Top ten movies on Channel 4 .
Mo
broadcast top ten Hindi movies with possible songs subtitled
in Britain -starting with Khalnayak on Tuesday 1 June .
There is a very funny article describing Bollywood movies in
that paper . Americans will need to have dual VHS -Pal and
Ntsc to see these movies ..
Mo
enthralled as the invincible hero somersaulted his way
through innumerable plots, vanquishing the villains to
secure life-long domestic bliss with his doe-eyed, buxom
Bollywood babe.
While fulfilling maternal and mother nation fantasies, he
would valiantly uphold the prevailing dharmic order with one
oiled bicep, perfectly coiffured hair and trend-setting
outfits, creases intact. Now, the Mega Star actor plays the
hero, anti-hero, comic and lover as each fragments into the
other.
excerpt guardian.co.uk
Idol moments
Bollywood films are worshipped in India and are now
appearing in the UK top 10. Satinder K Chohan on the allure
of Hindi cinema
Friday May 28, 1999
Long before my initiation into the rituals of the big screen
Hollywood-style, I lost my "blockbuster" virginity to
Bollywood in a British auditorium at an impressionably young
age. From then on, Sundays habitually became a cultural
extravaganza which revolved around twin linchpins in an
Indian wheel of existence.
While Sunday mornings commanded weekly three- hour
purgations at the local temple, Sunday afternoons erupted
into a weekly three hour glitz-kitsch Bombay masala mix of
family and nation hyper melodrama, thwarted romance,
"dishum-dishum" violence, and lurid song and dance
spectaculars at one of three local Asian cinemas in
Southall, west London.
For millions of Asians both at home and abroad, Bollywood is
religion. Its screen stars are demigods, its narratives
morality tales, its "Mega Star Live" concerts miraculous
happenings, its websites cyber-shrines and its movie
magazines gossip bibles spreading the highly libellous
latest word on its celluloid stars.
Bombay's film industry is the most prolific in the world,
producing over 1,000 films annually. They're seen in Russia,
China, Africa and the Middle East. Even in Britain, where
the industry enjoys its largest overseas audience, the video
and satellite television-domination of the 80s and early 90s
are being eclipsed by the revivalist power of big-screen
Bollywood in Asian cinemas and multiplexes. Last year's Dil
Se and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai broke box-office records to become
the first Bollywood movie to crash unsubtitled into the UK
cinema top 10.
As India's popular cinema shimmies its way into the 21st
century, Channel 4 presents Hindi Screen Icons, a film
season celebrating 10 of the greatest 20th-century Bollywood
icons as voted for by Channel 4 viewers and Bollywood film
fans. Introduced by journalist Thomas Abraham from historic
Bombay film locations including Mehboob Studios and the
aptly-named Fantasyland, 10 classic Hindi films including
Devdas, Amar Akhbar Anthony and Khalnayak offer a
representative selection of Indian popular cinema from the
50s Golden Age through to the Bollywood manufactured glam of
the 90s.
With significant absentees including Mother India's Nargis,
a 90s-dominated list otherwise weighs heavily towards its
male icons, emphasising both commercial cinema's youthful
currency and its gender bias. Early romantic icons like
auteur-actor Raj Kapoor, tragic hero Dilip Kumar and the
Marilyn Monroesque "Venus of the Indian Screen" Madhubala
(who died aged 35) are mediated by the 1970s "angry young
man" Amitabh Bachan, and counterpointed by the acute
physicality of today's singing 'n' dancing Sridevis, Madhuri
Dixits, Govindas and the three Khans that's Shah Rukh, Aamir
and Salman, between them liable to induce enough orgasmic
highs among devoted fans to compensate for decades of
on-screen sexual repression.
The celebrated few are icons who have inspired
identification with and transcended screen roles, entering
into the collective psyche to become an active part of
popular culture and people's lives. According to Avtar
Panesar of Yashraj Films: "The Asian cinema tends to be very
interested in an artist as a person and it's very important
for people to identify with that person. Take Amitabh Bachan
for example. In an age of rebelliousness, when he came
onscreen and beat up 20 people, he could convey anger
without saying anything and people could relate to that. It
enabled him to move on to a comedy role in Amar Akhbar
Anthony."
When Bachan suffered a near-fatal stunt accident on the set
of Coolie in 1982, thousands held vigil outside his Bombay
hospital and millions more prayed as national news bulletins
announced regular updates on his recovery.
From immediate post-independent nationalistic, socially
driven films to the increasingly "sexual" and Ramboesque
violent films of the politically turbulent 70s and 80s,
cinema has often been regarded as a vicarious reworking of
India's post-colonial ills through accompanying narratives
of fantasy and escapism. Munni Kabir, the co-ordinator of
the Hindi Screen Icons season, explains: "If you are just
trudging along with your life, then Hindi films seem to be
over the top but when you are in high-pitched situations or
traumas, all those dialogues ring true.
A lot of people in India live on the edge. So I think cinema
appeals because it poses grand questions about life, good
and bad or how to maintain morality or a sense of honour and
values when you're faced with those very difficult
situations or temptations. Everybody knows it's
entertainment and not reality it doesn't pretend to be and
never has."
Bollywood is often derided as Hollywood's younger and less
accomplished third-world sister. Slightly younger yes, but
Bollywood is the bigger, bolder and perhaps more sorely
misunderstood of the cinematic siblings. Consistently
denigrated in the west for formulaic film-making in which
the stars are the weak glue soldering together the cardboard
plots, sets and performances, common criticisms include
Bollywood films' length, convoluted storylines, affected
performances and technical showiness. Some critics fail to
perceive the kitsch artistry of a culturally-specific genre
which has cultivated a unique shorthand between form and
viewers.
As a commercial cinema however, Bollywood must delicately
dance the tightrope of tradition and modernity. Coteries of
whistling young men used to watch enthralled as the
invincible hero somersaulted his way through innumerable
plots, vanquishing the villains to secure life-long domestic
bliss with his doe-eyed, buxom Bollywood babe.
While fulfilling maternal and mother nation fantasies, he
would valiantly uphold the prevailing dharmic order with one
oiled bicep, perfectly coiffured hair and trend-setting
outfits, creases intact. Now, the Mega Star actor plays the
hero, anti-hero, comic and lover as each fragments into the
other. Kabir cites the access to and impact of satellite TV
in India: "Television has partly meant that these
characterisations have to be a bit closer to reality."
Greater "realism" is complemented by the growing industry
involvement of middle-class women and the centrality of Mega
Star actresses onscreen. In the machismo-saturated 70s
industry, potential Madhubala and Nargis successors were
cast into mainstream oblivion. Sridevi changed all that in
the 80s, re-establishing bangled heroine-clout at the
box-office to become the top female star. In the 90s,
Madhuri Dixit embodied traditional and modern womanhood more
confidently, her spirited femininity best exemplified in the
sensational song and dance sequence in Khalnayak.
Vicarious living doesn't get much more pulsating than this.
Choli Ke Peeche (What's Behind Your Blouse?) incurred the
wrath of the authorities and was banned from national radio
and TV for its sexually suggestive lyrical content. It
nevertheless immortalised Dixit in Indian film mythology.
Besides side-stepping sexual censorship through dance,
dialogue or emotive nature, Bollywood is beginning to
assimilate the satellite and MTV influence as it did the
Hollywood musical, shaking and stirring them. Panesar
believes the younger, middle-class film-makers are "a little
more in touch with their audiences. Earlier, films were made
for an Indian market, whereas now it's for Asians living
abroad." Kabir agrees. Blockbusters like Dil Te Pagal Hai
and Hum Apke Hain Koun demonstrate that "you can have the
modern and the tradition as well."
Indeed, the current Bollywood British resurgence follows
Bollywood's own burgeoning insurgence in British Asian
popular culture from clubland music to fashion and film,
among people weaned on Bollywood cinema and then regular
dairy deliveries of Bollywood videos, mango juice and milk.
A nocturnal diversion from that other Indian obsession,
cricket, the Hindi Screen Icons season seems like Bollywood
summer nights will not only be a past revisited, but a past,
history and culture positively
starting June 1
Mo
1 Tuesday night /Wed am on channel 4 - and I have heard the
songs are subtitiled as well .
If I can get hold of a video copy I will put the song
translation on Rmim ..
Richard Turner
<10033...@compuserve.com> writes
I'll try to get a friend or relative to tape it for me (don't have TV).
>
Cheers,
--
Richard Turner, in Winchester, UK.
pul...@my-deja.com
> in Britain -starting with Khalnayak masterbating in the shower on
Tuesday 1 June .
> There is a very slutty article describing Bollywood porn movies
in
> that paper . Americans will need to have dual VHS -Pal and
> Ntsc to see these movies ..
>
>
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