Vaisakh on the Duna

[muckefuck]

Simply gorgeous on the way into work this morning, which made settling into the office difficult enough before I realised I had an hour-and-a-half divisional meeting to attend. In a stuffy room. With barely time to grap a Snickers beforehand. Hopefully the rain will hold off long enough for me to compensate with a leisurely stroll to someplace I can pick up something fresh.

Last night, another milestone: First dinner of the year on the back porch! The gem of the meal was an outstanding onion marmalade monshu spent much of the afternoon cooking down. I also made and consumed my first Tom Collins ever, which I must say sounds oodles more sophisticated than "lemonade with gin". Next weekend, however, will be all about the mint juleps.

Most of the day yesterday was damp and chilly, so we blocked out the afternoon for a Bollywood flick. I was looking forward to having my mind taken off of the ignominious defeat at the hands of the Cubs which snapped the Cards' five-game winning streak and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam succeeded in doing that. But at what cost?

We've seen some stinkers before, but with the exception of a lousy Punjabi comedy that we couldn't bring ourselves to finish, I can't remember one that we endured more than enjoyed in the proportions we did this one. Usually it's just the male leads that are unsympathetically childish in Bollywood, but here that extended to Aishwarya Rai as well. She snaps out of it before the end, but well after we reached the point of not caring in the least who she ended up with.

Also, I'm not usually one to complain of too many song-and-dance numbers--it's Bollywood, for Chrissakes--but Jesus! By the time of the utterly gratuitous fantasy number during Rai's hospital stay, I was ready to strangle someone with their own filmstock. It didn't help that Mehboob seems to have been told he was writing lyrics for a much shorter film, since at least half the songs consisted more of spastic scat singing than intelligible words. Given those handicaps, the riotous colours and grand compositions ended up being more wearying than anything else.

Just about the only thing which held my interest at all during the last hour was the bizarre incongruity of having Budapest serve as an unnamed Italian city. The filmmakers couldn't even be arsed to dub anyone, so I was left tickled by the idea of a generation of Bombayites growing up thinking that the Italian for "Thank you" is köszönöm. There's even a scene featuring Schuhplatteltanz!

Comments

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Wow, I love that movie SO MUCH, I don't even know what to say! I mean apart from Salman Khan stinking up the first half. But then he gets kicked to the curb by Ajay Devgan so that's okay.

Does it help to understand Rai's character if you understand that we're supposed to infer that she's slept with Khan? And that if she didn't moon around after him an unreasonably long time into her marriage, she would be a big old slag in Bollywood terms, so her dawning love for Devgan wouldn't mean as much?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Nope, not really. There was a lot the filmmakers could've done in those first two hours to make her a deep enough character to hold my interest and, as far as I'm concerned, they simply didn't bother. For that matter, where were my subplots? There's the thing with her cousin, but they pretty much lose interest in it the moment it impacts the leads' romance.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I rather like the alternate history your post suggests, in which the Austrian Empire survives, thoroughly Magyarized, and the Italian city states resurge in a late flowering of Italo-Hungarian supra-nationalist culture. Maybe it all starts in 1815, with the Prussian delegation mortally offending the rest of the allies or burning down Versailles and the Magyars stepping into the breach, saving the day.