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Bina - 2009-01-01 04:30:29
I've a movie recommendation for 2009 - make the first movie of the year that you see "Slumdog Millionaire". I haven't seen it but have read the book (It's called Q&A by Vikas Swarup) and the movie's supposed to be brilliant.
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Philip - 2009-01-01 14:40:08
Why did you leave off that Batman movie? (And where's Happy-Go-Lucky?)
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Bob - 2009-01-01 15:52:31
I dunno, Bina... sounds like a ripoff of the "Jeopardy" subplot of "White Men Can't Jump" (just kidding... I think... though that's actually one of my favorite Hollywood movies). But what is your take on how official, and non-official, Pakistan feel about Bollywood stuff? (Not that I have any idea if "Slumdog" qualifies as a Bollywood production....)
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Paula - 2009-01-01 16:10:59
Philip: I thought Dark Knight was a major let-down after the perfection of Batman Begins! And Happy-Go-Lucky was one of the (many) films I didn't see this year--I have it queued on Netlix for when it comes out on DVD in March...
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Bob - 2009-01-01 20:31:31
The Beliefnet quiz seems a little like prejudiced hooey, Paula... cuz those same ones it lumped you under majority-wise, it lumped me under, and I think we're a bit mo' different than that, in this department, though maybe that was "covered" by its accusing me of being a strict secular humanist. Which I'm sure is supposed to be a bad thing, but what I'm saying is, I get the impression that those others are also supposed to be. But, hey, who could disagree that you are slightly more neo-pagan, and I am more liberal Quaker than you????
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Paula - 2009-01-01 21:22:20
Which I'm sure is supposed to be a bad thing
What makes you sure that the Beliefnet folks think that is a "bad thing"? It strikes me as a pretty non-judgmental forum.
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Bob - 2009-01-02 01:28:39
Well, given that I ain't got no faith compared to you, and responded accordingly, it seemed like they were being a little dismissive of liberal Quakers and those ones we both qualified for. Kinda like the time my parents went to St. Mary's hospital down in West Palm to give birf to one of my sibs, and supposedly they asked my mother what faith for the forms and she said she didn't have one, so, they didn't write anything, but when they later asked my dad what faith, and he tried protestant, the woman said "ah, none" and wrote that.
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Bob - 2009-01-02 01:38:08
(In other words, I'm not being defensive about my opinions, I'm just defending liberal Quakers from being associated with them....)
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Bina - 2009-01-02 07:15:44
Okay, I watched Slumdog Millionaire last night, and I found it very enjoyable. I read the book it was based on, Q&A by Vikas Swarup, and they've really done a great job bringing it to the screen. It really is a movie where you have to suspend your disbelief - a fairytale of sorts - but balanced by a very grim picture of the slums of Mumbai. Which is, actually, very accurate. As for how I feel about Bollywood, Bob, or how all of Pakistan feels about Bollywood - I hate it because it's so cheesy and everyone in Pakistan loves it for reasons that I simply can't comprehend. But I've watched my share of Bollywood movies. You can't avoid it if you live in this country!!
On another note, I introduced Paula to the Belief-o-Matic quiz, which marked me as 100% Reform Jew, so I'm converting to Judaism for the New Year.
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Bina - 2009-01-02 07:19:24
In the 50s and 60s, Pakistani movie theaters showed Bollywood movies, but after the 1971 war, they were banned from the theaters. Then, in the 80s, people started watching them again on bootlegged videotapes. These days you can get any Indian movie on bootleg DVD, but the theaters are allowed to show Bollywood films that are not filmed in India (many productions are filmed in more exotic locales, like New York, Toronto, Malaysia, and Australia and that somehow meets the approval of the Pakistani Censor Board).
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Bob - 2009-01-02 18:30:23
Interesting. And one was just being filmed in Miami, so that's probably headed your (theaters') way.
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Bob - 2009-01-02 18:42:49
Dammit, now I've got this picture of a censor who is trying on Reform Judaism, with Muslim sensibilities, watching a film of questionable origin, wherein a Brazilian woman is moaning "oi, oi, oi," whilst a National Front skinhead with her bellows likewise, and the censor's going "oye, oye, oye". Thanks, Bina.
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Benny Hill - 2009-01-03 02:33:16
Come to think of it, smear peanut butter on the skinhead's scalp and put someone on top of him and you've got a sandwhich scene directed by Mike Leigh and Hanif Kureishi....
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Bina - 2009-01-03 04:14:14
I want to see that movie, Benny! But you have be in it too, running around chasing some blondes in bikinis.
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BH - 2009-01-03 05:34:07
I think I mispelled the Jewish "oy". And I'm not sure I spelled the Brazilian one right... but I don't know that it's ever printed... (I've never watched it "for the articles").
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Bob - 2009-01-03 06:06:05
But this raises the serious question of how Benny Hill was in bed. I suspect that the answer is that it was a very subjective thing;; some girls couldn't stop smiling, and others couldn't take him seriously enough.
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* - 2009-01-03 06:37:37
In fact, a future of erotica may be computer special-effects depictions of what happens when Benny actually catches up with the girls... and, when it comes to recorded live performance, people singing while being served (though, for all I know, the latter may have already been around for ages).
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** - 2009-01-03 06:50:21
And I guess, come to think of it, the latter is almost certainly the way Bollywood would do porn, which I think might give it (porn, and singing) a bad name.
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Bina - 2009-01-03 08:21:47
To the asterisked one: Bollywood doesn't do porn! It's well-known for shying away from portraying love-making in any sort of direct way. In the old movies, as soon as the lovers would finish chasing each other around trees or fountains, they camera would cut away to visions of flowers blooming etc. In today's movies, it was a milestone when the Indian Censor Board decreed that lovers could kiss onscreen. Even in love scenes, they will writhe around lying next to each other as opposed to on top of each other, and just when you think they're moving in for the kill, they move close together and go for a steamy.... hug.
Indian porn, on the other hand, shies away from nothing, but there ain't no singing goin' on.
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Bob - 2009-01-03 16:25:46
Well yes, I'm aware of Bollywood's propriety... and of course we wouldn't WANT it to give anything a bad name. (I did read about the outrage over our notorious gerbil-stuffer merely kissing one of their actresses, which kinda clued me that porn wasn't an option.) (And, if the first part of that Gere equation is simply an urban legend, I know exactly where it probably started. My friend Hilary was working for an answering service in New York, when a male co-worker, whom she knew for a fact several of the young doctors that used the service hung out with, told her that one of the doctors had told him about Gere coming into the emergency room cuz a gerbil was stuck up there. Now, as to whether the doctor or co-worker just made this up, I do not know... but I do know it was another five years before such a rumor began to float around publicly.) (And I'm inclined to believe that gerbilizing's no urban myth, having once observed on the subway a pet-shop hamster box in the hands of a young man who gave the most defiant leer I've ever seen... and I ain't no PETA type, but dammit, some things just ARE tawdry!) I knew, though, given its history, that there also had to be that "other hand" to India. But it strikes me as curious that that side is not more celebrated in British literature, (of the likes of "Captain France's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" [which is actually a great, and semi-scholarly, work]), and song, and this makes me wonder how much mingling there was during colonial rule, or whether the caste system ruled that out.
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* - 2009-01-03 17:00:16
And though I'm sure that that Gere gerbil-stuffing rumor didn't get as far as India, and thus figure into their outrage over his planting a kiss on a Bollywood actress in public, I just remembered that it did eventually get so prevalent here that Mad TV even did a prime-time joke about it, during a "halftime special" that they did when the Super Bowl (and its typically unwatchable halftime special) was on another network.
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** - 2009-01-03 17:47:13
Correction: "A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" by Captain Francis Grose. (In fact, your buds the Oxford University Press published it from 1932 to 1947.) I'm genuinely curious about that colonial mingling question, though (not that I'm rubbing my hands together, Benny Hill style).
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Bina - 2009-01-03 18:15:26
The caste system ruling out mingling? Ha ha ha! Just google "anglo-indian" and see what you come up with.
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Bob - 2009-01-04 00:34:07
Well sure I know there must be plenty of descendents, (there's at least one famous Bollywood actress, for instance, that looks it), but my question is whether the Brits ever got to know the not-only-"shies away from nothing"-but-has-manuals-on-how-to-perform-the-downright-unlikely side, and whether that side was not pigeonhole-able on the caste spectrum, or whether it lay out of their range on it. Or more precisely, why such a sophisticated Flarda skateboarder such as myself has not run across more (okay, any) mention of it in Victorian "other side" literature and song....
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Bob - 2009-01-04 00:42:45
Then again, I guess it would be no surprise if British soldiers didn't seek out Tantric time, for instance. (I myself, in younger days, had facetious visions of going into advertising and marketing "Tantrum Yogurt" to yuppies.)
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SF Eli - 2009-01-04 05:11:59
What with all the religious folks deciding that I am not as good as they are and don't deserve to be able to have the same rights and protections as they do...and as a recovering catholic...I thought I would see how I measure up. I was a little amazed that I turned out to be 100% Unitarian Universalist. I went to a few of their services and was pretty sketched out by their ideas and rituals. I'm just not a joiner. Plus that quiz did not quite give enough options...I need a few where I can mix and match their choices. But it was nice to get a helpful top ten list if i ever do become a joiner.
1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Theravada Buddhism (98%)
3. Secular Humanism (84%)
4. Liberal Quakers (83%)
5. Mahayana Buddhism (80%)
6. Neo-Pagan (71%)
7. Taoism (69%)
8. New Age (65%)
9. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (64%)
10. Nontheist (58%)
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Bob - 2009-01-04 06:31:33
Well, I woulda thunk Paula's more liberal quakerish than me, Eli, and I'm a little more paganish than her, but when the oracle speaks.... (Just ask Bina;; she had to convert to Judaism.) And I'm still trying to figure out where to go to secularly worship humans (and here I thought I liked nature too).
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Bob - 2009-01-04 07:23:00
And Bina, I consulted the NON-Beliefnet oracle you referred me to, Google, but using 'British kamasutra' instead, and was reminded how powerful a force Victorianism was, not only in Britain, but in India to this day, and I s'pose Bollywood could even be blamed on it (as, for that matter, could SMUTTY Indian movies). But I'm still a little puzzled as to why something like Captain Francis' work (which came out well before '32;; O.U.P. re-published it then) did not strike me as having anything in the way of words and phrases attributed to colonial India, given it's wealth of inventive words and phrases (from Gypsy cant and the British military and whatnot).
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Bina - 2009-01-04 10:23:42
Bob, I'm not familiar with Captain Francis's work (ha - I once had a boyfriend called Captain Francis but he was a French pilot, not a British officer). However, it's well known that the British co-mingled with the Indians quite a lot back in the day... Apart from the usual consorting with prostitutes and courtesans, however, I suggest William Dalrymple's "White Mughals" for a fascinating book on the phenomenon of British officers and other merchants who lived like Mughals, married Mughal princesses, etc.
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Bob - 2009-01-04 16:06:20
If I can find "King Leopold's Ghost" (which, incidentally, reveals how ironically UNDERstated a take "Heart of Darkness" was, regarding colonial Belgian Congo atrocities) to send to Paula (that I threatened her with years ago), I should include Capt. Francis Grose's "A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue", and a 'view from America' book by Rudyard Kipling (from when he was a young reporter passing slowly through, from west to east), so that she can send the latter two on to you. As a writer in English, I think you'd find that particular dictionary fascinating reading (certainly, it's the only dictionary I've enjoyed actually reading), and the Kipling book is an interesting combination of thoughtfulness and shooting from the hip... such as his take on Mormons (which Eli might enjoy after their Ammendment 8 agitating!) as "shark-mouthed, block-headed" etceteras... kind of "British 'Empirical'" at its most ludicrous yet fun.
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Bob - 2009-01-04 16:37:24
But hey, while I'm grossly distending this comments section after-the-fact, I should mention that, not only am I proud to sort of know someone published by the O.U.P., that being you, but I am also downright amused to personally know someone who is in the O.E.D.. (For - get this - skateboarding.) (His real name is used in the definition of the word "ollie", something that was named after his nickname.) And, to quote His Eminence, regarding yours truly once: "Wow... Ow." (I hang out with a literate crowd!)
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* - 2009-01-04 17:07:56
But, getting back toward movies, the place he said that IS called Olliewood... and it Is in Hollywood... albeit Hollywood, Florida... but I just need to get over my cold and stop burbling.
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Bina - 2009-01-04 18:34:09
Your burbling is amusing me as I get over my stomach flu... so no worries. Not only am I published by OUP, but also by The Feminist Press in New York!
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Bob - 2009-01-05 01:20:50
Now, this has nothing to do with you, or probably even that publisher, but my take regarding the f word is that that there's code for passive/aggressive: Have some balls... like my grandmother. Or don't have balls, or have one, it's all good... but don't bother me wit'cha parochialism; try understanding why PEOPLE mistreat each other. And of course I'm not against women's issues, especially in certain countries (and I don't necessarily mean Islamic ones), but our country's Princess feminism a la Naomi Wolf(sp?) can be mildly counterproductive, and mostly I just think feminism's a really stupid thing to describe it as, since if you asked an alien, and it consulted its computer, it'd probably assume that it meant female-chauvinism. But it's not like I don't think something called The Feminist Press couldn't easily imply something honorably female oriented, between chauvinism and navel-gazing;; I think I'm just averse to -isms. (That and the word Scientology.)
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Bob - 2009-01-05 02:23:36
Jeez, I hate Diaryland punctuation;; you can barely see the colons, and you wind up with only one space after them when you'd put two, and it winds up being less punctuation than an ellipses, making it seem like I was saying that passive/ aggressive is like grandmotherly balls, when actually I was saying, instead of passive/aggressive anguishing, have some balls, like my grandmother... people.
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Bob - 2009-01-05 03:04:50
Basically, my blunt contention is that I understand females better than Feminists do... which I would NOT if I were a Guyist.
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Bob - 2009-01-05 03:50:52
And that Dalrymple book, though it does indeed sound interesting, is not a contemporary, subjective account of being exposed to, as Ian Dury would sing, "lots of other ways...". And the central female historical character in it was only fourteen;; how much could she have known? Though given that her female relatives went so far as to steer her out of an impending local marriage, they probably made sure to get her up to speed for the guy they figured could steal her from the local. But yes, there no doubt was plenty of dabbling in stuff that was new to the Brits, but it sounds like many of those who assimilated were at an age that sex in General was pretty new to 'em anyway. There just needed to be a Conrad (or a Benny Hill) to have his mind blown, and I don't know that there was.
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-1 - 2009-01-05 04:48:28
Compulsive muddy emphasis correction: "... which, were I a Guyist, I would not."
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Bina - 2009-01-05 08:20:08
Maybe you're looking for the Indian equivalent of Sir Richard Burton? There was Sir Alexandar Burnes but his accomplishments were more political than sexual, at least the ones he wrote about.
Feminist... I'm a proud one and am not afraid to call myself that. In a country where girls are denied the right to vote or go to school (even though the law says they can), I think feminism is badly needed. Patriarchy is alive and it is evil, and we're still getting our minds around the idea that there should be equal rights for all.
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We gotta get oughta here, it\'s 2009! - 2009-01-05 10:43:49
I think more WOMEN'S RIGHTS are badly needed in many countries, and all aspects of so-called feminism that entail that, I'm all for. But any and all short-sighted, COUNTERPRODUCTIVE aspects, that don't strive to grasp certain universal things... not so much. (Gosh, maybe I AM a Humanist....)
And I guess I don't even care so much about the real colonial culture clash facts/history, (cuz it's all gone), as about artifacts/art (though not Richard Burton types'). But I guess the real "Benny" Hill would have been an even sadder sexual case in colonial India, since he seems to have not even been gay, as rumored, but just a hopeless homebody. The performer might have given us Bennywood, though. Conrad, on the other hand, did write an amusingly jadedly-twisted novel toward the end of his career, so I think it would have been interesting to see what his (not all that British, anyway, though) sensibilities gave birth to after grapplng with the subcontinent. (Though he may well have spent some time there, and that may have even influenced that later novel, which I believe was set in the Indian Ocean somewhere... guess I should just figure out which one that was and just re-read it, hunh?)
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Bina - 2009-01-06 15:15:08
Conrad spent some time in the subcontinent: his novel "The Nigger of the Narcissus" is based on a trip he took on a steamer from Bombay.
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Jens Carstensen - 2009-01-06 17:08:40
Sorry to interrupt the Bina and Bob hour, but just wanted to say, "Secular Humanist in the house!"
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Bina - 2009-01-06 17:43:46
Bina And Bob... kind of like Amos and Andy... or maybe Beavis and Butt-head.
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Bob - 2009-01-06 19:00:52
Ah c'mon Jens, it was all after closing time... we didn't think anyone could else was in here.
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Bob - 2009-01-06 19:10:13
...and by "else was in here" I meant could "hear", apparently, or didn't mean "could". I'd sober up and move on to 2009, though, if Paula would get on the blogging ball.
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Bob - 2009-01-06 19:37:24
And it's unfair to Bina to put her name first there;; it could be said that she only encouraged me by being a sentient being.
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Bob - 2009-01-06 19:43:59
Oh wait, she said "no worries". Yeah, it's all her fault.
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Bob - 2009-01-07 01:25:28
And Bina, I deny being a CLUELESS Butthead, cuz, well, speaking of unfairly distributing blame, the mother of my Turkish aunt/ex-aunt(not sure, legally) was one of the first female judges in Turkey, and at one point found herself having to follow a law that required her to put to death a woman who had had an affair with a married man (who of course did not face the same penalty). She felt bad enough about it that she wound up adapting the little bastard that had come of the union. (Fortunately, I suppose, the adopted daughter [whom I've never met] was a little slow, but still, how is that for a family dynamic??)
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consicer is not an impertinent? - 2009-01-07 06:55:02
Oh, and just now I was not trying to diminish Bina's commentary, which was not, for the most part, impertinent;; what I meant was that the only way she "encouraged" [my impertinent commentary] [was] "by being a sentient being". Also, "required putting her to death" would have been consicer above.
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get us out of the void, Paula - 2009-01-07 07:02:29
Wait, I mean "required putting to death a" would have.
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Oh, - 2009-01-07 07:21:41
and lest ANY sentient beings get the wrong idea, I don't actually drink (or apparently need) unsobering liquids ('cept beer with the likes of pizza or lobster).
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Bina - 2009-01-07 07:30:59
Are you some kind of university professor or otherwise paid to be pedantic by the government?
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* - 2009-01-07 07:35:59
(I drink to forget the butter and cheese?)
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Hey, it\'s a sentient being - 2009-01-07 07:41:05
Self-government requires me to be pedantic (and little else).
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Oh, - 2009-01-07 07:57:11
and "I know you are, but what am I?" Nah, JUST a writer who lives with [his] parents and likes parenthesis. (I gotta get me one-a them professorships.)
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Bina - 2009-01-07 08:31:28
I live with my parents too. I think that's why I'm so pedantic.
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Victorian Lit - 2009-01-07 08:35:26
ParentheSES-is, that is. (...liffs the skirts, above their kneeses... and the Yellowman seeses...) Q & A: tropical breezes... ( ) ...Diseases and... ?
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Bob - 2009-01-07 09:25:32
Like your parents, I know [you] live with them... give us some credit, you pedant. But give me that Q&A rhyme, and we can be on to 2009.
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Bob - 2009-01-07 09:39:58
Hm, that's one of those cases where an exclamation point would have been politer than a period... you pedant!
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Roots-in-Victorian-times Song - 2009-01-07 16:49:42
A clue: It's not "Sneezes"! (Think ironically sweet -Yang, instead: "Diseases and...".)
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Bob - 2009-01-07 18:29:26
Though historically, the breezes lift "chamoises above their kneeses" instead of "skirts"... but I find Yellowman's take less clunky (plus I think he's the one who added the second part of "Diseases and... "). The oracle-net has been no help in the latter regard, though, so don't try to cheat....
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Bob - 2009-01-07 19:05:47
Oh, and there happens to be a colonially pertinent, really interesting article on Huffington Post by Johann Hari titled: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates.
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Butthead - 2009-01-08 05:55:49
She Said "Squeezes".... Oh wait, she didn't. Ah well.
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2DumbCrew - 2009-01-09 11:23:07
Me so wrongy... that Yellowman song is "Eases and Squeezes"... though it goes on about diseases elsewhere... and "d' eases and squeezes" sounds surprisingly indistinguishable from "Diseases and Squeezes". But the "eases and squeezes" actually seems to refer to "taxes", and its counterpoint is "what about d' hugs and kisses?" But hey, at least now I have heard that damn song again, for the first time since hearing it eminate from a trailer-based fm station in the Redlands, south of Miami, in '84. The funny thing was, when I asked the oracle, in the past, using words from the song, I only got obscure historical antecedents. A thousand points to any sentient being out there who can name the eighties movie that spawned the song "Me So Horny", though, without being reminded by the oracle.
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