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My Life in Movies

February 5, 2016 — Leave a comment

Will also keep this updated.

*Updated every February 5th.

Customary MUBI list.

Oh, Happy Chinese New Year! Let’s start my (supposedly) bad-luck Goat Year with the now-mandatory Letterboxd list of my film collection~

amys-film-collection-letterboxd

I have a really weird history with films– born in the late 80s, you’d think I would’ve grown watching loads of 90s kids stuff, but I actually grew up with a lot of Silly Symphonies (which were released in the 30s) and loads of Disney 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s stuff, plus a lot of more grown up 80s movies. Poltergeist, The Thing, The Fly and The Stuff were particularly scary stuff (and I’m pretty sure I was scared of yogurt or white stuff at some point).

I don’t ever remember buying any original VHS tape, except for the rare birthday gift of a Disney’s Sing-Along Songs chapter or that X-Men tape I have. My first DVDs buys were Coyote Ugly, She’s All That and Loser — you can’t blame me. I was a 15-year-old girl. The collection grew bigger, and possibly exploded during my years abroad. I’m nearing my 500th movie.

yammag-top-films-2014

Like we always do, the YAM Magazine team got together to vote for their favorite movies in a good ole’ Facebook poll in our secret group. We are so different and live so far away from each other that our choices vary so much, making the list alive. Of course there are movies I wish were lower, and others that were higher… but, all in all, it’s a good varied list for everyone to discover a new title.

So~ do your thing.

tabu-shahid-haider

Of course I’ve managed to watched Haider already. Three times. Over the weekend. In a month, I see it topping my list of favorites this 2014. Anyway~ there is a wonderful wordy article on Tabu by Raja Sen — titled The Stunning Actress Who Dared to Age, Seduce Her Son— and Confound Bollywood — where he sings praises left and right of Tabu’s latest performance [which has, in fact, trumped all her performances], and talks about her most (critically and commercially successful) notable roles.

In other news, it’s unlikely Rajeev Masand will take off the geo-block on his YouTube account, but the Actress Roundtable [1] is available on the IBN website. It’s got some very good moments, despite the Me, Me, Me, It’s All About Me attitude certain someone displayed. I was amazed. I always expect it, but this is taking it to a whole new level. LOL

In honor of the release of Haider today/tomorrow and me not being able to watch it until it hits the DVD/Bluray shelves… or EROSNOW (or someone else) decides to VOD it early or *cough*… I had been curating a YouTube playlist of all the music sequences -choreographed or not- (and item songs or special apperances) in Tabu’s filmography, which has resulted in a list of over 83 clips (est: 6 hours) from Tabu’s participation not only in Hindi films, but also Telugu, Tamil… and the random Malayalam clip that I was able to find.

The list has time to expand with rarer to find clips, I suppose, including (at least) one or two more clips for Idee Sanghati, as well as other regional movies that aren’t on YouTube. There are also clips that are included in their dubbed version (with the original title and the language they’re on), because the original audio isn’t available… as well as repeated clips in better resolutions than their “official” uploads.

We’re still being pumped for Haider [1][2] with an (short) interview Tabu is doing with Rajeev Masand about the apprehension of playing this part, her choosing the role, and how her ‘brand’ of acting is most often remembered for her seriousness. Though I still owe Hera Pheri a rewatch, I don’t think Biwi No. 1 classifies as one of Tabu’s movies, she’s hardly in it! I thought Aamdani Atthani Kharcha Rupaiyaa was funnier, though Kelki Dave stole that movie out of everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydUt9GgHa9Q

The funniest bit is, of course, when it’s pointed out that she refused Vishal’s offered with a “I’m not playing Shahid Kapoor’s mother,” while bursting out laughing.

She also admits that maybe she’s just lazy to pick films, so that’s something else she has in common with my Yu-chan fandom, apparently. That’s why there will be no other one quite like Joan Crawford. I’ve been re-connecting with Yu-chan, I’m having such fandom conflictive feelings.

… or commonly known as the “Haider Trailer”

It looks awesome.

Kaminey is still on hold, and still haven’t checked my Maqbool DVD. And I hope I get to re-read Hamlet… but if I don’t get the time, I’ll settle for the short animated series. LOL

yammag-15-indian-movies-people-who-hate-bollywood

Partly translated in English~ but fully in Español at Cinencuentro.

I’m not gonna lie to you ‘coz it’s obvious. I’m dying to watch Haider because of Tabu, and because it’s Vishal Bhardwaj… and Shakespeare, and the trilogy finally completed. I’m also not entirely sold on Shahid Kapoor, but I haven’t seen much of his work and he was sorta okay in Jab We Met. Haven’t seen Kaminey yet.

But he does look extra super duper sexy with clipped hair and facial hair.

shahid-kapoor-haider

As Zoolander would say, Really REALLY RIDICULOUSLY GOOD LOOKING.

… or what I think it’s an upcoming issue of Filmfare, anyway.

tabu-filmfare-2014-haider

I just ran into this lovely photo from the Filmfare editor’s Twitter account [1][2], and if you zoom into the images, you sorta can read those first two pages. Otherwise, I did a search and found nothing yet. According to the main quote, the most note-worthy thing Tabu said was “Apart from a child, a man can give me diamonds,” which is not, considering that she says she wanted to learn ballet. Now THAT is interesting!

In general, prima ballerinas are thought to be small… though that is apparently changing now that people are taller. Imagine a danseur that is 5’11 or 6 feet tall with a prima ballerina that is only 5’2. If Tabu had problems with her height in an industry that could pull off camera tricks, I can’t imagine if she had follow through with ballet.

Other notable comments from the images were the ones she made about her moving from Hyderabad to Mumbai. It’s interesting because it goes so in contrast to her early interviews. And she hasn’t read Shakespeare. I hated reading unfiltered-yet-translated Shakespeare in school. LOL Anyway, having said all of that, Haider is really one of my anticipated films this year :)

Oh-oh, and she wants to do an action film where she does her stunts. While watching Jai Ho, I wanted her to go all Mama Bear before she had to call Salman- like, THAT would have made the movie actually a lot better. It wouldn’t have made sense with anything in her current backstory, but they could’ve made it work. Tabu just hitting bad guys.

*May22’14 Update*

Interview is up!