This was my rule for finding the best character. Who felt like a real person, a full 3-dimensional person, like someone you almost expected to see on the bus on the way home? And I promise, my massive prejudices played no part in this decision!!!
Yay, the Raees love song! I could do with a little more guyliner, but otherwise it’s pretty great! There’s even a wet white shirt scene, which adds a touch of class to any pictuarization.
Way back when I woke up this morning, I saw the new Raees poster. And then I didn’t exactly forget about it (how could I? It’s my new computer wallpaper!), but I forgot to do a blog post on it. Until now!
Christmas is over, which is sad, but it means I have a lot of new presents to play with (check them all out here!), and it means I can go back to listening to Saavn and my Indian music instead of Christmas carols. In early November, when I start my Christmas channels, it feels all refreshing to listen to White People Music (as I think of it) for a little bit. But by December 26th, I am ready to go back to my Indian stuff. And for my first playlist, I went with the theme of “good songs from not good movies.”
I sent this link around to all my friends, of course, and about a minute later I got a message from one of them saying “Shahrukh doesn’t even show up for the first 29 seconds, what’s the point?” Followed by a complaint about the presence of a shirt. So you can see that we have a fairly limited area of interest for song sequences. But, setting that aside and viewing this objectively, I think this is a pretty good one!
The big headline news being reported everywhere is “Shahrukh movies come to Netflix“. But here’s the big thing to notice in the stories, they are coming to INDIAN Netflix. So unless you do that thing where you use a mirror site and trick your computer into thinking it lives in India, or unless you yourself live in India and have Netflix and a good internet source, this does you no good.
Well, I assume best excerpts. These are my favorite quotes from the quotes rediff pulled, but I don’t have the actual book, there could be other fascinating bits they didn’t include in their article. But I doubt it, because it is a veeeeeeeeeeery long article.
I was trying sooooooooooo hard to finish in the last section. But I was also getting soooooooooo sleepy as it got later and later, so I finally gave up. However, I did manage to get all the way to the emotional peak and resolution of the film, so everything I have to cover here is just epilogue stuff. (part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here, part 6 here, part 7 here)
SO GOOD!! And not just because the eyeliner/dorky 80s glasses is really working on Shahrukh. Well, that’s part of it. But there’s a lot of other good stuff too!
Ha! I originally had a typo of there, making it “the heat of Alia’s dysfunction”. Which sounds kind of sexy, but also kind of sci-fi-y. And, maybe, this scene is “sexy” in that caring and sensitive men are always “Sexy”, but it’s not sci-fi-y at all. So I went ahead and fixed the typo. (part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here)
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, which has allowed the news stories to build and build to the point where I have to deal with all of them at once. Or at least, all the ones that interest me (no, I am not going to touch Tamil politics with a ten-foot pole. Although my Iruvar review is getting all kinds of hits right now!)
The last section got a little extreme with the general thematic analysis. But this time, I am going to stay strictly focused on what happens in this actual section. Or at least, that’s the goal.
I have now seen this movie 4 times, which means in theory I should be able to remember in in exact detail and give a perfect summary. But in reality means I am going to mix up the order of a couple of scenes and forget an important line and stuff. Oh well, someday my brain-recorder technology will be perfected and I won’t have to worry about this any more. (SPOILER review here, non-spoiler here, and part 1 of the summary here)
Thank you rediff! Yet another in depth thoughtful interview for me to pick through! This time with Gauri Shinde, talking about what I was just talking about in the first part of my Dear Zindagi summary, how funky and sidewise career paths can be in the Indian film industry. Along with other interesting things.
I mentioned in my SPOILER review, how this is a very very female story, both in content and style. Sure, the narrative is all about one woman’s journey, based on emotions and relationships and all that “girly” stuff. But it is also told in a very female way, more about what is unsaid than what is said, through body language and intuition and so on. Which starts in the very first series of shots.
Yaaay! First look and a release date! But no title. And, more interesting (to me), Salman tweeted the first look, not Shahrukh. They did something similar with the Dangal first look, and I think also Sultan?
Global figures are out for Dear Zindagi! Yaaaay! And it did best in North America! Which has no significance whatsoever because North America had an extra 2 days in the weekend! And on the other hand, had a lot of competition here! But being a hit in Australia, now THAT is significant! (as always, the figures come from Rentracks courtesy of Bollywoodhungama)
This is the post I put up exactly a year ago, when the only people reading this blog were…me (I started posting on my Facebook page so at least my parents would read it a couple days later). I have gotten much more technically competent since then. So I am updating it and re-posting it. With notes added from “future me” in brackets.
First, just like I did for ADHM, I put up a SPOILER review for DZ first so people who have seen the movie have a place to discuss it. So please, no spoilers in the comments here! And no specific questions like “what did you think it meant when the aliens landed and it turned into a gritty post-apocalyptic drama?” here either. This is the place for people who haven’t yet seen the movie to hang out and learn about it. Everyone else, go hang out here.
Yes, I AM going to spoil the whole movie! I feel terrible about this, considering that Shahrukh was nice enough to release it 2 days early in America so I could see it before leaving for Thanksgiving. But on the other hand, a bunch of other people in America also saw it today, and we should have a place to discuss it. And there are those people (sometimes I am one of them) who want to know how a movie ends before they even decide to see it. But if you are choosing between seeing the movie and reading this post, SEE THE MOVIE!!! It’s really really good.
Saved the best (and also most obvious) for last! When you talk about Shahrukh supporting and encouraging and teaching young women, it’s all about Chak De, India. But, why is he doing it? Both his character in the film Chak De, and in real life by taking this role opposite Alia in Dear Zindagi?
dontcallitbollywood 