Globalisation does funny things:
Former Baywatch star David Hasselhoff has been named international star of the year at the Bollywood movie awards in Atlantic City in the US.
He received the award because his shows, including Knight Rider, are among the most popular on Indian TV.
That is the BBC story. I also recommend this Reuters report on the event, which packs a lot of information into a small space. Such as, that:
Rani Mukherjee won the best actress award for her role “Hum Tum.”
What does Hum Tum mean? Is it a medical condition? Or is that the name of Rani Mukherjee’s character?
And I did not know that they have Bollywood awards in Atlantic City. What is that about?
Says Reuters:
The event was held in the old U.S. East Coast gambling resort of Atlantic City as part of Bollywood’s bid to be a global force in cinema.
Interesting. And I did not know this either:
Bollywood churns out around 1,000 movies a year but despite a fan base that extends to the Middle East, Europe and Asia, few movies make money and the industry is under financial pressure. Bollywood films have not had much commercial success in America.
But Shammi Kapoor, who was given a lifetime achievement award, said better technology was leading to more and better films. “They’re getting to be more topical,” he added. “They aren’t the happy, happy movies of yesteryear.”
Indians will soon be complaining that Bollywood is becoming a fifth column Frankenstein’s laboratory Trojan Horse turncoat snakepit of anti-Indianism that panders to the global market and apes its worst excesses.
I guess this should have been:
won the best actress award for her role *in* “Hum Tum.”
Which roughly translates to “You and I”.
Just as a precaution: The first person to point out the alleged popularity of Hasselhoff in Germany will be terminated with extreme prejudice.
In defense of such people, Ralf, didn’t Hasselhoff perform on the Berlin Wall after November 1989? 🙂
Baywatch, of course, was popular all around the world, and actually got a second life because of it. It was originally on the NBC network here in the States, but they cancelled it due to low ratings. When the producers realized it was getting good ratings around the world, they made lots of new episodes and got a syndication deal here in the States.
I was watching an rented Indian movie a few months ago (can’t remember the name, sorry), and right in the middle of what was, I thought, a fairly serious melodrama, the cast suddenly went into an elaborate song and dance number. My wife and I just burst out laughing after a few moments because it was so unexpected and bizarre.
I understand this is common, but I hadn’t watched enough Indian films before to be ready for it. My long suffering better half puts up with my liking for all sorts of odd and foriegn movies (just wish I could find a copy of a French murder mystery I saw years ago called Bird With Crystal Plumage).
veryretired –
I highly recommend the latest remake of the Indian classic Devdas – the most expensive Bollywood movie ever made – as one of the finest of its kind. It’s a three hour investment you’ll have to make, but once you stop howling with laughter over the ridiculously overblown dialogue (for example, the mother referring to her son Devdas as “my tempest”; there’s plenty more) you find yourself being swept away by the melodrama of it all. It’s a very moving film – the ending is quite tragic – and it’s easy to see why the themes it contains resonate so strongly with Indians today, even though the script was written over 80 years ago. Yes, they do burst into singing at odd, and sometimes annoying, intervals. I guess that’s Bollywood for you!
Oh, and the leading lady would have to be the most beautiful woman in the world. She is utterly exquisite.
Bollywood movies’ breaking into song at odd times is no dumber than crappy Hollywood musicals of the 1940s and 50s like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Yeah Ted, but they’re still churning ’em out down Bollywood way and there’s no end in sight!
Okay, you do get the occasional Western (as in world, not genre) musical being produced. Dancer in the Dark was a recent one I liked.
veryretired,
The Bird With the Crystal Plumage is not French; it is the first movie by Dario Argento, the director known as the “Italian Hitchcock”. His best films include Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) and Suspiria. If you liked The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, you should really like these. Check him out on IMDB for more information; and you can buy the DVD on Amazon.
When I think of an anti-Globilization nut, I see as an early-twenties white male who raves about Indian Cinema while eating Thai, wearing a Che Guevera t-shirt made in China, and talking about flying down to Bolivia to help the indigineous Hispanics fight the power.
Thanks for the info all. I remembered Crystal Plumage as being a sequel of sorts to a movie called the Sleeping Car Murders but maybe I’m mistaken about that. It has been a long time, and there have been so many odd litle films over the years.
I attended an Hindu wedding several years ago, art, and I know what you mean about the beauty of Indian ladies. If anyone could have read my mind, I’m sure several fathers, brothers, and uncles would have kicked the crap out of me. Anyway, thanks again.
Lagaan is a great Indian film about a little known event during the British colonial occupation of India.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0282674/
If you like to see asshole British officers during the period of the Raj getting their just reward this is the movie for you! 🙂
Oh, and the film also concerns oppressive taxes!
If you like to see asshole British officers during the period of the Raj getting their just reward this is the movie for you!
I thought we got enough of that sort of lame anti-British crap from Mel “God” Gibson with The Patriot. Nice to know we also get it from the sub-continent as well.
‘few makes money’ like standard Hollywood accounting or ‘few makes money’ like the internet somehow killing Hollywood?
Julian Taylor,
Damn those portrayals of oppressive British officers! After all, they couldn’t be true! 🙂
And of course there is a distinct difference between protraying a British officier as Nazi-like mass-murderer (Mel’s distorted version of reality) and, well, bigoted a asshole set out to teach the “wogs” a lesson in a game of cricket.
Actually most Bollywood movies that portray the Raj do so with humorous affection. And the main station in ‘Mumbai’ is still called the Victoria Terminal and has a statue of the old queen in front.
There was a funny piece in the Radio Times by a guest critic a few months back about how it’s become de rigeur in trendy London circles to bang on about how exciting, vibrant, colouful, etc Bollywood movies are. He was caught in such a love-in and asked his fellow white reviewers how many Indian films they’d actually watched. None of them had seen one all the way through.
That said, it is equally silly to sneer at a film just because it incorporates musical numbers, like opera. According to Nietzsche, all drama originated from musical performance. Indian cinema today is more synaesthetic than that of Hollywood, and appeals to a much wider audience in its own territory than the CGI-saturated adolescent thrill rides which soak up Hollyweird’s biggest budgets. Arguably the musical created for the screen was Hollywood’s greatest cultural contribution, and when it withered the spirit went out of the system.