collaborative-ish project #1: Army of Monkeys gets off the sofa and Disco Dance[s]

I meant to direct attention to this ages ago, and you've probably already seen it anyway, but just in case: a few months ago, it came to light that my friend Steve over at Army of Monkeys had never even heard of Disco Dancer, a problem that surely needed to be addressed, so I sent him mine. He did a full-on AoM-style article on it - with video clips too! He also gave me space to explain why I had inflicted the movie on him, so you can read that too.

Basically, he was all "I can handle frighteningly bad Bollywood films," which seemed to me to smack of hubris. He and I like very different kinds of bad movies, though, so I wasn't sure I had anything to counter his claim. But then I remembered Disco Dancer. So I tossed it out. And he knew nothing about it. So a project was born.

I believe part of our arrangement was that I'll have to watch Jaani Dushman sometime soon. Unless I'm conveniently out of the country again...any invitations? Please?

Two Disco Dancer-related notes:
1) When I asked Rajan if he had seen DD, he immediately started doing one of Sam's moves from the "Bang Bang" song. It was great.
2) One of the things I love in DD is the fight scene in which people go flying into stacks of bricks, stacks which seem to exist solely to be knocked over in the fight, preferably by the trajectory of a bad guy. AoM has a clip here, if you don't remember. But lo! In the several days I spent in Punjab and Gujurat, I saw lots of seemingly random piles of bricks! All over the place! So while they may, in the movie, serve the purpose of being scattered under the heavy blow of our hero, they also are something you see by the side of the road in parts of rural India! Although maybe all the ones I saw were also there only to be knocked over, but I wasn't out of the cities at night, so I didn't actually see the fights. So if you're ever in India and hear a distant snapping....

Comments

Anonymous said…
My first chance to read on the best take on most Bollywood films. Being totally immersed in the NRI diaspora and ending up watching almost all movies available at the local desi dukan I really enjoyed reading your blog. Before you get KANKy, I'd love to read your opinion of OMKARA. Most of the people who have seen it have like it. I did too!
Oooh, you should email me and we cna discuss! Except not Omkara, becuaseu I haven't seen it yet. I really wanted to in India, but I thought that without subtitles I'd be sunk. I'm thinking about driving to Chicago next weekend to see it, though.
Anonymous said…
Oh yeah. You definitely need subtitles for that one! It was indeed hard to understand the language (dialect rather .. cant call it Hindi). Luckily the movie shown on the screen had subtitles and for once was I glad! On that note ever read the subtitles for any of the songs...most often they are hilarious!
I have this distant-seeming dream of someday having good enough Hindi to understand a movie at least 70% without subtitles. So I really need to start trying to learn Hindi. Where did you see Omkara? How did it go over in the theater you were in?
Anonymous said…
I live in PA but it takes me 15 min to cross the border into India ... er ... NJ to catch Bollywood movies with my fellow NRIs.
ggop said…
Disco Dancer was a super hit for Mithun. Mithun used to have a cult following in the 80s a la Govinda in the 90s. In all fairness he is one actor who won the national award for playing a tribal in Mrigya, went on to movies like Disco Dancer.

If you have picked up few hindi words, check out the Mithun category in GreatBong's website (http://greatbong.net)

gg

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