Today was already a crazy day at work, and then the fire alarm went off and made it crazier. So there is no way I will be able to write a substantive post today (especially since I still have to write tomorrow’s K3G review) and instead I am just going to repost some old Halloween content. Halloween! It’s a thing! Continue reading
On Friday I did a post on random Madhuri photos so we could pick our favorites. I purposefully avoided her iconic looks, thinking that wouldn’t be fair. But Asmita called me out on it, so now a bonus post! Which look is most iconic?
Happy Madhuri’s birthday week (again)! I tried to come up with something clever and original, and all I can come up with is a bunch of photos of Madhuri, which isn’t clever or original at all. Oh well, she was very pretty.
The actual awards list went up earlier, but we all know that doesn’t matter nearly as much as what people wore! Not even joking, in terms of people tuning in for the show, it’s all about who showed up and how big they went. And in terms of how seriously people are taking the awards, and their careers in Hindi film, it is also about how big they went (remember in 2016 Priyanka didn’t even come?)
Also, all women in pink! Because I want to see if I can make joyomama’s head explode in the comments (for those who don’t know, regular commentator joyomama is a fashion historian who writes about gender color preference). Oh, and also because I’ve gotten a couple of people pushing back against the standard TGIF. So no objectification and no men and no SRK in this one!
There was a comment on last week’s post, by Asmita I think, about liking it when men are surrounded by strong women. Which sent me down this whole rabbit hole in a direction I don’t think she anticipated, and I have come out the other side with a simple plot in mind that can be applied to any hero. I am excited!
Well, we all had good fun on my post this morning coming up with alternative plot-necessary reasons for Shahrukh to be sexy at 11 for an entire film. The clear winner was a James bond themed plot with someone of equal sexiness like Madhuri. And then the runner up that was my favorite, Shahrukh as James Bond type who falls for the glasses wearing Moneypenny type.
Last night, Shahrukh basically acted as India’s foreign finance minister. And it looked a lot more fun than when the royals were here and he acted as India’s British ambassador.
Priety’s married! For real now, because we have pictures. Including photos of her husband “Gene Goodenough” (still sounds like the name of a cartoon character).
Yay, it’s Madhuri’s birthday! At least, in India. If you are in America, you still have 6 hours to prepare. I already posted the first 25 reasons I love her, now here are 24 more.
It’s Madhuri’s birthday today! Well, today in India. But I want to start celebrating as soon as possible, so I am putting up my birthday posts today. One reason for every year she was alive.
Thanks to Amitabh’s twitter, I just learned that 4/29/2016 is International Dance Day. I had a half moment of thinking someone was punking him, but a bit of googling confirmed that it is actually a thing! Created by the International Dance Council, a UNESCO partner group. Which means it is enough of a thing that I can celebrate by posting the best, or at least my favorite, dances! Well, some of them. Good news is, this is apparently an annual thing, so I can come up with a whole different list next year! Continue reading
Finally, the only thing I really care about, the Royals went to the Asian Trust charity party and got to meet famous people! So many pictures! (I’ll be posting more as they come up)
According to rediff, which only reports things when they move from “hot rumors” to “everyone knows about it,” Shahid’s brother and Amrita Singh’s daughter are making their debut opposite each other. Which adds up to some very disturbing connections.
FilmFare was finally broadcast! Which means it is finally available on certain not-necessarily-legal locations on the internet! At least until all the copyright holders find it and descend. But just in case you miss the magical illegal window, here are the big things I noticed:
I already covered who actually won the awards, but that isn’t the biggest question of the night. No, the biggest question is always, Who Performed?
Again, thanks to awesome Times of India and their minute by minute coverage, I can answer that!
According to twitter, house full through out India, UAE, and not Egypt because they have to wait until the 30th (poor Egypt). Also, Madhuri wished him luck and Karan congratulated him. This picture SRK posted to twitter himself kind of sums it up:
So what I’m saying is, poor Bajirao.
So, I am a huge huge sucker for a good fanvid, have been for years. Going all the way back to when I was in college and I would take a break from studying to browse around and try to dig up a new SRKajol vid.
After over a decade of loving these things, I think I have figured out 3 categories of fanvids, specific to Indian fandom.
First, there is fanvid that expands on the themes of an existing artwork, for instance this fabulous one from Alina Yuvvraaj:
Or these, from lalilly:
Then there are the fanvids that expand on the particular awesomeness of a particular star. Like this, my all time favorite from Zizi K:
Or this one from Alina Yuvvraaj again:
So, both of those kinds of videos, based on a particular movie or a particular star, you can find in any fandom. Where I think it starts to get unique, is in the next two categories.
First, there are the videos based on a particular mood. Since Indian film follows the Rasa theory, where the goal is to evoke a particular mood at a particular moment, rather than a cohesive mood through out one narrative, a wide variety of films might have particular scenes that flow seamlessly between the borders of their individual movies.
Like this, the moment when you are in love without realizing it yet and happy (from half a dozen different movies with the same moment). By Zizi K again:
Or this, which evokes the specific mood of “young and drunk at a club”, by MRSEMRAAN:
Or this, which has the very specific-to-Indian-film emotion described right there in the title. Women who are sad, and the men who love them from MRSEMRAAN again:
And then finally, there is my favorite category, the totally made up full narratives that go across multiple films and, occasionally, all the way into real life footage. This is really unique to Indian film, because Indian film is uniquely cohesive film to film. The same jodis play the same characters going through the same narrative beats over the over again. And even into real life, in interviews and publicity tours, they interact the same way. And who knows, maybe it is even related to the reincarnation in Hinduism! According to some versions, even Ram and Sita were reborn multiple times and lived out their story over and over.
Anyway, one of my favorites, which seamlessly moves between real life and film. Almost convinces me that Kajol really is eating her heart out, from MissCinemaObsessive:
and then I watch this from lalilly and feel better:
(see, they’re just friends after all!)
Or this one, where she actually does get him, even though he is himself and she is village-Kajol, from Zizi K:
Or this, where it’s not just SRKajol, but SRKajol vs Kajol/Salman and Kajol/Saif, from LUANSU (LUANSU was also the first fanvid maker I found, back in college):
It’s not just SRKajol, I literally screamed with delight when I found this one, hitting up the scandals old school! And using all film footage to tell a real life story, very impressive! From TheMelicrazyy:
And this leads into the bonus subcategory, fake storylines pulling together multiple films, but with stars who never actually acted together! Because actors and their characters are so consistent across films, and all films are so consistant with the kind of scenes they include, you can actually craft a narrative revolving around people who have never been onscreen together (my favorite of these is the Abhishek/Kajol/Rani “Teardrops on My Guitar” that was briefly posted like 6 years ago by Nouf89, and then pulled down. My white whale! If someone out there has it, please send me a copy!). But these are nice too. From rmskch:
(this is so impressive! Remember they have only been onscreen together for less than ten seconds in her friendly appearance in KANK)
And I had never even considered these options, from 3bit89:
(none of these three has ever costarred with each other in anything!)
So, did I do this right? Are there the same number of categories as promised in the post-title? I think so:
dontcallitbollywood 