Weekend Actuals (Page 93): TFA 42.35M | The Revenant 39.83M | Daddy's Home 15.02M | The Forest 12.74M | Sisters 7.19M

[The Futurist]

7 minutes ago, grim22 said:

 

It is way more complicated than that actually. The Indian film industry is not one industry, it is basically 20-30 different language industries situated in every single state. Movies made in one language are huge within the state which speaks that language but will get no audience outside that state. Even Bollywood, which gets national distribution, barely has huge support in South India and some parts of North East India. So when it is hard for Bollywood movies themselves to break through on a pan-Indian level, Hollywood will take even longer, especially since a majority of Indian theaters are still single screens which are mainly in villages around the country.

 

Those languages are very different from one another ?

 

Can't you understand maybe 2 or 3 in some regions/areas ?

 

Thx for the insight, we know so little about INDIA ...

Edited January 9, 2016 by The Futurist

[grim22]

3 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

 

Those languages are very different from one another ?

 

Can't you understand maybe 2 or 3 in some regions/areas ?

 

That is really really hard. Most people can understand the language of their state, English and maybe Hindi but the languages in India are so different from each other, especially in the Southern states, that in some places you can travel 100km in any direction and end up in a place where you can neither speak, read or understand the language there.

 

Here is a high level map for reference

 

 

Almost every one of these languages has their own film industry.

 

 

[XXRDJisDoctorDoom]

4 minutes ago, grim22 said:

 

You should start with the ones which don't have song and dance, or at least the ones which relegate the song and dance to the background. Maybe start with something like "Chak De India" or Lagaan which are both sports based movies and are much easier to relate to since they speak a common theme of victory over the enemy through sports. Maybe I will start a staff blog detailing the best movies to start a foray into Bollywood and the Indian film industry for outsiders.

What is generally considered to be the "best" Indian film or some of the best? The only movie I can name is Baahubali.

[Olive]

EP7 will make much more than EP1-3 combined on its opening day here in China.

[grey ghost]

10 minutes ago, Ozymandias said:

"We're never gonna beat The Force Awakens, nobody can"

 

Hail, Disney.

[a2k]

7 minutes ago, Orestes said:

I wish I could get into Indian movies, but man do song and dance numbers grate on my nerves.

 

Indian movies which are realistic never get that much attention, but some of them are beautiful. And they are made in different languages, but I will recommend 3 amazing ones that were made in Hinglish (Mostly in Hindi but sporadically in English)

 

Ship of Theseus www.imdb.com/title/tt1773764/ (2012)

"Explores questions of identity, justice, beauty, meaning and death through an experimental photographer, an ailing monk and a young stockbroker."

 

Dhobi Ghat/Mumbai Diaries (2010)

www.imdb.com/title/tt1433810/

"The lives of four people intersect in Mumbai: a washer-man who wants to become an actor, a banker-turned-photographer, a painter looking for inspiration, and a newly-married immigrant who journals her experiences on home video."

 

My Brother...Nikhil (2005)

www.imdb.com/title/tt0419992/

"Famous swimmer Nikhil Kapoor (Suri) deals with the repercussions of announcing the fact that he has HIV/AIDS."

[grim22]

Just now, VenomXXR said:

What is generally considered to be the "best" Indian film or some of the best? The only movie I can name is Baahubali.

 

The general consensus comes down to Sholay (a very very Indianised remake of Seven Samurai), Mother India (A drama about post-partition India and the travails of a widow with 2 sons), Lagaan (A period drama where a village is forced to play Cricket against the British empire), DDLJ (the first modern rom-com in Bollywood) and 3 Idiots (a great satire of the Indian education system) in Bollywood. Some others I would recommend are Satya (a crime drama about the Mumbai underworld), Chak De India (a sports drama), and from this year we had PK (a satire on religion) and Bajarangi Bhaijaan (an Indian has to send a lost girl back home to Pakistan).

 

Baahubali is not a Bollywood movie, it is Telugu. In Tamil, there are some great movies as well like Nayakan and Thevar Magan which are worth tracking down.

[DAJK]

Holy crap, Revenant sold out tonight at our theatre.

 

Dont count out the west coast guys.

[XXRDJisDoctorDoom]

1 minute ago, grim22 said:

 

The general consensus comes down to Sholay (a very very Indianised remake of Seven Samurai), Mother India (A drama about post-partition India and the travails of a widow with 2 sons), Lagaan (A period drama where a village is forced to play Cricket against the British empire), DDLJ (the first modern rom-com in Bollywood) and 3 Idiots (a great satire of the Indian education system) in Bollywood. Some others I would recommend are Satya (a crime drama about the Mumbai underworld), Chak De India (a sports drama), and from this year we had PK (a satire on religion) and Bajarangi Bhaijaan (an Indian has to send a lost girl back home to Pakistan).

 

Baahubali is not a Bollywood movie, it is Telugu. In Tamil, there are some great movies as well like Nayakan and Thevar Magan which are worth tracking down.

Which would you recommend to break an American into Indian cinema? 

[grim22]

Just now, VenomXXR said:

Which would you recommend to break an American into Indian cinema? 

 

Chak De India is really good as it is pretty much filmed like an American movie, it is a loose remake of Miracle but is also based on a true story of a former Indian player who coached the women's team to gold in field hockey. 

 

PK and 3 Idiots are good as well. Lagaan is pretty awesome and was nominated for an Oscar, but the plot centers around Cricket very heavily. 

[a2k]

Just now, grim22 said:

 

Chak De India is really good as it is pretty much filmed like an American movie, it is a loose remake of Miracle but is also based on a true story of a former Indian player who coached the women's team to gold in field hockey. 

 

PK and 3 Idiots are good as well. Lagaan is pretty awesome and was nominated for an Oscar, but the plot centers around Cricket very heavily. 

 

I think the Bhojpuri accent in PK and the character's connections to UP/Bihar bring a lot of comedy and could be lost by viewers if they are not aware of it.

[a2k]

With Revenant doing so good, I wonder what impact it has had on Hateful 8.

H8 is putting small numbers so could escape without a big negative impact, but a leggy run with lower numbers seems tough if Revenant makes so much noise.

Edited January 9, 2016 by a2knet

[Spidey Freak]

2 minutes ago, VenomXXR said:

What is generally considered to be the "best" Indian film or some of the best? The only movie I can name is Baahubali.

 

"Best" according to whom? If you want to go by Academy standards, then Mother India, Salaam Bombay and Lagaan are the films to start with as those are the Indian films to receive Best Picture in a Foreign Language Film nominations. If you are into indie fare then to go by Satyajit Ray's "Apu trilogy" from the 1950's, considered to be one of world cinema's finest works, receiving praise from stalwarts like Akira Kurosawa. The Criterion Collection restored some damage prints of the trilogy movies last year.

 

 

 

[a2k]

18 minutes ago, VenomXXR said:

What is generally considered to be the "best" Indian film or some of the best? The only movie I can name is Baahubali.

 

This this and only this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyaasa

Edited January 9, 2016 by a2knet

[grim22]

1 minute ago, a2knet said:

 

This this and only this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyaasa

 

I once bought a 8 DVD Gurudutt collection and watched all 8 movies over a weekend. He was a director much much ahead of his time. Too bad he succumbed to his demons way too soon.

[Goffe]

4 hours ago, CJohn said:

There was so much potential in a Cloverfield sequel. I really love this movie and the mysterious surrounding it. JJ Abrams truly is a visionary. 

One of the great monster movies.

[MattW]

http://deadline.com/2016/01/the-revenant-star-wars-the-force-awakens-weekend-box-office-1201678383/

 

Revenant 14.1-14.6 Friday, 37.4-38.9 weekend

 

TFA 10.4-11.3, and they think 37.4-39.5 for the weekend

[picores]

Fuck Deadline.

[spizzer]

26 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

India is the last corner of the World where a local film economy resists to the Hollywood invasion.

 

There's an audience, but its tough.  There regions where film is far more ingrained into general culture than it is here (India produces 3x more films and sells ~twice as many tickets as Hollywood).  Each regional industry has a highly distinct audience base with different tastes.  For a long time, a huge part of the appeal of Hindi cinema (Bollywood) hasn't been narrative/storytelling, rather its been a focus on emotion/nostalgia and spectacle.  Hence the formulaic films, a large % of audiences enjoy watching the same/similar story told and treated in different ways a thousand times.  Its why pulp/masala films with the same basic plot structure, with nationalistic undertones, and covering a wide base of genres can be churned out to a profit year after year.  Just works on multiple levels.  Hell even our audiences ate it up back in 08/09 with Slumdog.  I see one post on how they're mundane and boring, but I've spent ages reading and observing the breadth of appeal of the same works.

 

Obviously, there's a niche for more world-cinema/westernized films but even that falls on a sliding scale.  There are films that could just as well have been made in Hollywood, just in Hindi, and there are films that retain a certain Indian flavor while still matching up to a certain world-caliber.  I don't think there's any sweet spot here in terms of goodness, but I can tell you with confidence which would have more appeal with the local audience.  That said, there's absolutely a growing audience for the former.

 

Gets even more complicated when you inspect the regional industries.  I'm most familiar with the Punjabi film industry (which has been booming as of late - last 6 years), and they've basically gone into overdrive in making multi-starrer comedies with the same 3 comedic actors + actor/singer in the lead role, with some sort of wedding hijinks + trip to London/Canada.  OW and gross records are broken twice a year with this basic formula, I wouldn't be able to tell a single film apart.

[#ED]

10.4M?

 

Goodnight.