When Bollywood is better than Hollywood
Hollywood may be the greatest movie maker on earth, but there is one aspect of movie making in which they are WAY behind Bollywood, or for that matter any other film industry in India. When it comes to snakes and capturing their sentiments, Indian movies rule! Indian movie writers get ideas that are beyond the realms of imagination of their Hollywood counterparts. Even if Hollywood did get such fascinating ideas, it would probably work extremely hard and spend millions of dollars to create an animation based on snakes. Guess what Bollywood would do (or rather did)? They just make the snakes take a human form! You know, make Jitendra the male snake, and Sridevi the female snake, and you have a masterpiece. Every thing becomes so easy then; although you could argue that it’s easier to make a real snake act than make Mr. Jitendra act. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Indian movies, Jitendra was a very popular actor back in the 60s-70s.
The majority of the Indian snake movies have one centralized theme – REVENGE. You know, a human villain kills a snake that happens to be the mother of another snake, and this baby snake grows up to take its revenge on the man. Mind you, the snake just doesn’t sneak through his house and bite the man; it’s never that easy. It takes the form of a human, most often a woman, a woman who can seduce the villain towards her (with a few snake dances) before turning back into a snake and biting him! Another form of a snake’s revenge can be hunting down thieves who rob a temple. In these cases, the snakes retain their original form but can perform stunts like Spiderman. Then there are movies in which the snake saves a house wife/step-daughter because she prays to the snake God. Scenes in such movies can range any where from sucking up the poison from the woman’s leg after another snake has bitten her, to protecting the helpless woman from a bunch of thugs. Check out this trailer of an old movie, it seems to have all the ingredients I have been talking about.
Nagina trailer
I guess I shouldn’t be making fun of these movies because I myself pray to snakes. In fact, one of my favorite festivals is what we call in Telugu “Nagulachavuti”. What we do is go to a snake pit early in the morning and offer eggs and milk to the snake. Sounds crazy right? But I absolutely love this festival and I miss it a lot now. Not a lot of people in India celebrate it these days and it’s sad. I always looked forward to it. Every single time, I would wait for the snake to come out of the pit, but it never happened. Even as a kid, I would insist on dropping the egg and milk inside the pit myself. That my hand used to tremble as I dropped the egg was a different issue. I don’t know why, I just loved doing it.
Anyway, I am reminded of all these things because of a movie coming out this weekend – “Snakes on the Plane”. I want to watch this movie even though I know it will not match the creativity of the Indian movies. But there is one small issue. There is ONLY one actor in Hollywood that I don’t like – Samuel L. Jackson. I think he is the only one in Hollywood who hams, you know, acts more than necessary with strong dialogues. For some strange reason, he suited well to the role in Pulp Fiction but otherwise he’s too much to bear. He is a polar opposite to Morgan Freeman. So I am not sure if I will watch it or not. I will let you know either way. By the way, don’t you think it’s been ages since Bollywood made a snake movie? I think it’s time for one!
The majority of the Indian snake movies have one centralized theme – REVENGE. You know, a human villain kills a snake that happens to be the mother of another snake, and this baby snake grows up to take its revenge on the man. Mind you, the snake just doesn’t sneak through his house and bite the man; it’s never that easy. It takes the form of a human, most often a woman, a woman who can seduce the villain towards her (with a few snake dances) before turning back into a snake and biting him! Another form of a snake’s revenge can be hunting down thieves who rob a temple. In these cases, the snakes retain their original form but can perform stunts like Spiderman. Then there are movies in which the snake saves a house wife/step-daughter because she prays to the snake God. Scenes in such movies can range any where from sucking up the poison from the woman’s leg after another snake has bitten her, to protecting the helpless woman from a bunch of thugs. Check out this trailer of an old movie, it seems to have all the ingredients I have been talking about.
Nagina trailer
I guess I shouldn’t be making fun of these movies because I myself pray to snakes. In fact, one of my favorite festivals is what we call in Telugu “Nagulachavuti”. What we do is go to a snake pit early in the morning and offer eggs and milk to the snake. Sounds crazy right? But I absolutely love this festival and I miss it a lot now. Not a lot of people in India celebrate it these days and it’s sad. I always looked forward to it. Every single time, I would wait for the snake to come out of the pit, but it never happened. Even as a kid, I would insist on dropping the egg and milk inside the pit myself. That my hand used to tremble as I dropped the egg was a different issue. I don’t know why, I just loved doing it.
Anyway, I am reminded of all these things because of a movie coming out this weekend – “Snakes on the Plane”. I want to watch this movie even though I know it will not match the creativity of the Indian movies. But there is one small issue. There is ONLY one actor in Hollywood that I don’t like – Samuel L. Jackson. I think he is the only one in Hollywood who hams, you know, acts more than necessary with strong dialogues. For some strange reason, he suited well to the role in Pulp Fiction but otherwise he’s too much to bear. He is a polar opposite to Morgan Freeman. So I am not sure if I will watch it or not. I will let you know either way. By the way, don’t you think it’s been ages since Bollywood made a snake movie? I think it’s time for one!
posted by UK at 11:51 AM
1 Comments:
I still didn't understand the concept of feeding the snakes and then burning crackers right next to the pit. I am sure all the snakes( if there is atleast one inside) will get freaked out even before they try to eat what ever we offered.
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