Happy Wednesday! I am aware it isn’t rainy for everyone, but it’s super rainy for me and looks to stay that way all day, blech. But the right person won the Chicago Mayor election yesterday, so I’m happy!
I’ll start!
Watching: I’m now on my 3rd re-watch of “Staged”. It’s a short sort of loose show filmed over Zoom during the pandemic, it’s brilliant (David Tennant and Michael Sheen just goofing around), and it also really perfect evokes the pandemic experience. It has 3 seasons and goes from those first few weeks when everything happened very fast, to months in when you were just sort of waiting for the world to start, to the end when it’s hard to let go and rejoin “normal” life.
Reading: I’m gonna try to read Gone With the Wind! A friend recommended it to me as truly a different sort of book with a different sort of heroine. Yes, also a terrible book. But worth reading as an Artifact. I don’t know, has anyone else here read it?
Thinking: It’s now been 2 months of kitchen struggles, and somehow it keeps getting worse? Once I knew I had to get a new floor, I was in a holding pattern until I got insurance payments for it which they kept telling me would happen “any day now”. Then I got insurance approval, and was STILL in a holding pattern for two more weeks trying to get the contractor to call me back. I finally gave up and hired a different company who is coming tomorrow (yaaaaaaaaaaay!). But because of all this, I’ve had my kitchen in a sort of “what’s the point of rearranging cabinets and things if I’m about to get a new floor any second?” holding pattern for TWO MONTHS. Two months of not knowing where half my dishes are, and eating dry food that requires no preparation/work space. And yesterday I had the sink taken out (so the floor could go under it). So now I have no kitchen sink, no work space, and every single thing in my kitchen from a jar of flour to the framed picture of my grandmother is strewn around my dining room in preparation for the Floor People tomorrow. I was gonna take Friday off work to put it all back together again, but then a coworker had a family emergency and I have to cover, so now it’s just gonna be like this until ???? Also, I really want a kitchen sink again. A bathroom sink just isn’t the same. I was gonna make pasta for dinner last night, and somehow the idea of filling a pot in the bathroom grossed me out too much, so I just ordered a pizza.
Listening: It’s not Indian, but it’s universal. The song my Mom used to put on when we were little and she really REALLY needed to clean the house with the biggest energy burst possible.
dontcallitbollywood 
I read Gone With the Wind in middle/high schoool. I liked it then, but I preferred the John Jakes trilogy that North and South was based on. All are very problematic, but interesting as an artifact and only if you are interested in the Civil War or have an affection for either movies/miniseries.
I finished watching Chhoti Bahu with Sharmila the other night and I’m still processing. Not going to be on my fave list though it certainly was interesting, I think? I thought it was going to be about an intellectually challenged young woman being married off to a doctor who doesn’t know about this or her epileptic seizures. But turns out she doesn’t have an intellectual disability (despite singing to a doll in the first song and being so childlike) and she really is just a brat who really likes little kids and being around them is the only way to cure her epilepsy…this movie is banana pants! And then you have the mean sister-in-law Paro who would twirl her mustache if she had one, a lazy sister-in-law who despite losing several children willingly gives up her only child just to get out of the responsibility of raising him. And Rakesh Khanna wanders in occasionally to be pouty about not getting enough sex from his wife (that one song almost worked because it was so realistic about couples with young kids), but he clearly was a supporting character in this. Which is good, since this really is Sharmila’s story and “female-centric” but regressive because it was all about the mother and child bond. And then the boy child Gopi is played by Shruti Hasaan’s mom and that really threw me, too! I totally recognized the eyes and thought the child looked familiar and then once I knew it was too weird. And then my favorite part might have been the song about socialism sung by a another kid character who also plays guitar and does the twist in another hilarious scene. What a strange but kinda fun I think film.
Also rewatched Agent Vinod the other day and I think overall it’s getting better with age, especially as it is compared to the YRF Spy films. Saif is an underrated action hero…he was also very believable in Phantom (another kind of underrated film). And he can do the cool, suave spy thing really well. I had one major issue with the film (SPOILER ALERT)…the way they treated the gay flight attendant character Freddie. Kareena’s character lets his character die without remorse despite being so traumatized by what happened to her in the past and Saif used him in the first place and put him in danger. So not cool and would be called out today.
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How have I missed Choti Bahu? It sounds like just the movie for me and I’ll be watching it immediately.
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Oh no. I’m going to sound like a terrible person. This is not something I tell anyone unless it is a Safe Space.
I love GWTW. I watched it at 6, read the book at 12 or 13 and it is one of those books I constantly carry around with me whenever I move. And I own like…4 versions of the book.
I know people dislike it and I get why. I think for me, being exposed to it at such a young age and the heroine having such a strong stubborn flawed character, just made it a winner for me, when i wasnt as exposed to why it was so problematic. It’s still one of the books on consistency and reliance I turn to quite often.
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This is how it was recommended to me! A friend who also read it as a kid and just really responded to the very unique female lead, almost an anti-hero. She told me I have to read it for Scarlett, but also there’s icky stuff.
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I almost read the book as history, or as you put it, an Artifact. Not really of the 1860s (although that too, to a point), but of the 1920s-1930s, when the book was written and published. But the characters are Excellent (not just Scarlett, but all of them) and the writing style is beautiful.
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I read Gone with the Wind in my late 20s and LOVED it! And then I saw the movie and hated it.
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Well, I saw the movie and didn’t love it, so maybe I will love the book!
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I’m in the middle of hindi series Tu Zakhm Hai. It’s rather dull, and the characters are very one-dimensional but OMG Gashmeer Mahajani. The makers know what they have, and there are at least 3 sexy shirtless scenes in every episode . I fill my eyes with his beauty, and in the meantime think how stupid bollywood producers are to not hire Gashmeer in their movies. The second season of Tu Zakhm Hai dropped recently and it’s the most viewed series of the week in India, and believe me, there is no other reason to watch it than Gashmeer being sexy.
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I started watching 100 Days of Love, but after few scenes I found your old reviews saying it’s mediocre and I’m not sure if I want to keep watching. Is it worth?
Also I saw Super Mario The Movie yesterday FDFS and it was fun. The cinema looked like a kindergarden and everybody was making noise with chips bags, but in the end we all applauded and kids were also applauding in the rhythm of Super Mario theme. Nice experience, almost like watching an Indian film 😉
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100 Days of Love is fine, a good timepass, not spectacular. Nothing horrible will happen, but it also won’t get any better.
And I just checked, my friend with a Mario-loving daughter does know about the movie, and her husband and daughter are planning to go this weekend. Sounds like a perfect Daddy-daughter outing!
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100 Days of Love is just way too slow and long. I really wanted to love it because of the two leads being one of the best on-screen pairs ever in OK Kanmani but it was just an OK movie.
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Watched Prem Nagar (with Hema Malini and Rakesh Khanna) the other night and it was a total Mills & Boon story! Secretary/boss…playboy alpha hero, big misunderstanding and groveling at the end. Plus beautiful palatial home and lovely 70s saris and hair and makeup on Hema. I actually really enjoyed it and it had some fun wacky moments and tons and tons of melodrama. Hema Malini is totally charming as usual. Still not a huge fan of Rakesh Khanna overall, but I can see why he had such mass appeal back then.
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Still on my 70s classics bingeing and in honor of The Romantics focus on it, I watched Daag for the first time. Starring Rakesh, Sharmila, and Rakhee (who I’m sure I’ve seen before but is she a bit forgettable…even in this one where she won the Filmfare I think). Sharmila just draws all of the attention in this one. She’s hamming up all of the melodrama but she still does it with her signature style. Loved it! Didn’t realize it was based on Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge which was weird but it worked. So basically they end up in a throuple at the end of this movie or am I wrong? And maybe I prefer Rakesh Khanna with a moustache.
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You’ve definitely seen Raakhee, because she played the Mom in several 90s films! She was one of the actresses like Farida Jalal who transitioned from Herione to Mom surprisingly young and had a nice long “Mom” career.
She has two great 70s rom-coms, Blackmail and Sharmilee. If you can find either/both highly recommend them!
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