Still don´t have enough of us?

Anybody in the vicinity of Graz, Styria on April 14th will be able to meet us - bole to main, michael aur woh acchi Vienna larkiya - at the FilmASIA festival. Apart from (re-)watching movies like LRM, Kabul Express or KHNH (you can find what else is being screened in their BW special here) Babsy´s Bollywood short film "Tere Ishq, Mere Pyaar" will also be premiered there. So again we´re planning on having a jolly good time.

PS: Yesterday the shipping confirmation for Bommarillu finally came. Expect a very girly Schnuffelpost next week.

Sillunu Oru Kaadhal - while my heart gently weeps

Birgit has left me. This morning she boarded the plane that will take her to Goa, the starting point for her 6 months long India visit. Only yesterday we had a fantastic funny evening with two more superwow women, Sophia and Aradhana, coming up with the craziest ideas but today I´m just sad.

So it is quite clear that I needed a movie for the heart. And none of the 2006 Hindi releases I watched, made my heart ache the way Surya did in Sillunu Oru Kaadhal. I´m a sucker for getting sucker-punched from a movie. It´s an addiction, and as addictions go you need more, you grow resistant. So it has been a while that I felt that.

Six years ago Kundhari (Jyothika) agreed to an arranged marriage in spite of her girly dreams of a love match. And, as it can be seen in the really fun shaadi song, the groom isn´t to keen about the whole thing as well.









But now, six years later, we meet a very happy family. Gowtham (Surya) works as head mechanic for Suzuki in Mumbai. Kundhari has a great job too, there is a sweet, sassy daugther. And lots of love.










Then one day the big shocker. Gowtham is away on a business trip and while looking thru his stuff on the search for a biology project for her daughter (I always said those things were no good) Kundhari stumbles over an old diary of his. And has to find out that Gowtham has a past. In college he, being the local rowdie, fell in love with the daughter (Bhoomika) of an MP. And after a rocky start love became the real thing and plans of elopement were layouted.









Kundhari is devastated and takes a bold decision....

Oh what didn´t I cry. Though I´m not even sure why. It is not a great-great film. The story only works in parts. But still.

Bits of trivia:

• Sillunu Oru Kaadhal was Jyothika and Surya´s last film together before they got married. It flopped.

• The great "New York Nagaram" song is sung by A.R.Rahman himself and in the video Luzerne, Switzerland pretends to be NYC (And I´m actually thankful for it as I´m a very much ootyfied by the NYC overdose the Hindi filmmakers exposed myself to in the last year)

• The comments on Maria´s review of "Boys" turned into a discussion between Michael, her and others about the hotness factor of certain Southindian actors. Sorry, but I still say Suriya wins hands down. With or without beard. Evidence? There you go: 1 2 3 4 5. ´Nuff said.

PS: 24/03/07 Short update. Birgit just mailed. Sab teek hai. Goa bilkul accha hai.

Jung. Strictly for a pagali like me.

Inspector Veer (Jackie Shroff), pride of the police force, has a real crappy week. Not only does he have issues









with his collegue Khan´s work philosophy ("lets clear the streets by shooting any criminal you can get a hold of. Preferably when they´re already in custody") No, destiny really has it bad for him when his seven year old son is diagnosed with leukemia. A bone-marrow transplant would help, but you guessed right, the little sunshine has to have a rare bloodtype too. And all the beautiful pathetic flashback songs with a happy-pappy family don´t help.









Looking for a donor still brings up only one name. Balli. A mean stone cold 14 time killer, caught by Veer some 4 years ago.









Who obviously has no intention to act as donor. Not even when Veer beats the bejesus out of him. Also the teary pledge of the sons mom doesn´t soften his cold heart (in a very yummi body I might add) until she slips the crucial info in her speech that the donation would happen outside jail in way lower security hosptial.

Guess what. Balli suddenly discovers the humanitarian within him - and of course takes the chance to bhag. Before donating. He has better things to do. Visiting his girl. Doing a little dance. Settle some open scores with a local dishonest don. The usual.









All the while being chased by not only the desperate Veer, who has to catch him alive. But also by Khan, who wants to get him too, dead, if possible.

On the plus side of Jung:









Sanjay. Sanjay in chains. Sanjay in cool gangsta mode. Shilpas attitude in her interrogation. Jackie, at least in parts. Raveenas clothes, mostly.

On the minus side: Minimum 4 songs that just don´t fit. Plus a real bad item number. Sanjay without his real voice. Balli doing the stupid face/off hand thingy all the time. And the general inconsistency due to two different directors.
Thanks to Diwali I now know that Jung ran into serious trouble during its production. Sanjay Guptas differences with the producer ended in his name being pulled off the credits and Sanjay refusing to dub for it. And it shows.
So you´re not a Sanjay pagali like me? Go and find something else to do with you time. Like watching KANK 3 times in a row.

Cleaning up. Fanaa and Baabul

Finally recovered from last weekends Bollywoodblogger meeting, a week of teaching and clearing up boring office stuff that got delayed during the preparations for the meeting. I was so out of my filmi loop that I could not decide what to watch. Until I decided to finally get two movies of last year out of the way that so far did not hold much appeal to me. Fanaa and Baabul.

To make it short. Fanaa was way better then I expected. Which was veeeeery little. Baabul did nothing for me, but I was not hoping for much and I have to confess I at least got manipulated into one single tiny tear at the end.

Still there are some comments that I gathered watching them that I want to share.

I started with Fanaa. So I will here too.

- Went into the movie with the plan to count Aamir´s scarfs. And might have messed up. Does anybody have the final numbers? I made out seven different ones:










- Kajol is beautiful to watch. So much that my real-life significant other halted on his way from the musicroom to the fridge for a "Wow, who is that? Oh, that´s Kajol? She´s very cute"
- Aamir should not do rain-songs. At least not without an umbrella. Or if he has to get his hair wet, don´t make him look straight at the camera. Just don´t.
- The supporting cast names are great and mostly wasted... especially the ATF people Tabu and Saxena.
- Fanaa is one of the very few movies where the bad guy uses a Mac. But then Rehan is a sneaky chameleonish terrorwala, hai naa?
- The heating bills of Colonel-Uncle must have been huge if you count in all the windows and doors poor Kajol had to close to keep Aamir out.

Resume: Liked the first half as nice nothing new old-fashioned pyaar ki kahani. Could tolerate the second half in parts. Let´s just say its not as sloppy as the usual terrorist fare like Dus or the likes. Hate the screenwriting in parts of the second half. It´s as "lame-screenwriting-twists-if-you-wrote-yourself-into-an-deadend for dummies" -like as KANK was.

Baabul:

"Yeh shaadi nahin ho sakta" Yesss! Long time, no see hear! You great Über-cliché sentence! And then two minutes later we have Om Puri almost repeating the same words. Loved it. Wrecked the dramatic mood, lekin main kya karu. Great lines need to be welcomed with a loud "Wah!" I´m just glad I didn´t watch Baabul in a cinema. The drowned in tears rest of the audience would have killed me.

- Can we please finally cast Rani again in a movie where she does not have to weep constantly? Please?

- And refrain from putting Salman in pin-stripe suits and ties?










Resume: The first half with Salman is too long and still did not manage to give me any reason why Rani should be as much in love with Salman as she claimed to be in the second half. Same goes for her accepting John that fast. Again another movie where a character portrayed by Rani is not able to get any sympathy from me. Lets see how she will do in Tara Rum Pum Pum. From the trailer it has the potential for making the same mistake.

Bollywoodbloggers. The 4th ACEBAs.

The voting for the 4th Annual Central European Bollywood Awards closed last wednesday and since I forced (nicely) Marco into having the results ready by the time the Blogger Meeting would take place, we were able to present the results in a fun impromptu awards ceremony during the evening event of the PEIBBM.













I prepared a Keynote presentation, ordered Birgit and Beth to screenshot their way through some of the winner movies, made a panicking Marco prepare a introductory speech *hehe*, put on my Sari and then we were ready to rumble. But not before more little thing.













Setting up the presenation got me the results early and knowing that they would not please the majority of the people attending, Birgit had the brilliant idea to bring handpainted "Wah!! and "Boo!!" signs. Lovingly made by Maria, Beth, Kaddele and Michael on friday, they came in quite handy.













But see for yourself. Here are the results as voted by the german speaking Bollywood fanbase. Which obviously is very SRKish or as we started to call it "Khanian". But maybe if the german distributors and TV stations would start sceening more non-SRK movies the fanbase will widen. And we won´t have Karan Johar winning Best Director for KANK. Bleh.

Mehru Jaffer, an indian journalist, who attended the ceremony asked me if we are planning to repeat the real-life ceremony and had plans to give away the awards physicly in the future. Well, even if it was a lot of work preparing and organizing the event, I think the crew with Marco, Markus, Birgit, Beth and Michael did great work. And the attending Blogwriters and -readers were getting along so well and we all had a ball. So, yeah, why not?

PS: and here´s the flickr set of my pics from the ACEBAs. All Pics taken from everybody can be found in this blogger group.

Bollywoodbloggers. Next Stop. Evening Fun.

So, we´re off. Unfortunately the restaurant we´re going to has no web-access, so the next update will come sometime during the night. :D

UPDATE 03/12/2007: I´m in the process of sorting and uploading tons of pictures. And apart from doing as little as possible at my "real" job today, I´ll try to post some afterthoughts on the weekend and of course my take on the evening event...

in the meantime here a pic of most of the superwow people that attended.













here a link to pics my bestest husband took during the evening. link. and here the link to all the pics we took from friday to sunday. link.

Bollywoodbloggers: Main Hoon Naa. Liveblogging

Everybody is set up with their own or borrowed laptops. Well fed from the walk to the Naschmarkt and ready for action.

14:18 And we´re rolling.














And there we have Naseeruddin. "Are you in charge here? - Yes. - Not anymore."
Oh and I genuinely dislike the TV show host.

14:22 I so had a crush on Kabir Bedi when he played Sandokan in the 70ies (?).

14:24 Yesss. Finally someone shot the annoying TV show host. The Blogger crowd is cheering.

14:26 "General, nobody is going to help you now."

Ghalad. Raghvan. Ghalad. SRK hai naa...

14:27 Damn you, Raghavan. Damn you!!













14:29 Oh I love how the crowd reacts.

14:34 Oh pulleeeaaase. Khirron. It was a mistake. How is the boy to blame. Oh get over it !!!!!

14:40 SONG!! I luurve the continous shot.

Hectic blogging everywhere. And tons of comments. Cheers for every actor.

14:57 Childhood trauma: "Please refrain from hanging out with us. You´re not cool enough."

How rude!

15:06 Isn´t it a shame how slow the computer equipment in this college is?

15:09 Ram to the rescue. The crowd goes wild.

15:10 Main Hoon Na. Finally. Sigh. Cheer.

I´m starting to lag behind. It´s so much fun to read the other blogs and watch the film and sing and whistle.

But there is no dancing yet. At least it seems that at 5 people are able to whistle the Main Hoon Naa chorus.

15:22 Sush is about to show up.. The crowd "uuuuhhhhhs. aaahhhs" and there are "Sing Ram Sing" chants.

15:27 The crowd goes wild at the bullet-time spitting scene.

15:28 I love how the Gabbar Singh poster is mirrored in the cars window... Great job Farah!
Those bicycle-rikshas are pretty fast. Hain Naa?

15:33 Well, bad luck Raghavan. "General Bakshi sent his "bloody best"!

15:38 And there we have it. The waterfall scene. No collective sigh? Is the male audience dead? tsts

15:44 INTERVAL













How superwow. Koi, our professor in residence, brought his violin and played "Main Hoon Na" during Interval. Wah! Wah! Sunniye!!

16:10 And we´re back in College. Pyaar hota hai.

Btw. Michael has sound and video bytes. Birgit too. Live from Vienna.

16:13 Lucky is such a jerk.













16:15 Tumse Milke. Gotcha Lucky! Hah. Marco sings. Ulli bhi. Me too :-D

16:27 Poor, poor, sweet, heartbroken, fatherless Lucky. "Do you care, do you love me, do you hate me? Anything. Anything." Damn I´m out of tissues.

16:30 Can you imagine anything more gross then being wooed by Prof. Rasai? Even if it´s just on the phone?

16:39 Aren´t our boys cute in their black suits, getting ready for sports day prom night?

16:45 Ahhh, the laser pointer thingy bandhuk. Nice, Ram can be pretty cold.
"Sorry about the Sari Ma´am"!

16:50 Wohooo. "Happy teacher´s day"

16:52 Uuh-oh. I see drama coming. And tears. Curse you Raghavan.

17:01 Uuh-oh. Again. Somethings off. No kids in the school yard..

17:02 "Project Milap is finished, General Saab" I knew it! I mean I of course really already knew it, but you know I knew it even when I didn´t know it.

17:08 That little white lock of Raghvan is making me crazy. Good crazy. Pity that he such a despiseable looser.

17:11 Ok, something that always bothered me. Is Khan such a bad shot or why else the first shot in the arm?

17:14 "You are a very bad man"! Oh Boman *shakes head in sorrow"

17:16 What kind of bad-ass terrorist is Raghavan? Can´t even look the traitor in the eye while shooting Khan. Wimp.

17:18 "Paanch minutes, Ram" hehe. Climax time.

17:22 Typical bad boy mistake. Don´t talk. Shoot. Bah.

"Damn it, turn around" Three, two, one. Bhoooom. Huge cheers in the room.

"Just shut up and pull me up. Ahhhhhhuuuuhhhhaaaaahuuuu.Woooohooooooo. Aur phir. Wooohhhoooooooo.

AND NOW:

The bestest end-credits ever.

That was just too much fun. I´m voting for doing it all over again next week :D


PS: and here´s the flickr set of my pics from the Live Blogging. All Pics taken from everybody can be found in this blogger group.

Bollywoodbloggers. Updates.

I´m more busy then I thought I would be :D

So for the latest Updates go to Michaels Blog. I´ll see you all in in the afternoon.

Liveblogs: apart from Michael: Maini. Beth. Kaddele. Birgit. Maria


PS: and here´s the flickr set of my pics from the Open House in the morning. All Pics taken from everybody can be found in this blogger group.

Bollywoodbloggers. Evidence.

Michael started a flickr group for all the pics we will take during the meeting. Chal dekho na. And btw. we already started as you can see :D

http://www.flickr.com/groups/bollywoodblogger/pool/

Bollywoodbloggers. Ready. Set. Go.

Location. Check.
Movie. Check.
Program. Check.
Logo. Check.

Lets roll.


I can´t believe it. A week from now it will all be a pleasant memory. Come saturday, March 10th the Bollywoodblogger Meeting will rock the city.

Here is the final program with all the important infos (here the program in german):



















Thanks to Judith and Birgit for the great help and the awesome logo and layout.

So, if you happen to be in Vienna next saturday, be sure to drop in. You just don´t want to miss this.

P.S. Birgit entrusted her Carom board in my care. (She´ll be going to India for 6 months end of march) We´ll set it up at the meeting. And I hereby challenge all of you.

UPDATE 3/9/2007: And they started to arrive... Beth is here since Monday and Michael, Kaddele and Maria just touched down..