Madison Film Forum: Bollywood Films at AMC Star Fitchburg 12

This week I had the opportunity to write an Isthmus article about the Bollywood films that have been playing at AMC Star Fitchburg 18, mostly without significant local media attention, for over a year now.

You can find the article, "Bollywood in Fitchburg," at The Daily Page, or Madison readers can pick up a copy of Isthmus this week.

Someday I might write a "meta-article" about how difficult it was to get information for the article because AMC Theaters have entered a "quiet period" leading up to their IPO. But given that, I was grateful that they could give me enough nuggets of information to get the word out about the films. The most interesting piece of information, however, was confirmed by simply looking at the foreign language titles that have played in Madison commercial theaters from June to November 1. I encourage you to read the article and see how Star's foreign language lineup compares to Sundance...I think you'll be surprised.

What wasn't clear at press time was whether Krrish 3 would play for another week at AMC Star Fitchburg 18.  I can now confirm that it will play for another week, and that I had as much fun at it as I have had at any recent superhero franchise film. Madison readers should check it out if they have the opportunity (and bring friends).

Meanwhile, I thought it would be useful to post some links for those interested in trying out a few Bollywood films at home before venturing to AMC Star Fitchburg 18.  First, I'll mention some previous posts that have useful links.

Back in March, 2011, I did a "Quick Picks" collection of Shah Rukh Khan titles that were then streaming on Netflix, including a title I recommend as a good starting point in the Isthmus article, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.  As with all of these older posts, the links to films no longer streaming will still take you to that title's Netflix DVD page. If you want to watch the recent Shah Rukh Khan film that played at AMC Star Fitchburg 18, Chennai Express is now streaming on Netflix.

In the article I make a brief mention of the two versions of the 2010 film, Kites.  Back in October, 2011, I posted links to both Kites (122 minutes) and Kites: The Remix (98 minutes), the later of which was re-edited by Hollywood director Brett Ratner.  The original film is still streaming on Netflix.  For streaming options for Kites: The Remix, consult GoWatchIt, where you'll find options to rent it on iTunes, Vudu and other resources (beware: the Amazon Instant Video link sends you to a completely different film).

In the near future, I hope to put together a post about classic Bollywood, films starring Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Amitabh Bachchan, and more. I've had trouble finding good streaming sources for them, however, so for now just search these names on the internet and you'll find good starting places for classic Bollywood.

Finally, getting back to films at Star, I recommend that people watch Dhoom 2 (2006) on Netflix View Instant in preparation for the release of Dhoom 3 in December.  The original Dhoom (2004) is also available to stream on Netflix, but Dhoom 2 is a much better test to find out if you will want to see Dhoom 3 on the big screen.

Posters and Synopses from The Movie Database

Chennai Express (Rohit Shetty, India, 2013, 141 minutes)

Chennai Express follows man's journey from Mumbai to Rameshwaram and what happens along the way after he falls in love with the daughter of a don.

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Dhoom 2 (Sanjay Gadhvi, India, 2006, 147 minutes)

In the second installment of the Dhoom series, Jai and Ali are back as the buddy cops on their toughest job so far. "Mr.A" is an international thief who has planned to steal a priceless artifact in Mumbai and the police have got to nab him. But Mr.A manages to steal the artifact and elude the police. He finds his match in Sunehri and they form a partnership. They move on to Rio for their next job, with Jai and Ali hot on their trail. Mr.A whose actual name is Aryan, and Sunehri are drawn towards each other but little does Aryan know of Sunehri's little secret.

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Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (Aditya Chopra, India, 1995, 190 minutes)

Raj is a rich, carefree, happy-go-lucky second generation NRI. Simran is the daughter of Chaudhary Baldev Singh, who in spite of being an NRI is very strict about adherence to Indian values. Simran has left for India to be married to her childhood fiancé. Raj leaves for India with a mission at his hands, to claim his lady love under the noses of her whole family. Thus begins a saga.

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Stream Ryan Trecartin's Center Jenny through Nov. 8 at Vdrome

Very high on my to-view list is Center Jenny, a new video by Ryan Trecartin, and one of four that he screened at the Venice Biennale.  In fact, I should probably watch it tonight, because it is only streaming on the Vdrome website channel through November 8.

As the Vdrome about page will tell you, Vdrome is "an online platform that offers regular, high quality screenings of films and videos directed by visual artists and filmmakers, whose production lies in-between contemporary art and cinema." You can consult the Vdrome archive for previous artists and films, but the streams themselves are only available for a limited time.

It is difficult to open the Vdrome Vimeo links outside of the Vdrome page itself, and I've not been able to use my previously described technique of using the myPlex Media Queue to watch Vdrome on my television. This seems like a good scenario for using Chromecast to fling the Chrome tab containing the Vdrome video to my television, because while Trecartin's work is driven by an internet sensibility, I don't want to watch it on a computer.

Quite a bit of Trecartin's earlier work is available on UbuWeb, and I feel less guilty about pointing you there in this context because unlike other work on Ubu, Trecartin's work is there with the artist's permission. As you will see Trecartin is quite prolific, and it is difficult to catch up with his work because it can be somewhat exhausting to keep up with his hyperkinetic style. One place to start might be I-BE-AREA from 2007, the first hour of which I think is absolutely brilliant, followed by a second hour that would be just as great if I hadn't been so exhausted by the first.

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Center Jenny (Ryan Trecartin, USA, 2013, 53 minutes)

Vdrome: Ryan Trecartin’s movies unfold like futuristic fever dreams. Collaborating with his cast, Trecartin’s layered aesthetic reveals high-definition uncanniness, wherein digital life dynamics and gamesmanship merge with pop culture histrionics and banality. In CENTER JENNY, part of Trecartin’s presentation at the 55th Venice Biennale, his characters continuously evolve towards a post-human realm through reality show hermeneutics, prosumer rhetoric, and collegiate rituals.

Note: After November 8, the Center Jenny links will simply take you to the Vdrome main page.

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I-BE-AREA (Ryan Trecartin, USA, 2007, 105 minutes)

UbuWeb, citing Electronic Arts Intermix Catalog: 

Holland Cotter, writing in The New York Times, describes the "sensationally anarchic" video I-Be Area, in which Trecartin uses what Cotter terms "very basic digital tools to create a highly personal narrative art, almost a kind of folk art."

Cotter writes: "We're in a house of many tight, messy rooms. In the suburbs? Cyberspace? Hard to say. Anyway, it's night. A door bangs open. A girl, who is also a boy, dashes in, talking, talking. Other people are already there, in gaudy attire, dire wigs and makeup like paint on de Koonings. Everyone moves in a jerky, speeded-up, look-at-me way and speaks superfast to one another, to the camera, into a cellphone. Phrases whiz by about cloning, family, same-sex adoption, the art world, the end of the world, identity, blogging, the future. Suddenly indoors turns into outdoors, night into day, and we're at a picnic, in dappled sunshine, with a baby. Then this all reverses, and we're indoors again. A goth band is pounding away in the kitchen. The house is under siege. Hysteria. Everyone runs through the walls."

"...For queer artists of Mr. Trecartin's generation, cross-dressing, cross-identifying and cross-thinking are part of a state of being, not statements of political position. Like the work of John Waters and Jack Smith, his art is about just saying no to life as we think we have seen it and saying yes to zanier, virtual-utopian possibilities."

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Bollywood: Ghajini, Dev.D, Jodhaa Akbar

After a significant of time off, I will return to regularly scheduled posts and updates in the coming weeks.

This past month a significant number of Bollywood films have been added to Netflix Watch Instantly.  Some of them mark the return of films that I've posted about in the past, including several films with Shah Rukh Khan.

Ghajini might not be for everyone, but it certainly is a wild ride and it features many of the pleasures and odd contradictions of Hindi popular cinema.  It is actually a Hindi-language remake of a 2005 Tamil language film (by the same director), and it is currently the sixth highest grossing Bollywood film in history.  It is often described as a Bollywood version of Memento, but that description will be misleading to those who are unfamiliar with the mix of tones and genres within many Bollywood films.  Certainly many of the plot elements will be familiar to those familiar with Memento, but Ghajini also features an extreme mix of light whimsical romance and brutal violence that one simply would not see in Hollywood genre filmmaking.  If you are willing to handle some extreme genre mixing within the same film (even more so that the typical Bollywood film), you should give Ghajini a try.

Ghajini (A.R. Murugadoss, India, 2008, 177 minutes)
Netflix: After a vicious attack claims the life of his girlfriend and leaves him with a debilitating case of short-term memory loss, mobile phone mogul Sanjay Singhania sets out on a quest to bring down the perpetrators that have ruined his life. Netflix link.







Here are some other films, perhaps more typical of recent Bollywood output.

Dev.D (Anurag Kashyap, India, 2009, 137 minutes)
Netflix: Because they come from different castes, Dev, the son of a tax collector, and his true love, Paro, are not allowed to marry. After Paro's family sends her to Calcutta, Dev despairs and spirals down into a life of overindulgence. Netflix link.

Jodhaa Akbar (Ashutosh Gowariker, India, 2008, 205 minutes)
Netflix: What begins as a strategic alliance of two cultures becomes a genuine opportunity for true love between a mighty Mughal emperor and a Hindu princess in director Ashutosh Gowariker's epic romance set in 16th-century India. Netflix link.

International: Visconti's Senso on Netflix Watch Instantly 4/22/11

I don't know why, but this Friday (April 22) will be a particularly good day for new films on Netflix Watch Instantly.  Maybe it's just the sheer number of films being added, and the percentage of good films is the same as any new film day on Netflix (there certainly are plenty of non-interesting films being added, too).  But in any case over the next few days I will try to highlight some of the interesting films being added Friday.

First up is Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954), which some consider to be Visconti's break from neo-realism.  In an interesting essay on the Criterion Collection website, filmmaker Mark Rappaport distinguishes Visconti's earlier films from other neo-realists like De Sica and Rossellini in the first place, noting that Visconti was always more interested in visual style and mise-en-scene just as much as he was interested in contemporary realism.  Describing Senso, Rappaport writes, "It is as if we were in a Manet painting twenty-four frames a second. . .You don’t want to hang the images on the wall. You want to live in them. The figures move in architectural surroundings with the grace and elegance of Veronese figures come to life."  Like Douglas Sirk, whom I seem to be mentioning quite often on this blog lately, Visconti was also interested in the expressive possibilities of melodrama; Rapapport begins his essay with a quote from Visconti: "Melodrama has a bad reputation because it has been abandoned to schematic and conventional interpretation."  Both Sirk and Visconti, however, went beyond schematic and conventional examples of the melodramatic form, resulting in rich, textured experiences that maximize emotional affect.

Senso (Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1954, 123 minutes)
Netflix: Italian Countess Livia Serpieri (Alida Valli), whose family leads an underground resistance during the Austrian occupation of Italy, risks her marriage, family, friends and political standing when she gives in to her lust for Austrian Lt. Franz Mahler (Farley Granger). Set in the late 19th century, director Luchino Visconti's luxurious, emotionally charged film is an adaptation of Camillo Boito's novella Senso. Netflix link.
Begins streaming 4/22/11




In perhaps an odd move, I'm going to provide a link for something that I don't want you to stream: the English dubbed version of Visconti's The Leopard.  By all accounts, it is far inferior to the original Italian language version, but unfortunately it is the English language version that is currently streaming on Netflix Watch Instantly.  Still, perhaps after watching Senso you might want to seek out the Italian language DVD or Blu-ray of The Leopard.

The Leopard (English Version, Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1963, 161 minutes)
In this war drama set in 1860s Sicily, Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster) attempts to hold onto the glory he once knew, while his nephew, Tancredi Falconeri (Alain Delon), has joined opposition forces and is being heralded as a war hero. As Falconeri begins to fall for Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), the daughter of the town's new mayor, Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa), Salina must learn to accept his changing political status. Netflix link.

Douglas Sirk and Melodrama

Apologies for the delays, and I'll need to catch up with a short genre post focusing on melodrama, which should have been posted on Thursday.

The delays were caused by some good news: I've been invited to be a juror for the Wisconsin's Own competition at the Wisconsin Film Festival.  So I've been watching a lot of films and preparing to go to Madison next week.  This will also affect the schedule for next week, so I'll post a schedule update soon (I hope to at least automatically post some Quick Picks while I'm at the Festival).

In the coming weeks I hope to do a longer entry on classic Hollywood melodrama, but for now you should just introduce yourself to the work of Douglas Sirk.  If you are unfamiliar with his work, once again I direct your attention to the Great Directors section of Senses of Cinema.  In addition, you should check out an article about "Sirkian Melodrama" on the Film Studies for Free blog.

I had initially hoped to lead you to watch Sirk and then watch Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven, but it is no longer on Netflix Watch Instantly.  But if you want to follow up with DVD rentals after this introduction to Sirk's visual style, in addition to Far From Heaven, I'd also recommend comparing the end of All that Heaven Allows with the end of David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Not enough people acknowledge the connections between Sirk and Lynch's Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks (for another good comparison, watch dancing with framed photographs scenes in both Written on the Wind and Twin Peaks). For an interview with Todd Haynes (whose current melodrama remake, Mildred Pierce, is airing on HBO) in which he talks about Sirk and the syntax of 1950s melodrama, check this ArtForum interview.

All that Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, USA, 1955, 88 minutes)
Netflix: Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson star in this supreme example of the glossy Technicolor melodramas of director Douglas Sirk, which were the inspiration for 2002's art-house hit Far from Heaven. Wyman is a repressed widow; Hudson is the virile (and younger) gardener who quotes Thoreau. A scandal ensues when they flaunt their love before their stuffy mid-1950s family and social set. Netflix link.

Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, USA, 1959, 124 minutes)
Netflix: In Douglas Sirk's emotionally and visually extravagant final film, Lana Turner is Lora Meredith, an aspiring actress and single mother who meets Annie Johnson, a black and similarly single and struggling mother. The two women move in together and face a huge challenge as they try to raise their children -- especially Annie's daughter, who, favoring her extremely fair-skinned father, slowly comes to resent her mother's black identity. Netflix link.





The current Netflix Watch Instantly lineup also includes an earlier version of Imitation of Life, if you would like to see how Sirk put his unique stamp on his version of the same material.

Imitation of Life (John M. Stahl, USA, 1934, 110 minutes)
Netflix: After taking in black housekeeper Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers) and her light-skinned daughter (Fredi Washington), the white and widowed Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert) makes a fortune in the pancake businesses, using Delilah's recipe and likeness. But wealth has unexpected consequences for them all. John M. Stahl directs this black-and-white classic based on Fannie Hurst's novel by the same name. Netflix link.