dadasaheb phalke, is widely known as the father of indian cinema. he made one of the first in 1913, raja harishchandra.
blog at the edge never seizes to disappoint never disappoints (english are be hard for i sometimes) when it comes to unexpected nooks of history. the angle of every post is slightly off-kilter. this one claims that the history of indian cinema goes as far back as 1664. i adore this blog and i love his tagline: retrograde. bamboozlement! more bamboozlement!
repost for no reason alert: tumblr claims that this was posted at 11:45 am though it reeks of a specimen spewed from drunken babbling closer to 1:45 am. either way, it made me laugh. thanks to that person who reminded me about this more than a year later.
| (two hours of movie later) | |
| me: | are you getting any of this? |
| dad: | i can't tell if he's her older brother or younger, but she's deaf though. |
this is brilliant +1. i immediately thought of the borrowers but that only has three apparently (malfoy, arthur weasley, slughorn), it felt like the entire cast was potter-based to me.
movie magic
i was watching sense & sensibility in the back of my neighbour’s minivan while on a stakeout the other night and realized that professors snape, trelawney, and umbridge had each somehow apparated into the cast. my neighbour (who is a former hogwarts alumna) pointed out that cornelius fudge and madam pomfrey were also in it. was this a record for the most harry potter wizards in a non-harry potter film? i decided to abandon the surveillance (there was only one pair of high-powered binoculars anyway) and scrape some data from the imdb.
the project turned out to be bigger than i expected. there were hundreds of wizards and tens of thousands of movies in which they appear. in the end, when the pixie dust settled, i was left with at least 23 movies infiltrated by 4 or more potter people. i made this chart (click to engorgio) to show the tangled relationships among them.
here are a few observations:
- the movie with the most harry potter wizards in it is vanity fair with an unprecedented 9* wizards.
- the muggle that these wizards most like to work with is johnny depp who stars in 4 of these movies (3 of which were directed by tim burton).
- horace slughorn (a known attention whore) has wormed his way into no fewer than 5 of these movies, the most of any wizard.
- conspiracy theory: 6 of these movies were in theatres before the first harry potter book was released. there is even historical evidence that 4 wizards worked on crook’s anonymous which was released back in 1962 before magic was invented.
- the sorting hat and aragog were in king ralph? i’ll have to rewatch that one on tonight’s stakeout.
__
*and also at least one extra who worked on both films.
fwiw: this program works a magic all its own.
i used to be able to watch indian movies, the mad clothes, dances, predictability and all. but at some unknown point in the recent past i’ve lost the ability to feel/digest any display of emotions.
movies on love make me sick. movies on family obligations make me sick. commentaries on corruption/social injustices make me sick. sentimental sequences about poverty/helplessness/rape make me sick. parents, sisters, mothers in law, spoilt rich girls, step-siblings, family rivalries, orphans. but it’s mostly the over-dramatization of some medieval-sounding honour code, usually dependably sexist that makes me sick.
at least the music was good. i say was because it is now not good. here’s an old favourite that has the woman (banupriya) literally breaking her back, “dancing” and trying to be “sexy” while fatty fat-fat (prabhu) walk around apparently too cool to even lip-synch.
(via incaseyouforget)
so empire mag got famous actors to pose with their famous-est,most iconic props. they’re all great and here.
but try convincing me that aragorn-boromir wasn’t the best of the set. goosebumps. come on!
“people pretend to be nice, people pretend to be smooth, and polite and everything, but this is only an appearance because the way we’re built as human beings is only in paradox and contradictions. so I guess, you know, when I read so-called baddies, I think they’re more human than heroes most of the time.”
- vincent cassel
whoa. pretty sure that this is k.r. vijaya. popular tamil actress of back when back then. and now of badly lit tv soap opera fame.
random but lovely.
(via nehrujackets)
i decree this ‘grace kelly appreciation hour’.
thanks guys!
Life
Apr 26, 1954
Too scruffy even to be called preppy, the young Grace Kelly liked to dress down, perhaps as an apology for those looks. Once on a studio contract, however, she fell under the guidance of two great Hollywood designers. At MGM Helen Rose dressed Kelly in Mogambo (effortless safari-chic), The Swan (empire-line princess fantasy) and High Society (Grecian goddess attire updated for the 20th century) ….
The public saw photographs of Grace’s key later life stages — princess and mother — and she was an avid consumer of fashion throughout the 1960s (plenty of floaty kaftan dresses) and the 1970s (often unfortunate), when she even became a brunette. Yet the broader perception of Kelly will for ever be corralled in that speedily produced portfolio of 11 films from the mid-1950s….
Fashionwise, Kelly is a hugely photogenic, strangely blank beauty, who wore beautiful clothes very publicly — just as the designers who dressed her really hit their stride.
disney’s robin hood is one of those under-rated disney movies like the rescuers or the black cauldron which get overshadowed by the popular girls in school, fairy tale love stories. i only came across it last year and it’s now probably in my top five (mixed-accents, bad editing, repeated sequences from the jungle book and all).
(bah, can’t get both the audio and animated gif to show up, but click through, it’s worth it!)
(via wastelandman)
usually, if something doesn’t exist on the internets, it doesn’t exist at all.
but this did, once, and is my favourite suicide comedy-love story set in glasgow ever. rotten tomato still gives a 86%, which doesn’t say much other than that i’m not making this up. also, it’s partly danish funded, which explains the presence of mads mikkelsen (horst!), who i have never seen be comfortable in a movie.
premise:
Harbour and his suicidal brother (Wilbur) inherit their father’s second hand bookstore in their native Glasgow. Their lives become entangled with Alice and her daughter Mary after the two visit the shop. Idealistic young Mary captures Wilbur’s heart, and just may help save his life or help him find peace.
bonus trivia: shirley henderson is not the only harry potter connection here. the actor who plays harbour, who has a real name as well, shows up in the philosopher’s stone as james potter (mirror of erised). and bear with me here, wilbur was last seen by me as this dude in tooth and claw, from season 2 doctor who. mad!
speaking of lovecraft, this is also a movie i sat through. this was in a class about the macabre, where we were lead to believe that this was based on his short story dagon. perhaps the professor mentioned that it really wasn’t and i was floating in space as i did for those four years, but let’s not blame blames here.
vague premise:
Dagon tells the story of Paul Marsh, a young man who discovers that the truth will not set him free instead it condemns him to a waking nightmare of unrelenting horror.
it’s true.
this is a great movie for horror movies. two weeks later, i saw dead fish-people in the library. it made that possible for me. the trailer below, i feel does not adequately capture the b-ness of this movie.
Oh dear. Context.
o_O
Welcome to Life
Warm Breakfast after a tumultuous day+night. Idly Sambar
8 minutes is a lot to ask, I know. But worth it.
