Indian Movies

Yesterday afternoon was rather interesting. I was over at Abie's place with Freddy and Eban. We had already gone out and gotten some movies and I wasn't really sure what they had gotten, so we sit down to watch them and it turns out they had gotten some Indian movies. I thought, sure, why not, this could be interesting. Now one thing you have to know is that there are different types of movies that come out of different parts of India. Each state pretty well has its own style. The first one we watched was by far the most hilarious. It started this 60 year old guy who was attempting to look and act like a 20 something. He does this in all of his movies. He the biggest superstar in that area of Inida by far. I'm not kidding here. Apparently he is treated like an actual god and worshiped. Like I'm talking about having cut-outs of him in front of theaters having milk poured on them and so forth. You cannot make this sort of thing up! And the movies are so BAD! They are just completely over the top. The special effects are something to be desired, but basically I saw him take on hordes of guys all by himself (one guy he punched and he went flying across the room and dented the steel bookcase that he hit), and he's suppose to play just some successful business man, no matrix like things were going on. Oh, and he does all sorts of ridiculous things that apparently everyone tries to emulate. Like bouncing his gum off of his hand and into his mouth. Just all of his antics and his over the top 'moves' and some of the dialogue that they told me about (no subtitles, though that was okay, we just fast forwarded to all the best parts, or as we all said, the most ridiculous parts). We laughed so very very hard. Though in that part of India they take it very seriously and if he ever gets beat up or anything like that, they tear up the theater! Its pretty crazy. Though that region of India is mostly poor labourers and these movies are one of their only forms of recreation and they don't know any better to know that it is over the top and impossible. So I figure if they enjoy it and brings joy to their lives, who are we to judge? We can just watch the movies and laugh tons, and they can watch the movies and be in awe. I mean we have people in north america that think some of the stuff in movies is possible and true and all of that. So that was that movies. We started a couple of others, but they were slow, so we moved on. The last movie we watched was a comedy, no subtities, so I started making up my own dialogue in my head of what was going on. So whenever they explained what had gone on, 'their' movie certainly made more sense. It was an odd experience watching a movie and not really knowing what was going on, I mean you could fill in some of the blanks, but for the most part... fun experience though. They all started laughing like crazy at parts and I had no idea what was going on. The comedy's from the part of India focus mostly on the dialog so I missed most of the jokes, though the ones they explained to me were pretty funny. The movie was full of tons of twists that you couldn't see coming and were quite well done and just added tons to the movie (from what was explained to me). It was a neat experience to watch a movie like that, and just be completely not in the know. I asked a couple of questions about things I saw, and it was cultural things that were going on, they just saw it and thought nothing of it (total background stuff that meant almost nothing) and I thought it was something major. We should certainly not think that we have a corner on the market of good movies. Sure the production values may not be as high as hollywood, but bollywood has some great stuff out there. Now some of it is funny when it shouldn't be, and instead of getting all intimate on screen they break into fantasy song and dance routines (yup, thats what they do, big groups of people singing and dancing and everything), but non-western entertainment is pretty great. Just one more reason for us to get off of our high horse.