Crazy rich failure

Fun fact first: Asia is home to about 60% of the world's population.  About 4.5 billion people.

Fun question: Can you generalize 4.5 billion with a word "Asian"?

Fun answer: Yes, but only here in the US!

Here in the US, one can easily shock most people by referring to, say, Iranians or Bangladeshis as Asians.  It will shock them because most Americans think only of Chinese and other Far East Asians as Asians.  The rest?  We are from shitholes, of course!

The box-office champ Crazy Rich Asians has done a lot to further reinforce this screwed up understanding.  (Nope, I haven't seen the movie, nor do I have any plans to watch it.)

The film has been "heralded as a milestone for Hollywood"

Not a single central or even auxiliary character is played by a white actor. On the few occasions when white people do feature, they flash across the screen as extras: as plane passengers or, on a giant container ship chartered for an over-the-top bachelor party, as bikini-clad beauty queens for hire.
Asian-Americans, including among the cast, hail this as a breakthrough moment in American cinema.

Well, ok.  But, that is the American perspective.  What is the reaction from Singapore, which is the locale for the movie? The film "ignores all Asians other than the Chinese kind."

One-quarter of Singapore’s population is not ethnic-Chinese, but of Malay or Indian descent. Yet when Malays feature, it is as valet-parking attendants. Indonesians are masseuses. As for the pair of Sikh guards at the Young family mansion, their buffoonish performance is as excruciating as Mickey Rooney’s as the Japanese photographer living above Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. Brown bodies, writes one anonymous film-goer, were disembodied “footnotes”: mere openers of doors or cleaners of homes. “Crazy Rich Asians” is not just “money porn”, she goes on, it is also, to many South-East Asians, “othering porn”. What passes as a victory in Hollywood can look like a glaring failure in Singapore.

And, how about in China?  You know, the "Asia" that most Americans think about?

Well, the movie "may not even be released there":

Under China’s strict quota system, a limited number of foreign films are approved for import every year and some experts are skeptical about the movie’s chances. The depictions of profligate spending and vast wealth inequality in “Crazy Rich Asians,” they say, might not sit well with Chinese officials amid the country’s growing push for positive “core socialist values.”

How about the content of the movie?

Dong Ming, a Shanghai film critic, said: “Maybe the content of the film wouldn’t get censored but it’s a question of whether the film would even be popular in China.”
“Chinese people really dislike this kind of westernized Chinese culture,” he added, comparing the movie to American Chinese food staples like General Tso’s chicken and fortune cookies. “The flavor is not authentic.”

We are a crazy rich people!

The business of art

One of the Tamil movies that I watched during my late teenage years was Yarukkaaga Azhudhaan (For whom did he cry?)  Of course, it was not during its original theatrical release but much later when the government television channel telecast the movie.

Unlike the typical movies, this one had no song-dance sequences.  No songs, period.  It was an up close drama.  I loved it.  The fact that it was written and directed by Jayakanthan was a bonus.

But, such movies never became commercial successes.  The movies that hit the box office jackpot were the formulaic ones with a clearly defined hero, a much younger and attractive heroine, a designated bad guy, and a bunch of songs.  The poetic art of the theatre died out in the face of crass commercial cinema.

I have no idea about the contemporary state of "art" movies in the old country.  I hope there are still a couple of people who create meaningful art.

In the adopted home country, art (indie) movies continue to flourish, even as Hollywood itself makes interesting offbeat movies once in a while that sometimes are also commercial successes.  There is one big reason that Hollywood continues to pump up its formulaic movies with action, sex, special effects, CGI, and whatever else.  These can be sold all over the world, whereas the indie movies cannot for one simple reason: There is a lot of talking involved in the art movies.  The language and the slang are distractions for the foreign market.

All these are reflected in the list of English movies playing in Chennai.  There is only one art/commercial crossover that is playing in town--Coco.  But, some of my other favorites from this year may not ever come to town.  Like Lady Bird.

Lady Bird was on my list ever since I read the buzz about it and its writer/director Greta Gerwig, whose performance as an actor I have appreciated in a few movies.  And, when the moment came, the companion and I went to the movie hall.

Like many reviewers, I too was awed by one scene in particular.  The protagonist, Lady Bird, goes to shop for a prom dress with her mother Marion (played by Laurie Metcalf).  The entire conversation, the facial expressions, and the body language, offered wonderful insights into the human that we all are.  Here's a lengthy excerpt from a review about the movie and about this particular scene:

“It’s too tight, fuck!” Lady Bird cries as she tries on one dress. “Well, I suggested you not have that second helping of pasta,” Marion replies through the door. “Honey, you seem upset about it, and I’m trying to help,” she adds as her daughter cries out in protest, “You’re giving me an eating disorder!” Throughout the scene, Gerwig never cuts to inside the dressing room; the camera stays on Marion (with Lady Bird occasionally emerging in a new dress), with Metcalf registering the tiniest facial twinges every time she realizes she’s said something that goes too far. Finally, Lady Bird emerges in a pink, slightly sparkly number. “I love it,” she sighs. “Is it too pink?” Marion replies.
In Marion’s eyes, there’s a fine line between being critical and being helpful, and she’s straddling it, but to her daughter, every criticism is another stab in the heart, an attack on her individuality from which she can’t recover. They’re both wrong, and that’s what’s so wonderful about Gerwig’s script; it lets its characters be wrong without the viewer losing affection for them. “Why can’t you say I look nice?” Lady Bird asks. “I thought you didn’t even care what I think,” Marion counters. “I’m sorry, I was telling you the truth. Do you want me to lie?”
“I just wish … I wish that you liked me,” Lady Bird says sorrowfully. “Of course I love you.” “But do you like me?” Marion can only reply with that most stiflingly parental of philosophies: “I want you to be the very best version of yourself that you can be.” “What if this is the best version?” Lady Bird asks. Marion looks at her askance, saying more in a glance than any piece of dialogue could. Believe me, it’s not, she’s thinking. But also, It had better not be. It’s simultaneously heartbreaking and heartfelt, an entire relationship captured in a look, for better or worse.

Everything in that scene will be lost in translation, unlike a visual spectacle of the ticking clock and the macho hero jumping into action in order to rescue the damsel in distress.  Though, Hollywood has started creating female action characters as well--as long as they have well proportioned breasts and legs that will attract the male audience too.

Yarukkaaga Azhudhaan?

Tony Curtis & Jack Lemmon in "Some like it hot"

The final few minutes of the movie leading to the famous last line, "nobody's perfect!" ... This is the scene that came to my mind when I heard that Curtis died ...

Hollywood scripted it before it all happened

Bruce Willis' General Devereaux character reminds me of this prize-winning paper on the American military coup--in 2012, which is next year .... :)
Maybe there is a lot of truth in this cartoon:

Mel Gibson alert :)

Slate Video has a mashup video bringing in the latest of Mel Gibson audio.  Hilarious.

Also at Slate, Christopher Hitchens has a brilliant piece thanks to which I had to figure out what the word gauleiter means!  Hitchens writes:

what he is issuing is the distilled violence, cruelty, and bigotry—and sexual hypocrisy—that stretches from the Crusades through the Inquisition to the "concordats" between the church and Hitler and Mussolini. Yet he's still reporting for work. When will Hollywood, and the wider society, finally decide to shun and spurn him utterly, both for what he is and for what he represents?

Frank Rich is all about schadenfreude, and writes:

It seems preposterous in retrospect that a film as bigoted and noxious as “The Passion” had so many reverent defenders in high places in 2004. Once Gibson, or at least the subconscious Gibson, baldly advertised his anti-Semitism with his obscene tirade during a 2006 D.U.I. incident in Malibu, his old defenders had no choice but to peel off. Today you never hear conservatives mention their embrace of “The Passion” back then — if they mention Gibson at all. (Fox News has barely covered the new tapes.) But it isn’t just Gibson who has been discredited. Even as he self-immolated, so did many of the moral paragons who had rallied around him as a culture-war martyr.
Take, for instance, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. During the “Passion” wars, he had tried to blackmail Gibson’s critics by publicly noting that Christians are “a major source of support for Israel” and that Jewish leaders would be “shortsighted” to “risk alienating two billion Christians over a movie.” That evangelical leader was Ted Haggard, the Colorado megachurch pastor since brought down by a male prostitute. Gibson’s only outspoken rabbinical defender in 2004, the far-right Daniel Lapin, would be sullied in the scandals surrounding the subsequently jailed Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. William Donohue of the Catholic League — who defended Gibson in 2004 by saying, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular” — has been reduced these days to the marginal role of attacking The Times for reporting on priestly child abuse.
The cultural wave that crested with “The Passion” was far bigger than Gibson. He was simply a symptom and beneficiary of a moment when the old religious right and its political and media shills were riding high. In 2010, the American ayatollahs’ ranks have been depleted by death (Falwell), retirement (James Dobson) and rent boys (too many to name). What remains of that old guard is stigmatized by its identification with poisonous crusades, from the potentially lethal antihomosexuality laws in Uganda to the rehabilitation campaign for the “born-again” serial killer David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) in America.

I suppose Gibson is one of those celebrity wells that keep on giving.  Here is a classic from the Daily Show :)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Highway to Mel?
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

The election for governor of California

Bollywood takes over Hollywood?

Interesting report from The Hindu:

Anil Ambani plans a takeover of the Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer Hollywood studio in an attempt to become one of the world’s most powerful film bosses, the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday.

When contacted, a spokesperson from the Anil Ambani Group declined to comment.

Anil Ambani already owns a controlling stake in Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks studio and has struck a series of deals with stars including Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey, Julia Roberts and George Clooney to develop their films.

Anil Ambani-led Reliance Big Pictures produced two most successful films last year while its current blockbuster ‘The 3 Idiots’ has broken Indian box office records.

According to the report, he hopes to expand his influence with an ambitious bid for MGM, the Hollywood studio which owns the James Bond franchise.

Sources close to Ambani confirmed his interest in acquiring MGM and it would help him achieve his ambition to become the world’s most powerful film mogul, the report said.

It also happens that Anil Ambani's wife is a former Bollywood star, Tina Munim :)
Here is a clip from an old movie starring Munim:

A word for the graduate

Gran Torino

It is awful that Hollywood waits until the end of the year to release its good movies--the kind of movies that eventually show up in the Oscar nominations list.  We then have to squeeze in so many movies into a very short time period before they disappear from the cinema halls--yes, we can watch them on DVDs later, but there is something special about watching the movies in a big theater with a bunch of others.

So, this time it was Gran Torino.  

For the most part, it was a neat movie.  But, at many places, it was stilted and put-on.  It did not have the kind of nuances that Eastwood played with in Million Dollar Baby, even though there were plenty of opportunities.  The old man's shift to tolerating and liking his Hmong neighbors was quite sudden, compared to the personality we were made to understand.  

I liked the way the movie ended, though it would have been better if the storytelling had involved a little bit more of the character being introspective--the nuances that I miss.  

Later, as I was driving back home, I thought that maybe the movie was the right one for the times for another reason: the "big three" are still stuck in the years of the Gran Torino, while the auto market itself had moved on to Toyotas, Hondas, and Hyundais!

Teeth: American white v. British yellow

But what is it about the bright white and perfectly straight teeth of Los Angeles that Americans love - and expect of their public figures?
"Americans have the idea uniformity is equivalent to looking good. The British character is more free-spirited, more radical," says Professor Liz Kay, dean of the Peninsula Dental School in Exeter and Plymouth.
She says Americans aspire to a row of teeth which are absolutely even and white. BBC News

America's view of the world

Has American politics changed at all since this movie, Three Days of the Condor, came out in 1975?