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musiclover

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:lol: :lol: most people in here wouldn't have....i mean, it's not so big in the West.

 

I just read an interesting piece on Bollywood, so i thot of this thread! :idea2:

 

 

actually a friend of mine is married to a Mexican woman and she watches Bollywood movies almost exclusively! :D

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OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Hurray for Bollywood

By PANKAJ MISHRA

 

Published: February 28, 2004

 

OMBAY — Last week this city's film industry, called Bollywood, held its own version of the Oscars. There were well-rehearsed jokes and solemn speeches, and somewhat more spontaneous hugs and tears. Soon after it ended, most of the prize winners left for Dubai to attend yet another awards ceremony, their fourth in less than a month. Bollywood tends to congratulate itself even more frequently and fulsomely than Hollywood. And, perhaps, it has good reasons for doing so: India makes around 800 films each year, more than any country in the world. Bollywood produces up to 200 films in Hindi and Urdu alone.

 

Little of what comes out of this $1.3 billion-a-year industry is of much quality, and few films make a profit. Yet India, where approximately 12 million people go to the movies every day, remains culturally a world unto itself, immune to the films emerging from Hollywood, which have captured only 6 percent of the largest domestic movie market in the world.

 

Moreover, Bollywood's films reach up to 3.6 billion people around the world — a billion more than the audience for Hollywood. Egyptians, South Africans and Fijians joined Indians in electing Amitabh Bachchan — a name unknown to most people in Europe and America — as the "actor of the millennium" in a BBC online poll.

 

Mr. Bachchan gained his reputation by repeatedly playing the role of the poor, resentful young man who makes it in the big city — often through crime and violence. But Bollywood films do more than sell garish dreams of a better life to the poor. To people struggling for emotional and material security within their increasingly modern and fragmented societies, they offer the consolations of tradition, especially of family values. Mr. Bachchan's angry young man usually dies in the arms of his mother or father, having realized the folly of his ways.

 

In this sense, an absurdly melodramatic extravaganza from Bollywood may speak more directly to a third-world audience than even the most politically sensitive Hollywood film. Bollywood films are popular even in countries like Egypt and Indonesia that have strong cultures that resist the American barrage. It is not uncommon for Iraqis and Afghans to greet the Indian aid workers and technical consultants helping rebuild their nations with snatches of half-remembered Hindi songs and names of Bollywood stars from the 1970's.

 

And now, after decades of recycling the same melodramatic plots and extravagant dance numbers, Bollywood is having a youth movement. A new generation of filmmakers is appealing not just to the traditional lower-middle class and poor audience. It is also reaching members of the educated urban elite who had looked down on Bollywood films, and also to the millions of Indians living in Britain and America.

 

The highest-profile effort is "Kal Ho Na Ho" ("Tomorrow May Never Come") by Karan Johar. The movie is set entirely in New York, yet it doesn't stray far from Bollywood's usual version of the romantic triangle. It does bring a new slickness to Bollywood dreams of affluence and style — while singing, the characters combine Hindi lyrics with the rhythms of disco, rap and gospel — but it simultaneously reaffirms family through a gregarious cast of brothers, sisters, parents, grandmothers and grandfathers. Mr. Johar's films, along with more realistic and sober movies by young directors like Ram Gopal Varma, are becoming the echo chamber of middle-class India as it tries to bend — without breaking — its old, austere culture of underdevelopment.

 

Some Bollywood directors see a great opportunity to score over Hollywood. Certainly, the global village seems to need a more complex moral code than that offered by Rambo and the Terminator, and Bollywood, even with all its apparently absurd sentimentality, may be better placed to provide it than the cynically, if slickly, retailed violence of Hollywood.

 

 

Pankaj Mishra is the author of "The Romantics," a novel.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/opinion/28MISH.html

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THERE WAS THIS REALY FAMOUS MOVIE HERE FROM BOLLYWOOD, WELL WE CALL THEM INDIAN MOVIES REALLY, OR JUST MOVIES, OR NO WE JUST CALL THEM BY THEIR NAMES OR AUTHORS, BUT ANYWAY, THIS MOVIE WAS REALLY FAMOUS AND THEY HAD PINK DRESSES, BUT NOT THE STUPID, USUALL PINK, IT WAS A BRIGHT PINK AND ALSO ORANGES DRESSES AND ...... I THOUGHT IT WAS LOVELY :D PLUS I GOT A DRESS JUST LIKE THAT ONE :D

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oh...i haven't seen any new indian movies for a while. but if you're interested, just watch any and find out if you like it :-)

 

'Lagaan' was quite famous in the last few years...it got nominated for Oscars, even, as foreign language movie...but it didn't win it.

 

'Dil Chahta Hey' is also very good!

 

just check out some bollywood web sites! :D

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oh...i haven't seen any new indian movies for a while. but if you're interested, just watch any and find out if you like it :-)

 

'Lagaan' was quite famous in the last few years...it got nominated for Oscars, even, as foreign language movie...but it didn't win it.

 

'Dil Chahta Hey' is also very good!

 

just check out some bollywood web sites! :D

 

:) Thanks!

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i like the dancing.. i took some lessons in bollywood style dancing..recently..

it's fun!

i've seen some parts of films but never completely

\

 

 

hi Athy! :-) so nice to see you! *hugs*

 

they offer such dance classes in Germany? :stunned: :stunned: wow

 

that's....cool!

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Do you know that Bollywood is the biggest cinema industry in the world? Whoa!!

 

I saw part of a Bollywood film at class and it was so funny!! They were talking and, suddenly, they started to dance and sing!! Hahahaha, nice!!

:D

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