Random Friday

Written in bits and pieces as soon as I have something to say. Halla Bol: can’t tell if it’s a good movie or not, because the so-called English subtitles were either very bad and ridden with typos or non-existent and un-synchronized to the dialog. So I have not a very clear idea of what they were saying at any time. I guess this movie wasn’t meant to be seen outside of India… Like others I’ve stumbled upon (I already mentioned missing or badly written English subtitles, didn’t I). Alas my Hindi is still non-existent, so maybe one day I’ll watch it again. Maybe.

Same DVD had also Welcome. Slapstick comedy, one of those where people don’t brake and keep going with their car after losing the wheel (an action scene in a supposed rom-com) and other silly visual tricks. Except there were probably lots of funny thinks said, but I could only guess them because – yes, once again, the English subtitles were clunky or non existent. I got the idea of what it’s about more than the prefious one, but I probably missed half the spoken jokes.

I guess Bollywood doesn’t care about actually exporting its movies, or they’d do a better job with English subtitles – they might be good for Hindustani readers, but not for everybody else in the world. Either this or those are “minor” productions not meant to go abroad. I mean, Jodhaa Akbar had perfect subtitles (even signed) and the first movies I saw on British Airways (KANK, Dostana) also had good subtitles…

Oh, gosh, just discovered how Dostana is called in Italian (IMDB gives me the Italian title when available only because I’m in Italy, I hate it, but I don’t know how to get rid of it. And I tried to watch Dostana on the Italian TV one Saturday night, but switched it off after 20 minutes – hated the dubbing): “Appointment (as in “date”, but I kept the word similar to the Italian one) for… 3″ – now, if they really wanted to keep the 3-thingy, is should have been “Apartment for… 3″, because that’s what the movie is about! I hate dubbing and I also hate re-titling of foreign movies in this country. More often than not they make no sense at all. They don’t do this with books that much, luckily…

Anyway. back to subtitles: the award for Worst English Subtitles goes to the first DVD. I thought it was because it was one of those “2 movies on one disk”, but then I tried a “3 movies on 1 disk” and Krrish (which I already own as single movie on DVD) had the same subtitles than my copy! I might steal that one as my copy of Krrish is a little faulty and blocks itself at the beginning – but then, I mentioned that the first half of the movie isn’t as good as the second, so who cares! Looking forward to the sequel… Come on, Hrithik, get done with it!!

Along with it there was Anthony Kaun Hai? which also had decent subtitles and is also a very decent story with Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi (seen in Kabul Express next to John Abraham). Sanjay Dutt is always overpowering and very good as a hitman although not as scary as he was in Agneepath. Songs were so-and-so for my tastes, but it’s a good story, so you should check it.

Also on that DVD was Gangster with Emraan Hashmi (seen in The Dirty Picture). But I’ll watch it during the weekend, as I started writing, therefore I’d rather not stop until I’m done with draft 0, LOL!I also want to rewatch a couple of movies and buy Magic Mike ASAP for inspiration on the body switch, so stay tuned… Have a wonderful weekend!