BW: Fanaa, Chalte Chalte, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna

Fanaa: pretty fantastic. The whole second half, which was a complete turn around from the first, was unexpected but pretty great. Of course Kajol was fabulous. I marvel at that woman's ability to play anywhere from 19 to 30 something. She's just gorgeous! This was my first exposure to Aamir Kahn. He's not attractive, but is charismatic, only he doesn't use this to his advantage as much as our beloved goofy-faced SRK. Rishi Kapoor and Kirron Kher as the parents were great, esp Rishi. I haven't seen anything from his hay-day (Dewaana doesn't count) but I like him in older paternal roles. I was a HUGE fan of their mountain cottage and the tongue twister song. I liked the Muslim Kashmiri Indian angle. It ended well.

Chalte Chalte: I've decided to see the movies that Rab Ne's Phir Milenge is based off of, one of them being Chalte Chalte. This was produced by SRK's first production company he started w/ his buds Juhi Chawla and Aziz Mirza and apparently was their first film that didn't flop, but it flopped with me. I'm not a huge fan of Rani Muhkerjee. Of course she left a bad taste in my mouth as Tina, I don't care how instrumental she was in getting Anjali and Rahul back together, and in K3G through no fault of her own she got in their way again, even for so small a moment. It's a little inexplicable, but I just don't like her much. Basically her character Priya runs into SRK's and he's instantly in love, but she's heading back to Greece to get engaged to her childhood friend. He follows her and she chooses him. But that's only the first half! Then the marital problems and pig-headedness come into play. Raj and Priya are both heavily flawed but refuse to correct themselves for the long-term. I wasn't convinced by the "happy ending". SRK's performance reminded me of many others, mostly Devdas. Johny Lever played the town drunk that sang DDLJ the whole time. I didn't realize that Raj's song he sings for the gma is the title to the movie! Now I can pronounce it! but only if I sing it...

Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna: are you joking me?! Good gravy, if I thought Chalte Chalte was a downer w/ an unlikable SRK this was 100 times worse. Two marriages, neither entirely blissful, but ok until one husband (SRK) and one wife (Rani) decide to be "friends" and help each other's marriages, only they end up being completely selfish and only helping themselves. There was not enough punishment and too much moral indiscretion w/o remorse. I refuse to believe this had a happy ending. I really hated Rani, but hey, I always have, and REALLY hated SRK. Imagine Devdas (the character's name is Dev, ha) and Raj from Chalte Chalte times a million and that was how unlikable and self destructive and pig-headed this character was. Mad props to KJo for making such an unlikable character out of SRK, and for playing emotions like a violin yet again.
Good things about KANK:
-Amitabh Bachchan plays the PIMP father that wears exquisite furs
-Abhishek Bachchan plays Rani's husband and Sexy Sam's son. He's a dear and has impeccable suit jackets that he flips the collars of, revealing fantastically colored under collars. At first I was like WAH? and then I was converted. Props Manish Malhotra, mad props.
-Preity Zinta was SRK's wife. She's my second fave after Kajol.
-Kajol had a cameo and shook her groove thang like no body's bizz-nezz.
-John Abraham was the D.J.
-Kirron Kher played SRK's mom, she's great.
-The costumes were fantastic.
-I bought this so I have the case and all. When you open it you pull down on this dealy and the discs are revealed by this crazy pop-up book mechanism, like you pull the bottom of the case and another disc holder pops out of the top too! It's straight up redick.
Question: How much is My Name Is Khan going to cost if KANK beat out K3G? Gosh Karan, you got some mad dough.

That's it really, I could rant more, and I'm sure the only people who care at all have seen these, but I don't want to spoil too much. My Hindi's going well. I practiced my dependent vowels today. Sometime I'll actually start the dialogues after I'm done w/ the miserable alphabet!

What I do in a day & BW: Devdas & Jodhaa Akbar

With the antique collection we take a garment out of it's muslin. We vacuum the inside and outside (one person holds there fingers over the vacuum so the garment doesn't get sucked up and vacuums while the other makes sure all the crevises are open). After we vacuum the thing we put it on a dress form, describe it to Jaynne Anne, who puts it in the computer, I take pictures of the front, profile, back and details, then we find a box to put it in. We find the appropriate layer to put it in (based on type of textile) and put down a sheet of acid free paper. We stuff any sleeves or shoulders, put down cushions of paper where we need to fold the garment, tag it, cover it, shut the box, put it away w/ a sticky not reminder that we need to print a label and put the box away. That's how we preserve our antique collection. It's actually pretty fun, when I'm not drunk w/ exhaustion. Did you know that the dust on a garment can be more harmful than bugs? b/c the dust a) attracts bugs b) has acids that eat away at the material.
BW:
Are you kidding me?! Devdas, starring Shah Rukh Kahn, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit. Devdas (Kahn) returns from a ten year absence to his childhood sweetheart Paro (Rai). There marriage isn't allowed so she marries and he becomes an alcoholic. A famous courtesan, Chandramukhi (Dixit) falls in love with him and tries to nurse him through is love pangs.

Not going to lie, I didn't like this one AT ALL at first. Granted the costuming and dancing are magnificent, Madhuri Dixit is killer, but Paro and Dev act like stupid tweens and in the first 2/3 they're completely unlikable, but not in a good way. I just wasn't able to empathise and understand why they did the stupid things they did. Of course Chandramukhi is the whore with a heart of gold whose life sucks. In the first 2 hours nothing really happened, basically what I said above. The last hour was pretty great though. Somehow I suddenly felt sorry for everybody instead of just rolling my eyes out of my head over all the melodrama ("I'm an OCTOROON!" but not in a good way Genevieve). It was just a very self destructive film, and yet I cried at the end. The opposite of a lot of Bollywood movies I've seen, it was slow at the beginning and picked up at the end. Overall though, absolutely beautiful. I think I cried at the end b/c of the ridiculously amazing billowing sari.

Jodhaa Akbar
The Moghal (Muslim) emperor (Hrithik Roshan) in the 16th century marries an Indian (Hindu) princess (Aishwarya Rai). Of course there is intrigue and falling in love and 3 1/2 hours of Hrithik Roshan being ridiculously good looking. The production value was FANTASTIC. We're talking like 1000 extras in one song! Since it was period, well more like since it was Bollywood, the saris were magnificent, the extras were dressed to the nines and all the men wore hats that looked like marshmallows. There were elephants and pretty pillows and bangles and so forth. The story was good, the love story was excellent, Jalal (the emperor) was vituous to no end. Of course it was a good movie, but I found myself not liking it as much as I should. It was almost TOO epic. I'm really leaning more towards the Rab Nes and Swades-es of Bollywood I guess. I love the real life (Martha would put quotes here) stories that break into song more than the epic romances recently. SRK in Swades and Rab Ne just strikes a lovely chord with me, not that I don' t greatly enjoy 3 1/2 hours of Hrithik.