So today when my roomie made a statement that No Indian actress knows acting, I couldn't take it.. and then while surfing Internet, somehow I got an article on how Bollywood is a poor cousin of Hollywood, the two incidents in a row compelled me to do some research on the topic and come-up with a comparison of Bollywod and Hollywood. Since I know that if I will write some subjective matter I will be biased towards bollywood and hence I am just writing some facts(of-course the ones I like :D) which will try to verify if the so called inferiority of Bollywood actually exist. The readers are always welcome to pour in their views and comments.
Lets first take a look at the finances and viewership
Now, if you look carefully you will observe that this data is of 2002, and it is provided by business week.
Let me illustrate a bit on how and why bolywood movies have 3.6 billion tickets sold vis a vis 2.6 billion tickets in hollywood, and still it generates a meager revenue in comparision to its american counter-part.
The major market for Bollywood movies consists of the following countries.
India, Pakistan, Russia. and the following regions south america, Africa(Kenya, SA, Egypt etc), Eastern europe(Bulgaria, Latvia etc) and Middle east.
One thing common in almost all these regions and/or countries is their financial condition, these all are either developing or under-developed countries where the money that an average person spends is far too little than in comparision to the major markets for hollywood movies (read USA,Britain,France etc).
plz note that this is the data when Avg. marketing was just $ 500,000 and the corporate involvement in bollywood at that time was little, so when this money increases the annual growth rate is bound to increase.
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Now lets start the game, we shall analyze the different allegations and see how much truth do they hold
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People ususally claim that bollywood is just a copy-cat and hollywood is all original, no matter its about the music or the storyline or drawing inspiration lets have a look.
Inspired Music
Devo's 1988 hit song "Disco Dancer"inspired by the song "I am a Disco Dancer" from the Bollywood film Disco Dancer (1982)
The 2002 song "Addictive", sung by Truth Hurts and produced by DJ Quik and Dr. Dre, lifted from Lata Mangeshkar's "Thoda Resham Lagta Hai" from Jyoti (1981).
The Black Eyed Peas' Grammy Award winning 2005 song "Don't Phunk with My Heart" inspired by two 1970s Bollywood songs: "Ye Mera Dil Yaar Ka Diwana" from Don (1978)
and the list goes on and on.
Inspired movies/story line.
Partner is said to be a remake or so-called inspired version of Hitch, plz face the truth Hitch is a remake/inspired version of chhoti si baat
madhumati (1958) inspired the Hollywood film The Reincarnation of Peter proud.
The movie Reincarnation Of Peter Proud is said to be the inspiring factor for Karz but then little do we realize that another Holywood film Chance Are is in-turn inspired by Karz.
The Dirty Dozen is inspired by Do Aankhen Barah Haath .
Koi mil gaya is said to be a remake of Steven Spielberg's ET and and the close encounters of another world, but then no we love hailing everything western coz we don't see that these two in turn were inspired by Alien an incomplete work of Satyajit ray based on his Bankubabur Bandhu.
Technology/Movie Making style.
Baz Luhrmann stated that his musical film Moulin Rouge was directly inspired by Bollywood musicals, with a direct song sequence from China Gate
And subsequently a host of movies draw inspiration from Moulin Rougelook at some examples Chicago, The Producers, Rent, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, Sweeny Todd, Across the Universe, Mama mia.
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We often criticize bollywood movies coz they don't provide lead roles to good actors/actresses if they are not beautiful (read Fair complexioned), and that we provide room for racial or color based bias.
plzz note that hollywood is probably the only profession which has a black film festival (Oh and they are so fair, unbiased huh).
They say Will Smith is a black actor or morgan freeman is a black actor, ever heard an Indian saying Shahrukh is a muslim actor or Ajay devgan isn't all that fair.
Hmmmm alright so a certain Halley Barry can get a lead role even if she isn't fair oh and a konaka sen sharma aur nandita das cann't get a lead role in bollywood movies just coz she has dark complexion, I beg to differ.
Halley Barry is the first and only black actress to have won an oscar (ie for those of you who actually give value to an oscar, for me a certain movie called "a wednesday" was far better than slumdog.) and oh she isn't all that ugly she is the runner-up in the Miss USA (1986), and winning the Miss USA World (1986) title.
And then lets have a look at the so-called black(we call them dusky) complexioned girls at bollywood Bipasha Bau, Malaika Arora Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Rani Mukharjee, Kajol, Lara dutta, Mughda Godse, Jiah Khan and the list goes on. May-be some of these aren't that big guns but hey Priyanka Chopra or Bips hold the same status in Bollywood as Halley Barry in Hollywood, and the status of Kajor can never be attained by her(excuse me for being rude).
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The so-called high status people and the wanna be guys say that they bollywood doesn't portray reality and its all about singing in the rain running around the trees and hollywood always comes up with the great portrayal of reality, they cann't digest the action sequences of Shahrukh khan in Main hoon naa, or that of Krish..... Come-on guys the action sequence in matrix, rambo,rocky, superman,batman,spiderman (think of any damn name and add a man to it :P) and the like are so much believable isn't it.
And oh Hollywood is all so much about real people, real incidents and bolywood ,yuk its all about fantasy ........ Have you guys ever seen a Bandit Queen or a Legend of Bhagat Singh, then the same guys will ask how many movies of this kind are made in bollywood, hmmm good question but then how many movies of this kind are made in Hollywood......
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There ain't any-one like so and so of Hollywood in Bollywood...
Wow really!!!! Tell me one thing "Can you compare Mozart with Tansen ???" If your answer is yes I bow out to you.
If your answer is no, we can further look into it.
People talk about Al Pacino, Morgan Freeman.... yeah, they are excellent actors but then have you seen a certain Naseeruddin Shah, or a Irfaan Khaan or a Om puri or Manoj Bajpeyi....
People will object that none of these is a lead actor but then in how many movies MorganFreeman was a lead actor....
So hollywood has excellent directors like Steven Spielberg, francis d coppola, clint eastwood ....
Hmmm but may be there was some-one called Satyajit ray in India and he was followed by Guru datt,Mrinal Sen,Ritwik Ghatak in the past and guys like Ashutosh Gowarikar and Mani ratnam in present.
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Hollywood has excellent technology and Bollywood can never compare with it ....
This one is my favorite...
Since when did the genius of art depended on technolgy... Is Godfather or Citizen Kane less insightfull then Star-wars....
or the music of mozart inferior then that of ricky martin and co.
can tools like photoshop/picture manager create art tht can make Picasso blink.
And by the way just for the information of the readers the largest film studio in the world Ramo Ji city is based in Hyderabad and unfortunately Hyderabd isn't in USA or for that matter any western and developed country.
Comments/Thrashes/Abuses/Debates all are welcome but plz if you want to give something BE READY TO TAKE ITS RETURN .....
7 comments:
gud baby gud!!! kaafi khoj kiye ho!!!
ab koi bhi zyada bakwaas kiya to tumhara blog dikha denge... size dekh ke nai behosh hua to content se to chup hi ho jaega!!! :D
gud one dude ,Thanx for giving us so much info...
coming to my statement about actresses....it was a casual one,but in any case, Kate winslet cannot be compared with katerina or kareena with respect to their acting talent,dialogue delivery,facial expressions and any of the actors attributes.just compare the action stunts of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in the movie "MR. and Mrs.Smith" and u will understand that hollywood actress are way above of just bed scenes......
I dont think i compared hollywood and bollywood in my statement...nyways there are always brigter and darker sides associated to either bollywood or hollywood .....i can give u a number of examples in which bollywood music tunes have come directly from hollywood......ek din teri rahoo mein(naqaab)comes from .."when i dream at night "....3 songs of bollywood hit movie maine pyaar kiya came from hollywood ....tune from Bryan Adams's song "have u really loved a woman" was used in movie "Raju Chacha" in the song "jab kisi ki taraf" and these are few from my personal experience ,i havent googled for it yet...
Well the makers of "Partner" didnt need to copy every dialogue,location ,scenes,from the movie "Hitch" atleast with hitch only the idea was inspired but partner was a xerox of hitch......
again i am not trying to downgrade bollywood music or movies.My favourate music composer,actor ,singer all come from Bollywood not because of sheer patriotism ,but purely on merit .....
also i dont believe in comparing these two genres becoz these two come from two very different cultures and societies.Bollywood music and movies were far great in 60's and 70's than between 80's and 2000.so bollywood need to recreate that charm instead of looking towards west.
@ Anitesh thx boss, and yeah I understand that the post is a bit too big to handle, but then trust me I've tried everything in my limit to reduce its length { I had three more points of comparison + 100s of examples}
@ VJ , Dude its not abt patriotism, I understand and accept that the way I take these things personal is not good, but then some-times we love bad things/.
Isn't it.
As about comparing Kate Winslet with katrina or kareena, god I never said u gotta do that but then in my case Kate Winslet cann't be compared with a certain Sushmita sen or a Kajol.
As about the action stunts of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt,they are probably the sexiest couple of the world BUT plzz bear with me that all the action scenes or at-least most of them are coz of their director, stuntman and the technical team. in bollywood this isn't appreciated, have a watch at Drona or Don, and that's why bollywood actresses don't do action stunts.
Have some research(or simply use google) and you will get to know that very few hollywood stars have ever a done a stunt by themselves.
At-least we have Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra and Celina Jetley who do their stunts them-selves what this means is wat-ever little they do, its actually their task period.
And as for the fact that between 1980-2000 no(or a few) good bollywood movie has been made. Plz read this interview of George Clooney http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/celebrity/177865/george-clooney-criticism-of-hollywood.html
@ Vishal jalan
You actually said my point buddy.
At-least bollywood accepts that they are using the hollywood technology/music/plot and what-ever.
but then plzzz use some google/wiki/ask and u will see that though ET is a pretty straight copy of Alien, Spielberg never admitted it.
And that at-least 7 different western singers+musicians have used A.R.Rahman's music, though Rahman didn't go giving legal notices to them like the producers of Hitch.
and oh on one last point.
I never said that bollywood doesn't copy but as the saying goes "Creativity is all about hiding your sources", and then hollywood has all the money and the power to do exactly that.
hey rohit
are u kiddin!!!
man suppose if the distance b/w bollywood and hollywood is equivalent to the distance b/w moon and earth then bollywood has just crossed the atmosphere of earth it still has to go miles or say thousands of miles
by atmosphere of earth i mean the traditional bollywood dance and song culture
and even very few have dared to cross that atmosphere, i guess i can count those names on fingers like DEV D, LUCKY OYE, to some extent our latest kaminey.........
hey i definitly agree that bollywood has produced a bunch of talents but god knows y they dont care to do somthing remarkable, somthing which could remain in minds of people for years......(with a few exceptions)
probably they dont have enough guts to risk crores on a project which could prove to be a overhead transmission for majority of indian viewers........
m not trying to find the cause of all this or who is doing the copying stuff m just putting my thinking
if you show a quality bollywood movie and a quality hollywood movie to a completly unbaised person, then his personal opinion will convince you about this........
Looks like u r quite a fan of Raja Sen....
I've read in somewhere that he thinks dev d is the greates Indian movie n all.
if u r actually that then may be I won't like to say anything to you.
otherwise I will tell you to go watch movies like do bigha zameen, awaara, pyasa Or dil chahta hai, rang de basanti, wednesday, tahaan, lagaan, munna bhai and if you come back and repeat the same thing, I will agree that I cann't agree with you and we may live happily ever-after.
P.S- > No offences meant.
hey dude u got me all wrong,
i do agree that bollywood has produced some real gems, n i do like many f d movies u mentioned.
But the problem is that this list will end very soon.
N m neither a fan f some Raja Sen nor read his reviews anywhere, only reason y i mentioned lucky oye was because i seriously found it a genuine comedy movie after hera pheri
i dont say dev d was perfect but atleast they tried to experiment that is what i like most about this muvi.
i have seen many european muvis,
but i hardly found any intrusion of characters r situation to make u laugh.
may be our way of lookin at muvis is different....
if i go to watch a action/crime muvie then i will not expect it to have romance, songs, many comic characters ...........
n here in bollywood de try to mix every single thing which could make it commercial keeping aside few exceptions.
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