I enjoyed reading your post as it is relevant to today and I thought I’d add another comment.

Its an interesting topic and should be discussed. Ill check back soon for any added comments, thanks.

It would be great to get this thread really active again!

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Its a shame this thread has not progressed further with comments. Its an interesting topic and should be discussed.

Anyhow I enjoyed reading your post as it is relevant to today! Ill check back soon for any added comments, thanks.

Good movies come seldom & far between in Bollywood and some over the past year include Sarkar, Rang De Basanti….Cheers!

I’m an avid Indian-movie fan and agree that Umrao Jaan is a classic and well-directed and well-told story. I agree with you that most Bollywood films these days do not measure-up to the older classics – most Bollywood films before the 1990s were treasures and like many other Chinese, I grew watching Indian movies – Umrao Jaan reminds me of the great stories that Bollywood used to film. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t more of these.

China’s movie industry, like Bollywood, is churning out mostly junk these days – we too used to have good films and stories up until the ’90s, when film directors started to become obsessed with making expensive, and as you say, ‘glorified’ movies that exaggerate the ‘feel’ of the movie rather than telling a good story – because of this, not only do the movies have no meaning, they leave us with no feelings whatsoever. Most of the Chinese films on concubines – with exception to ‘farewell my concubine’ (which was excellent but wasn’t a story about concubines at all…) – are badly directed and are watered-down with empty emotion and they fail to tell a good story. This is unfortunate because China has a lot of stories to tell but the real problem here is that the directors are no-good. China’s movie industry has taken an bigger turn for the worse, today’s Chinese movies are loaded with stuff that directors think people in the west will enjoy – martial arts, submissive Chinese women, superstition…, they’re trying to turn a buck from western viewers but this doesn’t happen because most westerners don’t like to read subtitles and when the movies are dubbed into English they loose any original creativity that may have existed in the first place.

I have higher hopes for Bollywood than I do for China’s film industry. Thanks for your review of Umrao Jaan, Ill keep my eye out for other JP dutta films.

Dr. Chindia