India
Pick of the week: Bollywood’s blissful, idiotic “RA. One”
Pick of the week: From dazzling dance numbers to post-"Matrix" action, "RA. One" showcases Bollywood's confidence VIDEO
Shahrukh Khan in "RA. One" I won’t remotely pretend that I’m qualified to judge “RA. One,” the Indian science-fiction action-adventure movie that opens all over the world this week, against the larger context of Bollywood cinema. What I can tell you is that “RA. One” is reportedly the most expensive movie the Indian film industry has ever produced, that it represents the continuing fusion of Eastern and Western sensibilities and technologies, and that it’s prodigiously silly and miscellaneous and a whole bunch of fun. This is hardly an original statement, but Hollywood had better not take its global supremacy for granted. While “RA. One” is as calculating as all get out, is loaded with blatant product placement and — in classic Indian style — combines any number of different and perhaps contradictory genres in an effort to reach babies and grandmas and everyone in between, it never feels cynically niche-marketed or fundamentally bored with itself, the way so many big-budget American movies do.
If you’re unfamiliar with Bollywood movies, the conventional thing to do would be to start with an acknowledged classic — maybe a delirious ’90s romantic-comedy hit like “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” or “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai,” both of which feature superstar Shahrukh Khan, who plays both a doofus dad and a video-game hero in “RA.One.” Or something more serious and substantial in tone, like “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India” or “Mughal-E-Azam” or “Mother India.” But seriously, you don’t need to bother. “RA. One” is where Bollywood is right now, and no advanced degree in South Asian studies is required to grasp its combo of slapstick comedy, semi-chaste romance, “Matrix”-meets-”TRON” fight sequences and booty-shaking musical numbers, which blend hip-hop, bhangra, traditional Indian dance and ultra-cheesy MTV choreography. Seriously, check out the video at the bottom of this page, which features Khan, voluptuous costar Kareena Kapoor and American R&B star Akon doing the song “Chammak Challo” (which is roughly how you say “hot chick” in Tamil Hindi) and then tell me with a straight face that you don’t want to see this movie.
Shahrukh Khan is sometimes described as the Tom Cruise of India, in that he’s been a movie star for decades — Khan will turn 46 next week — and has a similar veneer of indestructible cheerfulness. But, honestly, that’s selling the Bollywood star short, since no one regards him as an unstable religious wacko (although he is a Muslim in a predominantly Hindu society) and he hasn’t yet encountered the treacherous, self-mocking character-actor phase that Cruise seemingly faces. In “RA. One,” he first plays Shekhar, a goofy London video-game designer with appalling hair, who creates a first-person ass-kicking game with an indestructible villain at the behest of his adorable tween son. That smoldering electronic baddie is the title character, whose name approximates the Hindi pronunciation of Ravana, the demonic, 10-headed king of Lanka from the “Ramayana.” In between the bevies of dancing girls in skimpy costumes, the gags involving Shekhar acting like a wimp or getting kicked in the balls (four times? Five?), and the no-kissing-allowed, comic-erotic relationship between Shekhar and his wife, Sonia (the robust and irrepressible Kapoor, herself one of the biggest female stars in Bollywood), RA. One escapes from the video game and comes after Shekhar’s son, for reasons I won’t bother explaining. (He’s evil!)
I’m not sure you can spoil the plot of a movie as nonsensical as this one, but let’s just say that in the second half of “RA. One” the action shifts from London to Mumbai — site of a long and pointless airport fight sequence featuring a guest appearance by Rajnikanth, a superstar of Tamil (as opposed to Hindi) cinema — and Khan plays G. One, the hero who emerges from the video game with a 0.01 percent chance (we are told) of defeating his nemesis. (At 146 minutes, “RA. One” is pretty brisk by Bollywood standards, but as is customary in India and many other markets, it will play with an intermission.) Aficionados of high-end digital effects won’t see anything especially new in “RA. One,” which rates about a B on the Michael Bay scale, but there is a terrific sequence when G. One has to run sideways along a runaway passenger train, ending in the complete destruction of a Victorian-era train station. (A strikingly similar scene appears in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming “Hugo,” and they’re likely both recalling this real-life disaster.
I make no claims for “RA. One” as great cinema, and director Anubhav Sinha displays no particular vision, beyond that of a general who’s kept his enormous army moving in roughly the right direction. (Sinha and five co-writers, Shahrukh Khan among them, get credit for the story and screenplay.) What makes this movie worth seeing is its blend of aesthetic and technical approaches — some of the crew and special-effects team was Western — its immense scale and abundant confidence, and its utter shamelessness in trying to entertain nearly all imaginable viewers, from Abu Dhabi to New Jersey to Zanzibar. If you’re bored by the action scenes or the love story or the dopey domestic comedy, just wait three minutes for something else to come along — and whoever you are, you won’t be bored by the musical numbers!
Hollywood has entirely abandoned that quest to embrace all comers in its single-minded focus on the young, male-dominated blockbuster audience, and not a single American film released this year at this budget level has made me laugh out loud and stomp my feet and yearn to leap from my seat and shake it quite the way this admittedly idiotic Indian movie did. (It definitely didn’t hurt that the New York preview screening I attended resembled an enormous family banquet, with catered Indian food, long speeches and wandering small children — the movie started more than half an hour late.) It’s hard to resist the conclusion that what has happened in industry and commerce and finance is also happening in pop culture. Hollywood has lost confidence, and may soon lose its grip on global preeminence — and a new leader, in what we used to call the “developing world,” is almost ready to take over.
“RA. One” is now playing in theaters worldwide.
Inside India’s softcore porn industry
Bollywood reflects on what these racy and ubiquitous films from the pre-Internet era say about the nation's culture
NEW DELHI, India — On a hand-painted poster for a 1990s’ grade-B Indian film “Qatil Jawani” (“Murderous Nymphette”), a plump and naked actress sits astride a shirtless man, her head thrown back in apparent ecstasy as the man’s hands paw at her chest.
Once ubiquitous in so-called “morning shows” at theaters across the country, softcore films like “Biwi Anadi Sali Khiladi” (“Innocent Wife, Cheating Sister-in-Law”) and “Kaam Tantra” (“Principles of Sex”) have slowly disappeared from the big screen in India with the increasing availability of hardcore pornography on the internet.
What if we lose Pakistan to China
Why America's waning influence on the Muslim nation could be good news for both the U.S. and India
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani (L) shakes hands with China's President Hu Jintao during a meeting in Beijing May 20, 2011 NEW DELHI, India — With a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on the horizon, India has been caught between cheering Washington’s moves to rein in Pakistan’s military and bewailing the possible fallout if America “loses” Pakistan to China.
Unlike the United States, which can take its guns and go home, India will have to deal with the fallout of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistani radicalism for the next decade.
Mumbai explosions kill at least 8, injure 70
Three separate blasts rip through India's financial capital
A car is seen damaged at the site of a bomb explosion in the Dadar area of Mumbai July 13, 2011. Three explosions rocked crowded districts of India's financial capital of Mumbai during rush hour on Wednesday, killing at least eight people, media said, in the biggest attack on the city since 2008 assaults blamed on Pakistan-based militants. REUTERS/Stringer (INDIA - Tags: CIVIL UNREST CRIME LAW)(Credit: © Stringer India / Reuters) Three explosions rocked India’s busy financial capital of Mumbai late Wednesday, killing at least 8 people and injuring 70 in the city hit by a major terrorist attack nearly three years ago.
Local media reported the Home Ministry had called the explosions a terror attack. No Home Ministry officials could be independently reached for comment.
Television footage showed dozens of police officials, several of them armed, at the sites of the explosion and at least one car with its windows shattered.
Continue Reading CloseAfghanistan is ranked the most dangerous country for women
An expert survey ranks the most perilous countries for women, but results should be viewed critically
In this Monday, May 16, 2011 photo, women learn tailoring at a training center of the Afghan Institute of Learning in Kabul, Afghanistan. Sakena Yacoobi's AIL has grown from a few makeshift schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the mid-1990s to an organization running schools, women's learning centers, day care centers and clinics across seven of the 34 Afghan provinces. (AP Photo/Mustafa Quraishi)(Credit: AP) Afghanistan is the most dangerous country in the world for women according to a panel of gender experts assembled by Thompson Reuters Foundation. The experts, whose findings were gleaned in a survey from TrustLaw (an arm of Thompson Reuters Foundation), ranked which countries were most perilous for women through a number of different factors.
Which countries were found to be most dangerous? Afghanistan was ranked the most dangerous, followed by the Congo, then Pakistan, then India, then Somalia.
Continue Reading CloseNatasha Lennard covers the Occupy movement for Salon. A British-born, Brooklyn-based journalist, she has been covering Occupy Wall Street since before the first sleeping bag was unrolled in Zuccotti Park. One of the first journalists arrested at an Occupy action, she has managed to enrage Andrew Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. You can follow her on Twitter (@natashalennard), and email her any Occupy updates/videos/ideas to natasha.lennard@gmail.com More Natasha Lennard.
Flesh for sale
From kidney brokers to blood farmers, a journalist exposes the "red market" in human body parts
Scott Carney During the mid-2000s, Scott Carney was living in southern India and teaching American anthropology students on their semester abroad when one of his charges died, apparently a suicide. For two days, he watched over her body while the provincial police investigated her death, reporters bribed their way into the morgue to photograph the newsworthy corpse, local doctors performed an autopsy, and ice had to be rounded up to retard decomposition. Finally, his boss asked Carney to take pictures of the girl’s mangled remains for analysis by forensic experts back in the States.
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Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com. More Laura Miller.
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