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I like this number for a lot of different reasons. I'm on my second viewing of this movie, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, but I've watched this number a gazillion times. I don't know much of anything about Bollywood, but I suspect this movie is kind of the golden mean of Bollywood movies. It's really long, has romance and goofy comedy, and awesome musical numbers like this. There are also some things that make me cringe a little, some supposedly-funny-but-really-dreadful parenting bits, some non-PC stuff. Lots of NYC locations (!) and every American person acts weird and wacky.
I've decided that Shah Rukh Khan, who is seen in this video brooding off to the side, is kind of the Bollywood Tom Cruise. He's kind of cocky and pseudo-tough, and he's highly cute. Tom Cruise never got to me, but SRK did. But watching this now, I see that it's Amitabh Bachchan, the older dude in this video, who is the real deal. He was 64 when this was made (2006). It seems as if he was at one time the top guy in Bollywood, period, although he had some setbacks during his career. He is seriously hot in this number. And what I didn't know the first time I saw this is that the young guy in this number, who plays the son of Amitabh's character, is actually Amitabh's son, Abhishek. How cool is that?
The colors in these dance scenes hurt my eyes in a good way. The party at which this number takes place allegedly has a "60s" theme, but those clothes sure doesn't look like the sixties. It doesn't look like 2006, either. I don't know what it looks like. It looks like a parallel universe. And the dancing certainly comes from a parallel universe, one where things crash together in a bizarre and attractive way. I would love to be able to dance like that!
I keep having this vague ugly-American thought that this stuff is so weird and yet so unselfconscious -- but of course they wouldn't feel self-conscious. It's not weird to them, it's their culture. But it's really very foreign to me, and very charming and beautiful and cool, just endlessly rocking in a timeless way.
I know that I do strike people as sad and troubled and anxious of late; I walk around anxious about money every hour of every day, and every small increase in expenses makes me feel gut-punched. And I haven't been posting here too often, and I suspect I've done more posting when I've felt really down than when I've felt really up. There are a lot of good things in my life, for sure. It's just that the roller coaster is killing me. And I'm uncomfortable about people seeing me in pain, and some days it really is pain. It's just grinding. I recently had an e-mail from my sister-in-law, and she's having much the same experience. Neither of them is working, they have a son, and my brother is having some pretty wrenching emotional problems. There is a lot of not-happy going around, and I guess I'm carrying an additional load of disappointment. This is not how I thought my life would go, and I'm not too optimistic about things getting better in a big way in the foreseeable future. I feel like I've been clobbered by my lifetime of underachievement, that I'm paying now for being unfocused and undisciplined and unprofessional. It took me way too long to become a good worker and to be satisfied by working well; I have that satisfaction now, but missed out on a lot of the benefits by not getting here sooner. I should have been building a career instead of rebooting into a new line of work every couple of years.
I've decided that Shah Rukh Khan, who is seen in this video brooding off to the side, is kind of the Bollywood Tom Cruise. He's kind of cocky and pseudo-tough, and he's highly cute. Tom Cruise never got to me, but SRK did. But watching this now, I see that it's Amitabh Bachchan, the older dude in this video, who is the real deal. He was 64 when this was made (2006). It seems as if he was at one time the top guy in Bollywood, period, although he had some setbacks during his career. He is seriously hot in this number. And what I didn't know the first time I saw this is that the young guy in this number, who plays the son of Amitabh's character, is actually Amitabh's son, Abhishek. How cool is that?
The colors in these dance scenes hurt my eyes in a good way. The party at which this number takes place allegedly has a "60s" theme, but those clothes sure doesn't look like the sixties. It doesn't look like 2006, either. I don't know what it looks like. It looks like a parallel universe. And the dancing certainly comes from a parallel universe, one where things crash together in a bizarre and attractive way. I would love to be able to dance like that!
I keep having this vague ugly-American thought that this stuff is so weird and yet so unselfconscious -- but of course they wouldn't feel self-conscious. It's not weird to them, it's their culture. But it's really very foreign to me, and very charming and beautiful and cool, just endlessly rocking in a timeless way.
I know that I do strike people as sad and troubled and anxious of late; I walk around anxious about money every hour of every day, and every small increase in expenses makes me feel gut-punched. And I haven't been posting here too often, and I suspect I've done more posting when I've felt really down than when I've felt really up. There are a lot of good things in my life, for sure. It's just that the roller coaster is killing me. And I'm uncomfortable about people seeing me in pain, and some days it really is pain. It's just grinding. I recently had an e-mail from my sister-in-law, and she's having much the same experience. Neither of them is working, they have a son, and my brother is having some pretty wrenching emotional problems. There is a lot of not-happy going around, and I guess I'm carrying an additional load of disappointment. This is not how I thought my life would go, and I'm not too optimistic about things getting better in a big way in the foreseeable future. I feel like I've been clobbered by my lifetime of underachievement, that I'm paying now for being unfocused and undisciplined and unprofessional. It took me way too long to become a good worker and to be satisfied by working well; I have that satisfaction now, but missed out on a lot of the benefits by not getting here sooner. I should have been building a career instead of rebooting into a new line of work every couple of years.
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