Fight Club

This is your life, and its ending one minute at a time.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

Brilliant stuff, this.

Also, blatant plagarism. I know, but I take pride in the fact that David Fincher's Fight Club is one of my all time favourite movies, and I wouldn't mind quoting it till kingdom come.

Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and the amazing Edward Norton, who I confess I'd be crazy about had I been a woman, is a revolutionary movie, which is so awesome that one could watch with riveted interest even if one were subjected to sleep deprivation for four previous days in a row.




Here is some interesting trivia attached to the movie in general. The movie is based on a book written by Chuck Palahniuk, who is an acclaimed Gen-Y genre writer (now don't ask me what that means, I myself am clueless about it), and has belted out controversial book after controversial book, and has a major cult following in the US.

There are also some theories that the movie/book has been lifted off from Calvin and Hobbes, and that the two main characters along with the character of Marla Singer played by Helena Bonham Carter are actually the adult representations of Calvin, Hobbes and Susie. This seems to take random conjenctures to extremes, with such a hypothesis, and thats all I've got to say about that.

The extremely disturbing reason why I am writing this post is to highlight the fact that "Fight Club" is now out in Hindi.

It has heroes.

Four of them. (At last count, based on the promos.)

Two heroines.

And songs.

Aaarrrgh!!!

I'd much rather watch arbitrary movies such as "Khopdi-the skull", that have people dressed up in costumes they stole from some children's fancy dress competition auditorium changing room, with shady dialogues that even a three year old could make fun of, and heroes that even I look better than, and heroines that...well...the less said the better, you know.

I am not part of the crowd that pooh-poohs Hindi movies, while praising English ones because its 'cool' to do so. I am more subtle in my pseudness. I genuinely like quality stuff regardless of the language in which the movie is in. You should check out my Swahili and Esperanto movie collection someday, and you'll know.

I also think Bhojpuri movies rock. Bhojpuri movies have come back with a bang, and their revival will be made a case study in some B-school in 2010. A leading news magazine featured an article on the same, where they even spoke about the use of high end technology such as sync sound, slick editing and computer graphics.

It is rumoured that production for a whole host of Bhojpuri movies catering to the multiplex crowd in various unspecified secret locations has started in earnest.

They've used high end computer graphics, licensed from major Silicon Valley tech graphics vendors to do many wonderful things to the movies. The graphics can hide the flies buzzing around the cast's heads and hide the spittle that comes out of the hero's mouth every single time he speaks. Sound editing blanks out the mooing of cows in the neighboring cowshed, which shares its wall with the studio.

There are some wonderful cost-cutting measures in place, that this film industry has ingeniously employed. Whenever they want the hero/heroine's close friend to be respectively murdered/molested, they don't hire people as villans, but merely incite the local goons by spreading rumours that the soon-to-be-victim has passed comments regarding the hair that grows out of Laloo's ears.

There is nothing more blasphemous, in the humble opinion of the village heads, who decide to uphold the prestige of their fallen chief minister, and the alleged wrongdoer is dispensed with faster than you can say 'Gaai ka tabela', with the entire sequence shot on camera, thereby easing additional charges on the director's pockets.

Why doesn't mainstream Hindi commercial cinema try and borrow some lessons from their supposedly lesser cousins, rather than try and re-make classics from Hollywood and from the yesteryears as well???

Movies such as Swades, Rang De Basanti, Black and so on stand as testament to the fact that the creativity of the film industry knows no bounds, and can hold its own against the slick production houses of Hollywood, in a few years to come.

"Welcome to Fight Club. If this is your first night, you have to fight."

OR

"Fight Club mein aapka swagat hai. Agar aap yahaan pehli baar aaye hain, to aap ko yudh karna hi padega."

The choice is yours. Go figure.