Happy Wednesday! I am having a hard day. I woke up with my neck all messed up, and then my work headphones broke so now I have to take work calls on speaker all day, BLECH!!!
I’ll start!
Reading: Finished Shards of Honor (SO GOOD!) and moved right on to Barrayar (also good). Also, of course, the constant updates on the Suez canal storyline which consistently makes me laugh because I am a terrible person who takes joy in other’s misfortune. Oh, and the new AskSRK, the only bright spot in what is so far a very difficult day.
Watching: I made my parents watch the first episode of Call the Midwife last night, not sure if it was a hit or not, but I have more faith in the second episode if I ever get them to try it because CHUMMY!!! Oh, and I started a new True Crime series called “Southern Fried Homicide” which is just as classy as it sounds. And tonight for Friends Movie Night, we are watching Hrithik-Tiger!!!! I’m so excited!!!
Thinking: Of course my neck gets messed up the day before I have scheduled folks to haul away furniture, grrr!!!! I’ve given up on the Salvation Army or the other places ever doing pick up again, and I’m paying a company to take my stuff and deliver it to a donation place for me. But I have to move boxes and rearrange furniture and things so they can easily get it out, no big deal, except I CAN’T LIFT MY ARM!!!! Oh well, I’m paying them, they can move the boxes themselves.
Listening: It’s Easter Week!!!!
Okay, your turn! What have you been reading and watching and stuff?
Oh, and question for you, in honor of my parents’ anniversary, what is your favorite marriage love story on film?
Not gonna over think it, I’m just gonna say Chalte Chalte. They marry, they fight, they make up, they have big scary fights, they work at it and get back together, it’s not a “happy ending”, it’s a continuing ending.
dontcallitbollywood 
Reading: Masked: The life of Anna Lenowens, Schoolmistress at the Court of Siam. Do you know the King and I musical and Anna and the King movie? ALL LIES!!! This well-researched book goes onto the reasons why for all those lies, and as someone who has lived in Thailand, I have to say the whole story of Anna in the Court of Siam story that she made does put a little sore spot in my mouth as an adult.
The interesting fact is that she was Ango-Indian and tried to distance herself from those roots by any means possible, and I get the fact that she was a feminist. But yeah, essentially selling lies about Thailand to sell the story as her as a White Saviour in the court just reeks of Karen behaviour (as we’d call it in today’s internet talk) and feeds into the Orientalism view. Yeah, she did more harm than good, though I get her motives as a woman in the 19th century and the racial factor of her being Anglo-Indian and trying to hide it. Just, would it have been too much to try and understand rather than harm the people and culture that treated her rather well????? Sorry for the rant. I have some strong feelings about this at the moment.
Watching: Marple and Poirot, and I just found Paul Hollywood’s City Bakes free on YouTube and they are great! If anyone needs to relax, then watching Paul Hollywood learn local bakes and enjoying the places he goes to is so uplifting to watch!!
Thinking: I have to finish a short story, but I have no energy to do so now. Too tired right now.
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Oh man! I am going to continue to be happy with the pretty songs from The King and I and ignore reality. Until I absolutely can’t any more.
But OMG the “distance myself from my roots by identifying with the Overlords” is such a THING! I was just thinking about it, obviously, related to Street Dancer 3D. Varun has to choose between colonial powers (The Royals dance team) and allying with his fellow underclass (Shraddha and her dance team).
I may have to rewatch Marple. It’s so much more exciting than Poirot! Grading on the “BBC Christie” scale of excitement.
On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 11:06 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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By all means, go ahead and enjoy the musical and the songs in it! Just think of it as a story (like Sound of Music) LOOSELY based on “history”. I think that will help for as long as you need before the reality of it becomes hard.
And the SD 3D comparison is so good! I was surprised by the connection to India with this story because it just adds another layer to it all. Very interesting, but also very sad.
And yeah, Marple is much more exciting! Though upon rewatch there is a lot more LGBTQ+ representation in it, which is good, but the way they handle is very 2000s and there are a lot of deaths. I’ve just accepted it as a “win some, lose some” scenario. Not that representation was anything close to nice during Christie’s time.
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I just listened to an old BBC radio play production of Nemesis, and that is INTERESTING. Christie wanted to get at a bisexual love triangle but didn’t quite go all the way, left it a bit open as to if it was “mother” love or “lover” love. I don’t think she was even censoring herself, I think she was reflecting the confusion of the time in which this kind of love was so unspoken that sometimes folks couldn’t even label it for themselves.
On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 3:57 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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This caught my attention so much that I just checked out “Nemesis”. I’m on holiday after all, I can spend a little time reading. For me, it confirmed that Christie herself was very aware of what she was writing about. I knew of the female couple in “A Murder is Announced”, but they just might have been the product of no more than keen observation from the outside, without ever considering that they might be anything but close friends.
It’s different here, I think. There’s no reason for the girl to want to “escape” if the woman is nothing more than a surrogate mother. And I mean, they were looking for an “other man” in the beginning. It was framed in the context of schoolgirls (at an all-girls school) developing a “crush” on older students/teachers. Plus the Clymenestra allusions – Christie knows what she’s doing. And I don’t think either Marple or the woman are confused about what kind of love this is either, even if they don’t have a word for it.
I’d really love to find more stories like this, written by mainstream authors when describing anything LGBTQ+ still required many words and allusions to Greek mythology. Did you know that “The Count of Monte Christo”, of all things, is another one? Two of the minor characters in that are definitely in a lesbian relationship.
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Angela Thirkell! The British author I was binging over the summer! In real life, her first husband left her partly because he realized he was bi, and one of her sons was gay. But in the book Cheerfulness Breaks In, she introduces a female couple that is clearly a couple, and all the characters in the book who meet them acknowledge that too. No one ever uses the word “gay” or “lesbian”, and they are a nice middle-aged long term couple everyone likes, but there are all kinds of side references and side comments from people indicating that they know perfectly well what kind of couple this is, and that’s normal and not upsetting and familiar. I love this glimpse of society before there were words for it but it was still happening, you know? We think that folks said “roommate” because they were innocent, but often they knew exactly what it meant and “roommate” just happened to be the only word available for them.
On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 2:38 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Thanks for the suggestion, will check it out.
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I watched absolutely random telugu movie and it turned out to be interesting – Vinara Sodara Veera Kumara. Spoilers: It’s about a guy who decides to commit suicide after a breakup but is weaned away from doing it by a ghost of a guy who commited suicide for love earlier in the same house. It sounds very dark but isn’t that bad. I’m so tired of the movies about romantic suicides and I think there should be more movies like this one, showing the pov of who remains after the desperate act. It’s far from being perfect tho. As always the makers had to squeeze inside all telugu tropes (hate to love, stalking scenes, drinking scenes, some slaps, few fights etc) and had little time to show what they really wanted.
The movie is free with subtitles on Aha, if someone is interested.
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Oh how INTERESTING!!!! That’s one of the things that comes up all the time with suicide studies, the survivors are glad they survived. So suicide survivors are great anti-suicide counserlors. And I suppose a suicide ghost would be even BETTER.
On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 11:58 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Watching: finished Bandish Bandits last night. It has many good things about it, especially the older generation of actors and the music. Margaret, for you, there is some band drama in the middle mixed in with the romance, BUT if you hold on through that episode or two, the mother characters really come through in the last few episodes and it is worth having put up with a stretch of young person drama. Naseeruddin also gets to do a little more at the end that shows off how good he is. Atul Kulkarni is good but his character ends up being a little one note. The ending was fine if predictable, but the story felt a bit rushed in the last third. They had packed in all these plot points and had to get to lots of resolution, and some of it needed more space – which is also a way of saying I wanted more of it, because it was fun to watch. The other thing I wanted more of…the show tiptoes right up to the edge of full on feminism, then in the rushed resolution finale the Shreya character is kind of disempowered, and Bhowmik’s character ends up honoring everyone but his mother who held the whole family together. I just wanted him to hug his mother :).
Reading: This music review of Bandish Bandits was interesting, I don’t know that much about Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy so I learned stuff. I was curious about the singers behind the show. The singing is amazingly good.
https://scroll.in/reel/966809/bandish-bandits-music-review-shankar-ehsaan-loy-album-is-a-crisp-blend-of-pop-and-classical
On a totally different note, I wanted to share this crazy article with you, kind of goes along with your true crime binge. It’s about Sara Gruen, the author of Water for Elephants (which, if you haven’t read it, is a lovely novel), and her years long quest to free a man she believes was wrongly convicted, and how it has ruined her life. Written by her good friend who is clearly worried about her.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/03/24/a-bestselling-author-became-obsessed-with-freeing-a-man-from-prison-it-nearly-ruined-her-life
Favorite marriage love story: also not overthinking it, the older couple from OK Kanmani. It’s a caretaker story bit there’s so much love and joy there.
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I have seen only half of Bandish Bandits so far but can agree with everything you said. I’m enjoying it a lot because of the music and good older actors, but it lacks something. It’s 10 episodes long series so there is a lot of time to work on characters, their motivations, past etc but it’s not there. Let’s see how it will continue. After having read your opinion I’m even more curious.
And thank you for the article about the music. I keep thinking about Katyar Kajlat Ghusali album, which I adore, everytime I heard a new song in Bandish Bandits.
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YES! Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy!!!! They have been my favorite composers since college, and they are so special and different, and I love them. I think I did a theme post a few years ago, if you want to see Margaret’s Picks for Best SEL Songs. Oh, here it is: https://dontcallitbollywood.com/2016/09/09/important-music-news-mirzya-album-is-out/
And thank you for the article! I suspect it will confirm my thought that getting involved in wrongful convictions is SUPER DRAINING. Unless you are a lawyer and it is your job. And maybe even then.
On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 10:10 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I am mildly concerned that Chalte Chalte is your love marriage film. Do you enjoy fighting that much?
I’m reading Alone by Admiral Richard E. Byrd about staying by himself for a winter in Antarctica. Hubby read it first, he says it is cold and windy. So now I’m reading it to find out just how cold and windy it is. Just finished up Endurance with pictures, which was also cold and windy, but it really helps if there is a professional photographer around to make the cold and windy look stunning. The final Antarctica book club meeting is the 17th, so after that I won’t need a sweater to read anymore.
I’m not really watching much these days, largely because I’ve been letting my kids watch stuff and we only have so many computers.
Listening: mostly to birds outside. When I went walking the other day I heard one in the sage brush with a really awesome call. I suppose I should figure out what it is…
Thinking: In-Laws are coming tomorrow and my extended family is coming in five days. I spent two hours cleaning the inside of the car and in one day it is trashed again. Hubby is an invalid for a matter of months and really can’t do anything. We had planned to ski and garden and clean all week, but with the invalid status it is gardening and cleaning for me and skiing for no one. And I have to give it up. The garden won’t done or even look nice for my family’s arrival, and THANK GOODNESS my inlaws are mellow and while I do have to clean for them, I don’t worry about it as much as I do for my own family. I’m kinda worried about cooking. It is a lot of people to cook for, especially when I don’t have hubby helper. And I better start thinking about Easter Breakfast, but I bet my mother-in-law will have ideas, and her ideas are usually good. And a new vacuum is supposed to arrive tomorrow (thank you stimulus) and I’m looking forward to not having to use the shopvac in the house anymore.
And I don’t think I have a singular favorite love marriage story. At this second I feel like maybe it is INcredibles 2.
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I enjoy Shahrukh that much! And Chalte Chalte is for sure his most married of married films.
And oh my, your life! I feel bad for being so happy about your husband’s injury last Friday meaning you could join the watchalong. I guess the nice thing is, after all of this, you will get to enjoy a really nice clean house? And of course, you get to see relatives which is nice.
On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 12:06 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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My favourite marriage love story? Mouna Raagam or Paheli (but does it count? )
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Genevieve beat me to it but I had the same thought she did about Chalte Chalte. I am a sucker for happy ending but with that movie, I wish it had not ended so happily. Ideally, I would have loved it if it ended with both of them in counseling trying to work on themselves and their marriage. Those two should NOT be together.
I think if I had to pick a Shahrukh marriage
Hmmm. . . some love stories about marriage that I have liked have been, Jodha Akbar, Manmarziyaan, Abhinetri with Dharmedra and Hema.
Some of my favorite ShahRukh marriage love stories: KKKG (SRK and Kajol are one of my favorite married couples), Rab Ne, maybe even Paheli.
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Oh my gosh, how did I forget Rab Ne!!!! Of course that should be my pick.
On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 2:04 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Wow. That post was all over the place. This is what happens when I am posting from my phone and also cutting and pasting during it. Please ignore the phrase “I think if I had to pick a Shahrukh marriage.” That was supposed to be deleted. UGH!
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Ajeeb Dastaans trailer just dropped. One of its producers is Karan Johar and has 4 different stories. LOOK AT THE CAST!!! Looks a little dark, but very interesting.
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