(no subject)

[chelseagirl]

adventures in Bollywood . . . I started watching Asoka in all its lengthy glory, on my laptop over the weekend; finished on the tv last night. Loved it! It reminded me of some of my favorite Chinese historical epics, and for all the same reasons: beautifully shot, romance, tragedy, nifty swordfights, pretty men (well, pretty man, there weren't so many pretty male secondary characters), costumes I could gawp at for hours, and a heroine who's kickass in battle. (Kaurmaki really surprised me in that last battle.) It also shares some of the more offbeat elements of Chinese films -- the damn cute kid! aargh! (At least this one had a plot purpose beyond just being there and wasn't too cloying) and the semi-pointless and unfunny Humorous Characters of Another Social Class. I confess to any Bollywood fans who are reading this that I didn't quite "get" the song sequences other than as B'wood convention -- often they seemed to interrupt the flow of the storytelling, and at certain points it seemed like the performers were breaking both character and era to do them. *chelseagirl ducks projectiles* Next, *Devdas* with the French subtitles. Oh, and linaerys, thanks! I mailed it back to Netflix this morning.

Heard from my accountant yesterday -- paid estimated taxes last year and *still* owe the Federal govt. nearly $200. *sigh*

Loving daylight savings time, though. There's something about coming home from work in sunlight that cheers me immensely.

Random thought of the day: Students hate Jeff Noon's Automated Alice. Really hate it, to the point where it was hard to get them to talk about even the interesting bits, where Noon plays with logic concepts that Carroll would have been all over if he'd been alive today. They were also rough on the whole concept of derivative texts; can't imagine how they'd respond to fanfic! However, in the lit/history class, Oroonoko taught remarkably well and the accompanying historical documents from the Bedford edition sparked some great discussions.

Comments

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

Woo-hoo! Yeah, this kid was much better than some of the others I've seen in other BW movies. The pointless humorous character sequences were relatively short, thank goodness.

I actually found the songs in Asoka worked for me, but that was partly because of teh hawt. And I found "Roshini Se", the song with the water and the fire (and the very sheer shirt) was very poignant. I bet the songs will grow on you, but the side characters will not . . . if you're anything like me =P.

A lot of the time the songs are meant to be either illustrations of what they are thinking and feeling rather than literal parts of the story. Sometimes, as in Dil Se they go further than that and are sort of symbolic commentaries on the story. Sometimes they are literal parts of the story, but not in Asoka so much.

Glad you liked it! I have more to loan you when you have time. SRK-focused, of course.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

Part of it, I think, is that this particular film was similar to the HK/mainland Chinese historical epics in so many ways, and the songs were the one element that didn't fit the historical epic genre as I'm used to it. I'll be curious to see how they fit into other types of B'wood movies.

I'll look forward to seeing more! Definitely would like to borrow -- probably best after I get my chapter draft in.

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I guess I should be watching some of those Chinese historical epics then. I was trying to think and I don't think I've seen any of them, so Asoka reminded me as much of Braveheart as anything else. And songs would have definitely improved Braveheart =).

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

I'll go through my collection and see what I have. (Hard to remember what I actually own and what I've seen.) Did you see Hero?

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Hero or even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but I'm behind on my main obsession, so I'll let you know when I have time for this other stuff =).

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and Veer-Zaara has a super-hot song that is totally the herione fantasizing about getting busy with the SRK character, and him undressing her and lifting her up a lot and . . . WHEW.

[seanmoon.livejournal.com]

Aphra Behn! How cool. She's going to be a character in a derivative story I'm sort of forever writing.

What didn't they like about automated alice? I've always wanted to read that.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

Do tell. What kind of role will she play? She fascinates me as a person; her writing's sometimes tough to get through, though that may have something to do with the fact that English prose fiction was in the midst of being invented at that point. Someone else on my f-list saw the Rover performed on a recent trip to London. I must read some of her drama as I suspect it is her forte.

As for Automated Alice, they couldn't get past the fact that he was creatively piggybacking on someone else rather than creating something of his own. Also the derivative prose style. I still think it's worth a read for the concepts he plays with and his evident delight in what he's doing. It's a bit hard to find in bookstores (Brit import) but there's always a copy on the shelves at St. Mark's. (I'd loan you mine but like all my teaching texts it's way marked up.)

[seanmoon.livejournal.com]

I like her plays way better than her fiction. I got a complete works set edited by Janet Todd at the strand a while back, and I'm slowly chipping away at that. It's like 5 massive volumes.

She's a spy and general adventuress in my book. It's not exactly her, but more or less her. There's a Rochester-liek character, and they are friends/rivals in some of the stories.

I'll check the st mark's store next time I'm down there. I loved Vurt!