Friday, June 01, 2007

Shivaji: the Fug



Try as hard as you can to make it past the guys in the tiger-face shirts. And the blackface. It's worth it.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

blackface?? Rajni is black! And don't underestimate Shankar's movie. None of shankar's movie has ever been bad.

Beth Loves Bollywood said...

As in African (or African-American, Afro-Caribbean, etc.) And I'm definitely not saying anything about the movie beyond the clothes (and probably the wigs, now that I think about it) :)

Susania said...

actually, the effects look rather sophisticated!

Lena said...

how is rajni still allowed to make movies is my question.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for turning your gaze to Kollywood fug -- truly scary. And Rajni needs to stop chasing around 15-year-olds.

Anonymous said...

http://specials.rediff.com/movies/2007/may/30slide3.htm

I have no words to describe it. Enjoy it, Johnny Depp look alike

Anonymous said...

i dont understand. the title of your blog has bollywood. so why are you talking about other industries? also it's really not bollywood. people like you have come up with that name. and just because you can't find the costume designers does not mean you can make fun of the actors or the whole entire indian film indistry.
o and why do you keep deleting my comments? don't have a reply?

t-HYPE said...

Re: cranky anonymous commenter,
"Other industries" come under the blog subhead: "The best fugliness Bollywood, Kollywood & Tollywood have to offer."

I would like to think that "people like me" came up with the term 'Bollywood' because I prefer descriptions that are short and sweet and obviously those like me feel the same way.

Feel free to point out which other comments are yours so I don't have to believe that more than one cranky person reads this blog.

If you haven't already, read our blog philosphy here: About this blog.

Thanks for stopping by! ;(

[FYI, in case it matters, blackface will always get the thumbs-down on this site no matter who does it.]

Anonymous said...

ok so. yea. bollywood is short. but then why to do people like you say that the indian film idustry copies hollywood?

o and the blog's NAME has bollywood. so change to include all the indusries you are talking about so you mislead people.

and dont blame these actors. have a blog about blackface.just because you can't find the directors does not give you an excuse to target the actors.

also u said you'd only talk about actors while acting. well you have pics from awards and what not.

Susania said...

Anonymous, if you're going to ask questions and want honest answers, then have the decency to identify yourself. We won't bother otherwise.

Impressionist said...

The costumes are by Manish Malhotra - who is the designer for most of Bollywood

Anonymous said...

this is def not by manish malhotra. and he does design most costumes in the india film industries.

i dont have a blog or account so i can't say who i am. but anyways, you're just making up excuses for not answering my question.

Susania said...

Anonymous, you can create an account without having a blog. We have answered questions about this topic multiple times if you will bother to look back at previous postings and comments. Either get a name or leave us alone.

Beth Loves Bollywood said...

According to imdb, Manish Maohotra is the costume designer for Sivaji (and two other movies). Imdb has been known to be wrong, and in my experience it tends to have less information about non-Hindi Indian films than for Hindi-language ones. But it's the best I can do right now, and the movie's official site does not list a costume designer.

Anonymous, if you are so inclined, you can very easily type your name into a comment along with your remarks, or you can sign up for a blogger account and log in. You seem not to be so inclined, and that's your choice. It's also our choice to disable anonymous commenting should this get out of hand.

As for the name "Bollywood," the most I have ever found out about the origin of the term is from Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema by Tejaswini Ganti (Routledge 2004), who is on the anthropology faculty at New York University. The book says that the word is "a tongue-in-cheek term created by the English-language press in India in the late 1970s" (page 2). If that is correct, then the inventor of the term is not "people like us," as you say, because most of "us" who write this site are in the United States in the 2000s and not members of the press. Whether the people who coined "Bollywood" were Indian or British or Martian, I have no idea and would enjoy learning more about, so if anyone knows, please tell us.

Now, the practice of identifying costumes by the person who wore them: I assume that you're right that actors are generally not to blame for what they wear in movies. After all, if actors chose, then why would there be costume designers at all? It is sometimes difficult to find information about costume designers, but we should definitely include it when we can find it. The problem, though, is that I think most people probably remember movie fashion by the faces in the fashion rather than by the (sometimes unnamed) designer. Mentioning the wearer helps jog people's memories and identify the film if they can't easily recall titles. Try to think of this approach of using the actors' names as a tool for identification rather than an assignment of blame, which is how it's meant. You can believe that or not, but I ask that you consider that that is at least one author's feeling about how the site works. You will note, for example, that no one has blamed Rajnikanth for blackface. I just said there was blackface in the trailer.

Award shows are also very much pre-arranged, so while they are not actually films, as you point out, I think they should get to fall under the category of "designed fugly."

Anonymous said...

i know you guys didnt nake up bollywood. not that stupid. but first you guys are saying that the indian film industry copies everything from hollywood and then you use the term bollywood in your title which is also at the "copied" from hollywood. so don't unnesessarily put a bad name for the indian film industry.


also all that crap you said about identifying the actors, movie, costume, blah, blah STILL does not give you an excuse to make fun of the actaully actors. your index is mostly made up of actors' names.

and awards...
the blog description specifically say "movies", not awards ( ugly or not).

and i know this is your blog and you have the right to put anything, but before making fun of everyone and everything, think about all the hard work that goes into these movies (no matter how "fugly"), especially in a country like India.

Impressionist said...

Hi

I have read/seen many articles that says Manish to be the costume designer. Manish has worked with Shankar before in couple of films (Nayak)

Some of the links I found (Not sure whether they are authentic or not)

http://www.manishmalhotrablog.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sivaji:_The_Boss

Beth Loves Bollywood said...

Lisa, first, I am happy to know your name. This makes so much more sense when I feel like I'm talking to a real person. I didn't mean to imply that I think you're stupid - you said "people like [us] came up with" the term "Bollywood" and I wanted to explain how I didn't see that as the case, not so much historically (obvious, as you point out) but ideologically or whatever.

I really don't feel like we're making fun of the actors. Quite honestly. I can't tell you you don't think that, of course, but most of the time we are talking about clothing. You are right that there are times we stray off and talk about actors' performances - or non-movie settings like awards shows - and I don't have a defense for that. Topics come up, we talk about them, we get off-track.
If we put a label over the index that said something along the lines of "here are people who, in the course of doing their jobs as film actors, have to wear costumes we think are fugly, and if you click on the name you will see posts that discuss some of the wardrobe choices that were made for that actor" would that address one of the issues you and I are talking about? (That probably sounds flippant and I don't mean for it to - I'm curious and I want to understand your concerns.)

Re: mocking all of all the various Indian film industries, again I can't tell you that that's not the impression you get, but I can tell you that that is not our intentions. If we actually thought so little of something as that, we wouldn't invest so much time into it. Blogs based on hate, which we've all seen, seem like a big waste of resources. Costumes were something that kept coming up in our conversations about popular Indian cinema (mostly Hindi, but not entirely), and we had fun in those conversations, and other people took an interest, so here we are.

Anonymous said...

this site is a bloody shit. i am a proper maharashtrian, i usually watch english and hindi movies. some of my frndz who saw Sivaji said its a superb movie. It was my 1st xperience watchin a tamil movie. I didn't understand any word other than some english words. But to tell, the direction, picturisation and mind-blowing music was just beyond my imagination and i cant find any words 2 describe the movie. Now, you guyz, just by watching a trailer decide the whole of it. dont count the chicks b4 they r hatched. stop discriminating

Anonymous said...

I watched Sivaji recently, and I can only say "WOW" .....It was worth every penny and truely entertaining. You need to understand Tamil( I am not Tamil) to enjoy the movie..

Rajnikanth is the ultimate entertainer, and his fan following is not a fluke.

Dugi said...

They are not tiger faced shirts....it's body paint on guys with big guts...yeh i know...fugly.

Anonymous said...

Absolute FUG! You shud probably add most of Rajnis movies in here. He is a bloody fugly old one..lol

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Unknown said...

Rajnikant's real name is Shivaji Rao Gaikwad, And I think that why the Movie name is as Shivaji The Boss, I love the movie, and whatever the Rajni Kant did in movie now our PM doing the same thing for clean the corruption of our country, see news related to Rajni Kant here - http://bit.ly/2hvd6DD