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                                  Bollywood

One of Spring's [1] favorite channels is the International Channel [2] and
tonight she was watching a show about Bollywood [3], the Indian (as in Indian
sub-continent and not Native Americans) version of Hollywood. The show was
highlighting remakes of Hollywood films and would show clips from the films,
which were, more or less, the length of a music video and as far as I could
tell, more or less were music videos.

The announcer would say something like, “And this film, [some title in Hindi
or Tamil or some other Indian dialect] was based upon the American film, What
Lies Beneath [4]” and then they would show this five or six minute clip of a
huge dance and song number, with scores of people dancing and a couple (and
it was always a couple) doing the vocals. Yes, a film, based upon “What Lies
Beneath” (a horror film) with a huge song-n-dance routine.

And there was the film based upon Fatal Attraction [5] with a five or six
minute clip of—

—a huge song-and-dance number with scores of people. And another film, based
upon While You Were Sleeping [6] with again, a five or six minute long clip
of scores of people in a song-and-dance routine. And yet another film based
upon The Whole Nine Yards [7] with, can you guess?

Yup, a five to six minute clip of scores of people in a song-and-dance
routine, but not just any song-and-dance routine. Nope. This was
Riverdancing! [8]

“There seems to be a trend,” I said to Spring.

“Every Indian film I've seen has musical numbers,” she said.

“Are there points within those movies where they speak?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Really? They spontaneously break out into talking?”

She laughed. “Yes, between the musical numbers and action sequences, they
have been known to break out into talking. Not much mind you, but some.”


The Bollywood remake of My Best Friend's Wedding [9] seemed more suited to
this style of film making than “What Lies Beneath” or “Fatal Attaction.” And
the remake of Body Heat [10], named (and like Dave Barry [11] says, “I am not
making this up”) Jism (ahem) was quite hot, and quite unusual with only two
people in the five to six minute musical clip.

[1] http://www.springdew.com/
[2] http://www.i-channel.com/
[3] http://www.bollywood.com/
[4] http://us.imdb.com/Title?0161081
[5] http://us.imdb.com/Title?0093010
[6] http://us.imdb.com/Title?0114924
[7] http://us.imdb.com/Title?0190138
[8] http://www.riverdance.com/
[9] http://us.imdb.com/Title?0119738
[10] http://us.imdb.com/Title?0082089
[11] http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/

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