Category: Movies
Amitabh Bachchan, the man, the myth
I was poking thru a Hindi movie store in Toronto and have come to the conclusion that Amitabh Bachchan has been in every single Bollywood movie made in the last 30 years.
Yes, every single one.
Think about what this means: Bollywood cranks out roughly 800 movies per year – at this rate, Amitabh doesn’t so much film specific movies as he must have multiple cameras on him all the time filming him in a Truman Show/Big Brother-esque fashion.
This brings me to my second point. You ready for this? This is a dirty little secret that Bollywood doesn’t want you to find out. I think that… now listen closely… <whisper>he’s just not that good an actor</whisper>.
I know that this statement may get me killed in certain parts of the world and there are certain people who will never speak to me again, but it must be said. He has no subtlety in his actions, in fact I would say that he is the king of over-acting. Anytime you want to see a ridiculous over-the-top portrayal of anything… Amitabh Bachchan is your man. Look, he has a very sexy voice and is a pretty studly guy, I just wouldn’t cast him in a movie where that whole “realism” thing was demanded.
My own personal hell
I have recently been subjected to my own personal hell… an entire week where the only activity was to watch Bollywood movies.
What we saw:
- Don [then said in low echoing voice] Don Don Don Don
As complicated as the first Mission Impossible but it’s 3 hrs long so there is soooo much more time to pack in confusing details and twists. Actually the final twist was pretty cool and made the movie almost worth watching. Low expectations here helped.
- Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (Don’t Say Goodbye)
This movie was over 3 hours long. This is equivalent to over 6 half hour TV episodes and if you include commercials it is more like 8 episodes. This *one* movie had enough romantic melodrama as a *full season* of TV.
- Umrao Jaan, or as I like to call it Ashwaria’s Wretched Miserable Miserable Life
Sort of a sad, Memoirs of a Geisha. Actually, it’s very reminiscent in tone to The Passion except with a *more* wretched ending.
- Chini Cam (Amitabh’s Cook Movie)
Don’t get me started on Amitabh Bachchan, more later.
- Jurm (Wife killing movie)
I missed the first 2 hours of this, luckily for me there was like another 5 hours left. This movie hit every single Hindi movie stereotype imaginable… campy, bad acting, overacting, drawn out, long, cheesy dialog, ridiculous action, too much makeup, need to spontaneously break out into song…
Observations from recent travels
It addition to it just being a funny sounding word, I think CHUM is a bad name for a radio station because (for me) it first invokes an image of a bucket of bloody meat…
This sign more reminds me of something that you would see on the marina of Amity Island where Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss would shove off to go kick some great white ass than in downtown Toronto.
The only saving grace of the movie Sahara, was that it killed two hours of a cross-country flight without making me want to kill myself… barely.
In a performance only slightly less gut-wrenching than Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist in The World Is Not Enough, Penelope Cruz made me want positively hurl as a doctor for the World Health Organization.
And it only went downhill from there.
The utterly non-sensical plot, uninspired vehicle chases and gut-wrenching dialog made me truly wonder how brain-dead you have to be before they will let you run a movie studio.
Is it me, or does it look like the New York Department of Parks and Recreation was acquired by Air Canada?
…or is it the other way around…?
Dubya’s energy plan… or lack thereof
From today’s news – US to reject germ-warfare pact. It seems to me that dubya needs to spend less time telling the world to kiss his ass and more time coming up with an energy plan that at least tries to address the vicious cycle of fossil fuel use and global warming.
On a related note, do you realize that they already have made a movie out of dubya’s energy plan? It is called The Naked Gun 2½. The bad guys in the movie and dubya seem identical ideas when it comes to energy use. At least the good guys in the movie prevailed…
Salim's World 