Oscars for India!
Over at the Mutiny, Amardeep did an interesting post about Bollywood and the Oscars. He begins by referencing an article in The Indian Express by Shubhra Gupta:
Gupta is right on many counts here. Rang de Basanti does have urban, middle-class kids speaking liberal amounts of English (as well as a white girl, speaking Hindi). What she’s overlooking, of course, is that while Rang de Basanti is a lot of fun, it just isn’t that serious a film. It doesn’t have the sense of gravity or “prestige” that makes a film a plausible Oscar contender. A much better choice, by far, would have been Omkara — which has the three A’s: it’s Arty, “Authentic” (though still legible to western audiences, via Othello), and most importantly, Adult. (I often feel that NRIs or ABDs should pick India’s official Oscar selections, since the Board that currently makes this selection clearly has no idea what it’s doing. Paheli?)As regular readers already know, I luuuuved Paheli. But in this particular instance, I don't suppose my opinion really matters...
Who knows what motivates those Academy folks. One can never tell. Crash vs. Brokeback anyone?
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7 comments:
I didn't like Crash at all, although I'm pretty biased, since I grew up in LA and the movie got a lot of things wrong about my hometown. And second, most of the racism I encounter is much more subtle, it's not in-your-face racism.
That all being said, I thought Brokeback was pretty overrated, too.
I loved Brokeback Mountain, I remember how outraged my friends and I (and most of the internets) were when Crash won. Even though none of us had actually seen Crash ;)
Read somewhere yesterday that RDB didn't get shortlisted for the Oscar nominations, but Water did. I didn't think RDB would have much of a chance (Volver to win, probably? Or that Clint Eastwood thing. I'd like to see Pan's Labyrinth do well, though), but it would've been nice to see it nominated, at least.
From my waaaaay outsider's perspective, the problem with RDB is that it seems to tell people that shooting people because you think they're evil is a good idea. While the heros/murderers are in some sense punished (they die), they're pretty pleased with themselves. If the movie stopped at the protest at India Gate, I'd be all for it. The best part of RDB's message for me is at the very end, when they're interviewing people, and someone says that we get the government we deserve and that we have to take action and responsibility. Be vigilant, not vigilantes, that's what I say.
I didn't know where else to post this, but you have to check this out... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4807397690444864476&pr=goog-sl
Sorry about that.
Here's the real link
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4807397690444864476&pr=goog-sl
That link doesn't work, so here's another
This is hilarious. He has Bollywood DOWN!
http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/004422.html
Omkara is an excellent film, if you haven't seen it then you really should. I read somewhere that it couldn't be entered in the foreign film category because it is based on an English language work - not sure if that's correct.
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