Oscar who?
Didn’t see a movie on the weekend. Reason being, my son has his ICSE Board Exams starting this week. Decided not to watch the Academy Awards telecast today as well, not because of my son’s boards, but because I’m bored. Stiff. Of US glam shows. Which is all the Oscar race really turns out to be. Designer duds and diamantine dudettes. Red carpets and blue blood celebs.
There’s also the fact that I’m not really into most of the big nominees this year. Okay, so I haven’t seen Million Dollar Baby yet – not yet in theatres or DVD, and I will not watch a pirated print – but I doubt even that would blow my skirts up much. Truth be told, I’ve come to enjoy watching Brazilian, Chinese and other non-euro/US films much more than typical Hollywood product of late. Even if I feel like watching a good comedy, give me a good French flick anyday. Or if I want a good action dose, then I’ll take a Korean one, or Chinese. Somehow, Hollywood’s bloodlines are running paler than usual, and even their most technically sophisticated products leave me somewhat cold in the end.
For instance, I can’t imagine a film like Central Station ever being made in the USA, and yet it’s probably last year’s best dramatic film, a must-see. Or The Hero, which shows you Jet Li in a light that Hollywood action-flick producers obviously never see him – and it’s a film which is not only thrillingly action-packed but is so beautifully made and masterfully designed and produced that it makes even Crouching Tiger pale in comparison. Or the works of Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano. Or the whole genre of Japanese horror, which Hollywood is now turning to for inspiration – the recent Sarah Michelle Geller-starring English language-version of The Grudge is a rare collaboration of Japanese film-making and American funding and stars. See Dark Water and you get a ghost story that is so much more eeirily moving than any Hollywood slasher product.
These days, if I have to get my Hollywood fix, I prefer to do it watching TV serials. This is partly because my kids and wife are heavily into them, but I don’t complain when they’re watching their latest seasons of Buffy, Angel, Dawson’s Creek or Alias. At least on television, in the hands of a really gifted creator-producer like Joss Whedon or J. J. Abrahms, you see character development that a 90-minute film can’t possibly give you, and with a level of technical sophistication that easily matches Hollywood.
In fact, I don’t see any contradiction between watching a commercial American pop-culture TV series and watching serious art-house films. It’s like eating gourmet food as well as bhel puri, chaat or burgers. I’m a liberal in these matters. I love my Indian culture passionately, and spend my working hours and even leisure hours deeply immersed in writing and reading and researching history, myth, language, legends, etc. But when I need a break, I’m as likely to enjoy a couple of episodes of Jennifer Garner kicking ass in Alias, as I am to listen to old Kishore Kumar songs, or Green Day, or watch Black and applaud India’s first Oscar-worthy film (and as Best Film, not Best Foreign Film, if they had the guts to include non-US films in that category instead of shunting them off to one side) or even R&B-inspired Hindi film remixes.
I think the beauty of contemporary culture is its inclusiveness: something for everybody, and everything for an eclectic like me. I taste every dish in the buffet of modern entertainment and refuse to differentiate or segregate.
Except, maybe, when it comes to bland, bloodless Hollywood fare.
This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2005 at 11:54 am. It is filed under Ashok.
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