Week four! Woo! This is kind of working I think maybe? Although we’ll have to see how it does now that I have finished all the big name releases from last year. Oh wait! I still have Oppam!
Greetings from an undisclosed location in Southern California! It’s about 10 degrees warmer, but otherwise exactly the same weather as if I were in Chicago (grey, rainy). But I’m still happy! It’s just so nice to get away.
Once again, sorry international readers, this has nothing to do with you. But it is a cool thing for Americans to be aware of.
36 hours, right? 24 hours plus 12? 1am GMT on Sunday is what I mean. We will watch Hum Saath Saath Hain while being hum saath saath hain on twitter!
Thank you thank you to T.J Stevens for posting the “Azhagiye” song in a comment! This is about the happiest thing I have ever seen/heard. And then I remembered that it wasn’t, because there are other AR Rahman songs which made me the same amount of happy! And then I thought, “Why not a theme post?”
There are two parts to this story, and it’s the aftermath I find much more interesting and radical. So I’m going to start there and work backwards.
Sorry sorry! Another America only post! But this is directly related to the topic of this blog, Jeff Sessions is up for Attorney General, he would haaaaaaaaaaaaaate that we all watch and love films featuring brown-skinned people and religious minorities (well, minorities in America), most of which are produced by an extremely obviously gay man.
Oooo, that headline sounds so fancy! “GMT” and all that! To make it simpler, 2/5/2017 1am Greenwich Mean time is 7pm 2/4/2017 Chicago time (where I am). It is 2pm Sydney time (I think), and various other times all over Australia (Australia is weird! 13 TIME ZONES!!!!!). And 10am in Japan. And 6:30am India time (sorry Indian readers!).
Ugh, that feels so exclusionary! It’s just because it is a political action post, and unfortunately if you can’t vote in American elections, this won’t be that useful for you. Also, sorry that it’s not really Indian film related, I will return to regularly schedule blog programming on my next post.
I already put up 3 very detailed posts discussing and reviewing the entire 23 episode series that rocketed Mahira Khan to international fame. But those were really for people who had already seen the show and wanted an in depth discussion. Or were never planning to see the show, but still wanted to know exactly what happened. But what if all you care about is getting a quick sense of what made Mahira Khan so appealing to the Raees producers that they just had to cast her in this role? Then, this is the post for you!
Well, there was no over-whelming consensus on my voting post last Thursday as to what to do next, so I think I will pick the Khanna-Kumars. Partly because I started Dimple’s story and never finished it with the Kapoors, partly because I am in love with Twinkle and Akshay after their Koffee appearance, and partly because Rajesh Khanna was a very big deal and you should know about him!
Really, this isn’t fair, it’s a tie between this movie and The Fog With Irfaan Khan. But I don’t remember The Fog With Irfaan Khan as well, so you have to be contented with just Bal Brahmachari.
Badshah had a baby! Not much more to say besides that, but I felt you all should know. And I suppose this give me as much a reason as any to post some possible lullabies her father might sing her.
My almost final Kapoor post! Yaaaay! I figured I couldn’t be done with the family without dealing with their distant relations, “the other Kapoors”. Or, as I think of it, the Surinder Kapoor family. (If you want to read the other posts, I have finally given in and created a Hindi Film 101 area of the menu here)
I gave you a few extra days, but I think everyone has now had more than enough time to respond to my voting post here, and it is time for me to tally and summarize the results! Which took me much longer than I expected, Math is hard! Although, there is one thing that became abundantly clear as soon as I started reading them over. Neerja really was the film of the year.
I have a very very very very very very very hard time promoting myself. Which is why half the time my own family doesn’t notice me at the dinner table. But I really really really really want more people to find my blog so I can talk to them and they can talk to me and we can be a nice community!
And I also want more people to find my book, so they will learn about Indian film and come to love it like we do, and join our nice community.
Since I will just never be able to promote myself, it’s not in my nature, I am going to ask you all to do me a BIG BIG favor and promote on my behalf. And then I will love you SO MUCH, that I will just have to send you one of my custom Valentine’s cards in gratitude.
Well, this was FASCINATING!!! I’m watching them out of order, so I just finished the Jackie and Sid episode, which was a bit tricky because there isn’t much that the audience was interested in learning about them. In comparison with Shahid and Mira, where we want to know EVERYTHING.
I still haven’t tallied the final votes from my polling post on my 2016 film awards (still time to vote! I’ll be tallying and putting together the results post late tonight), but it looks like there is a strong trend in one direction for the Best Film choice, and it is the same movie that I keep returning to…Neerja.
Oh this is just too hard! Out of all the movies from 2016, which one is my absolute favorite? Hmmm. Oh! I just remembered a loophole! Oh good, I’m all set then. I get to talk about my favorite films that weren’t mainstream Hindi and didn’t necessarily get a big release, and why I loved them anyway. And why you should love them (and see them) too.
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!!!
2 weeks into my new series, and I am getting decent views and comments. Yay! I will tentatively continue. In case you are new to this, the idea is that if you didn’t grow up surrounded by Hindi film, it can be hard to learn all the things that small children in India just know by osmosis. And so I am giving you a little “101” course on the things you need to learn. Kind of a follow up on the basic grounding I gave in my book. (part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here) Starting with the Kapoors, because where else?
I was debating who to give this to, Anushka or Alia or Shahrukh, and then I realized, just because I was thinking of them, that meant they were ineligible. Because in every part I was very aware of who was playing the role. No, the real best actor of 2016 is one who was in 4 of the biggest hits of the year, and you didn’t even realize it was the same person.
The tagline was “Love Him. Hate Him. Judge Him”. And I do all those things! Except the first one. I judge Azhar to be a truly terrible move in every single possible way, and also I hate it.
dontcallitbollywood 