Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Thursday, July 29, 2004 The Pitch: It's Like Back to School meets Grease meets The Jackal! I finally, finally, finally went to the Naz Super 8 yesterday, after months and months of just telling everyone I was going to. Yes, I made it back to the strange and dusky land known as Fremont, where Chris and Nancy came from, and I was so happy to see the dry-dirt mountains I actually took pictures. I will probably subject you to them later becuase that's the sort of cruel bastard I am.As is the case when I hit the Naz 8, I saw two flicks, and the first one was a dud and the second one was a ton of fun: not surprising since I deliberately chose to go see Bollywood sexer Julie as my first flick. After the car crash that was Boom!, you'd think I'd learn the cardinal lesson of controversial adult Indian films: the women never get naked and the plot never gets interesting. Thank God the second film Main Hoon Na is a big old crack pipe of modern Bollywood cinema: it's three hours long, has no intermission, jams musical number on top of musical number, and gives you a muscial credit sequence where cast and crew cavort at a carnival. Alarmingly, this is the second Indian film I really, really enjoyed with Sharukh Khan. Unlike Kal Ho Naa Ho, it wasn't even "I enjoyed Sharukh Khan despite my better judgment, and part of it is because his character is going to die." I just liked the vain, mugging bastard, as he plays an all-business Army Sargeant posing as a college student to protect young Amrita Rao from villainous terrorist Sunil Shetty. There's a strong element of Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham in the flick too, as Khan poses as a stranger to his stepbrother and stepmother to reunite his family after the death of his father. So there's family crying; there's over-the-top action sequences; and there were enough musical numbers to sate the biggest Bollywood fetishist. The director, Farah Khan, came from choreographing musical numbers and it shows: one musical number starts with a breathtaking sequence where the camera doesn't cut from the singer until the arrival of the second singer--and then follows that singer in an unbroken sequence. The whole thing, from what I could tell, is two unedited shots and it's dazzling--The Touch of Evil of musical numbers. Really, the only thing I found wrong with Main Hoon Na was it didn't showing its Indian Film Certificate at the opening: I love the Indian Film Certificate and halfway through Julie I realized I could sneak out my digital camera and snap a picture of it at the opening of MHN for my own use. No luck, though. Now I gotta start getting ready to go to Humboldt County for the weekend. That I will see a good Bollywood flick and relax under the stars with Edi in a Finnish Hot Tub within 48 hours of each other seems almost too good to be true. (To say nothing of not working on Friday or Monday.) Now if I can just remember to pack everything... posted by Jeff Lester | 5:31 PM | |
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