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"Where are the pens? I need a pen!"
"You should have thought of that before you destroyed the last one!"
- Ludwig van Beethoven and Mr. Schindler, Beethoven Lives Upstairs (David Devine, 1992)
Silly me; midterms have made me completely forget what the point of my film courses is:
TO WATCH MOVIES.
Naaaaw, really? I just thought we were supposed to sit around and copy crap off a board.
But the one film course this week that wasn't plagued by the midterm insania was Canadian Cinema, which means that I had one more screening today than I recalled. And my god was it weird.
The film is Masala by Srinivas Krishna, which focuses on a South Asian family in Toronto trying to come to terms with the ridiculous number of subplots the director decided to throw at them. First there's Krishna, whose family got blown up in a plane accident; Rita, who wants to learn to fly planes (amusing parallel there?) while her father thinks she's actually saving for med school; Lallu Bhai (sounds like "lullaby", intentionally?), who helps this dude smuggle... newspaper toilet paper? I dunno, it's weird, and a random RCMP lady thinks that they're actually terrorists smuggling guns which causes this ridiculous misunderstanding; the grandmother, who wants to make food with electric appliances (for reasons that are beyond me), and chats with her god Krishna (parallel there obviously) through a VHS tape demanding help for her son; and then there's Tikkoo, Rita's father and the grandmother's son, who obsesses over his stamp collection so much that he gets into a lawsuit with THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA over a five-million-dollar-worth three-penny beaver stamp! SERIOUSLY, is that really something to get into a lawsuit over? A freaking beaver stamp?! But it all works out; Rita gets her money, though she doesn't really end up taking flying lessons after all, the misunderstanding is understood and no one is arrested, the grandmother gets "justice" from the Krishna god (even if Krishna is absolutely sick of Canadian Indians by now), and Tikkoo ends up selling the stamp to the Canadian National Centre of Philately which he gets hired to work at 'cause of his avid love for stamp collecting. Well, except for mortal Krishna... his mortality is proven by his getting stabbed by a bunch of dumb white kids. What a stupid way to go.
Oh yeah, I didn't mention, there are going to be spoilers in this journal. Yeah, um, sorry for the delay on informing you.
Masala was very obviously influenced by Bollywood. You can tell 'cause it has one of the most obvious characteristics of Bollywood: spontaneous musical interludes! Each one representing a dream of each character's (except for Tikkoo; I guess the love for stamps was already obvious). Rita gets this cheesy set of a carousel and a plastic airplane in the clouds while singing this English/Hindu song about lovemaking and love and the usual themes you get in 90% of the world's songs, Anil (oh yeah I didn't mention him - he was Rita's arranged financé before she realised he was "chickenshit"... he really is, he always has this "ehuh?" look on his face), his consists of a typically-masculine gratuitous sex scene with another potential fiancée who ends up also rejecting him, Lallu Bhai gets surrounded by topless women while singing an amusing rendition of "I Did It My Way", and Krishna... flies through a starry sky picking up all of his family's clothes as they come falling from the exploded plane... interesting...
Besides that, there's not too much to say about it. It was certainly amusing to watch. It's sort of like My Big Fat Greek Wedding only far less conventional and far more... strange. But amusingly strange. And while a lot of the Bollywood-like elements make it seem a little less like a Canadian film, it still has the strong sense of community that I notice in almost every Canadian film I watch. So hey, if that's your thing, give it a watch... if you can find it anyway. YouTube isn't an option in this case XP
Really, the film being Canadian is all it has in common with the Beethoven Lives Upstairs quote. That more or less has to do with my current obsession with classical music. I saw Beethoven Lives Upstairs years ago back in my childhood 'cause we have a VHS copy of the film, and I have a suspicion that it helped conjure my love for Ludwig and his symphonies.
I was listening to classical music on Galaxie today and they played a concerto by Camille Saint-Saens, followed immediately by a piece by the aforementioned Respighi. Has someone on Galaxie been watching Fantasia 2000?
Time to head to that Fernando Solanas screening I suppose. Till later!
"You should have thought of that before you destroyed the last one!"
- Ludwig van Beethoven and Mr. Schindler, Beethoven Lives Upstairs (David Devine, 1992)
Silly me; midterms have made me completely forget what the point of my film courses is:
TO WATCH MOVIES.
Naaaaw, really? I just thought we were supposed to sit around and copy crap off a board.
But the one film course this week that wasn't plagued by the midterm insania was Canadian Cinema, which means that I had one more screening today than I recalled. And my god was it weird.
The film is Masala by Srinivas Krishna, which focuses on a South Asian family in Toronto trying to come to terms with the ridiculous number of subplots the director decided to throw at them. First there's Krishna, whose family got blown up in a plane accident; Rita, who wants to learn to fly planes (amusing parallel there?) while her father thinks she's actually saving for med school; Lallu Bhai (sounds like "lullaby", intentionally?), who helps this dude smuggle... newspaper toilet paper? I dunno, it's weird, and a random RCMP lady thinks that they're actually terrorists smuggling guns which causes this ridiculous misunderstanding; the grandmother, who wants to make food with electric appliances (for reasons that are beyond me), and chats with her god Krishna (parallel there obviously) through a VHS tape demanding help for her son; and then there's Tikkoo, Rita's father and the grandmother's son, who obsesses over his stamp collection so much that he gets into a lawsuit with THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA over a five-million-dollar-worth three-penny beaver stamp! SERIOUSLY, is that really something to get into a lawsuit over? A freaking beaver stamp?! But it all works out; Rita gets her money, though she doesn't really end up taking flying lessons after all, the misunderstanding is understood and no one is arrested, the grandmother gets "justice" from the Krishna god (even if Krishna is absolutely sick of Canadian Indians by now), and Tikkoo ends up selling the stamp to the Canadian National Centre of Philately which he gets hired to work at 'cause of his avid love for stamp collecting. Well, except for mortal Krishna... his mortality is proven by his getting stabbed by a bunch of dumb white kids. What a stupid way to go.
Oh yeah, I didn't mention, there are going to be spoilers in this journal. Yeah, um, sorry for the delay on informing you.
Masala was very obviously influenced by Bollywood. You can tell 'cause it has one of the most obvious characteristics of Bollywood: spontaneous musical interludes! Each one representing a dream of each character's (except for Tikkoo; I guess the love for stamps was already obvious). Rita gets this cheesy set of a carousel and a plastic airplane in the clouds while singing this English/Hindu song about lovemaking and love and the usual themes you get in 90% of the world's songs, Anil (oh yeah I didn't mention him - he was Rita's arranged financé before she realised he was "chickenshit"... he really is, he always has this "ehuh?" look on his face), his consists of a typically-masculine gratuitous sex scene with another potential fiancée who ends up also rejecting him, Lallu Bhai gets surrounded by topless women while singing an amusing rendition of "I Did It My Way", and Krishna... flies through a starry sky picking up all of his family's clothes as they come falling from the exploded plane... interesting...
Besides that, there's not too much to say about it. It was certainly amusing to watch. It's sort of like My Big Fat Greek Wedding only far less conventional and far more... strange. But amusingly strange. And while a lot of the Bollywood-like elements make it seem a little less like a Canadian film, it still has the strong sense of community that I notice in almost every Canadian film I watch. So hey, if that's your thing, give it a watch... if you can find it anyway. YouTube isn't an option in this case XP
Really, the film being Canadian is all it has in common with the Beethoven Lives Upstairs quote. That more or less has to do with my current obsession with classical music. I saw Beethoven Lives Upstairs years ago back in my childhood 'cause we have a VHS copy of the film, and I have a suspicion that it helped conjure my love for Ludwig and his symphonies.
I was listening to classical music on Galaxie today and they played a concerto by Camille Saint-Saens, followed immediately by a piece by the aforementioned Respighi. Has someone on Galaxie been watching Fantasia 2000?
Time to head to that Fernando Solanas screening I suppose. Till later!
