neon epiphany

Gurinder Chadha’s Bride & Prejudice is loud, colorful and really cheesy, but in the end, lots of fun. I have to admit that even though I really like Bollywood movies, for the first hour or so I wasn’t sure this film was going to work. I don’t remember my Austen that well, but surely the characters weren’t as thinly portrayed as in the first half of the movie? Also, the musical sequences seemed really awkwardly placed and the English lyrics were really awkward with the music (much moreso than in Bombay Dreams). Still, things started hitting stride when the Koli/Collins character showed up and I even warmed up to the young & gorgeous leads (Martin Henderson and Aishwarya Rai) as they romped playfully through the plot. So maybe it was all intentional after all. Surprisingly, up until the true-to-Bollywood ending, it was a pretty tight adaptation of Pride & Prejudice too — imagine that!

Also, you get to see Naveen Andrews (from Lost and The English Patient) dance!

After we left the theater I showed off my “No Life / Without Wife” song & dance bit, which was fun, but I don’t think I’ve got much of a future in the industry…

IMDB says that Chadha’s working on the adaptation of My Sassy Girl! I can’t wait to see what she does with that material (can you imagine that done as masala? Sigh, one can only hope!).

• via signalstation , who always finds the best things on the web: A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible, a web comic. It’s brilliant! You might not want to start at the very beginning, though — things pick up for good around 7/23/04.
• …and via jiggles: USB sushi disks. I guess it had to happen someday.