Does this happen every year? Amitabh and Dussehra and the Girl Child all happening on the same day? Because it is EXHAUSTING!!! At least this should be a fun post, with an excuse for cute videos.
Happy Girl Child Day!!!
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Tag Archives: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai
Happy Gandhi Jayanti!!!
Not too many songs for this occasion, peaceful non-violence isn’t necessarily the most cinematic thing to watch, but I’ll see what I can do! (Bhagat Singh’s birthday was a lot easier)
Happy Friendship Day!
Is it still Friendship Day in India? Am I getting in just under the wire or did I miss it? Oh well, either way I want to do a quick post on it with a few of my favorite songs about friendship.
Sultan and Ghajini: Do They Share a Structure?
Okay, there is no connection between Sultan and Ghajini except in my mind. But it suddenly hit me that the thing I like best about Ghajini might be similar to what Sultan will do.
Happy Mother’s Day! Some Songs to Help You Celebrate!
Happy Mother’s Day! An Indian filmi holiday if there ever was one! Except not, because why have a special holiday if everyday is Mother’s Day? I’ll be putting up a few more posts on the same theme today, but to start off, have some songs!
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)
SRKajol: A historical review
So, with this new movie, there’s going to be a lot of comparisons with past SRKajol films and judgments and greatest hits lists and so on. So I thought, why not join the party! Before I’ve even see Dilwale, so my judgement is not yet sullied. And then I realized, picking a #1 all time best SRKajol film is easy, but the 5 (6, now) after that are hard.
#1, of course, is DDLJ. I say that not just because it is my favorite movie of all time, but because, objectively speaking, it is the highest quality film they have been in together, and the most beloved. The script deals with issues ranging from structural feminism to first versus second generation immigrants to marriage as a personal or societal undertaking. Plus, it has Shahrukh’s all time greatest acting moment:
If you don’t remember all the other awesome bits of the film, YRF conveniently put together this remix for the 20 year anniversary:
(I think I like the remix better than the original, don’t hate me!)
But what comes after DDLJ?
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 