Bollywood Question

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HarryGoldfarb
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Re: Bollywood Question

Post by HarryGoldfarb »

I'm far from being an expert on the matter but I must say Lagaan makes it to my personal all time best 100 films... And Devdas is a very entertaining film too, with great visuals. The Lagaan soundtrack is marvelous (the DVD I own, thankfully includes subtitles). Those are must see anytime. And considering some reviews I'll try to catch sooner than later Taare Zameen Par.
"If you place an object in a museum, does that make this object a piece of art?" - The Square (2017)
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Johnny Guitar
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Re: Bollywood Question

Post by Johnny Guitar »

OG, I'll give my tentative answers to a couple of these questions -

I'm not sure why some Indian actors have gone by only one name, but I would say that it's only "some." Plenty had both names. I wonder if it might have to do with spreading celebrity across a large country with very many different languages and ethnicities ... but that's just a guess.

As for musical numbers replacing sex scenes - I'm not so sure. Indian popular cinema has, for a very long time, used the musical format (six songs, three dances - "masala" [mixture]) as its conventional structure, so it's not as if there were sex scenes in 1920s cinema that musical numbers replaced. Maybe in 1990s productions, perhaps, there would be a musical number where a Hollywood film would have shown a sex scene - but this would have more to do with cultural mores and censorship as well as a long-standing musical tradition to use music, dance, etc., to suggest and evoke what can't be explicitly shown. As was often the case with classic Hollywood. I don't know anything about Indian filmmakers in general deciding to replace sex with music, but perhaps someone with better knowledge than myself can come up with examples.

Some recommendations for just starting out on popular Indian film - Sholay (an incredibly entertaining 'curry western'), Kaagaz Ke Phool, Barsaat, in fact the films of Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor in general ... as for a more recent one, the Tamil filmmaker Mani Ratnam is sometimes called something like the "Indian Spielberg." I haven't seen much but I very much love the film Roja - you can see the wonderful opening song here.
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OscarGuy
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Bollywood Question

Post by OscarGuy »

It's strange when I realize that outside of Slumdog Millionaire, which wasn't really a Bollywood film, that Gumnaam is now my first actual Bollywood production. So, a question arises from said viewing:

Was there a reason Indian actors went only by one name? Nanda. Helen. Manoj.

And, I think I read briefly somewhere that musical numbers were meant to replace sex scenes in films. Is there any veracity to this?

The film wasn't terribly good and part of it stemmed from being pulled out of the film frequently by a total of eight songs. And while I did not like the musical number aspect of the film, most of the music was fun and catchy even if it didn't seem to fit in the story (there were no subtitles on the songs, so I have no clue if they even pertained to the action or not).
Wesley Lovell
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