Wednesday is such an awkward day of the week for a movie release. I know it’s a holiday in India, but it isn’t anywhere else!!!!! Although I suppose the alternative would be us waiting two more days until Friday, and that’s no good.
I’ll start!
Reading: I have to start re-reading Laura! I made a date to discuss it with a friend in a few weeks, so I should have it fresh in my mind.
Watching: I’m co-working again on Friday, and the last time this co-worker came over they requested something older and campier to watch. I’m thinking the original Hera Pheri? But can you follow that if you are pausing it every 5 minutes to take a work call?
Thinking: Albie’s annual vet visit is today, he gets to have lots and lots of shots and I get to learn if I am under or over feeding him. He is such a tiny tiny little animal that a few pounds one or the other and the vet yells at me.
Listening: Hey, “Naatu Naatu” won at the globes! It’s my least favorite song from the film, I would have gone for “Komuram Bheemudo”
Now, question for you!!! This is totally un-film related, but DEEPLY important and I feel we should all get to know each other better: If you had to choose between bacon and cake, which would you choose? Savory or sweet?
Bacon. I would always choose bacon. Also cheese, potato chips, etc. Rather than cake, ice cream, etc. Although I also like the sweet stuff.
dontcallitbollywood 
Even the raptest of attention can only make so much sense out of “Hera Pheri.” That movie is, as the kids say, straight vibes (affectionate). But camp it can supply!
My mother accidentally got signed up for a month of Prime, so we’ve been enjoying some movies from there. The parents both loved “Thank God” even though I wouldn’t in a hundred years have guessed from the trailer that it would be their kind of movie, lol. Next up for me, I think, will be “Ek Baar Kaho,” the Shabana-Navin Nischol version of “Affair to Remember.”
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Do you have more visitors coming to read RRR reviews now that it has become so famous?
I also don’t like Naatu Naatu, it’s too earworm’y for my taste (I hate the music made purposely to enter the mind forever, that’s why I stopped being fan of Shakira in 2005 )
I have been living in Italy for 15 years now, and I still eat polish (savory) breakfast. So my answer: Bacon . Cakes are nice but savory stuff is better. And Italian sweet breakfasts are stupid.
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OK but earworm as revenge against a cheating ex husband is kind of delicious. To me it feels like we got the real Shakira back finally.
https://www.billboard.com/music/latin/shakira-bizarrap-music-session-lyrics-translated-english-1235197774/
All best wishes to Anushka, but marrying a famous athlete always seems like a risky bet. So much macho ego.
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Oooooooooo, that song has gotten me to look up the story!!!! Very good breakup song.
I think Anushka should be fine, Virat seems comfy just taking a backseat now. I think the key might be to marry an athlete as he is on the brink of retirement, no more accolades coming for him.
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It’s such a catchy song. There’s clever word play in Spanish. Like, the person he cheated with is named Clara. One of the hooks is “tiene nombre de persona buena (her name makes her sound like a nice person)/ claramente no es como suena (literally means clearly that’s not true, with ‘claramente’ a play on her name)”.
Piqué retired in 2019 and started cheating on his wife (who, let’s be clear, is Shakira! like that’s not enough for you? and your two kids aren’t enough?) in 2021. Athletes who have been held up as god’s gift, they’re just hopelessly entitled most of them.
But again, all best to Anushka. She’s a tough cookie, no doubt she knows what she’s doing.
Can’t help but love the lesson that if you mess with your partner who happens to be a powerful and super talented artist, they can lock in your image worldwide as a no good cheating scoundrel with one three and a half minute song.
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Yes! Only yesterday I told I don’t listen to her anymore and today she dropped this piece. I was like: Wow, “Si te vas” Shaki is back!
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Her break-up songs were always the best. 🙂
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The advantage of Hera Pheri is that you don’t really need to follow it. You look up, and there’s Amitabh setting his soup on fire. It’s almost better if you don’t follow it.
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Parvaarish is also a good option.
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I only managed to see one Indian movie – Gatta Kushti. The first half is great. It’s about a girl who is a wrestler, but her parents are against the sport and force her to marry a tamil guy. In order to make the marriage happen they lie about everything, even her hair lenght. Then some time later he is attaced by goons and she saves his life. And this is one of the most epic fights ever. I loved this film at that moment. Policewomen or girls wrestlers kicking asses – my fav genre. Unfortunately the movie was written and directed by a man and he didn’t know how to join “women are badass and strong and men are a headache” with compulsory “hero and men can’t be humiliated” message. So the second half is not good. It could be such a good movie with a little more romance and family dynamic.
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Gosh Angie I am just gonna wait for you to say things about movies cuz I like and agree with everything you say!!
I loved the first half of this movie and laughed so much. Wish the heroine had more to do in the second half 😦 it wasn’t bad the second half but didn’t live up to how awesome the first half was.
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You made my day Saira 😀
The second half lacks the scenes where the hero learns to love Keerthi. Make him angry but also a little fascinated and attracted. She is a great human being, appreciate her for this.
Instead they were like: “I tried gushti – gushti hard- my wife good”.
Also the competitions drive me crazy. The same was with 777 Charlie. It was nice and smooth and suddenly Dog contest out of nowhere.
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Aw yay 🙂 glad to hear that. And oh I like your spin! Yep, some scenes and emotional growth like that would have done the trick for me.
I like Aishwarya Lekshmi from Ponniyin Selvan; that’s why I picked this movie (and watched on mute while my son napped) – she did well in the movie, but also I read the books and I grew to root for the character in that.
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Aww! I like Nattu Nattu. It’s such a fun spectacle. I do wish that they didn’t speed up the dancing though. I think Genevieve mentioned this also. It’s hard for us mere mortals to emulate when it’s that’s fast!
You should totally watch Hera Pheri. Only thing to follow is that it’s a love story between Vinod and Amitabh, Saira really doesn’t matter. Amitabh and Vinod meet, they fall in love, they pretend to split up, but it’s just a ruse to trick the bad guy, they get back together… happy ending!
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Pingback: Wednesday Watching Post: What Are You Reading and Watching and Thinking and Listening to Exactly 2 Weeks before Pathaan?!?!? - Siyal News
Ordinarily your question would be difficult, but I haven’t eaten bacon in years. I’m not real fond of the Japanese (=not crispy) kind. When I’m home I try to build in a morning when I just fork down a plate of bacon. Anyway, I choose cake.
I liked Nattu Nattu and I’m just so happy they won and everyone is so excited! I know, Hollywood foreign press is kinda dumb and it’s not an Oscar, but it’s nice happy news!
OK, saw a ton of movies over my break:
Super 30: Just released in the theater in Japan! Nice inspiring movie but, just, unbelievably long. It’s almost 3 hours and it’s not one of those movies that really needs to be.
Monica, O My Darling: I liked it but didn’t love it as much as I thought and I’m not sure why? I kept comparing it to Blackmail which has a similar premise but is really, really funny, which this movie is not (at least, to a non-Hindi speaker). I did enjoy it though. And I LOVED the cool retro soundtrack! (That is, retro-feeling songs, but, except for the title track, they’re all original). The songs are all great and different, they all go together and they all go in the movie. For most movies I think they can just slip in some love song someone had lying around, but this one seems really purposeful. Even the singers sound straight out of the 70s.
Dobaaraa: Thought it would be dark because of Anurag, but it is not at all. Very fun time-travel mystery, really liked the end which was totally unpredictable but very satisfying. Highly recommend.
Ek Villain Returns: Why did I watch this? I hated the first one. There is way too much evil laughter in this movie; I got seriously annoyed. I did like Arjun in this. He does such a great job of being a bad boy that I forgot it’s sweet big ole squishy cuddly Arjun. But I simultaneously wanted to punch his character in the face. To belabor the point I made in the Pathaan trailer post: John looks greater and seems leaner. Maybe he’s working out differently or maybe it’s the aspect ratio or something.
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Does Rajkummar dance in Monica O My Darling?
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A little bit, yes. There’s like an opening number with Huma dancing and he joins her for a bit, but that’s it.
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hhmm not worth watching for that then. But I will watch that song! Thanks!
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The song is only like 10 minutes into the movie, so you could just watch it and then quit.
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Thanks, that’s a good one!
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The soundtrack of Monica O My Darling is its best part, though I liked the film as well. The way they created that retro sound is interesting. They looked for singers who sound like Asha Bhonsle and Hemant Kumar and found artists who are known mimics of these singers, who sing in concerts in their voices. If I listen to certain song bits, I can be fooled into thinking it’s the old singers’ voices! They’ve done a great job.
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SO COOL! I did notice that the female singer sounded like Asha. Such a great soundtrack.
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I didn’t realise till yesterday that M.M. Keeravani is the music director of RRR and the Baahubalis. He’s done some of my absolute favorite Hindi songs in films like Zakhm, Criminal, Paheli, Jism, etc. Maybe you could do a post about his songs. Very happy for him!
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Thanks for the idea! I will definitely do that.
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It’s been 4 days since I subscribed to Zee5 and I still wasn’t able to watch a movie. It’s unbelivible how bad their site/app is. It never works! I spend days writing with their support team and reinstalling the app. I knew Zee is bad but this is something else.
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Zee5 doesn’t work on a tablet or phone, and they don’t tell you that until you’ve explicitly told the support staff you’re using one. I agree, it’s the worst.
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-It doesn’t work on my tv because the software is not up to date (in their opinion). I could watch the movie I wanted on eintusian but I wanted to see it on bigger screen, and also make the right thing (stupid me) Well it doesn’t work, so I decided to watch on my tablet, and here another surprise – I can’t enter my account, because someone decided that the normal password are too passe, now you must wait they send you an one time password. It wouldn’t be a big problem, if only they send those passwords! I have 1 minute to recive and digit it, and guess after how long they send me the OTP? AFTER 12 HOURS! 12 HOURS!!! I wanted to watch the movie at noon and the password arrived at midnight.
Strangely calm, I decided I’ll watch on their site. Of course it didn’t work either! I really don’t know what happens, it seems my account was cursed or something. Zee was always bad but not at this point.
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All of the RRR songs have been my favourite at some point; I’m just thrilled for them! I think they’ll get the Oscar too (she says, jinxing them).
I got my card, Margaret, THANK YOU!!! I am thinking of how to display it to its best advantage. 😀 Also, American Christmas stamps are cute, I am saving them too!
Sweet vs savoury: I don’t eat meat, but I would probably choose cheese over chocolate, so I think that puts me in the savoury camp.
I hope Albie Dog’s vet visit was OK!
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Albie Dog was very brave at the Vet! He got 6 shots, and was weighed, and checked for bumps, and was fine all around. He also showed the Vet how he can sit (his one trick).
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Good for Albie Dog! Sitting is totally underrated, there’s nothing like a good sit. 😀
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I know awards don’t really mean anything to DCIB and films don’t need American recognition to be valid and worthy, but I am ECSTATIC about RRR winning at the Globes, especially for Naatu Naatu. I went on a half hour speech to my roommate explaining the movie to her, showed her the video, and ran around our living room screaming when it won. I called my mom, texted the rest of my family, went on a Twitter and Instagram tirade and probably annoyed everyone I know. And this is coming from someone who has somehow managed to not watch the entire movie yet!! Lol. But I plan on changing that, I’m pretty sure I convinced my dad to watch it with me tomorrow, so I will report back. And I think my excitement is justified because the Telugu and Hindi versions of the song have been on constant rotation for me since they came out. So that’s what goes into both my Listening and Thinking categories.
Included in Thinking is my school’s reaction to the win. A lot of my students don’t even know what the Golden Globes are, let alone care. Two girls were arguing with me because I said Naatu Naatu won, but they said it was called Naacho Naacho, and I felt like I had to educate them which was so jarring because they’re both Indian. One boy was so excited that I mentioned how our school plays music between homeroom and first period on Mondays and Fridays, and the principal takes requests. So he sent an email requesting the song and they played it yesterday! And he was even more excited! The same two girls when into a really long explanation about how the actors and director have really long full names and it was so hard for me to pretend I didn’t know who they were. Another girl said she was dancing in the hallway and fell down. And a third girl just seemed so excited, and I thought it was such a sweet moment for her in particular because she’s brand new to my class from Andhra Pradesh, just started on Tuesday, the day of the Globes. I ended up Googling RRR to try to explain it to my non Indian students and if you’ve never Googled RRR before, there’s a little graphic up at the top of a horse and a motorcycle moving across the screen. I was curious about it, since I genuinely hadn’t seen it before, and this girl explained about Ram and Bheem and it was so cute and I am so happy for her specifically that she had this moment during her first week at a new school. I also have a video of the 5 minutes they played the song if you want me to email it to you, Margaret.
Also been thinking about how I caught cheaters during a test I gave earlier in the week, but that’s frustrating and everything has been taken care of anyway, so we’re not gonna go there.
Not reading anything exciting. Saw I Wanna Dance with Somebody and the lead performance was really good, but something about it felt slow. I liked Elvis better as a biopic that was released in 2022. Watched one episode of the Harry and Meghan series and it was very interesting but I was not in the right headspace to deal with racist organizations, so I stopped for now, but I will go back.
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This makes me so happy! This is exactly why the Golden Globes matters, to have people in America feel seen and welcomed. I don’t care as an American fan because I don’t need my fandom justified, and I find it a bit odd when Indians care because it’s a different country. But absolutely Desi kids in the US should have the opportunity to see something they know about being acknowledged! Thanks for sharing and, of course, I would love to see your video.
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Just sent it through Google Photos, let me know if it goes through!
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I got it! And this is probably not a good thing to say, but you are so Cute!!!! I love young enthusiastic teachers.
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Thank you! I consider myself as a teacher more along the lines of Embarrassment to Society, rather than Cute, but I appreciate it. Glad you finally get to see how difficult it is for me to pretend to know a lot less about Indian film than I actually do.
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