Take me away, oh Sultan!

[dangermousie]

Apparently Ashutosh Gowariker (the Bollywood director who made Lagaan and Swades, both excellent) is making an epic about the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his wifey Jodha. And in a casting decision that is sure to make my fangirlish heart sing in glee, he's cast Hrithik "thud, you are so hot" Roshan and Aishwarya "pervy men think you are the hottest woman ever" Rai. Apparently it will involve love blooming after their marriage. Which is where my confusion sets in. Maybe it's just me, but if someone who looked like Hrithik Roshan and was the bloody Emperor of entire India came offering love to me, I'd sure as hell jump at the chance. I guess that's where suspension of disbelief comes in.

Period epic. Romantic period epic. I love those and Bollywood does not make them nearly enough! Also, the thought of Hrithik and Ash dancing together (hey, he will finally have a dance partner as good as he is) is lovely. (Though who knows, would Akbar dance? I guess if Asoka did, why not?) Not to mention they look so physically matched together! If he wasn't married, I'd say they should be forced to breed purely in the interests of beautifying the human race. I really hope this will get made (yes, I am looking at you, Mr. Sunjay Leela "I will make Bajirao Mastani about a warrior king and his dancer lover and their angsty true-story love affair. But wait, no I won't" Bhansali).

For those who have no clue who Hrithik Roshan or Aishwaria Rai are, here are pics.

Hrithik:


Aishwarya:

Comments

[rajni.livejournal.com]

I am so, SO excited about Jodha Akbar, especially because I read it's going to be an out and out love story, which Hrithik hasn't done in a while. But a shallow part of me spends more time worrying about how they'll do his hair for the film and / or a potential mustache (please NO!) than being excited about such a grand project. :X His hair stint these days has me wary of his every cosmetic move, seriously.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

No mustache, please! *runs away, scared*

Hopefully Gowariker is not insane, authenticity be damned!

The only out and out love story I can think of, of his, was MDK (love it, don't care if a lot of people don't) and NTJNH (but that had Esha and really awful writing with lack of romantic bits as they didn't even like each other through the movie). MPKDH was a "comedy," Lakshya a war film, Yaadein had whole swathes of just "family" movie, KNPH had all these thrilly, fight bits (and ditto for the awful AMALL), Fiza and MK were terrorist flicks, and KMG a disability flick.

I would love me some angsty Hrithik romancing Aishwaria angstfully under trees...

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

P.S. And K3G was of course a family movie, not an out and out love story. Yeah, I've seen every Hrithik movie :D

[rajni.livejournal.com]

Hopefully Gowariker is not insane, authenticity be damned! Amen, sister. The only reason I'm worried is because I saw pics of Akbar and he had a mustache, ugh.

I love MDK, watch it all the time! *high five* lol I can stand bits of NTJNH but, oh my, the Eshaness was indeed a little hard to deal with sometimes and you don't even get to see anything between them until the very end, blah. I agree with you on all of the little synopses you gave about the rest of his movies - even KNPH had this suspense/action thing going on which is why I totally don't classify it as a romance. Oh, and MPKDH was SUCH a trainwreck, geeze. I have much more tolerance for AMALL, which just shows how bad MPKDH was.

Btw, I LOVE your Paap icon. I've been trying to buy that movie for ages but it's always sold out at Nehaflix and Indiaweekly. I love that movie, don't care what anyone says. Oh, Shirtless!Johhhhn.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Heee. We should form an "underrated movie lovers" society. I got my copy of Paap off ebay pretty cheaply so there might be another one there.

As to mustache: No. No no nonono. It looked OK on Prithviraj Kapoor, but no way should Hrithik have it.

I adore MDK and don't see why it gets such a rep. I thought it was sweet and angsty and HEA, and what more do I need. But then I love the Hrithik-Kareena parts of Yaadein (even though I skip the rest), so my taste is a bit suspect.

As to NTJNH...not even Saif AND Hrithik could save it. The thought of two of the hottest guys in Bollywood pining for Esha? Come onnnnnn...

MPKDH: I am sure the director and writer was on drugs.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I think the hardest part of NTJNH was that Esha kept looking at Saif like he would jump her and rape her any minute now, when all he did was try to be sweet to her. She looked like she was dying and she kept this expression for like the whole second half of the movie.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

She looked like she was dying

I wish she did. That way Hrithik could find someone normal. Lucky Saif did get someone else :)

[thelana.livejournal.com]

See I just couldn't feel sorry for Hrithik. To me it was like the revenge for MDK and Saajans of the world. It combines two of my most hated stereotypes in BW movies the "fall in love with somebody with somebody through letters/internet and don't bother to check who the person in question is" and the "I'm so heroic sacrificing my love without asking what the others want".

People who are determined to marry their penpal regardless of who the person is in real life deserve to be stuck with Eshas.

If it wasn't for Esha's zombie acting, NTJNH would probably near my top "So bad they are good" movie list. Because I frikking love the ending. It kinda drives home the whole insanity of plot turns like "Heroine patiently for the hero for several years even though she barely knows him and comes off as a lunatic in the process". NTHNH is like the distilled essence of what I can't stand in some of the most popular BW movies (Veer Zaara, I'm looking at you). :)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Veer-Zaara is my very favorite BW movie (and is in my Top 5 period), so we have pretty different Bolly tastes. All the more amazing that NTJNH is so bad that we seem to be united in horror against it :)

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, after all, NTJNH still amuses me :)

I wouldn't say that VZ is really a bad movie, it's just that moves like that piss me off. Waiting for a guy for some many years just makes me think that the heroine is a nutjob. Same with Madhuri in Saajan. She is in love with this poet and is determined to be in love with him no matter whether she likes him in real life. Sanjay is like: *points at Salman" He's the poet. Madhuri: Ok. Then there's some tumult and a fight and Salman goes: Nope, he's the poet. Madhuri: Ok. And goes with Sanjay. Stuff like this just makes me think that the heroine is braindamaged.

... Which is actually quite odd since I have a very high acceptace level for nutjob plot twists like "I lost my memory in an accident and now my family has to fake my son being my nephew or else I'll dieimmediatelyonthespot". I guess I'm weird that way :)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Re: VZ. She isn't waiting for him, as she thinks he is dead. But she loved him and now she lives in a small village with no one much compete for her affection. Plus, Veer would be an ex really hard to beat. She is not a modern New Yorker, she is much more akin to someone out of JA's Persuasion. Anne loved Wentworth all this time and I never thought it was odd. As to Veer, he is in jail, so he is not exactly going to be meeting sexy women, is he?

My great aunt was married for a month, then WWII started and her husband went off to war and was killed. She never remarried. It was a combination of love for her husband and lack of men who could compete with the memory of her husband. So I don't see the VZ plot as far fetched.

I haven't seen Saajan, so cannot say anything about it.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

What can I say, giving your life up like that is just something I just don't find romantic at all. If she feels like that, why not just go ahead and jump off a cliff? At least that I could understand. I feel the same way about the Lagaan with the side mention of "And British chick went back to England where she never married and pined away for him forever; While he got married and had a truckload of kids with somebody else".

I just don't find it romantic at all. I can see why a man would like as it is the ultimative ego stroking. But as a woman, it just pisses me off. I have no problem with somebody loving somebody else forever even if you are apart. I just find it unnatural not to try to move on. She can still have fond memories of that one guy while she tries to build a life with somebody else.

I concede that there are different rules in real life though. Other influences, from lack of opportunity, to other interests, to lack of motivation.

But onscreen and in books it's just something I just can't take at all. Let alone *enjoy*. Like I said, I find it more creepy than romantic and just not something I can enjoy in a heroine.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

But in VZ, they both gave up important things. Not to mention Veer gave up a heck of a lot more.

As to why not jump off a cliff? Well, I don't think not finding a man to love equals wanting to die. The heroine might want to keep loving a dead/absent person without wishing to have no life. She might be content working, interacting with family members etc. In any event, even an unhappy person is better off being alive and is unlikely to be miserable 24/7/365. Not getting a husband is not the end of the world even if you don't have an undying love to keep you going. Another great-aunt of mine never married not because she pined for someone, but because she never found anyone right. Nontheless, she lived to a ripe old age and was hardly miserable throughout. I don't think she should have killed herself just because she couldn't marry. Most of us don't get all we want in life, but we keep going anyway.

This said, stay away from Kisna: you will loathe it :) (I liked it)

In a movie, as in RL, it depends on a situation. I can buy it in VZ. Much less so in NTJNH, though Esha is pretty young even by the end, so why not wait and see if dreamboat shows up?

[thelana.livejournal.com]

This said, stay away from Kisna: you will loathe it

Oh, I have every intention of doing so :)

Much less so in NTJNH, though Esha is pretty young even by the end, so why not wait and see if dreamboat shows up?

I tend to think that Esha is worse than Zaara because when she waits for him she, in her mind, still has never actually seen the guy she is waiting for. The only thing she has from him are his letters and him cruelly dumping her on the phone. Yet she still keeps up the faith? Now that is disturbing.

Maybe my deep seated dislike for letter romances comes from the internet. When the first thing they teach you is that you can't trust what people write you. Because you never know if it's not a serial killer or a pedophile posing. So if there is a romance based on letters only, my first instinct is to say: Well, it could all be lies. I have nothing against letter romances, I know bunch of people who met somebody on the internet. But to me it has to be something that might start as letters, but the real thing happens once to meet in person. That's why I hate BW relationships that are based on letters only. Like in MDK when Hrithik immediately switches his loyalties to Rani as soon as he finds out that she wrote the letters, just like he was blindly giving his loyalties to Kareena when he thought that he wrote the letters. You really expect me to take something like that seriously or consider it even romantic?

But my hate for letter romances in movies and my hate for "waiting" are completly seperate things. :D

See, I could take those waiting things more easily if the movie did a better job of communicating to me what she did in the meantime. Like show her burrying herself in work or in a cause of some sort after she loses her love. (yes, you can always argue that after losing Veer Zaara might have decided to dedicate herself to her family and nieces and nephews; but to me the movie still made too weak a case for this. To me the vibe was too much that Zaara was being kept all pristine and untouched in the wait to be there so the romance can have a happy ending. To me that smells of plotpoint from a movie POV and leaves a sour taste in my mouth.) Maybe I just like my heroines more active than that. (BTW, I have no problem with Veer's pining. He's in jail. He has an excuse. But in the end the story just didn't move me. It's not the fault of the movie, it just didn't click with me.)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Re: MDK. Well, the movie did a good job (IMO) of showing that Hrithik was falling for Rani even before his "discovery," it's just he was blinded by Kareena's (as he thought) letters. And of course there's no chance of your childhood buddy being a psycho :)

Re: Zaara. They had to maintain a surprise, of course. But I got the sense that she led a productive life in the village, even if she mourned Veer all this time. But hey, different strokes for different folks. Luckily BW makes 700 movies a year, so there's one for everybody :)

[thelana.livejournal.com]

What can I say, it's just something that irks me :) It's like those people on BW discounting movies for not being Indian enough, regardless of storyline. Some people just have a different focus. And some people have dealbreakers that other people wouldn't even consider caring about.

Oh I can see the point of MDK, after all the thing was that they supposedly had so many things in common. But it's still not the kind of thing I consider enjoyable to watch. Same goes for glorious pristine waiting.

Re: Zaara. They had to maintain a surprise, of course. But I got the sense that she led a productive life in the village, even if she mourned Veer all this time.

I guess it depends on what you want to believe. I guess I found Zaara's character rather uninspiring beforehand, so I can't picture her being a terribly exciting character after Veer's "death". :) But as you said, different strokes. But to me that's one of the most fascinating and wonderful things about people. That they can show us all the same thing and everybody will see something slightly different. :)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Have you seen DTPH? I am curious what you thought of Madhuri's character. I am not much on spunky female heroine power thing, but even I wanted to strangle her.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

Hated her. Kinda interpreted the movie was being about an artist making a movie about another artist finding his fantasy women. And that's all there is to her. She's not an actual woman, she is just like a man would want his perfect women to be and she isn't allowed to do anything beyond that. She's just an accumulation of desirable personality traits rather than real person.

Considering Yash's accomplishments in the past I don't fault him writing his dreamgirl romance, but it's just not particularly compelling as a people romance.

How weird is it that it Silsila might just end up as my favourite Yash movie (well, excluding Darr since it isn't an actual romance). Ok, I might have to watch some more of his movies to be allowed to say that, but still I found the characters a lot more real in there (even though the idealistic artist guy is in there as well. But it's Amitabh, so at least this one has a lot more real drive and passion than SRK in DTPH).

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I found Silsila a bit dull, the same with Kabhi Kabie (have you seen it? It's rather acclaimed, but I didn't care for it).

Re: DTPH. I love the music in it, and once I realized what this was and wasn't, I was able to enjoy it, but still. I love Zaara, and Simran and Ria and a whole bunch of other YRF heroines. But Mads in DTPH was so lifeless. I kept rooting for SRK to end up, KKHH-like, with Karisma.

Btw, what do you think of Anjali in KKHH? She didn't wait, but she did pine. In some ways, I found Anjali's situation rather realistic (as opposed to e.g. Esha in NTJNH). She realized she won't have SRK and moved on with her life, and found another, but she can't forget the old love she had.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

You are gonna *really* hate me for this. I kinda sorta don't really like DDLJ all that much. I guess that most Yash heroines just don't do it for me. I'm thinking I liked Silsila because it's like the first case of Yash!Heros and heroine who had some serious and interesting flaws and some dark fire.

I found Silsila a bit dull, the same with Kabhi Kabie (have you seen it? It's rather acclaimed, but I didn't care for it).

Haven't seen Kabhi Kabhie. I don't mind dull as long as I find the story/characters interesting and as long as there are good scenes occasionally.

Well, I did role my eyes at Anjali from KKHH waiting that long before she marries somebody else. Again it's just the whole situation of the hero being *elsewhere* for that long and when he comes back, YAY, lucky him, the heroine is still in the waiting (or, like in this case, she's only on the brink of doing something else, but she still hasn't actually done anything that might seriously mangle their potential for a reunion. She's still "pure" for him, he can just pick her off the shelf and go home with her.). KKHH!Anjali was lucky that she was crafted so carefully in the earlier part and, well, it was Kajol playing her. But, yes, I noticed and, yes, it bothered me. I forgive it because the movie is so nice otherwise, but it's still eyerollworthy. I know it's a thing of dramatics that everything has to be last minute like that, but I don't have to like it, right?

I didn't mind the idea of the situation "Women on the brink of marrying somebody else when she is swept away by her old love and picks him", I just mind the long ass time period in between where he never even bothered to contact her. But at least KKHH has the plus point of showing how Anjali has changed considerably in the meantime, so that's something I did like.

Oh wait, I came up with a case where I did mind the woman not being with somebody else (even if in this case the man is!). Namely Asoka. Here is one case where I had no problem at all with the heroine. It seemed to fit her character and most of all, she was shown being *busy*. The situation around her was crazy and she had all kinds of things to do. I had no problem at all buying that she was to busy to have the time or the interest to even consider wanting something else. It is one case where it didn't feel like the woman was being *wasted* lying the wait like that.

I guess I find it easier to take pining in a case like Karisma/SRK in DTPH, where he is in front of her every day and she can't help but pine for him and hope that he will eventually turn her way.

[jonaki.livejournal.com]

You made my day with this fantastic bit of news!

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I know, isn't it great?

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I'm extremely curious about this pair. Both have a tendency to annoy me in some roles, but there is just something about them (ok, it it's the unadultered prettyness bouncing off the screen) that makes me think that they would probably be awesome together as a pairing. You know, when the result is more than the sum of its parts.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Well, they both had some horrible movies, and don't have the ability to carry on despite the bad director (also a really lousy ability to pick scripts), but I like them when they are "on" and you are right, just the physical "fit" of the match will give it that extra "something"

[aliterati.livejournal.com]

... Oh my goodness. I've been waiting for this movie to come out since I saw Hrithik for the first time. Must see and die of prettiness overdose.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Heh. I just knew you would appreciate..glittery jewels, glittery palaces, glittery Hrithik.