These clips have been bouncing around some email threads today. They look like they were directed by Arizal and Isaac Florentine's love child. Which means I have to see these films. Is it possible they're even available?

Chiranjeevi to the Rescue

Horse Versus Jeep

Telugu films are generally around on DVD but unsubbed. Just google around for Chiranjeevi + watch online and there are a few places where you can watch them in streaming video. (I think the one with the horse is Alluda Majaka). Without subtitles, it is hard for me to get too interested in working my way through them, especially since there are so many subbed films out there to grab first.

I'm of two minds about those "wacky indian movie" youtube clips, on the one hand its great that the gonzo filmmaking of that region is getting more attention, and the clips are hilarious; on the other hand, I don't know, it sort of feels like how MST3K was to the movies they screened. I loved MST3K, but I guess now I can better appreciate the feeling of those who didn't.

The clips allow us to look from the outside at the films ironically, and have a good laugh. But watching the 3-hour film from which the clips arise sometimes does something different, as Indian films are among the most un-ironic on the planet. Bursting with straight-faced sincerity, built from plots near mythological in their unwavering consistency, and illustrated through outrageous special effects and glorious musical numbers, the spirit of the production eventually consumes you. And you laugh, not from your former position of knowing superiority, but because the movie is driven by emotion, and unbound by the flimsy shackles of realism, and you are giddy with the potential of cinema finally unleashed.

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating. And really, when I think about it, I laughed at movies long before I laughed with them -- I don't think I ever would have gotten into Hong Kong movies as much as I have if I hadn't seen Woo's THE KILLER and didn't stop laughing about it for days afterwards. Maybe you need the one to get to the other.

So until Chiranjeevi has to save his coreas for Jenny,

-- Peter

I'm of the same mind, but there are just some occasions... I'll always remember the conclusion of ROTI, with its foot chase over a snow-covered mountain range: the antihero has his dying girlfriend slung over his shoulder, a half-dozen strapping young policemen and their vicious doberman are barely keeping pace with him, and the whole group is overtaken by an asthmatic elderly couple with their one-legged son! Still, I couldn't tear my eyes away.

There is something about the climaxes of Indian films in particular that bend time and space. I've seen a few films now that show the hero chasing the villain (or vice-versa) away from home, into a car, on a high speed chase, then out of the car and up a mountain, only to have mom show up a second later to jump between them to prevent that last fatal bullet (or strangulation, or whathaveyou), even though they left her waaaay back at the house and no explanation is given of how she got there.

But once you accept that, especially during the climax, characters traverse an emotional landscape rather than a spatial one, then mom showing up becomes an inevitability, rather than an impossibility, and really, no explanation is necessary.

It's still hilarious, but again, maybe something a little more, too.

-- Peter

Aw man Peter if I didn't already adore you I'd adore you all over again. You take my exact feelings and put them into meaningful sentences!! "Bursting with straight-faced sincerity, built from plots near mythological in their unwavering consistency, and illustrated through outrageous special effects and glorious musical numbers, the spirit of the production eventually consumes you. And you laugh, not from your former position of knowing superiority, but because the movie is driven by emotion, and unbound by the flimsy shackles of realism, and you are giddy with the potential of cinema finally unleashed." is exactly why I'm so addicted to this cinema.

xo
Jennifer