Happy Sunday!!!! I did sooooo many errands this morning.
Hopefully we start at noon! It depends how long the check out line is at Costco.
Anyway, all things going as planned, at noon Chicago time i will put up an “and play!” Comment and we will go from there.
Upanayana sins! Evil and bad!
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Ooops, my internet hiccuped. About what time are you-all?
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1 hour 39
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Thank you! Lost about four minutes : P
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I know it is supposed to be “Bad” but Ram looks FIIIINE in that uniform
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He sooo does!
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The past is, of course, brown.
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Ajay Devgan has such messed up teeth. It’s out of control!
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The cost of bullets increased incredibly sharply between Ajay’s flashback and Malli’s kidnap.
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Because Ajay is about to use so many of them up, supply and demand will be completely out of order.
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Ah, yes, that one stolen box made all the difference!
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I still think it would have been better narratively for Charan to have been For Real a colluder until interval, but I like the whole multiple-generations-of-sepoys thing.
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Totally thought the snake scene was his conversion moment until we got to the flashback/origin story.
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I don’t know her name, but I love the mom actress in this sequence. And baby Sita is so cute also : )
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Agreed.
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Shriya Saran! I like her too. And she is in Manam, my favorite Telugu movie EVER.
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Ah, thank you! I’m so slow at learning faces.
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And again, I shall hit the drumbeat of historically accurate inaccuracies! The British wouldn’t have, like, burned down an orphanage while laughing evily. But when there were women and children within a rebel camp, they ABSOLUTELY killed them.
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Wonderfully seamless toddler handoff.
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Ajay is so good in this sequence!
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And here is where I struggle with this movie and completely agree with your Shelomit. The cameos of men are so much more thoughtfully written giving them so much to work with than the cameos of women.
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Same darned thing happened in “Acharya.” It’s a dangerous occupation to be Charan’s mom of late.
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It’s the same thing I struggle with with Aaron Sorkin stuff, including West Wing. So much importance is giving to the father-son relationship. And the women are rarely well rounded despite being amazing actors. UGH.
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I love that there’s a shrine on the barracks grounds.
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Counterpoint to the weak female characters, Evil British Woman is totally More Evil than her husband.
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I like that in this day of anti-Muslim films and rhetoric, everyone can come together in a common hatred of the British / White people.
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The English woman has some weird BDSM fetish.
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I think it goes way past BDSM into something I don’t know the name of but that I will ask my friends about when I show them this and they will tell me. There are so many things they know about that I do not!
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I believe the technical term is “being a big old meanie.”
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I agree. BDSM has a lot of consent and trust. She’s a sadistic.
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Yes. I take my BDSM comment back. Calling it that is a disservice to and flawed thinking of BDSM.
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I would like to point out that her crazy whip has a hard time tearing his shirt, even though it splintered wood. He’s got some strong cotton going!
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Homespun natural native cotton! Not like that flimsy British wood.
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Okay, now that I ranted on Rajamouli, I am going back to giving him credit. I love love love how he continues to show Ram (the character and the legend from Ramayana) as flawed. We got a back story. We got that he achieved his mission. And yet, HE WAS WRONG!
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Ram from Ramayan is constantly depicted as the perfect human. And he wasn’t. He was deeply deeply flawed. I love love love this portrayal of Ram.
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You’re making me much more curious about the Ramayana. I feel like I’ve come around to some basic level of Mahabharata-literacy because the narrative plays into so many movies, whereas the Ramayana always seemed less interesting/less relevant from an outside perspective.
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I think this is one of the only unique perspectives I have seen on it. And I give Rajamouli credit for it. But I may be the only that thinks of it this way. I know in Margaret’s review she rightly brought up the class differences and saw it differently than I did.
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Yeah, the first time I watched it it gave me creepy savarna-gaze vibes but with repetition I’ve grown a lot more comfortable with it. I do think the film does wrong by Tarak’s character in some ways, but it’s not hard to read “against the grain” and see the characters as more equal.
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Just putting in an argument for the Devdutt Patianaik Sityana and/or the “Sita Sings the Blues” version as the perfect introduction to the more complex questions of the story.
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Yes. Agreed. Sita Sings the Blues explains this too.
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Oh, technically I’ve seen “Sita Sings the Blues” but not in years and years. Perhaps time to do some reading and then revisit.
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Ooooo! And she finally finished her follow up, which is about her Jewish heritage/the Patriarchy/Passover. You should double bill it!
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Do you know Siona Benjamin (the visual artist)? She does a lot of cool Jewish mythos stuff. They recently had an exhibition of her pieces at a shul I used to belong to.
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No I don’t but now I will look into it.
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I forget which Jewish-Indian group she belongs to, but seeing her stuff really makes me wish Karaites/Egyptian Jews had something similar in the cultural conversation, feeling really intensively Jewish without having to also be Ashkenazi.
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I like the recurrence of this translator guy throughout so many scenes. Also, his donkey is nice.
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Oh, hadn’t noticed the cross earrings on Mrs. Meanie until now.
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I’m not certain what it means, but I feel like the view of the second whip falling, looking up at it, is deliberately the same as the snake-yeeting scene.
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Shout-out to the Victrola advert in the background also.
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My eyes keep going to that one loose curl on Ram’s forehead
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Another scene where Ram can’t be the perfect person if he can do this to Bheem/Hanuman. This is not okay. I don’t care about the end.
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The woman min the crowd moving her feet back ) ‘:
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I imagine even folks who are watching this for the first time will have already have heard the soundtrack, but when I realized this was the same melody as Malli’s little folksong in the theater I FREAKED OUT.
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Nothing NOTHING redeems Ram after this to me. Bheem gets credit for having a bigger heart but Ram is not forgiven IMO.
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But he’s so handsome…..
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Once more, Rajamouli really gets the epic visual possibilities ofa huge crowd.
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I love the parallels between this and the animals in the courtyard. The army guys have lathis, but the crowd is just tearing at them with nails and teeth.
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I LOVE the woman clawing the british soldier’s face.
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And here is where the Bheem Hanuman story starts getting intermingled.
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And here is where Ram is beaten! Bheem/Hanuman literally breaks Ram. He was WRONG! He is humbled!
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Yes! You done screwed up, my guy!
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By the way, just finished the new season of Bosch, which is still SO GOOD. And the repeated motto of the show is “everyone counts, or no one counts”. A great motto for police work, freedom fighting, and scriptwriting. Which this movie also follows on, why should Malli be ignored for sake of “more important” fights.
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EXACTLY!!!! Malli’s fight is just as important. Also, fighting for ONE human NOW is as important as securing weapons that can possibly help many people in the future.
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Notice that Ram Charan is now conflicted in his identity, as shown by the stubble appearing belief his Police Much
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Omg! I hadn’t noticed this. Beginnings of a notable Hair Journey.
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I just want to point out how ANNOYING it is that Ram talks to the governor in Hindi (or Telugu as the orginal was) and not the English he usually used with the British. I mean I know the movie with it’s animals and such isn’t a bastion of realism, but still I found it disconcerting.
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Thank goodness this truck has a lot of holes in it, or this plan would have kind of been screwed from the get-go.
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OMG ladies, I had so many thoughts about this movie and I am going to confess that I was really apprehensive to share my thoughts on Ram from Ramayan because it can be a very very divisive topic. So thank you for giving me this forum to share my thoughts. YOU ARE AWESOME!
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You always have such great insight Filmikhudi! It brings so much more into the movie! 😀
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You are too sweet, Kirre! I am so glad I can watch this movie with you!
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We really are. And yeah, I thought everyone knew it was cool to critique Ram? He also left the people of Ayodha, who wanted him to rule, because his father ordered him away. Where was the responsibility then?
OH! Which is also in this! the villagers going “what the heck, where’s Ram?” and Ram doing his own banishment thing.
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YES YES YES! The whole promise to my father is more important that my actual responsibility. UGH.
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And no. Critiquing Ram is HIGHLY controversial in this climate. I really was about to say all this but say it anonymously and let you know personally that it was me because I was worried.
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Well, not in DCIB-world. Our tiny corner where I can also put up a post that takes as it’s unspoken premise that everyone in the world is pro-choice.
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Oh, that’s really sad ) : I hope the worry is unnecessary, but fear that it might not be.
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Run, baby, run!
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(Always with the splintery pieces of wood!)
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Rajamouli absolutely does the same thing with weapons here that he does in B1 and B2. Ram uses guns and other manufactored weapons, while Bheem uses tree limbs and similar. Until the end when it starts to blur.
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I love the image of them getting smaller and smaller running away ❤
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Is there such a thing as Horserider Shoulders? Because if so, I think Ram Charan has them.
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HOW FAST DOES HIS HAIR GROW?????
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The transition dialogue is literally “It’s been months”!
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In that case, HOW SLOW DOES HIS HAIR GROW???
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Kind of love the confused way Mr. Meanie pronounces “Beam?!?!”
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Does anybody know what that proverb (?) is from?
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What proverb is it?
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The passage that wasn’t in Hindi. (Sanskrit, maybe???) It was similar to the Pirkei Avot saying that “You are not required to complete the work, yet neither are you permitted to set it aside.” I can skim back and get the actual subtitle text later if liked.
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Alia is SO smart!
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I love that the Hindi dub had Alia’s voice!!!
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I think pretty much all the principals are doing their own dubbing.
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I didn’t know the other’s voices so I could not speak to that. But that’s amazing! Thank you for letting me know that.
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Charan at least I’m certain about–he has a really distinctive voice. I saw a couple of press junket things the main cast did in Hindi, too.
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Okay, say that this is a hide out that is known to be safe for revolutionaries. And Sita is a revolutionary traveling to the city. And NTR and the gang have been hiding in the city for months. So it is actually logical for them to bump into each other, and I shouldn’t worry about the realism. Right?
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Once again, you are asking REALISM from a Rajamouli movie??? The guy who directed a movie with a fly as a protagonist??
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HE WAS REBORN! IT TOTALLY MAKES INTERNAL SENSE!!!!
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What is this fly movie?!
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Naani / Eeega / Makkhi movie! It’s so much fun!
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Sounds like tonight’s second movie!
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At first it might seem like a Disney Channel movie (guy turns into a fly), but it has MURDER!!! So much fun!
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Eega!!!! It’s AMAZING
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“Eega.” Literally the singular word I know in Telugu. Nani dies and is reincarnated as a fly.
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SPOILERS
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There are some weird moments where the English dialogue feels half-baked, and “You thought you could take on us?” is one. It seems like one of the Anglophone cast members ought to have pointed out that “take us on” was more idiomatic before it actually got committed to film.
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Also the total lack of polite nuance. We snickered a bit at Jenny’s line, “your deep and expressive eyes seem like they’re always searching for something.” I mean. Talk about getting hit over the head with a big hunk of wood.
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Well, white people can be blunt.
On Mon, May 30, 2022 at 11:01 PM dontcallitbollywood < comment-reply@wordpress.com> wrote:
>
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Not British people!
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Polyamory positive! Isn’t it nice that NTR totally accepts Alia as his co-spouse instead of being jealous?
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LMAO
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Oh, and Alia already accepted NTR as her co-spouse by accepting that Ram Charan has to die for him!
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JR NTR has such large eyes!! So cute and emotive!!
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Jenny! Continuing to be the only white person with a good heart!
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Ram’s hair is so beautiful!
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I have the same kind of curls when the air is humid. Love a good natural curl!
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My nephew’s hair is just like that! and his parents refuse to cut it because it is so pretty
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It really is. And his beard is so perfectly groomed besides that one scene.
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Sorry, I meant, besides after he is jailed.
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