songs? And other elements of spectacle? So we can have the exact same concept for the plot and setting over and over again (rich boy, poor girl, families object, blah blah) but the high concept comes in with things like the exact way the meet cute plays out, or the setting of the fantasy song, or whatever? Like, K3G has nothing at all original in concept, but the love song is in Egypt, and Kareena’s costumes are different, and so on and so forth.
On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 8:43 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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So much in agreement with both the comments.Movies like Sahoo,Student of the Year2,Bharat etc which has simple ideas at the center get trashed brutally by the reviewers/cinephiles because they chose a grand scale to tell a familiar story. But mid concept,made-to-look realistic movies of Ayushmann Khurana&Gully Boy or high concept movies like Judgemental Hai Kya,Super Deluxe etc get endless praise.I am still okay with mid concept movies but the high concepts ones are usually brutally boring.
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Yes! And now that I think about it, Bhansali would also fit into this discussion. His period pieces with the epic special effects and so on are hiding character who have no real development. Nothing happens at the human level, it is all glitz. If you take away the concept, nothing is left. Versus Bahubali or Jodha Akbhar or even Lagaan where I would be perfectly happy watching these same characters in the same storyline set in a modern day corporation, or dispute over farmland, or something low concept like that.
On Sun, Sep 1, 2019 at 1:36 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I hope you’re feeling better, mredlich21.
For anyone feeling low, I just watched this song on loop and, wow. This is just the most intense madness I’ve seen recently. I thought Main to Hoon Pagal was madness. But this tops it easily in terms of his insanity. The energy he has is absolutely unprecedented. What I love so much about this song, as I do about all of the ones that are similar in nature, is that they really can lift you up, without thought, without reflection, nothing but just watching and allowing myself to be infected by his passion for what he does. Really nice.
(On an irrelevant note, if you do watch or know this to the T, how crazy is it that even his pants are completely wet? Not just wet. Soaked. I noticed that he really seems to sweat disproportionally to the performers around him, not just when dancing but also when acting. I know this is completely banal, but still.)
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I love this song too! Ram-Jaane is really not a great movie, but he brings such energy to the role. This particular sequence isn’t just the song, the song leads straight into a crazy action sequence where Shahrukh goes from leaping around action to tearful grief in the space of a few minutes.
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