Happy Wednesday! I am doing a week at the family lake house. Which is nice on it’s own, but is particularly nice right now because I am SURROUNDED BY BOXES. And the lake house has nice solid furniture and things that have been immovably in place for the past 100 years.
I’ll start!
Reading: My Dad has somewhere discovered a land of Dad Joke Images. Anyway, this is my favorite so far:
Watching: I finished the latest season of Unforgotten, sad as usual. And I just started New Tricks. I might like it, but I’m not sure. It’s definitely not as good as Unforgotten, but also not as sad.
Thinking: Moving is SO EXHAUSTING. But there are more and more good things sprinkled in. I got my “Hate Has No Home Here” poster, which not only is a really great poster, the idea came from a 9 year old at the elementary school around the corner from me, and it was designed by school parents volunteering their time. On Monday, we got our fire pit set up in back and got to sit out and enjoy a fire in our own back yard. And of course, I have a Real Bed, which is amazing. On the bad side, I have so far found the boxes with my pots and pans, a cutting board, champagne glasses, sharp knives, and spatulas. But no plates, regular glasses, or silverware. Sigh. Oh, and I also found a million heavy wool blankets, but no towels.
Listening: I missed Raakhee’s birthday! Sorry Raakhee! Let’s all listen to this song to make up for it:
Now, question for you! Raakhee or Rekha? Whose hair/make-up/clothes/accessories do you prefer? (yes, you can have 3 separate answers)
For me, Rekha takes the hair and clothes winnings (I do like loose and drapey). But Raakhee takes the accessories and make up! I am a hat person, and I like the subtle eye.
dontcallitbollywood 
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Where’s the “Dad joke image” ?? It didn’t show up in your posting.
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I think I fixed it now
On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 7:52 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I like Rakhee better all round, she also has the better make-up. Clothes are good for both, but Rekha wins in accessories no question. Rekha’s make-up is great sometimes and then other times I just don’t think it works.
BTW I got the Govinda shirt I bought from Kash Collective, it’s great but huuuge. So if anyone wants to order from there, get a size smaller than the sizing chart says.
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I think Rekha shouldn’t always do her own make-up. I think she needs an objective opinion once in a while from someone else.
I love oversized t-shirts! This just makes me want to order them MORE
On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 8:10 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Well, maybe they’ll have another round of the SRK ones!
That’s right, I think it would be better if she got some other input. Although Helen always did her own and I never felt she took a wrong step or got stuck in a rut.
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Yeah, but Helen’s Helen.
On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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That’s true!
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https://kashcollectiveco.com/?utm_campaign=privy_2655095&utm_medium=email&utm_source=privy&utm_email=%40%40%40%409E0CBN7InFFJIs9YlxPv3BVCRZYIUCPIxj6iMuPZmPoXVgoCLk8w3z40%2FzZtBjhXgS3uyRvCQd9DLX8g6q3cHAxTfJn5CZ50%2BiulP77ux2YPzY7UtBn9%2BjS67nhUlP9ZWc1WYPvQX4nBpcK75KklaN0FjcEKK7A95StTbRuTmvfKn3A%3D
New SRK shirt!
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Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! I’m not even gonna try, you posted this 6 hours ago, the chances of it already being sold out are TOO HIGH.
On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 2:01 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Watched Hungama 2 last nite and don’t understand the bad reviews, here on DCIB and almost every place else. Yes, it has a dated look, the premise is silly, and the humor falls flat. But the over-the-top acting was a hoot and Meezan was gorgeous.( I like him better as a bad boy, but my lord, that shower scene! ) I found it an easy couple of hours of not having to pay too much attention after a hard day.
I also liked Sheershah (Sid!) but the new Ajay Devgan war pic on Hotstar was grueling. Paused midway and might no go back. The trailer for Bhoot Police with Arjun Kapoor and Saif looks fun. I wish trailers had subtitles.
And I don’t get the Dad joke. A bunch of levelers labeled “Wrong”? What am I missing?
BTW, how is Albie in the new place? I bet he’s enjoying the country.
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“This is wrong on so many levels”. And then it’s a picture of the word “wrong” on a bunch of levels. So it’s like a visual pun. It’s not that great.
You are making me want to check out Hungama 2!
Albie is absolutely miserable at the new place. It’s filled with strangers and loud noises (plumber, painter, etc.), I keep moving his blankies to get out of the way of my unpacking and then he can’t find them again. He is afraid of boxes, styrofoam, power tools, and the sound of me setting down boxes with a bang. He loves walking through the neighborhood, he loves being able to look out the windows, so I think he will be super happy once the moving and unpacking is done. But right now he is a nervous wreck, and looks to stay that way until I get us fully settled.
On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 12:57 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I got it seconds before I opened your reply! Not a stupid old lady after all but a hip chick. (Boy, does that phrase date me.)
Dogs are sensitive animals. I extended the fence to the front of the house so Teddi would have more room outside to run around. For days she stopped where the old fence USED TO BE! She could have kept going but to her the front yard was Here Be Dragons land.
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So I saw Mimi – and I can’t get over the fact that they would ask an 8 month pregnant woman to abort when there are (and were) blood tests available that would tell you if there were fetal problems at 11 weeks. I couldn’t tell that the movie was set in the past, but I read a review that it was set in 2013. And in the spring of 2014 I took a blood test, for free, given to all women over 36 in California, that told me if my fetus had downs syndrome or a host of other issues. It also told me the gender. NO way that a clinic used by wealthy foreigners wouldn’t have had that test in 2013? Okay maybe there is a way, but highly unlikely. And abortion at 8 months? I had no idea that was ever done anywhere. So the thing that moves the plot forward – I just couldn’t wrap my head around.
But Kriti was great, really great. I believed she was an 18 year old foolish enough to do this. And the white woman was great, more unbalanced than evil. The white man was a paper cut out though, and the best friend was an unexplained constant presence. I’m glad I saw it for Kriti, I now have a lot more respect for her, and perhaps the truth is she’s becoming a better actor. And I’m glad I saw it for the interaction between well meaning (at first) pompous Americans and Indians as seen through Indian eyes.
I also saw some of Netflix’s Feels Like ISHQ – loved the male actor in the first one even if on the whole it wasn’t amazing, but The Interview episode was amazing, or at least very good.
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I am going to be the last person to watch Mimi! I should be watching it right now, but I’ve got a headache, so I’m watching bland TV instead.
On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 9:22 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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And you have a fire pit!!! AWESOME.
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Yes! My friends had a delayed wedding shower and got a bunch of housewarming gifts.
On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 9:23 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I’m slogging through the very end of my semester–grades due tomorrow!–but finally have time to watch movies and put together opinions of them.
By coincidence, this morning I was just thinking about one of my favorite dad joke memories. A long time ago I was teaching at an English program in the States, and my students and other teachers and I went out to lunch at restaurant. The food took a really long time and one of the students said “If my dad were here he’d say they’re growing the vegetables.” Instantly there was a chorus around the table of students from all around the world saying “my dad says that too!” and everyone was so happy to remember their far-away dads and find something they all had in common.
Watching: Watched Meel Patthar (Milestone) and Khoobsurat on alternate days which is quite the emotional roller coaster. Neither of them quite landed for me. Meel Patthar is a gorgeous and really depressing film about an aging truck driver who’s lost his wife. The cinematography is beautiful and the acting is wonderful and it is objectively a wonderful film, but a super downer. Khoobsurat, sorry everyone, Sonam’s character irritated me so much that I never want to see it again unless someone can just edit all the parts with Fawad together.
Then I saw two movies about Dhaka because I was missing it: Extraction and Under Construction. I recognized Dhaka in both of the movies but boy do they look different. Extraction is an American movie about a Heroic White Guy played by one of those actors named Chris who swoops down to rescue a young boy. Dhaka is shot in the yellowish “developing country” filter and looks like a hellish crowded dirty place. “Under Construction” is a Bangladeshi film, available on Youtube, with Shahana Goswami from Bombay Begums and Rahul Bose. The performances are good, but honestly I’m tired of the story of a woman realizing she’s married to a complete tool. In this movie Dhaka is beautiful, lush and green with mist coming from the water in the morning. This is more the Dhaka I know except my Dhaka is filled with fun and friends and excellent food instead of a long slow existential crisis.
Neither of these is a Margaret movie. I’m assuming your enmity for Randeep Hooda is not so deep that you’d want to see him get kicked off a roof and then hit by a bus, but if I’m wrong then Extraction is for you. (He survives both those things). Under Construction just leaves every single thing up in the air at then, including whether she leaves her awful husband and flings herself at Rahul Bose. How hard is that decision, honestly?
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This is such an amazing contrast of movies, thank you. That description of Extraction is exactly right.
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I didn’t know Randeep Hooda was in Extraction! Or did I know it and forgot? Not sure. Anyway, my interest in Randeep as a crossover star does not extend to watching this, and my hatred doesn’t either. Oh well.
I am shocked that Dhaka is not actually full of long slow existential crisis! I thought all Bengali speaking areas were just crisis after crisis all the time, in perfect saris.
On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 9:57 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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You’re right; it’s probably just existential crises all around me, and I’m enjoying my biryani too much to realize.
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Reading: Completely paused since I got home. But we’re going away again on Saturday, so that should get me unstuck again, planes and all that. This trip will probably not be long enough to even finish Sea of Poppies. We’ll be at a beach rental house with family. There’s a small chance the kids are all old enough now that I’ll be left in peace for stretches of the day, but I’m not counting on it.
Watching: started Descendants of the Sun, to see if I still like the male lead from Vincenzo. And finished Something in the Rain, starring the female lead from CLOY, the most DCIB appropriate K-drama I’ve seen so far. Older woman-younger man romance (like 10 year age difference but it’s a major conflict because of how they’re judged by other people), flawed but likeable heroine, workplace harassment plot that’s really well done, strong female friendships, all good stuff. Then I watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with the children, which they enjoyed but didn’t appreciate quite enough. Probably a little too young still to get how good the writing is. At least now they’ll understand when I say “Bueller? Bueller?” I swear half the movies I pick for them are just so they get my jokes.
Thinking: I knew this summer was going to be like entering a tunnel and not coming out until I reached the other side. I’m so glad to be home and don’t really want to go on vacation at the moment, and also work is crazy again and stepping away for two weeks makes me cringe. Plus not exactly normal travel conditions in the world. It’s weird not to look forward to my first proper time off in months, right? Have I gotten too used to crisis mode?
Speaking of which, the only way out of the boxes is through! I believe you will find your dishes and towels. Past Margaret surely put them in a very logical place which will one day become apparent again.
Listening: In the Heights is such good summer soundtrack. This song is speaking to me for some reason:
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Do you have any idea what’s going to happen once school starts yet? At the very least, hopefully the boys will be busy for 3-6 hours a day in some way or the other. I had a friend movie night last night, which included a mother of two kids close in age to yours. All she wanted to do was join the Zoom call and chat for ten minutes. But NO. Children descended, grabbed the laptop, spilled ice cream, and eventually she got them out just in time for her battery to die. Albie Dog is much easier.
Past Margaret thought “My life is so hard, Future Margaret will have an easier time, I will let Future Margaret sort out these boxes”. Past Margaret wasn’t the best.
On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 12:46 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Supposedly school will start as normal after Labor Day. We’ll see! The world is not normal yet, however much we want to go back to having plans and routines.
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Well, at least SOMETHING will happen after Labor Day, so you can rest assured your routine will change yet again in some way.
On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 11:52 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I have some movies to report. First something I don’t recommend – malayalam movie Anugraheethan Antony with Sunny Wayne. I saw this beautiful poster and thought: bearded man in dark shirt soaked in the rain with his lover – A must watch!
But no. The guy is good for nothing and annoying. His father, tired of dealing with him, buys two adorable Golden retrievers to have some joy in his life. Obviously the hero is jealous and wants to get rid of dogs. He makes disappear one of them (we don’t know if he killed the dog or sell him). Later when he carry the other one to kill/sell he meets with an accident and dies on the road. Now he’s a ghost who has 7 days to settle his unfinished matters. There is a long flashback with guy’s love story and we are supposed to wonder – will the girl ever discover he is dead? I didn’t care and was like: you better tell us what you have done with the dog you loser!
Not recommended.
Another not reccomended movie – Bhikari. I saw it only because it was last remaining marathi movie on Italian Prime, and strangely it also has italian subtitles. Indian movies never have italian subs on Prime so I felt like I must support it. Unfortunately the movie was very forgettable. Not worth watching.
Then I saw Mala Aai Vhhaychy! and Mimi and I can’t decide which one I like more. Maybe Mimi because it newer. Marathi original was good also; different and darker but Urmilla Kothare and the boy who played her son were so cute and nice I wanted to live with them in their little cot.
In the end I watched punjabi movie Angrej and it was very nice. Pre-partition Punjab. Guy falls in love with a girl. They meet few times secretly. While he prepares the way to ask her family her hand in marriage (the rules were very strict and nobody can suspect they couple already know each other), she meets another guy (Ammy Virk looking very sharp) and falls in love with him because he is rich and has better clothes. Our hero feels betrayed. Then a wedding happens in the village, the hero and his ex are invited and Ammy crashes the party to be with the girl. There is another girl (my fav Sargun Mehta) there who wants to help the hero. She pretends to be in love with thim to make the ex jealous. Of course they fall in love for real. Meanwhile Ammy Virk, who is a seducer, starts hitting on Segun. The ex remains empty handed, because now nobody wants her.
I know there are many movies with similar plot but I want another one with Sanya Malhotra and Vikrant + Arjun in Ammy Virk role.
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Wait, so we NEVER find out what happened to the dogs???? What a terrible movie!!!! Koode is much better, that dog gets love and food and kisses.
I think I remember when Angrej came out? Either there was a lot of buzz, or it had a shockingly good box office, or both? Anyway, I remember hearing good things. And that sounds like such a sweet storyline!!! Perfect for a remake. And who would you make be the other girl with Sanya? Oh! Fatima!
On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 4:24 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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The dog he had with him during the accident survives, and roams here and there all the time. Seems it’s looking for something. It’s the only character who can see Anthony’s ghost and often follows him. In the end, when hero’s time is almost over, and the girl he loved still doesn’t know he’s dead it’s the dog who “informs” her by bringing a leaflet with funeral notice. Thanks to that Anthony can finally go in peace. Grateful, he decides to help the dog and show him the place the other dog lives (he sold it to some guy who does dog shows). The doggies reunite and return together home.
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THANK YOU!!!! I would have been worrying about that all day.
On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 8:36 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Angrej is one of the highest-grossing punjabi movies. It made a lot of money.
And for the remake I won’t cast Fatima (I’m not a fan). I would cast Tripti or Rakul Preet.
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I forgot to say I watched Vivo on Netflix and loved it. I’m not animated movies person, but this one was fun and the music was great. My son loved it also and already saw it thrice.
And thanks to your recommendation my husband and I started Bosch. It’s very good. Thanks, I don’t know if I would watch it if not for your post.
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I haven’t seen Vivo! Maybe thanks to your recommendation, I will 🙂
So glad you are liking Bosch! It is very good, and very character driven in a way that is surprising for a cop show.
On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 5:24 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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As I mentioned in I think several previous comments, I watched ZNMD with my dad. We both loved it. He keeps saying it’s his new favorite Bollywood movie. I think he has a man crush on Hrithik, and I think that he thinks that I care about Hrithik a lot more than I actually do. But we also watched the SRK Letterman special and I think my dad is now a full fledged SRK fan. He kept telling this story about how, probably two Halloweens ago, he was chatting up his 30-something year old Indian coworkers, who he knew were Bollywood fans, about costumes and he said he was dressed up as Shah Rukh, and these Indian ladies were cracking up. He only just figured out that it’s probably cuz he stretched his arms out when he said it without realizing that’s Shah Rukh’s thing and only just realized why his comment was so funny to these Indian ladies, after watching the special.
Well, that takes care of both Watching and Thinking lol.
I finished my first Sonali Dev novel, A Distant Heart. It was okay. The romance was sweet, but the story and action felt very ridiculous and extremely predictable. Would have been much better as a Bollywood movie. I’m also mad at the novel’s marketing, because it’s part of a series, but Goodreads says the novels are only loosely connected and you don’t have to read them in order. So I had no regrets picking up what’s technically book 4. Only after I finish it and start reading reviews do I discover that it’s sort of a sequel to book 3, which explains why I probably didn’t like it as much. Characters from book 3 do show up in book 4, and they reference things from book 3 which I obviously didn’t understand because I didn’t read book 3 because I didn’t think I had to. I feel like I have to go back and read book 3 now, even though I don’t want to.
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I hate accidentally reading books out of order! HATE IT! For that exact reason, even if I didn’t like it now I want to read the previous one just to get the references. But reading the previous one will be unenjoyable beyond that. UGH! At least if you read the first book in a series, you can just decide you don’t care about these people and stop.
I’m so glad your Dad is enjoying Hrithik!!! Have you shown him War yet?
On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 2:06 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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War was his first exposure to Hrithik. I needed something to do during a long weekend, and War was getting ridiculously good reviews, making insane profit, and stuck around at my local theater for almost a month, which is absurdly long for a Bollywood movie run. So I dragged him with me because I thought he would not hate it. And we both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, me more so than him. I’m pretty sure the first words out of his mouth were “who played Kabir?”
Anyway, I think ZNMD is the only other Hrithik movie he’s seen. I haven’t seen that many myself either. But I am forcing him to watch K3G because of all the Bollywood stars he knows/has seen, he definitely likes SRK and Hrithik the best, and I think that’s their only project together. He agreed to watch it, so I’ll report back whenever we get to it. No clue when though. I made a list, and he said the next one he wants is Dil Dhadakne Do, because now he’s a Zoya Akhtar fan. Also Ranveer, kind of. And Priyanka maybe, but mostly by association because almost everyone in my immediate family is a Jonas Brothers fan, including me, so he can’t actively hate Priyanka.
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Oh, has he seen Gully Boy yet????
On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 4:11 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes, another thing I dragged him too, but as soon as it hit theaters. It was his favorite Bollywood movie for years, up until we watched ZNMD.
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Also forgot to mention, I started read Red, White, and Royal Blue afterwards, and it’s much better and very sexy and very gay and very funny and very well written and everyone should go read it if you haven’t already.
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