Just a hello — and a piece of historical fiction I'm working on

Hello, all! Sorry there's not much exciting going on over here. The only Bollywood I've watched since Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu was re-watching Wake Up Sid (with my cousin, who enjoyed it!) and Dil Bole Hadippa. I really need to watch something soon... I had a dream about Bollywood last night (starring Rani Mukherjee and Big B) that seemed to be telling me I need to watch something.


I also recently read Devdas, so I may post about that in the near future.


In other news, I suppose I haven't been blogging as much lately because I've been working on writing again. If you didn't already know, yours truly is both a (working) journalist and a (aspiring) novelist. I'm currently working on a piece of historical fiction about Anglo-Indians (Britons in India) in 1900 colonial Bombay. I describe it as: "In 1900, Adelaide Marshall has a mission: travel to India and drag home her brother James, who has lived there for five years and become engaged to an Indian woman despite family disapproval. But there, Adelaide is forced to confront that India is both foreign and fascinating, its people confusing and captivating, and that breaking her brother’s engagement is not as simple as she expects."


If you would like to read the story (it's about 18,000 words or 25 document pages and counting), you can find the story HERE. Any feedback, here or on the document itself (see the comments function), would be greatly appreciated!

Indian Film Fest Tampa Bay 2012 thoughts

So, my experience at the film festival was very mixed. I didn’t make any new friends (sad face), I decided to be gori (no Hindi, no salwar), I liked the films I expected not to and I didn’t like (at points hated) the films I expected to like.

Here’s what I thought of the films, briefly:

Paulwaat (The Pathway) - Marathi (with Hindi; see below). This film was OK in snatches, but it was really long and unnecessarily drawn out. It was also kind of all over the place and barely cohesive at moments. It was like the narrative flow (a singer searching for success in Mumbai, which gets old after about his fourth up-and-down success-then-disappointment) kept getting interrupted for platitudes over and over again. There were some unresolved issues at the end (such as the love story) as well as poor explanation of some relationships in the film (such as who the love interest was/where she came from!) that drove me crazy. The film dipped into Hindi and Urdu a lot, especially with particular characters, which I found interesting (and refreshing). (Side note: as someone struggling to pick up Hindi as a third language, I have a very deep respect for the many Indians who speak and understand three or more languages.)

Patang (The Kite) - Gujarati (?). Well, first off, let me say I’m now confused about the language of this film because it was billed as Gujarati and it’s set in Ahmedabad, but I could understand most of the film, so unless Gujarati and Hindi have a large overlap (I know zip about Gujarati) or it’s a Hindi-Gujarati blend, the film is actually in Hindi. Anyway, this film is about a family during the kite festival Uttarayan. The description bored me, and it doesn’t do the film justice. The film is really about the complex relationships in one family — middle-aged businessman Jayesh, who has moved from Ahmedabad to Delhi; his teenage daughter Priya; his aging mother; his older brother’s widow Sudha (Seema Biswas, the only actor I recognized); and his nephew Chakku — who come together, butting heads and reconnecting, during a visit for the festival. Chakku hates Jayesh and blames him for his father’s drinking death. Jayesh buys his mother and sister-in-law a condo in the newer city to get them out of the slums, but they refuse. Delhite Priya sneaks away and falls in love with local storeowner’s son Bobby. All of this is contained in the festivities of the kite festival, which are portrayed in detail and with great care and love. The film’s camerawork is very loose and artistic, something that drove Papaya (who was with me) crazy, but I liked it. So, yes, Patang is a winner in my book.

Love, Lies and Seeta - English. This is the film that I had such high hopes for as it was made by an NRI in New York. But it turned out...practically incoherent. It was filmed in the space of 25 days. And it shows. The story is about three guy friends and roommates who all think they’re in love with Seeta, an Indian-American girl adopted by white parents whom all three men met at a different point in childhood. But the problem is Seeta doesn’t believe in love. So she agrees to date all three men — who increasingly fight over her — at the same time, much to the chagrin of her two closest female friends, who are each in love with one of the men (the third man is just...there). Add in Seeta’s zany brother (her parents’ child by birth) for comic relief.

So, first, the film was really not Indian at all. Seeta is only Indian in looks and the fact that she randomly wears a sari in one scene. Two of the men are Indian, as is Seeta’s friend Ramia. The guys have Bollywood posters and one speaks very intermittent Hindi with Ramia (who botches her Hindi). And the other one has a fantasy about being Lord Rama (I think).

Most of the supporting actors were good, but Seeta, though amazingly gorgeous, is kind of painfully bad. Her brother is nuts and not really like a brother at all (I treat my acquaintances with more affection). Her dad is creepy.

Add all of that on top of the fact that the plot becomes too convoluted — juggling three love stories, Seeta’s disbelief, each of the seven main characters’ life complications, Seeta’s mom dying, flashbacks to childhood — and it just becomes too much for me.

I will say I liked the premise and where it started and also its portrayal of New York.


And to end it, two shorts that I liked of the very few I actually got to see:

Satee Shaves Her Head
Uncoupled

NEW: Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu: I couldn't feel any depth.

So I was supposed to go see Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu last week, but I waited because others wanted to go see it with me. I still ended up seeing it alone this week, but I was excited because in addition to it starring Imran Khan (♥!) and Kareena Kapoor (on a ROLL), I read such great reviews about this one. They were all glowing.

I wasn't wowed.

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (previously called Short Term Shaadi) is young and a little off-beat. It's fun and goofy. But it just kind of...flounders. Not much actually happens. The plot is thin, and I felt like it just kind of lacked depth.

I missed the first 15 minutes (traffic, ugh), but from there on, the basic premise is this: One drunken night in Vegas, straightlaced Rahul Kapoor and zany, rulebook-out-the-window Riana Braganza -- both out of work -- get hitched. After agreeing to get an annulment, they become close friends. When Riana's thrown out of her house, Rahul lets her stay with him until she gets back on her feet. And then Rahul, whose world has been turned upside down by ever-happy and ever-bubbly Ri, realizes he's fallen in love with her. But when he finally plucks up the courage to act on it, she rebuffs him, saying she loves him like a friend but nothing else and she doesn't want to be in a relationship now. And so Rahul narrates an epilogue in which they repair this rift and both get jobs, but they just stay friends even though she tries to push girls his way and he turns them away because he loves her.

Sum total, I think in that depressingly antiromantic kind of way, it kind of resembles 500 Days of Summer. It goes the hipster route and tries to be cool by being purposely antitraditional. And I don't really think it works.

I heard people comparing Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu to Wake Up Sid and Jab We Met (Vegas version), two films I love. It is kind of like Wake Up Sid in reverse: Instead of the woman teaching the man to take responsibility, she teaches him how to let go of a responsible exterior. And that's also what happens in Jab We Met, where a bubbly Kareena character helps a depressed guy loosen up.

But in both of those films, those storylines are the catalyst to things happening in the relationship. In Ek Main, the two characters fight and Rahul goes home to his repressive family, where his father still picks his ties and his mother still tells him how to chew his food. Finally fed up, he tells his parents off. And he goes back and talks to Riana. And they become friends, get an annulment, and that's...it. Riana refuses to have a deeper relationship (without much explanation, might I add) so they don't.

I liked the film's first half, even though it dragged. I liked part of the second half. But then...nothing happens! It has no climax and no satisfaction. It's a wasted half.

So, sum total, that's all about the film.

But on a slightly off-topic note, the theater-going experience was perhaps too interesting (a story you already know if you follow me on Twitter). It involved some rather rudeness from desis. There were two guys in the theater for the film, sitting like five or six rows behind me, and after interval, the one guy left the other and came and sat down right behind me. And he didn't SAY anything. He just sat there. And stared. And when I left the theater, the two guys were outside, smoking, and as I left they just kept staring! I understand if you're curious why there's a gori in the theater, but at least ASK me something. It was very strange, creepy and rude. I know enough Hindi to have told the one guy off or at least snapped at him, and I probably should have said at least, "Aap ka problem kya hai?"

India International Film Festival Tampa Bay: What should I expect from a film fest?

After months spent in seething jealousy at others' film festival goings, I finally get my own film festival to enjoy: the India International Film Festival Tampa Bay. I've lived in the Tampa Bay area for a month today, and one of the exciting things about the area for me were its ethnically diverse offerings that I couldn't get where I'm from. (A few include an Indian theater, Indian events and Indian clothing stores, though of course other ethnicities' presence are a plus too!)

And Tampa has welcomed me with an Indian film festival. I'm excited for Sunday.

But I'm nervous also. Part of it is the standard gori-among-desis fare that I generally face going to Bollywood films and Indian grocery stores — do I wear a salwar kameez so I blend in or does that make me seem weird? Do I do the little things, like calling people bhai sahib or aunty/uncle? And are a quick shukriya or dhanyavaad appropriate or do I stick with "thanks"?

Part of it is the fact that I've never been to any  real film festival before. Before Bollywood, film was never that big of a deal for me. My sole experience with a "film festival" was in September when a local Latina Women's League held screenings of Latino-relevant films across the weekends of a month and I attended one screening.

What does one expect from a film festival? Just the experience of watching a film multiplied by several films? I know actors (no one I know) and directors will be around for the festival, but in my usual shyness plus the aforementioned gori awkwardness, I'm unlikely to ask any questions. I'm also not typically fond of Q-and-A sessions because, let's face it, most of the time, they're just boring; people ask boring questions and those being asked go on long, mostly irrelevant spiels.

At least I get to be excited about the variety of the lineup, although I wish I could attend both full days of the festival instead of one (I'm working the opening half-day and first full day of the festival; I only get to attend the final full day). I'm missing a Tamil film, a Punjabi film, a Hinglish rom-com called "Love You To Death" that looks like fun, and a documentary on Indian weddings. But I will catch a Marathi film and a Gujarati film (hooray!) as well as an English one, plus Hindi, English and Bengali shorts.

The lineup of main features is as follows:

The Myth of Buddha's Birthplace - Documentary, English. An ancient stone inscription, discovered in 1928, states that the Buddha was born in a village in eastern India. This claim runs counter to all established theories, so two anthropologists investigate. (Probably skipping, actually.)
Paulwaat (The Pathway) - Marathi. A relation based story of a youngster who wants to become a playback singer and an old landlady with whom he is living as a paying guest.
Patang (The Kite) - Gujarati. A poetic journey to the old city of Ahmedabad, Patang weaves together the stories of six people transformed by the energy of India's largest kite festival.
Love, Lies and Seeta - English. A romantic comedy about "falling for a girl who doesn't believe love exists", interweaving friendships that cross traditional borders of ethnicity and how they feel about love.

Anything you guys have to say about film festivals would be much appreciated!

EDIT: Here's a link to my thoughts on what I saw at the film festival.

Poll: Help me pick a film to initiate my cousin to Bollywood!

So, I'm going to introduce my cousin to Bollywood soon. And I'm having a hard time picking what film I should start her off with. 3 Idiots has been my go-to generally for initiating folks to Bollywood because it's so roundly good in every way, but I think my cousin may get tired of it two or so hours in, and a more traditionally romantic Bollywood movie may be more up her alley.

Here's a poll of most of my best DVDs so you folks can weigh in. The Netflix thing is also always an option, and some streaming options I've considered are Dostana, I Hate Luv Storys and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. The poll is below the jump break.

Rangeela (1995): Colorful, young and fun

This is yet another one that I watched that all-so-long month ago (now eking toward two) before I graduated college. But if Omkara and Tere Naam were dark and depressing, Rangeela, as its name promises, is anything but.

Synposis: An orphan named Munna (Aamir Khan) is taken in by a family whose bubbly daughter Mili (Urmila Matondkar) grows to be his best friend. While Mili works as a movie extra and dancer and dreams of being an actress, Munna earns cash selling movie tickets in the black market. One day, Mili is noticed by actor Raj Kamal (Jackie Shroff), who gets her the heroine's role in his upcoming movie called Rangeela (it’s Rangeela-ception!). Then Munna realizes he loves Mili and Raj is falling too, all while oblivious Mili is too busy chasing success to notice.

True to its name, Rangeela is...colorful. It’s hard to describe the film any other way as it blends an artistic feel with an upbeat tempo, young feel and also a tone of fun. The best way to show that is through the songs, which have very “modern dance” choreography but are, yes, fun. The music, being A.R. Rahman, is of course brilliant; and, side note, Rangeela was actually Rahman’s first non-dubbed Hindi film.

A lot of the movie is driven on the female protagonist’s flamboyant character, and Urmila Matondkar is gorgeous enough to draw anyone in. She somehow manages to be sexy and smouldering and adorably cute bouncing around in her short shorts and fluffy early 90s hair.

On the other hand... Aamir needed to take a bath through the whole movie. Just like my advice to prospective suitors last week via Tere Naam to not propose by telling the bride you’ll slap her father, via Rangeela I tell you, prospective suitors, take a bath before trying to woo a girl, especially an ambitious one.

Jackie Shroff, however, is lackluster and somewhat creepy. Somehow he managed to win a Filmfare Award for this role (in the same year that DDLJ pretty much swept the awards), but I honestly don’t understand how. That and you have to see him in a Speedo running around with Urmila in a bathing suit, which is downright brain damaging (though not so much as Underwear Rishi in Bobby or Speedo Paresh Rawal in 36 China Town).

One of the things I most liked about Rangeela, though, was that it’s a film about making films. Watching movies portray movie-making is fun, and Hollywood does it far too little. As an industry, Bollywood acknowledges it’s a part of the filmi world a lot  more than Hollywood (with its “realism”) does; for example, Bollywood has fun putting in cameos, nods to other films and industry-mocking jokes that the audience, acknowledged as a filmi-knowledgeable audience, will appreciate.

That’s another one of those things besides Mili that’s colorful about Rangeela: Its look at the movies is full of fun, pageantry, drama, and so on. All the colors of the wind.

Anyway, sum total, Rangeela is fun. My only word of caution is that it takes forever to finally reach the climactic lovey moment, which literally happens at the very end of the film.