I hate Bollywood, and all this pointless singing and dancing, all this copying other movie ideas, and the complete lack of effort to actually make a real movie and sell it to Indian audiences. I would go as far and say they don’t have a film industry, they have a musical industry. The difference between Bollywood and Broadway is that they sell their musicals as movies, while you’d have to bribe someone or perform a magic trick to get a Broadway show on DVD.
So we don’t write about Bollywood. But there is an exception. All you readers out there who are familiar with the cult movie Ghostworld will probably already know what I’m talking about. Bollywood is not a new phenomenon. The Indian “film” industry dates back to a time even before the 60s, and today I want to show you a clip from a Bollywood movie that I could watch over and over again. To me, it has a certain James Bond or Indiana Jones flair to it, and really cult-like custome design. And on top of that the music will just stick with you. See for yourself (I posted the Ghostworld trailer further below, that’s how I discovered it).
The movie is called Gumnaam (1965), directed by Raja Nawathe.
And here the Ghostworld trailer (for a discussion about the connection see this blog article here at the Sun Times):
5 thoughts on “I hate Bollywood, but…”
Bollywood is a part of Indian cinema. What about the other regional film industries (Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, and Marathi films). Of course most of those mainstream films are in the same lines as Hindi cinema aka Bollywood. But there are those exceptions… those filmmakers who make stuff outside of the mainstream circle. Some of them include Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Bimol Roy, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Anurag Kashyap etc.
Why are you cast down o’my soul….?
i beg to disagree…..you guys just get to see the big budget stuff, films they can afford to release overseas or at least on video……check out some of my fav hindi films from 2010 if u can- Udaan, Peepli Live, Love, Sex aur Dhokha, Phas Gaye Re Obama and Well Done Abba to name a few
and Kaminey my fav hindi movie of the last few years
Bollywood films in the 70’s, 80’s were brilliant when the screen heroes were Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna etc. Now fast forward it’s all about copying Hollywood along with sex, nudity and the story lines are rubbish. But the truth is India is nothing like they portray on the films it is not that advanced. What amazes me is that in the films they show the actors and actresses in really modern clothes, hairstyles etc but when I go to India there is none off that. Bollywood films would do good if they portrayed the truth !!!!!!!