No subtitles though. Which, following my theory from yesterday, means that Shahrukh used to love me and was telling me through subtitling his videos. But now no longer loves me and is breaking up with me through NOT subtitling his videos. WHY SHAHRUKH???? WHY???? I’ll change for you! I’ll do whatever you ask! Just take me back!
Happy Wednesday! And happy two days before Tubelight! (or maybe one day in America? Please please distributors, make me happy!) Time to talk about what we have been doing in the days leading up to Tubelight, watching and reading and thinking.
Well, that’s not really fair, I don’t know yet if they are better films because these films haven’t come out. But I can suspect they are better films, because the films they remind me of were really really good, and it showed even in the trailer.
I was at my library checking out yet another DVD set of Murder She Wrote (it’s the perfect “have the TV on in the background for company while you unpack/blog” show), and there on the “recently returned” shelf was Janatha Garage! So odd! I took it as a sign and checked it out and watched it.
Well, apparently the promotion train is moving at an express pace, and I will need to put up one of these posts every day for the next month and a half (last one here). I guess I am okay with that. Anyway, New Teaser! More importantly, Subtitles!!! Most importantly, Shahrukh loves me and wants me to be happy and is showing it through subtitles on his trailers! I should take this as a sign of his undying devotion to me and go be a Gaurav outside Mannat, right?
Happy Tuesday! Tubelight will be coming out soon, and I thought it might be helpful to review the history of Indo-Chinese relations. At least, the little I know about them. (yes yes, I will get back to the Nehru-Gandhi’s, probably on Thursday)
Isn’t this amazing, that there is a whole Indian genre of “women escaping relationships that aren’t terrible, but aren’t what they deserve”? I watched this movie and could compare it with Queen, English/Vinglish, How Old Are You?, and plenty of others. But this film has a twist, this film ends with the “unthinkable” actually happening.
Really quick post, just so we can all discuss. And so those of you who need this information ASAP can get it. New JHMS teaser! I am still cautiously optimistic. Although slightly less so than I was after the last two teasers.
Happy Tubelight Monday!!! Only 4 days left until the “real” Tubelight day. Or maybe 3 if we are lucky and there is a last minute Thursday release in America. So, let’s talk about Kabir Khan and Salman and their first collaboration, Ek Tha Tiger.
Happy Tubelight Week!!!!! I am less excited than I thought I would be, but I think that is just because it is too hot to be excited. Writing all my Tubelight posts is beginning to get me excited though, thinking about all the things it reminds me of and could be related to.
I was putting this off and putting this off, hoping subtitles would be added so I could do a comprehensive discussion, not just a sort of discussion. But, no luck! So I will put up this kind of placeholder post, and all you lucky people who know Hindi can discuss it in depth, and the rest of us will just leap in once someone at Red Chillies gets around to hitting the magical “English Subs” button on their youtube account.
Happy Father’s Day Again! My weekly fanfic post this morning (it’s really good! You should read it) exhausted me, so this will be a quick-ish post. But it is Tubelight week, I can’t let the day go by without acknowledgement.
Happy Father’s Day! I am celebrating by doing nothing! Probably. I might go out to lunch with my parents after church if they want to. But we have all had very exhausting weeks, and his Father’s Day wish may be to just go straight home and take a nap instead. But I am excited at the idea of doing a Sunday speculative post that is fatherhood themed! Such a rich source of film plots, that is very rarely used.
Happy Tubelight Week again! Let’s talk about the film I was immediately reminded of when I saw the first Tubelight trailer, the classic Dr. Kotnis. Well, and the real person Dr. Kotnis.
Accessbollywood.net does the real work of keeping this list updated, if you want a day by day update, subscribe to them. But if you want my opinion and recommendation on every single one, read on.
Another podcast! And another week when there was no movie to see in theaters, so we watched a DVD! Another Nivin, Jacobinte Swargarajyam. Because I know it would be unlike any movie Dina had ever seen before. And I was right! (you can read my original review here)
Whenever I say “Chinese”, I have that knee-jerk moment of “wait, is that right?” Because of course you don’t know if a person is Taiwanese, or Taiwanese who prefer to be called Chinese, or ethnically Chinese but from Cambodia, or just straight up American/British/Norwegian/Indian, whatever other country they were born and raised in, despite a Chinese appearace. And then with languages, there’s the whole Mandarin versus Cantonese thing, and with films there’s the whole Chinese versus Taiwanese versus Hong Kong, and so on and so on. But in this case, YES! Chinese! I am talking about attractive men who were born and raised within either Hong Kong or the People’s Republic of China, and who openly identify as Chinese and nothing else. Because it’s Tubelight week, and Salman Khan is teaching us all about peace and openness. And also I had about an 18 month period of being really really into Hong Kong cinema.
Happy one week before Tubelight comes out! And welcome to my week of coverage. If this is your first time here before a big release comes out, what I usually do is a loosely related post every day for a week before. Stuff like, the director’s last film, or a similar film from the same star. Just sort of discussion topics and background reading for stuff that might end up being relevant for the final film. And for this film, let’s start with the co-star, Zhu Zhu!
What a good movie! I hadn’t watched it in ages, and this time around I noticed all kinds of themes hidden under the surface that I hadn’t appreciated last time. “Pardes” versus “Des” is just the tip of the iceberg.
I was going to do a box office report for Raabta earlier this week, and it turned into this very very long post about what box office is and why I look at it the way I do and so on and so forth. And I thought “heck, I should just turn this into a 101 one-off so people can easily refer back to it later!” (don’t worry, I will come back to my Nehru-Gandhi family history and finish it in a bit)
Boy, it’s been awhile since I did a real news round-up, isn’t it? Partly because the releases have been going boom-boom-boom for the past few months, so with my weekly southern reviews, and new movie news, and then Bahubali, there just hasn’t been time. But this week it’s kind of slow, I don’t have another review ready yet, might as well do a quick news round-up.
On the Monday Questions post, I was talking about fanfic, and how I think it’s especially common with Bahubali because this world is so rich. There are so many characters who just show up for a scene or two and their story isn’t fully finished or ended, so many settings that we don’t explore entirely, so many possibilities for the future that are left unknown. Anyway, that’s what it is for me. And one of those possibilities that I explored in both of my original fanfics was “Anushka 2”, the daughter of Anushka 1 and Prabhas 1, if Prabhas 1 had lived after Prabhas 2 had been born. And now I have become obsessed with her love story with Rana 2 (Rana’s illegitimate nephew by way of his father’s mistress’ daughter) (full index of all Bahubali posts, including fanfics, here)
Happy Wednesday! I’m trying something new again, giving you a question to answer, or at least a place to start discussion, along with the usual “what are you watching and thinking and reading this week?” questions.
Well, I finally watched VIP! Because I really really wanted to watch that teaser with Kajol, and I decided I couldn’t let myself watch it until I saw the first movie. Anyway, it is just as good as you all said it would be! And the plot and themes and stuff hold together a lot better than it appeared from the Wikipedia synopsis.
Well, this is one I’ve been avoiding! Because I know feelings run high on it. And I know that, as a non-Indian, I have no right to talk about another country’s politics. So I am not going to talk about politics, I am going to give as impartial a perspective as I can on the progression from Motilal to Jawaharlal to Indira to Rajiv to Sonia to Rahul. Because as I discovered yesterday when looking at the posters for upcoming films, we are about to have a spate of Indira-era period pieces, and to understand them, you really need to know about not just Indira, but what came before and after.
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