Bollywood Recs Needed

[brigdh]

One of the classes I'm taking, Visual Cultures of South Asia, has assigned people to various topics. I got Hindi Cinema. Now, that wouldn't be so bad- after all, basically all I have to do is read the things the professor has already picked out- but there are multiple people in the class who specialize in studying this. Including the professor herself (why none of them signed up to do this topic, I have no idea, they were too busy stealing my own topic, ahkdsjdkfgldflgf).

So, I feel like I should maybe, you know, actually watch a few movies so I have some vague idea of what I'm doing. The only things I've seen are Bride & Prejudice and Slumdog Millionaire- neither of which are really Bollywood movies, I know- and Qurbani. Please recommend two or three Bollywood movies to me! I'm looking for well-known ones, classics, or ones that could give a vague idea of the spread and typical kinds of movies.

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

In my expert position of having just seen my first Bollywood film, I can recommend that film: Omkara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omkara_%28film%29), an adaptation of Othello. I loved it and am going to check out everything by director Vishal Bhardwaj (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishal_Bhardwaj).

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee. Thanks! That looks really interesting.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Classic Bollywood: Sholay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholay), which might be, like, the worst movie of all time. Very typical of Bollywood in the 70s. Spawned a whole genre called the "Curry Western".

Then more recently, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagaan) is actually quite a beautiful film.

Also, for singing and comedy in the 1950s and 1960s, there's movies by Kishore Kumar (http://www.dishant.com/cast/Kishore-Kumar.html) who brought yodeling to Bollywood.

BTW we have an insane collection of old S. Asian films. Most are Bengali, but we have some Hindi ones too. Let me know if you need.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oooo, thank you so much.

I think I'm pretty good with finding copies (Netflix has a not bad selection. Except for Lagaan, which I have heard tons about, but for some reason they do not have. Why, Netflix?), but if there's anything I can't get a hold of, I will be sure to ask you.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Check out shewhohashope -- she's a big fan and has lots of recs.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That looks like a great link.

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

I kind of want to rec Dil Se (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164538/) just because they did the requisite Sudden Dance Sequence on top of a moving train (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOOlgbfFy3k). (Though it actually might be a good one to check out in terms of the contrast between Indian/overseas response--IIRC it flopped terribly in India but did amazingly well in the UK.)

And, yes, seconding the rec for checking shewhohashope's journal--she's got her Hindi cinema reviews conveniently tagged (http://shewhohashope.livejournal.com/tag/films:hindi).

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! I've watched that dance clip, though I haven't seen the rest of the movie. It is completely impressive (plus, awesome song).

And oh, thanks for the link!