Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Bollywood
One of Spring's favorite channels is the International Channel and tonight she was watching a show about Bollywood, the Indian (as in Indian sub-continent and not Native Americans) version of Hollywood. The show was highlighting remakes of Hollywood films and would show clips from the films, which were, more or less, the length of a music video and as far as I could tell, more or less were music videos.
The announcer would say something like, “And this film, [some title in Hindi or Tamil or some other Indian dialect] was based upon the American film, What Lies Beneath” and then they would show this five or six minute clip of a huge dance and song number, with scores of people dancing and a couple (and it was always a couple) doing the vocals. Yes, a film, based upon “What Lies Beneath” (a horror film) with a huge song-n-dance routine.
And there was the film based upon Fatal Attraction with a five or six minute clip of—
—a huge song-and-dance number with scores of people. And another film, based upon While You Were Sleeping with again, a five or six minute long clip of scores of people in a song-and-dance routine. And yet another film based upon The Whole Nine Yards with, can you guess?
Yup, a five to six minute clip of scores of people in a song-and-dance routine, but not just any song-and-dance routine. Nope. This was Riverdancing!
“There seems to be a trend,” I said to Spring.
“Every Indian film I've seen has musical numbers,” she said.
“Are there points within those movies where they speak?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Really? They spontaneously break out into talking?”
She laughed. “Yes, between the musical numbers and action sequences, they have been known to break out into talking. Not much mind you, but some.”
.The Bollywood remake of My Best Friend's Wedding seemed more suited to this style of film making than “What Lies Beneath” or “Fatal Attaction.” And the remake of Body Heat, named (and like Dave Barry says, “I am not making this up”) Jism (ahem) was quite hot, and quite unusual with only two people in the five to six minute musical clip.
![[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2023/1023.t.jpg "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades")