getting my recommended yearly allowance of bollywood
i saw taj express last night, which is two hours of bollywood dancing, all but untroubled by meddling plot and characterization.¹ there was a narrator and a sketch of a frame story, but those could be entirely ignored.
so i saw about a dozen movies' worth of dance numbers. they were all very pretty, and the show was a fine way to spend a few hours, but the dances tended to all blur together. so very little stands out in my mind. the opening number included what seemed to be an adapted classical indian dance along with its invocation of the muse (for indian values of muse). some of the other dances appeared to be taken from older indian forms as well, but others seemed to have strong american influences (breakdancing and hiphop). the ObFightScene had some resemblance to the video for "beat it", but i imagine there aren't many ways of staging a dancing fight scene.
i'm not sure i can recommend this one, unless you really want to see bollywood dance numbers. it probably could have been shorter with no loss of interest. or perhaps it needs a greater variety of dances. i don't know which.
1: i generally don't like musicals. the plots move at a snail's pace, and the songs are a bit scattered. but break them up and i'm perfectly happy: a bunch of show tunes is a fine thing, and the stories are more entertaining when they move faster.
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth.
so i saw about a dozen movies' worth of dance numbers. they were all very pretty, and the show was a fine way to spend a few hours, but the dances tended to all blur together. so very little stands out in my mind. the opening number included what seemed to be an adapted classical indian dance along with its invocation of the muse (for indian values of muse). some of the other dances appeared to be taken from older indian forms as well, but others seemed to have strong american influences (breakdancing and hiphop). the ObFightScene had some resemblance to the video for "beat it", but i imagine there aren't many ways of staging a dancing fight scene.
i'm not sure i can recommend this one, unless you really want to see bollywood dance numbers. it probably could have been shorter with no loss of interest. or perhaps it needs a greater variety of dances. i don't know which.
1: i generally don't like musicals. the plots move at a snail's pace, and the songs are a bit scattered. but break them up and i'm perfectly happy: a bunch of show tunes is a fine thing, and the stories are more entertaining when they move faster.
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth.