Happy Saturday! And happy Bajrangi Bhaijaan day! It is SUCH a good movie, I can’t wait to share it with y’all.
Continue readingSaturday WatchAlong: Bajrangi Bhaijaan! I love it So! Starting at 7:30am Chicago Time
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Tag Archives: Bajrangi Bhaijaan
Saturday Morning WatchAlong: For EID! Bajrangi Bhaijaan!!!!
Eid Mubarak! I may or may not end up seeing a Salman movie in theaters to celebrate, but at least we can see a Salman movie NOT in theaters. Join me in watching Bajrangi Bhaijaan, the movie that is hands down his best in recent years.
Continue readingMonday Morning Questions Post: What Do You Want to Ask Me the Week Ludo Releases?
Happy Monday! And also, WOOT! Ludo!!! So excited to finally watch that thing. I am sure I will end up being a little disappointed, but at least I can stop being curious about it.
Continue readingHappy Father’s Day! 5 Films to Watch for Non-Traditional “Father” Roles
Happy Father’s Day!!!! There are so many traditional “father” movies, someone being all authoritative to their biological child. I want to think about all the movies where a male character fulfilled a loving mentoring role to a younger character.
Continue readingFood Day Continues! What Are Your Favorite Food Based Movies?
Food! Such a happy topic. And something we should all have opinions about, you hardly need to be an expert to know what you like and don’t like.
Continue readingMy Top Ten Ugly Crying Indian Films
I suddenly got one of my random Kannathil Muthamittal urges last night, and it made me think that I haven’t done a ten ugly crying films post yet. Of course, ugly crying is a deeply personal thing, so these are my ten, but they won’t necessarily be yours. Feel free to share your particular triggers in the comments! Oh, and they are almost all Hindi, but that’s just a coincidence, don’t feel limited by that.
Box Office/Hindi Film 101: Tiger Zinda Nahin, and the History of the China Box Office
Did I do that right? Anyway, what I mean to say in the title is that the Tiger box office is finally dropping off. And nothing else has shown up to pick up the slack, so it is yet another bleak and dreary week at the box office. Well, except for China where Indian films reign supreme.
Quick Tubelight Speculation Post
Thanks to Salman’s Being Salman app, my phone has been going “boop-boop” and alerting me every time he puts out a new Tubelight image. I keep waiting for a teaser or something more than just a poster, but that doesn’t seem like it is happening any time soon, so I will work with the poster.
Happy Birthday Salman Khan!!! You are 51, but still the Youngest of the Khans!!!
So, earlier today, I posted the first 20 reasons I love Salman Khan (not as much as I love Shahrukh, but still quite a bit). Here are another 20. (UPDATE: This is the post I put up in 2015, but it’s still true today! I’ve just cleaned it up a little)
Happy Children’s Day!!!
Children’s Day in India is November 14th, because that’s Nehru’s birthday, and Nehru loved children. Isn’t that sweet? And, just like World Animal Day and all the other sub-holidays, I am marking the occasion with a theme video post.
Shivaay Review (NO SPOILERS): Mind-Blowing Action, Mind-Numbing Dialogue, Not Enough Masala
I saw Shivaay tonight! Because it was the practical thing to do based on theater schedules, even though everyone else is seeing ADHM. I’m glad I saw it, not necessarily glad I saw it before ADHM.
Happy Girl Child Day!!!
Humpty Sharma Part 2: It’s Important Not So Much for What it Is, but for What it Says about DDLJ
I already did a detailed discussion yesterday comparing and contrasting the first halves of DDLJ and Humpty. And that got so long that I decided to break at intermission and talk about the second half today. This may be slightly too much thought to put in to Humpty (although it is a very good movie. With a terrible title), but it is interesting as an example of how DDLJ has forever changed and influenced the Indian romance film.
Happy Sultan/Salman Day! To Rev You Up, Some of my Favorite Salman Songs!
Happy Sultan Day! I have my tickets already for the 7 o’clock show, planning to get there half an hour early so I can get a good seat. But in the meantime, let’s have some Salman songs to get us in the holiday mood!
Singer Amjad Sabri Killed in Pakistan
I was doing my usual morning browse through the news sites for something worth talking about, and I ran across a bigger story than I expected. In the middle of photos from Priyanka’s Paris trip, and a follow-up story about the Udta Punjab piracy case, there was news that a Pakistani Qawwali singer who had worked in the Hindi film industry had been shot and killed while riding in a car in Karachi.
Bajrangi Bhaijaan’s in Hong Kong and Karan Johar’s in the Newspaper!
Quick news update today, not really new-news, mostly following up on developing stories. Oh, and an interesting article about Shahrukh.
Bajrangi Bhaijaan: Does it Hold Up on the 5th Viewing?
Yes it does! I watched it again last night with friends for my weekly movie night. I’d already seen it twice in theaters, once at another movie night, and once with my sister while we cooked Thanksgiving dinner. It’s an extremely re-watchable film, especially with a group. Which probably explains why it sold so many tickets.
2015 in quantities: What movies did I watch most?
Everyone in the world is doing “Best of 2015” lists right now. And I get that, it makes sense. But I am incapable of choosing “Bests”! I love all my little movies equally! But what I can do, is remember which movies I watched most in 2015, as it is a quantifiable rather than qualitative decision. So let me count down, 10 to 0.
Opportunity to vote for Kuch Kuch!
Or whatever, but let’s not kid ourselves, it should be Kuch Kuch. It should always be Kuch Kuch.
Anyway, rediff has a poll as part of their week long Salman birthday coverage where you can vote for his best movie. I don’t know if I would really call Kuch Kuch Hota Hai a Salman movie, but they included it, so now I must vote for it!
You can vote here. (Maine Pyar Kiya and Bajrangi Bhaijaan are currently battling for number 1)
Boring Industrial Inside Baseball stuff
Notice how I put the really exciting picture at the top so we would remember why this really matters?
So, currently, the highest Shahrukh movie on the all time gross list for India is number 5. NUMBER 5!!! The shame of it! Ahead of him is PK, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Bahubali, and Dhoom 3. The whole list is here on wikipedia.
Now, you know what all these films have in common? They are all from the past 5 years. And the film at the top is usually from within the past 2 years. In America, we are used to that, the top grossers are always fairly recent, but in India that wasn’t always the case. Mother India set a box office record in 1957 that stayed in place for 3 years until Mughal-E-Azam surpassed it in 1960. Mughal-E-Azam held the record until Sholay beat it in 1975. Sholay held the record until Hum Aapke Hain Koun came along in 1994. Hum Aapke Hain Koun was toppled quickly by DDLJ in 1995. Then DDLJ lost it’s crown to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in 1998. That record held until 2001 when it was beaten by both Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham and Gadar: Ek Prem Katha. Gadar held the record until 3 Idiots in 2009, at which point everyone breathed a sigh of release because they could start pretending Gadar never happened (very very problematic messages in that film). And then 3 Idiots held the record for a long time, by a big big margin, until it was finally beaten by Chennai Express in 2013. All Shahrukh fans cheered and celebrated and laughed in the faces of their Aamir-fan friends, or at least that’s what I did. Truly, it was a magical time!
(Shahrukh, take a bow! You earned it!)
And then about 2 months later, Dhoom 3 came out and Aamir was on top again. It stayed up there for a year, until PK came out, and then Aamir had the two top spots. PK is still up there, but Bajrangi Bhaijaan did really well this summer and came close to beating it. And Bahubali, of course, is a huge deal since it is the only non-Hindi film up there (although it was distributed by a Bombay based production house, Dharma, which is very important in terms of overseas awareness and national reach in India).
So, on the micro-level, this just means we all need to buy as many tickets for Dilwale as humanly possible in order to return Shahrukh to his rightful ranking. I don’t care if you are actually seeing Star Wars, you buy your ticket for Dilwale!!!
But on a macro-level, in terms of global trends, economics, and the future of the industry, what does all of this mean and where does it come from?
dontcallitbollywood 