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on Jul 06 2008 09:57 PM @tsk_tsk: 1) Your statements are contradictory. On one hand, you say Hollywood lacks originality %u2018coz it%u2019s movies are %u2018copies of books%u2019 and on the other you condone Indian plagiarism since it adds to the %u2018beauty of the originals%u2019 which, according to you, are highly unoriginal in the first place since they are mere copies of %u2018original%u2019 books. Therefore, do you mean to say %u2018copy of a copy%u2019 is better than %u2018just a copy%u2019?? 2) My dear, a film that is based on a book is called an 'adaptation' for christ's sakes, not a 'copy'( if you do not know what is an adaptation and the kinds of adaptations, read 3) Apart from the above, the plagiarist never acknowledges the original; he neither pays for the original source he copies nor he acknowledges in public that he copied or inspired by a particular work. He boldly or tacitly claims the work as his own. That's unethical besides being illegal. Did you see Ajay Devgan or Radha Krishna of Gamyam mention 'The Notebook' or 'Motorcycle Diaries' in their public Q&As or pre-release/post-release promos let alone the credits?? No, they wouldn't. Never. Doing such a thing is actually against the %u2018conscience%u2019 and %u2018spirit%u2019 of a plagiarist. However, if you please read the reviews of the film The Notebook or watch its credits, you will notice that they clearly mention it as the adaptation of the Nicholas Spark's novel with the same name (in fact, Nicholas Spark is famous for writing many musty romantic tales some of which were made into movies. Remember %u2018A Walk to Remember%u2019 or %u2018Message in a bottle%u2019 which was actually lifted by that idiot Puri Jagannath to make a trash called %u2018Sivamani%u2019?). Same thing goes for %u2018The Motorcycle Diaries%u2019. The screenplay and the film clearly mentions that it is based on Ernesto Guevara's travelogue %u2018The Motorcycle Diaries%u2019. They actually say that it%u2019s based on so-and-so novel by so-and-so author. Why?? Have they gone out of their minds??. They do so because they pay for it. They pay a million bucks to the original author as a token of acknowledgement of his work. Hence, before being anything else the plagiaristic movie-making is, first and the foremost, in a strict legal sense, an illegal copy of the original by committing which you a) trespass the rights of the original novelist to earn the royalty for his original work b) trespass the commercial privileges of the original film-maker who actually earned the rights for adapting the novel by paying a fat sum to the original author c) deprive original author/original filmmaker of his artistic license to celebrate the applause of the audience, which they are ethically entitled to. If anything creative, be it scientific or artistic, can be copied just like that on a mealy-mouthed plea that %u2018duplication%u2019 is necessary to reach a wider audience/beneficiaries, we may as well remove the words %u2018patent%u2019 and the %u2018copyright%u2019 from our legal dictionaries. If you are right, we can invent a vaccine for AIDS without ever being grateful to Louis Pasteur or make a Satellite phone without ever acknowledging the work of Graham Bell (in fact, we, the Indians, wouldn%u2019t even make a satellite phone. We would make something that looks like a telephone without a diaphragm or a transmitter and claims it to be a superior variation of the original telephone. We say, of course, who is Graham Bell, anyway.). You said all plagiarism is not evil. But the very word plagiarism denotes an %u2018evil copy%u2019. Therefore, first, please learn the difference between the words %u2018Adaptation%u2019 and a %u2018Copy%u2019, %u2018Remake%u2019 and %u2018Plagiarism%u2019. In a very simplistic licit terms, the former are legal and the latter are illegal(In a creative sense, the latter are very often vastly inferior to the original. At least Indian versions). Why can%u2019t Radha Krishna say in public that his movie is inspired by %u2018Motorcycle Diaries%u2019, why can%u2019t Devgan say his idea for UMH germinated from %u2018The Note Book%u2019. Why don%u2019t they at least acknowledge the works of Ernesto Guevara or Nicholas Sparks ( Do you think the thieves actually knew the movies they stole are adaptations?? Do you mean to say they actually read the original source??). If these guys are really brimming with passion for cinema, why couldn%u2019t they grab these books in the first place before Hollywood did it and make the movies out of them themselves?? If you are really straight and honest, why do you have to wait for someone from Hollywood to pay millions for the novelists and work their asses off to write an adapted screenplay so that you can lift the concept straight from it? Why don%u2019t you dig up the literature yourself, pay for it and make a movie out of it? Even if your insincere plagiaristic work is forgiven, what%u2019s stopping you from publicly applauding the work of the original author at least for giving you that killer idea that earned you millions??? (Most of the original Hollywood/chinese/Korean works, the lazy indian film-makers steal, are inferior products themselves). Apart from all this, do you mean to say Indian film-makers exclusively plagiarize only those Hollywood movies which are based on books and do not actually copy any 'original screenplays'?('Changing Lanes' into 'Taxi 9211' and 'Collateral' into 'The Killer' etc., etc.,. This list goes on endlessly. I believe Mumbai is probably the piracy capital of the world). The Chinese, Korean film-makers do not adapt novels as frequently as Hollywood does as they shoot C-grade action flicks most of the time. Then why do we steal these movies as regularly as we steal Hollywood, though the source of these movies is not often a book?? 4) You said a copy occasionally adds to the beauty of the original. Firstly, in the context of quality of Indian movies, please replace the word 'occasionally' with %u2018rarely%u2019 or 'never' as most of the Indian plagiaristic works wrench the theme of the original out of its natural narrative and distort it in the name of nativity(Refer to my comments on Gamyam). However, at the end, most of these %u2018free remakes%u2019 actually either draw their situations or dilemmas of its characters out of elements of American culture or varnish the hyper-cliched Indian narrative with the stolen theme. In case of the former, the quality of the copy is naturally becomes inferior to that of the original, whose basic theme much more readily blends into its plot since they were both derived from the same cultural resource. In case of the latter, however, the stink of the underlying stereotypical narrative and characters usually overwhelms the deodorizing scent of the %u2018stolen theme%u2019, unless, of course, you are suffering from acute artistic anosmia (the inability to smell), like it happened in Gamyam. Secondly, just tell me who is going to talk about the %u2018original%u2019 let alone it%u2019s %u2018beauty%u2019. If you are actually conceding that the source of a copy is a %u2018beautiful original%u2019, shouldn't it's existence be acknowledged first before making a copy?? Shouldn%u2019t the %u2018cool guys%u2019,who enjoyed the %u2018cool movie%u2019 UMH, have to applaud the original %u2018cool%u2019 movie %u2018The Note Book%u2019 that made the secondary %u2018cool%u2019 movie UMH possible or remember Nicholas Sparks who wrote such a %u2018cool%u2019 novel which is actually the source of both the %u2018cool%u2019 movies??(Even the fad of using the word 'cool' often is aping an Yankee ex-pression). 5) As for your having a laugh about my remarks about victimization of Hollywood etc., I would say everything you said minus your misplaced sarcasm holds true. Yes. They pay a fat purse to get the copyrights and they do toil hard to write an %u2018adapted screenplay%u2019 and we copy their %u2018original adaptation%u2019. Of course, it%u2019s criminal. Since, it takes considerable visual imagination and story-telling talent to condense a 600 page novel to a crisp 120 page adapted screenplay or to expand a simple single-line description of a scenario or a character of a paperback into a long set of detailed meaningful visuals, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences actually presents an Oscar for the 'Best Adapted Screenplay' apart from awarding the 'Best Original Screenplay'. In fact, the films that win Best Picture Oscars are often made of the adapted screenplays. Last year's Best Picture 'The Departed' and this year's 'No Country for oldmen' have won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay as well. Scorcese's Oscar-winning remake 'The Departed' boldly declares it's screenplay is based on that of 'Infernal Affairs'(The 'Pather Panchali' of the great Satyajit Ray is actually an adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's novel of the same name). Like-wise, innumerable Hollywood flicks over the decades have been adaptations of novels, real-life stories, comic books or short stories. Adapting literature isn't any warped new phenomenon that gives you a pointer to 'lack of originality' in Hollywood as you amateurishly claim. In fact, it is one of the primary reasons why Hollywood could be able to come up with such a vast number of 'original' story lines which are generously copied and deformed by the freebooters called Indian filmmakers and why Hollywood is such a Juggernaut in the realm of motion pictures. 6) You spoke of Hollywood producers to be millionaire bastards. If someone who pays millions for something he takes is a bastard, then what should we call someone who makes millions out of something he stole and produce such perfectly bastardized movies?? Mean-SOBs, pimps??. Your tirade against Hollywood producers there seems to be a case of a typical jingoist vehemence, born of an acute sense of inferiority, of a dabbler who has an inkling that the kind of cinema he gets a kick out of is indeed a shallow ill-gotten lovey-dovey fare. 7) Is the Indian cinema in the pink of its health or it is betraying an ugly yellow of a deeper cultural malady? The problem with the Indian Cinema is more about the kind of films it makes than the kind of movies it cannot make. It is more about the alarming depths the sensitivity of it's audience has fallen off the minimum acceptable perceptual threshold of a cross-section of generic movie-buffs of any other culture. If Om Shathi Om is an rigorously recycled decoction of super-absurdity that defies the universal notions of %u2018entertainment and art%u2019, which only Indians can find 'entertaining' and are capable of making, %u2018Bheja Fry%u2019 is an insipid cinematized stage-play that can only look good in contrast with an atrocity called OSO and hardly the basis on which you can claim parity with Hollywood, which not just refined but actually invented new genres of filmmaking. OSO - Bheja Fry wouldn't denote the range of versatility or two %u2018divergent forms of ingenuity%u2019 of Indian Cinema as you tacitly imply, rather they only represent a 'chronic disease' and it's 'inevitable side-effect' respectively. There is a thick line between 'originality' and 'quackery', 'inventiveness' and 'contrivance', %u2018discrepancy%u2019 and %u2018diversity%u2019. The fact that Bheja Fry is not based on a book wouldn't make it great, on the contrary, lack of ample quality contemporary literature is a major reason why Indian Cinema still resorts to either recycling %u2018conventional junk%u2019 like OSO or outright stealing from foreign cinema in order to cash in on the new generation of 8) The films you mentioned, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings (visually, probably the best trilogy in the entire film history of the world) etc.,etc., are comic book adaptations, a form of adaptation the Hollywood has virtual monopoly over. Though India doesn%u2019t have a comic book culture, the comic book adaptations of Hollywood have actually resulted in their dowdy Indian versions of superheroes like Mukesh Khanna%u2019s Shaktiman, whose premise is generously and unabashedly copied from that of American Superman and that superman batman spiderman hodgepodge of Krrish. Shaktiman was a hugely popular television series and I don%u2019t remember Khanna ever acknowledging publicly about where exactly he got his idea of Shaktiman from. India do not/cannot produce comic book adaptations not because it has the will to produce only magnum opus of other genres but because the comic book films require huge budgets, great visual imagination and very healthy screenwriting traditions none of which Indian filmmakers have besides the total absence of quality comic book literature. Nevertheless, I reiterate that India doesn%u2019t have substantial contemporary literature to have a tradition of adapted screenplays and what it produces mostly is crude rehashes of back-dated/brand-new foreign cinema and it%u2019s weird to hail it as %u2018original%u2019 than the very industry whose %u2018narrative structures%u2019 and %u2018movies%u2019 it unflinchingly steals from as a means of its survival. (I cannot imagine what would have been your reaction had Mumbai produced Lord of the Rings and Spielberg made an American version of the crappy DDLJ). Though the Hollywood is rife, of late, with comic book adaptations, especially after the runaway success of Lord of the rings, I don%u2019t understand, why should it necessarily mean Hollywood lacks originality when its production of films in other genres easily outnumber, both quantity-wise and quality-wise, the production of films of similar genres of Indian movie industry, most of which are, in reality, 'very remakes' of American films?? Moreover, of the million movies the Hollywood makes every year only a fraction comprising of big-budget action adventures, sci-fi/comic book adaptations or films of branded directors arrive in India to tap the potential commercial market of that common universal movie %u2018mob%u2019, which barely reflect the vibrancy of real Hollywood. 9) Did it actually hit the wall?? Does American cinema suffers from dearth of originality?? Yes. It does. But it's at another level. There used to be a tennis great called Ivan Lendl, who could never be able to win even a single Wimbledon final. Though Ivan Lendl is considered to be one of the greatest of tennis players ever born, somehow, the grass courts of Wimbledon seemed to expose a 'weakness' in his technique. Then should we say Ivan Lendl is as good or bad as someone like Ramesh Krishnan just because Krishnan played some of his greatest tennis only on grass courts?? No, we don't say that, do we?? Lendl's game on grass courts is predictable and unidimensional only in comparison with other 'equally-talented' top players with who he had to compete with at Wimbledon and we say he is a 'failure at Wimbledon' only with reference to the 'level of success' he had had on other types of courts at other times against other great players at the %u2018level he competes at%u2019. Simply speaking, Lendl is only considered 'incomplete' because his 'success' at Wimbledon is disproportionate to the general level of finesse he could be able to achieve in the game of Tennis itself(Lendl reached Wimbledon finals twice. Had Ramesh Krishnan done that it would have been hailed as one of the greatest Indian sporting achievements ever). Likewise, Hollywood can only be called 'stereotypical', 'unoriginal' and 'lagging-behind' only with reference to the degree of refinement a film industry with such an illustrious past and pedigree ought to achieve in the art of filmmaking but not in comparison with an industry whose very substratum for its 'new-age cinema' is Hollywood's very own(and mostly obsolete) 'narrative structures' and 'leitmotiv'. Hence, India's so called 'in-vogue' cinema is hardly an equivalent parallel cinematic alternative to Hollywood as most hypocritical Indian movie fans would like to believe, rather it is only an inferior subsystem of its 'American parent' whose movies and literature are profusely used as its aesthetic fuel for sustenance (why? even the word 'Bollywood' is a variation of Hollywood. Do the French call their movie-industry 'Pariswood'??). Don't you think the lead poster of convergent line of slick, muscle-bound leather-jacketed hunks and cleavage-flaunting halter-topped ladies dangling LMGs of a typical Bollywood action flick reeks of its third-grade out-of-date Hollywood counterpart?? 10. You say Originality is rare...India or not etc.,. Yes, it is. But the infrequency of that 'rarity' in India is so (Reply to this) |
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on Jul 06 2008 09:58 PM @tsk_tsk: 1) Your statements are contradictory. On one hand, you say Hollywood lacks originality %u2018coz it%u2019s movies are %u2018copies of books%u2019 and on the other you condone Indian plagiarism since it adds to the %u2018beauty of the originals%u2019 which, according to you, are highly unoriginal in the first place since they are mere copies of %u2018original%u2019 books. Therefore, do you mean to say %u2018copy of a copy%u2019 is better than %u2018just a copy%u2019?? 2) My dear, a film that is based on a book is called an 'adaptation' for christ's sakes, not a 'copy'( if you do not know what is an adaptation and the kinds of adaptations, read 3) Apart from the above, the plagiarist never acknowledges the original; he neither pays for the original source he copies nor he acknowledges in public that he copied or inspired by a particular work. He boldly or tacitly claims the work as his own. That's unethical besides being illegal. Did you see Ajay Devgan or Radha Krishna of Gamyam mention 'The Notebook' or 'Motorcycle Diaries' in their public Q&As or pre-release/post-release promos let alone the credits?? No, they wouldn't. Never. Doing such a thing is actually against the %u2018conscience%u2019 and %u2018spirit%u2019 of a plagiarist. However, if you please read the reviews of the film The Notebook or watch its credits, you will notice that they clearly mention it as the adaptation of the Nicholas Spark's novel with the same name (in fact, Nicholas Spark is famous for writing many musty romantic tales some of which were made into movies. Remember %u2018A Walk to Remember%u2019 or %u2018Message in a bottle%u2019 which was actually lifted by that idiot Puri Jagannath to make a trash called %u2018Sivamani%u2019?). Same thing goes for %u2018The Motorcycle Diaries%u2019. The screenplay and the film clearly mentions that it is based on Ernesto Guevara's travelogue %u2018The Motorcycle Diaries%u2019. They actually say that it%u2019s based on so-and-so novel by so-and-so author. Why?? Have they gone out of their minds??. They do so because they pay for it. They pay a million bucks to the original author as a token of acknowledgement of his work. Hence, before being anything else the plagiaristic movie-making is, first and the foremost, in a strict legal sense, an illegal copy of the original by committing which you a) trespass the rights of the original novelist to earn the royalty for his original work b) trespass the commercial privileges of the original film-maker who actually earned the rights for adapting the novel by paying a fat sum to the original author c) deprive original author/original filmmaker of his artistic license to celebrate the applause of the audience, which they are ethically entitled to. If anything creative, be it scientific or artistic, can be copied just like that on a mealy-mouthed plea that %u2018duplication%u2019 is necessary to reach a wider audience/beneficiaries, we may as well remove the words %u2018patent%u2019 and the %u2018copyright%u2019 from our legal dictionaries. If you are right, we can invent a vaccine for AIDS without ever being grateful to Louis Pasteur or make a Satellite phone without ever acknowledging the work of Graham Bell (in fact, we, the Indians, wouldn%u2019t even make a satellite phone. We would make something that looks like a telephone without a diaphragm or a transmitter and claims it to be a superior variation of the original telephone. We say, of course, who is Graham Bell, anyway.). You said all plagiarism is not evil. But the very word plagiarism denotes an %u2018evil copy%u2019. Therefore, first, please learn the difference between the words %u2018Adaptation%u2019 and a %u2018Copy%u2019, %u2018Remake%u2019 and %u2018Plagiarism%u2019. In a very simplistic licit terms, the former are legal and the latter are illegal(In a creative sense, the latter are very often vastly inferior to the original. At least Indian versions). Why can%u2019t Radha Krishna say in public that his movie is inspired by %u2018Motorcycle Diaries%u2019, why can%u2019t Devgan say his idea for UMH germinated from %u2018The Note Book%u2019. Why don%u2019t they at least acknowledge the works of Ernesto Guevara or Nicholas Sparks ( Do you think the thieves actually knew the movies they stole are adaptations?? Do you mean to say they actually read the original source??). If these guys are really brimming with passion for cinema, why couldn%u2019t they grab these books in the first place before Hollywood did it and make the movies out of them themselves?? If you are really straight and honest, why do you have to wait for someone from Hollywood to pay millions for the novelists and work their asses off to write an adapted screenplay so that you can lift the concept straight from it? Why don%u2019t you dig up the literature yourself, pay for it and make a movie out of it? Even if your insincere plagiaristic work is forgiven, what%u2019s stopping you from publicly applauding the work of the original author at least for giving you that killer idea that earned you millions??? (Most of the original Hollywood/chinese/Korean works, the lazy indian film-makers steal, are inferior products themselves). Apart from all this, do you mean to say Indian film-makers exclusively plagiarize only those Hollywood movies which are based on books and do not actually copy any 'original screenplays'?('Changing Lanes' into 'Taxi 9211' and 'Collateral' into 'The Killer' etc., etc.,. This list goes on endlessly. I believe Mumbai is probably the piracy capital of the world). The Chinese, Korean film-makers do not adapt novels as frequently as Hollywood does as they shoot C-grade action flicks most of the time. Then why do we steal these movies as regularly as we steal Hollywood, though the source of these movies is not often a book?? 4) You said a copy occasionally adds to the beauty of the original. Firstly, in the context of quality of Indian movies, please replace the word 'occasionally' with %u2018rarely%u2019 or 'never' as most of the Indian plagiaristic works wrench the theme of the original out of its natural narrative and distort it in the name of nativity(Refer to my comments on Gamyam). However, at the end, most of these %u2018free remakes%u2019 actually either draw their situations or dilemmas of its characters out of elements of American culture or varnish the hyper-cliched Indian narrative with the stolen theme. In case of the former, the quality of the copy is naturally becomes inferior to that of the original, whose basic theme much more readily blends into its plot since they were both derived from the same cultural resource. In case of the latter, however, the stink of the underlying stereotypical narrative and characters usually overwhelms the deodorizing scent of the %u2018stolen theme%u2019, unless, of course, you are suffering from acute artistic anosmia (the inability to smell), like it happened in Gamyam. Secondly, just tell me who is going to talk about the %u2018original%u2019 let alone it%u2019s %u2018beauty%u2019. If you are actually conceding that the source of a copy is a %u2018beautiful original%u2019, shouldn't it's existence be acknowledged first before making a copy?? Shouldn%u2019t the %u2018cool guys%u2019,who enjoyed the %u2018cool movie%u2019 UMH, have to applaud the original %u2018cool%u2019 movie %u2018The Note Book%u2019 that made the secondary %u2018cool%u2019 movie UMH possible or remember Nicholas Sparks who wrote such a %u2018cool%u2019 novel which is actually the source of both the %u2018cool%u2019 movies??(Even the fad of using the word 'cool' often is aping an Yankee ex-pression). 5) As for your having a laugh about my remarks about victimization of Hollywood etc., I would say everything you said minus your misplaced sarcasm holds true. Yes. They pay a fat purse to get the copyrights and they do toil hard to write an %u2018adapted screenplay%u2019 and we copy their %u2018original adaptation%u2019. Of course, it%u2019s criminal. Since, it takes considerable visual imagination and story-telling talent to condense a 600 page novel to a crisp 120 page adapted screenplay or to expand a simple single-line description of a scenario or a character of a paperback into a long set of detailed meaningful visuals, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences actually presents an Oscar for the 'Best Adapted Screenplay' apart from awarding the 'Best Original Screenplay'. In fact, the films that win Best Picture Oscars are often made of the adapted screenplays. Last year's Best Picture 'The Departed' and this year's 'No Country for oldmen' have won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay as well. Scorcese's Oscar-winning remake 'The Departed' boldly declares it's screenplay is based on that of 'Infernal Affairs'(The 'Pather Panchali' of the great Satyajit Ray is actually an adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's novel of the same name). Like-wise, innumerable Hollywood flicks over the decades have been adaptations of novels, real-life stories, comic books or short stories. Adapting literature isn't any warped new phenomenon that gives you a pointer to 'lack of originality' in Hollywood as you amateurishly claim. In fact, it is one of the primary reasons why Hollywood could be able to come up with such a vast number of 'original' story lines which are generously copied and deformed by the freebooters called Indian filmmakers and why Hollywood is such a Juggernaut in the realm of motion pictures. 6) You spoke of Hollywood producers to be millionaire bastards. If someone who pays millions for something he takes is a bastard, then what should we call someone who makes millions out of something he stole and produce such perfectly bastardized movies?? Mean-SOBs, pimps??. Your tirade against Hollywood producers there seems to be a case of a typical jingoist vehemence, born of an acute sense of inferiority, of a dabbler who has an inkling that the kind of cinema he gets a kick out of is indeed a shallow ill-gotten lovey-dovey fare. 7) Is the Indian cinema in the pink of its health or it is betraying an ugly yellow of a deeper cultural malady? The problem with the Indian Cinema is more about the kind of films it makes than the kind of movies it cannot make. It is more about the alarming depths the sensitivity of it's audience has fallen off the minimum acceptable perceptual threshold of a cross-section of generic movie-buffs of any other culture. If Om Shathi Om is an rigorously recycled decoction of super-absurdity that defies the universal notions of %u2018entertainment and art%u2019, which only Indians can find 'entertaining' and are capable of making, %u2018Bheja Fry%u2019 is an insipid cinematized stage-play that can only look good in contrast with an atrocity called OSO and hardly the basis on which you can claim parity with Hollywood, which not just refined but actually invented new genres of filmmaking. OSO - Bheja Fry wouldn't denote the range of versatility or two %u2018divergent forms of ingenuity%u2019 of Indian Cinema as you tacitly imply, rather they only represent a 'chronic disease' and it's 'inevitable side-effect' respectively. There is a thick line between 'originality' and 'quackery', 'inventiveness' and 'contrivance', %u2018discrepancy%u2019 and %u2018diversity%u2019. The fact that Bheja Fry is not based on a book wouldn't make it great, on the contrary, lack of ample quality contemporary literature is a major reason why Indian Cinema still resorts to either recycling %u2018conventional junk%u2019 like OSO or outright stealing from foreign cinema in order to cash in on the new generation of 8) The films you mentioned, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings (visually, probably the best trilogy in the entire film history of the world) etc.,etc., are comic book adaptations, a form of adaptation the Hollywood has virtual monopoly over. Though India doesn%u2019t have a comic book culture, the comic book adaptations of Hollywood have actually resulted in their dowdy Indian versions of superheroes like Mukesh Khanna%u2019s Shaktiman, whose premise is generously and unabashedly copied from that of American Superman and that superman batman spiderman hodgepodge of Krrish. Shaktiman was a hugely popular television series and I don%u2019t remember Khanna ever acknowledging publicly about where exactly he got his idea of Shaktiman from. India do not/cannot produce comic book adaptations not because it has the will to produce only magnum opus of other genres but because the comic book films require huge budgets, great visual imagination and very healthy screenwriting traditions none of which Indian filmmakers have besides the total absence of quality comic book literature. Nevertheless, I reiterate that India doesn%u2019t have substantial contemporary literature to have a tradition of adapted screenplays and what it produces mostly is crude rehashes of back-dated/brand-new foreign cinema and it%u2019s weird to hail it as %u2018original%u2019 than the very industry whose %u2018narrative structures%u2019 and %u2018movies%u2019 it unflinchingly steals from as a means of its survival. (I cannot imagine what would have been your reaction had Mumbai produced Lord of the Rings and Spielberg made an American version of the crappy DDLJ). Though the Hollywood is rife, of late, with comic book adaptations, especially after the runaway success of Lord of the rings, I don%u2019t understand, why should it necessarily mean Hollywood lacks originality when its production of films in other genres easily outnumber, both quantity-wise and quality-wise, the production of films of similar genres of Indian movie industry, most of which are, in reality, 'very remakes' of American films?? Moreover, of the million movies the Hollywood makes every year only a fraction comprising of big-budget action adventures, sci-fi/comic book adaptations or films of branded directors arrive in India to tap the potential commercial market of that common universal movie %u2018mob%u2019, which barely reflect the vibrancy of real Hollywood. 9) Did it actually hit the wall?? Does American cinema suffers from dearth of originality?? Yes. It does. But it's at another level. There used to be a tennis great called Ivan Lendl, who could never be able to win even a single Wimbledon final. Though Ivan Lendl is considered to be one of the greatest of tennis players ever born, somehow, the grass courts of Wimbledon seemed to expose a 'weakness' in his technique. Then should we say Ivan Lendl is as good or bad as someone like Ramesh Krishnan just because Krishnan played some of his greatest tennis only on grass courts?? No, we don't say that, do we?? Lendl's game on grass courts is predictable and unidimensional only in comparison with other 'equally-talented' top players with who he had to compete with at Wimbledon and we say he is a 'failure at Wimbledon' only with reference to the 'level of success' he had had on other types of courts at other times against other great players at the %u2018level he competes at%u2019. Simply speaking, Lendl is only considered 'incomplete' because his 'success' at Wimbledon is disproportionate to the general level of finesse he could be able to achieve in the game of Tennis itself(Lendl reached Wimbledon finals twice. Had Ramesh Krishnan done that it would have been hailed as one of the greatest Indian sporting achievements ever). Likewise, Hollywood can only be called 'stereotypical', 'unoriginal' and 'lagging-behind' only with reference to the degree of refinement a film industry with such an illustrious past and pedigree ought to achieve in the art of filmmaking but not in comparison with an industry whose very substratum for its 'new-age cinema' is Hollywood's very own(and mostly obsolete) 'narrative structures' and 'leitmotiv'. Hence, India's so called 'in-vogue' cinema is hardly an equivalent parallel cinematic alternative to Hollywood as most hypocritical Indian movie fans would like to believe, rather it is only an inferior subsystem of its 'American parent' whose movies and literature are profusely used as its aesthetic fuel for sustenance (why? even the word 'Bollywood' is a variation of Hollywood. Do the French call their movie-industry 'Pariswood'??). Don't you think the lead poster of convergent line of slick, muscle-bound leather-jacketed hunks and cleavage-flaunting halter-topped ladies dangling LMGs of a typical Bollywood action flick reeks of its third-grade out-of-date Hollywood counterpart?? 10. You say Originality is rare...India or not etc.,. Yes, it is. But the infrequency of that 'rarity' in India is so (Reply to this) |
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