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dangermousieYou know, sometimes I find cross-cultural remakes fascinating. Bollywood movies are a case in point. Bollywood often takes an obscure (or not so obscure) Hollywood movie and remakes it. Interestingly, the outproduct has not that much in common with the original even if the plot is largely kept. Different conventions of the genre and social expectations lead to some fascinating results. For example, in a recent Bolly remake of A Perfect Murder, the scummy lover was the one who convinced the heroine to marry the rich man so they could collect later. Only on learning of this did the heroine's husband hired the scummy bf to take the wife out. And the movie ends up with the husband and wife forgiving each other for their transgressions (!) and united in killing the lover (impaling him with a pole, no less). Quite quite different.
Anyway, this is a bit of a seguay into Paap today's post subject. Paap is a Bollywood remake of the quite famous Hollywood movie Witness with Harrison Ford. Replace Philly with Mumbai and the Amish with a Buddhist Monk/Nun community. Yet, while the plot is superficially the same, the movie turns into something entirely different (and not just because the child witness to a murder in this case is a kid the heroine is sent to Mumbai to pick up because he has been picked by the monks as the reincarnation of their former leader. Not a typical Hollywood point). Witness was a movie about cross-culturalization and a neat mystery thriller. Paap, which showcases the beauty of remote hill stations (it really is one of the prettiest movies out there), is really a sexy love story and is more about the awakening of the heroine's femininity and her discovering the world and its desires, than it is about anything else. The plot with the murder is a mcguffin, summarily dealt with. In fact, while Witness is really Harrison Ford's show, Paap is all about Udita Goswami's character. It's as if the Amish widow in Witness was given center stage, everything else secondary (Perhaps the female-oriented slant is because the director herself is female). And while Witness was in a way an idealization of Amish culture and had at least the equal amout of praise for desire to abstain from modernity, Paap is clearly on the side of going into the bustling modern world and experiencing life of the outside.
Anyhoo, I confess. This is basically my vaguely intellectual excuse to post some incredibly hot pictures. Seriously. I did a write-up on it somewhere in my LJ and will look it up at some point.
That is certainly a different kind of meditation:
I am glad his face is not a few inches to the left:
I like a man who's...ahem..packing:
I wanna have a color coordinated picnic!
*gasp* *choke*
The world's biggest Mai Tai:
Viewing the creatures of the wild in their native habitat:
Fully clothed! Shock!
Even future Buddhist nuns like 60s haircuts:
This picture is made of awesome:
Nope, it's not a creepy hermaphrodite, just an artsy shot:
Deceptively virginal:
'I know what goes on in that head of yours. Sexy fantasies involving John Abraham'
And this is why I love Bollywood:
Scratch that. THIS is why I love Bollywood:
Pretty pretty colors:
Contrary to expectation, the bandage is not from Udita's clawing hands :D
Anyway, this is a bit of a seguay into Paap today's post subject. Paap is a Bollywood remake of the quite famous Hollywood movie Witness with Harrison Ford. Replace Philly with Mumbai and the Amish with a Buddhist Monk/Nun community. Yet, while the plot is superficially the same, the movie turns into something entirely different (and not just because the child witness to a murder in this case is a kid the heroine is sent to Mumbai to pick up because he has been picked by the monks as the reincarnation of their former leader. Not a typical Hollywood point). Witness was a movie about cross-culturalization and a neat mystery thriller. Paap, which showcases the beauty of remote hill stations (it really is one of the prettiest movies out there), is really a sexy love story and is more about the awakening of the heroine's femininity and her discovering the world and its desires, than it is about anything else. The plot with the murder is a mcguffin, summarily dealt with. In fact, while Witness is really Harrison Ford's show, Paap is all about Udita Goswami's character. It's as if the Amish widow in Witness was given center stage, everything else secondary (Perhaps the female-oriented slant is because the director herself is female). And while Witness was in a way an idealization of Amish culture and had at least the equal amout of praise for desire to abstain from modernity, Paap is clearly on the side of going into the bustling modern world and experiencing life of the outside.
Anyhoo, I confess. This is basically my vaguely intellectual excuse to post some incredibly hot pictures. Seriously. I did a write-up on it somewhere in my LJ and will look it up at some point.
That is certainly a different kind of meditation:
I am glad his face is not a few inches to the left:
I like a man who's...ahem..packing:
I wanna have a color coordinated picnic!
*gasp* *choke*
The world's biggest Mai Tai:
Viewing the creatures of the wild in their native habitat:
Fully clothed! Shock!
Even future Buddhist nuns like 60s haircuts:
This picture is made of awesome:
Nope, it's not a creepy hermaphrodite, just an artsy shot:
Deceptively virginal:
'I know what goes on in that head of yours. Sexy fantasies involving John Abraham'
And this is why I love Bollywood:
Scratch that. THIS is why I love Bollywood:
Pretty pretty colors:
Contrary to expectation, the bandage is not from Udita's clawing hands :D
