Have had a good time at my aunt's place this "fall break". Since I did nothing of consequence (and, thankfully, since the guys at school decided not to ruin my break by uploading exam scores), the only thing I have to talk about are movies. It feels like I've reached a point in my life when I no longer feel the impulsion to read books. I have a few unfinished books on my Kindle, but the urge to read them leaves me as soon as I pick it up. Hopefully this will prove to be just a passing phase, and I shall return to being a bookworm ere long. Anyway, movies are good. I have nothing against them. I will say that I've been watching movies with greater frequency than I did in the past, and that has perhaps contributed to my no longer being a bookworm (hopefully temporarily).
I watched several Hindi movies this break. Some were good; some were good some of the time; others were plain infuriating in their inanity. It's always infuriating how Indian movies (especially "crime thrillers") come up with the most ridiculous pseudoscientific devices to keep the movie afloat. In Hamari Adhuri Kahani, for instance, they manage to have a convicted terrorist released from jail based on the video-taped testimony of a British missionary. All this missionary had to do was to speak clearly into the camera, making sure to evince maximum Britishness in order to get reason defenestrated in the courtroom. "So-and-so is innocent," he said. The guy recording the testimony high-fived himself, and sent the video file straight to the judge, who immediately had the terrorist released. Once again the long bottom of the law prevented the misapplication of justice.
In Shamitabh, a mute man gets a device planted in his vocal chords that records speech that is heard in an earpiece, and transmits it when it senses the lips moving. At no point did anyone go, "Hang on a minute. Is this how science works?" I don't know whether the filmmakers were sure that gullible audiences would lap up all the nonsense thrown their way, or whether they knew that their audiences loved being treated like people of mean intelligence, but things like this seriously annoy the sensible viewer. It's insulting to our intelligence to be treated this way. There's a marked difference between the trash that comes out of Hollywood and the trash that comes out of Bollywood, in that the former doesn't make any attempt, at least actively, to insult the viewer's intelligence, as Bollywood clearly does. The only point of contention with Bollywood is whether these two bloated giants of the movie world have fundamentally different audiences (in which case Bollywood would have to come up with a defense for their questionable choice of audience), or whether Bollywood just grossly underestimates their target audience's intelligence (in which case Bollywood would have to come up with a case for treating their viewers like retards).
Other tropes that greatly annoy me are cutesy children. I was watching a movie yesterday (Samay) in which a girl, who couldn't have been younger than twelve, literally came skipping up to her mother to show her a drawing. It annoyed me greatly when it transpired that the girl was not retarded. In another movie (the above-mentioned Hamari Adhuri Kahani), the writers went to great lengths to come up with the most cringe-inducing flowery dialogues. Vidya Balan took one look at a flower, turned to her child, and said something pretentious about those flowers having been put on Earth by God for him. He was twenty-four. Okay, that was a joke. He was actually young: maybe six or seven. But then he looked up toward the sky, and said in the most grating, saccharine voice, "Thank you, God." Hamari Adhuri Kahani broke all previous records in terms of pretentious dialogues, so it would be unfair to talk about it and other Bollywood movies in the same breath, but my point still stands. Although I suppose if Bollywood attempted to imitate real speech, instead of coming up with pseudo-poetical drivel all the time, their movies would be revealed for the worthless pieces of shit they are. Argh, I am so mad at Bollywood!
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