Bollywood's hollywood paheli
I was reading an article in some newspaper that talked about paheli(riddle), the movie nominated by india for oscars. It was being screened for people who vote for oscars and paper said the judges started walking out during half time/intermission. One of the judges even quoted "We have hundreds of films to review & can't waste 3 hrs on a movie where there is no continuity and songs pop out of the blue". Made me wonder why in the first place do we even send movies for oscar award. Bollywood movies will win oscar award only if there is a special category just for them, not because they are bad... they are just different. So I repeat we should stop oscar craze, we have plenty of our own.
Well I am not a bollywood fanatic but after watching more bollywood movies in the past few weeks than my entire life, I have realized the difference between our movies & hollywood. It can be explained in terms of cooking. No kidding, consider cooking... whether its western food or indian or any other style, same ingredients like veggies or meat or sea food but cooking style is different. The best and worst part is ... take any dish from any country turn it into an indianized version by throwing in some "masala" at the end and thats how indian movies are made nowadays. There are always gems like tikka masala or pongal or bisibelebath but most of them are ready made garden variety masala stir fry.
Using my experience in past couple of weeks, I realized how to solve bollywood movies. They are just like GRE exams which has different parts like math skills, verbal & analytical and have no relation to each other but sum of it tells whether you are a better person or not. Same way indian movies have story, songs & masala characters with no relation to each other but together make a super duper hit bollywood movie. So you MPAA members pass the individual tests and then you will see the "whole" picture.
Anyways back to my original thought, do we really need to participate in oscars ? This is one riddle thats better not solved.
Well I am not a bollywood fanatic but after watching more bollywood movies in the past few weeks than my entire life, I have realized the difference between our movies & hollywood. It can be explained in terms of cooking. No kidding, consider cooking... whether its western food or indian or any other style, same ingredients like veggies or meat or sea food but cooking style is different. The best and worst part is ... take any dish from any country turn it into an indianized version by throwing in some "masala" at the end and thats how indian movies are made nowadays. There are always gems like tikka masala or pongal or bisibelebath but most of them are ready made garden variety masala stir fry.
Using my experience in past couple of weeks, I realized how to solve bollywood movies. They are just like GRE exams which has different parts like math skills, verbal & analytical and have no relation to each other but sum of it tells whether you are a better person or not. Same way indian movies have story, songs & masala characters with no relation to each other but together make a super duper hit bollywood movie. So you MPAA members pass the individual tests and then you will see the "whole" picture.
Anyways back to my original thought, do we really need to participate in oscars ? This is one riddle thats better not solved.
posted by anmolnm at 2:47 AM
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