Wednesday Watching Post: What Are You Watching and Reading and Thinking and Listening to This Week?

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Happy Wednesday! This week is just FLYING by! Partly because I have a social event every single night except Monday. And today I have TWO.

I’ll start!

Watching: I saw a movie! In THEATERS! With my friend Dina! Just like in Olden Times! And now I am sleepy because I forgot how hyper and excited movies in theaters make me. Also, some time today I will try to write my usual reviews but I may not get to it because of the Social Whirl referenced above.

Reading: People magazines! Boy, celebrities are vapid. Oh, and in Podcast Land, did you know Dateline has a podcast? It’s brilliant, I can get the best of true crime while driving my car. It’s just old episodes repackaged as audio only.

Thinking: Last night movie with Dina, tonight having friends for dinner, tomorrow night virtual movie group, Friday night nothing (phew!), Saturday night having other friends for dinner, Sunday night dinner at my parents. It’s like I’m a debutante or something!

Listening: The Love Story soundtrack is real REAL good.

Now, question for you!!! Easy one. Favorite Lata song for her birthday yesterday?

Ooo, maybe not so easy! I can’t decide between “Ajeeb Dastan” and “Chalte Chalte”

45 thoughts on “Wednesday Watching Post: What Are You Watching and Reading and Thinking and Listening to This Week?”

  2. I posted the second part of my Christopher Lee movie reviews! Weirdest collection of movies I’ve ever watched. There will be a part three which will potentially be even weirder.

    I also finally watched The Man With the Golden Gun for the first time. He has a powerful weapon and comes just before the kill. Or so I’ve heard. Very fun to see Christopher Lee be sexualised in an entirely different way than usual.

    Next week is the Giornate del Cinema Muto so I will be busy with that. Sadly not everything is online but a good collection still for anyone interested, including silent Korean cinema.

    My favourite Lata songs, I have a weakness for Satyam Shivan Sundaram and, more obscurely, this one:

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    • The Man with a Golden Gun is so great! I think it balances comedy with action really well. And Christopher is just fabulous in it. You cannot beat a villian with a third nipple!

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    • As always, your watching adventures are better than mine. Also, wouldn’t you have to arrive just before you shoot someone? (see? I made a joke about “coming” before you shoot!)

      On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 9:28 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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    • I didn’t realize you had a blog until this comment, Popka! And we seem to be interested in the exact same sorts of films ( :

      If you go in for silent comedy, the Keaton Convention is both fully online and free this weekend. They’re doing a couple of asynchronous screenings, but it will mostly to be lectures and the like. Not certain how things will pan out away from Muskegon, but shall give it a chance myself–free is free.

      My chum Tomal Hossain was involved in composing and recording a new score for this Maharashtrian silent earlier this year (crossed fingers that the thing embeds correctly!):

      It’s a stunt film featuring Lalita Pawar and a bunch of people I don’t recognize, 1931.

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      • That’s great! Very very fun to see another silent film fan here. Are you doing Pordenone? I’m very happy with the online festivals because with working from home I can usually manage to see everything I want fitted in around work.

        Thanks, free is free and there’s not many from Pordenone on the weekend so I will see if I can fit some in.

        That movie sounds GREAT (Lalita!) but it didn’t embed, can you link?

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        • Ugh. . . every time I try to link to Vimeo, I seem to screw it up somehow. I think this ought to be the direct link: https://vimeo.com/546149367 Or if that doesn’t work, the user name is just “Tomal Hossain” and the video title is “Diler Jigar (1931) with Original Soundtrack (2021).”

          No Pordenone for me, no–too busy at work this season : P

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  3. I keep struggling with Thimmarusu. Not sure if it’s me or the movie. It took me 1 week to watch half of the film.
    In the meantime I watched an indo-australian movie The Colour Of Darkness. It’s a story about an australian journalist of indian origin who writes an article about violence against indian students. While interviewing the people she meets a nice low caste student and is shocked to hear that castes in India still exists (Under which rock she was living?) She is intrigued by his story. They meet regulary and eventually fall in love. She is even planning to visit India to learn more about castes but it’s not necessary because she has another shock of her life – her own father (who btw has been living in Australia for 30 years and has white wife) is also casteist and don’t like her boyfriend for being untouchable. Who would say? 😉 Then a lot of other things happen and in the end the poor student is killed by some random junkies who were passing by, just when his life became better and happier.

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    • What a stupid movie! I’m definitely not watching it. Thank you for saving us!

      On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 2:54 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • I didn’t hate it but yeah I don’t recommend it either. It also has long and boring flashback scenes about caste violence in a village- It was an odd movie.

        I wasn’t lucky with movies this week but it was such an interesting week musically. I continued digging into punjabi music and found so many treasures especially B Praak and Jaani songs. They are so good. I love almost all their music, except that one song with Akshay in the video.
        I also discovered that my favourite last year’s soundtrack was written by them.
        Today I’m obsessed with this beautiful song, sing by one of the Nooran sisters.

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  4. I saw The Wedding Guest on Netflix, I was roped in by the fact that Jim Sarbh was in it. It needed Zoya Akhtar. It needed to be at LEAST an hour longer. An hour and a half was not enough to get into the head of each character. Radhika seemed untrustworthy from the get go and her actual feelings were never known. Dev Patel played it like he was a really interesting character, with an interesting backstory. But we never got the backstory and we didn’t get enough time to actually know him. And Jim was one dimensional to the point he was unbelievable. But – give that same cast another hour to develop the characters and it could have been great!

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    • OH! Has Zoya not done a wedding movie yet? She MUST!!! It is the perfect structure for a Zoya-Reema plot, loads of characters, loads of complex interactions, loads of class and gender and money issues. I know they are doing Made in Heaven, but I want them to commit to having main characters actually IN the wedding.

      On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 5:59 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  5. Curious if you’re watching Only Murders in the Building? True crime podcast fans living in the same NY apartment building – Steve Martin as a former true crime TV host, Martin Short as a failed Broadway producer, and Selena Gomez as a young woman with a mysterious past – try to solve a real murder that takes place in their building, while making a podcast about it. It’s sweet and funny and meta. Watching with my husband who is not into K-drama.

    Then after he goes to bed watching My Mister, which I put off for a long time but finally tried because Alisa Bollywood Newbie has been persistently recommending it on Twitter. She’s right, it’s really good. The first 3-4 episodes start out feeling slow and dimly lit, featuring morally gray and not very likeable characters. But then the intrigue kicks in to hook you on the story, and over the first half you realize that the middle aged male lead, who seemed like an unhappy, beaten down office worker, is the best human being. He’s kind of a retro 50s character. It’s a version of manhood that involves duty and repressed feelings, but you see over time that the choices he makes and the way he treats people is warm hearted and morally right. The much younger female lead ends up spying on him and you see her listening to how he talks with his friends and brothers and coworkers when nobody is watching, he’s a person who treats people well even when they’re not present – including how he talks about women in all male groups. She’s this damaged character whose motives make her unpredictable, but by putting her in the position of watching and listening to everything he does, you see him being a good person under difficult circumstances, and what spying on him starts to do to change her. In a non romantic way. So far at least. Very unusual and interesting show.

    I’ll get back to Anjaam one of these days. That car accident was a little too much for me this week with all the other life stuff going on.

    Can’t wait to read your reviews of Love Story!

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    • I am watching Only Murders! It’s good in so many ways. On the Indian side of things, I love seeing Steve Martin and Martin short together! It’s the sort of decade long artistic interaction I think of as normal in Hindi film, and love it. Seeing Amitabh and Rishi together onscreen, or Shahrukh and Anupam, or any number of other pairs is magical. And now I get to see that in an American film, two people at the top of their game in old age who have worked together so much they can do it without thinking. Also on the Indian side, I LOVE the way Steve Martin is letting what we know of his real life peak through into his character and add depth to it. Older, lonely, thinking he will never find love and family, former celebrity in autumn years, etc. etc.

      My Mister does sound really REALLY interesting! And I find myself hoping for an American remake so I can see the same themes in a genre/language I know 🙂

      I’m looking forward to my Love Story reviews too! hopefully tomorrow.

      On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 7:52 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • My Mister is really good. There’s this scene you would love, though SPOILER alert for anyone who might watch. The female lead finds our male lead on his way home walking down the street at night (she always knows where he is because she’s been using his phone to spy on him and listen in on his life for weeks). She confesses she likes him, and says she doesn’t care if he fires her for it. He says he won’t fire her, it would be cheap to fire her to avoid awkwardness, that instead he’ll make sure she works through the end of her temp contract, that she’s accepted and treated well by the team, and she gets a recommendation for her next job. That after that, when they see each other in passing, he’ll greet her with a smile, that he wants to be invited to her grandmother’s funeral and for her to come to his mother’s funeral. End SPOILER. It’s brilliant, I melted. It’s a thing you see so rarely, the older male lead basically saying I will not take advantage of your loneliness and damaged psyche, I will do everything I can to help you succeed in work and life and continue to be part of my community. The way the show treats their relationship is in another league, so rare and refreshing.

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        • Honestly, this is why I kind of like Kat and Salman together!!!! When I thought of them as a dirty old man with a young woman, ew!!! But thinking of them as a very damaged young woman who was gifted a lifetime of support and love and protection, then it is sweet.

          On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 5:25 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  6. Yay! Social events!!

    I’ve just been watching scenes from Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein (Madhavan needs to chill out with his handsomeness, I just can’t anymore) and is it just me or is it SO SO homoerotic? I decided by the end to ship Dia X Madhavan X Saif in a great 3-way relationship. The chemistry for all three is off the charts. As is the innuendo.

    Reading: Wodehouse on a flight! Fun times!

    Listening: I recently fell down the Kangana-Shiney rabbit hole (Woh Lamhe and Gangster) and the songs are…actually good?? I was shocked. But they’re good! And then I began squealing over how cute the title video of RHTDM is!

    Lata, Lata. Hard to decide, but at the moment, Beqas Pe Karam Kijiye from Mughal-E-Azam!

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  7. I can’t pick one Lata song, but if I had to it would be Aap ki Nazron ne Samjhe, for its role in Aligarh as well.

    I was finally able to watch movies this week. So, I watched Anjaam! What a great movie. I’ve actually never seen Shahrukh in one of his negative roles (like really negative, not the debatable ones). I was prepared to be bitterly disappointed by the ending, so it was all the more cool. It was interesting how all the music kind of makes you uncomfortable–from the happy rape song to stalker Shahrukh singing a bog standard love song to the sexy dance Madhuri does to wake him up. I liked it better than Angry Indian Goddesses.

    I know you’re sick of tv shows instead of movies, but I watched Ankahi Kahaniya and thought it was pretty mixed, but the middle story is just beautiful. Beautiful story and gorgeous cinematography. Two young people use movies and each other to escape their bleak lives in 80s Mumbai.

    Netflix has been informing me that movies are going off the platform, so I watched a couple while I could. The first was “U-Turn” which has an interesting premise but started getting stupid about 20 minutes in. I went to Wikipedia for spoilers and yep, it seems pretty stupid. The second was Umrika ,which is very good, both hilarious and sad. It also takes place in the 70s/80s–it begins with a reference to the Emergency, shows villagers offering prayers for Amitabh Bachchan after his injury, and ends after the Challenger explosion.

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    • Addenda: Watching Anjaam I got all mad about the actress playing SRK’s mom who was obviously at most around 35, and then I IMDBed her and found that Beena Banerjee is fully old enough to the be the mother of Shahrukh Khan, even without a teen mom situation. She’s certainly eternally youthful.

      Ankahi Kahaniye’s other stories aren’t real super interesting but the last one has Kunal Kapoor, so.

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      • That’s how I felt the first time I watched Baghban!!!! I got all mad at them casting this 30 year old opposite Amitabh as though she could be the mother of grown children. Jokes on me, Hema Malinia just doesn’t age.

        On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 9:58 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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    • I thought you might like Anjaam! It feels very Bengali, in that everyone is miserable in different ways. But also, SUCH a great role for Madhuri! And Himani Shivpuri!!! And yes to the music. Reminded me of the Darr soundtrack. If you watch the song videos, they look like your normal flirty Holi song, or love stalking song, but in context you realize they are an uncomfortable dark version.

      On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 9:52 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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    • Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! I really hope the biggest conflict is Dhruv becoming okay with never having children or a big wedding. But I still want them to get married, just because I want a recognition of marriage as merely a legal shortcut to make it easier to live together and nothing else.

      On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 7:21 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • It’s been a couple of years since I saw season 3 but wasn’t he slowly becoming okay with the idea of getting married and Kavya was the one that wasn’t sure at the end?

        But yeah, I really hope it ends with them getting married!

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        • Yes! His mother offered him a family ring, and after going back and forth, he decided to take it. Kavya found it and freaked out, and then they had an honest open conversation about marriage being a thing that might happen someday.

          On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 7:49 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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