And regarding the discussion, for people who constantly berate bollywood – there is whole lot of films beyond hindi and even in hindi hollywood and bollywood I would say match the crap to good ratio. So, it is your problem if you end up watching only crap. There are so many good ones from Vishal Bharadwaj to Mani ratnam to Adoor gopalakrishnan to even count.

They would’ve made a GORgeous couple, pun intended.

I’m not sure how to explain it. And I shouldn’t have used traditional, but rather the type that is used in now still being used Western and Hollywood musicals, and something rarely seen in Indian films I’ve seen.

There is a difference. While in Indian films, there are plenty of films where the songs are integral to film and carry the plot forward, there is somewhat of a difference. I think very few have actual characters basically voicing their feelings, dialogue and moving the plot forward. Yes it’s there, but…I don’t know. Jab We Met had all the songs being integral to the film and moved the plot forward. It was a combination of songs that described the situation, and kind other songs that sang through the character’s view. More than some other films, I really believed Nagada Nagada was about Geet, and Tum Se was voicing Aditya’s feelings.

But it’s just not the same as the characters themselves singing their inner feelings, whether with the background setting joining in on their songs, or if others are going about with their business while the character is singing. But it’s so believable that it’s the character’s voice.

He’s talking about the magical golden light that exists on the “LOST” Island. Hrithik is a lost castaway that everyone forgot!

How the hell did indian guys wearing suits get into this discussion? They have been wearing suits in movies way before Indian movies got “westernized”. And as far as Indian movies from 15-20 years ago, may I say that was the worst period of Bollywood along with the mid to late 80s. That is the Bollywood era that really turned me off Bollywood big time. I think Bollywood is getting better at aping the westernized look and sound these days. But the closer they get, the more they come off as second rate imitation to my eyes because then you start comparing them to our movies in the US. They are better off retaining more Indianness in the tone of the movies, if they insist on keeping with an archaic song and dance format. If you ape the west, at least do it right. I see this problem a lot in Telugu movies too where they include a lot of “cool sounding” english lyrics and some bizarre attempts at rap, but in reality, they come across as awkward sounding. Maybe to the locals in India, it is the height of coolness.

Indian stars have been dressing up in suits for decades now. M.R. Radha in Rathakanneer (Tears of Blood) a super duper hit in which he plays a philistine (based on a v.successful play he produced and acted in) ordered linen suits and a cartons of Vat 69, and tins of State Express 555, all from London, to look the role. And this was in 1954. Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, among many others have always dressed nattily (even if they weren’t beefcakes). But then you had other hunks Dharam, Dara Singh, Ranjan (who was a champion fencer, horseman, crack shot, and swimmer), Ajit, and several others. Vinod Khanna and Shatrughan Sinha too in their time were prime hunks. If anything, fitness concerns are heightened these days. You don’t want actors looking like Ron Jeremy, do you?

There’s a good reason why the Indian movie dance and song routine works so well – they are memorable and over the last 75 years been perfected into integral plot devices. Whether they interrupt the action (as Mani Ratnam admiring purists insist they should not) or carry the movie forward (as the Indian brand genius Aditya Jha consultant to Infosys insists about Mani Ratnam’s Nayagan) they are capsules that capture the the essence of the movie. And they are different from the musical song-dance sequence which is more like dialogue set to music. You don’t need to understand the lyrics, they are very intense – as with the songs of the Tamil lyricist Kannadasan that use forms from the millennia old ancient Tamizh poetry, or a Shakeel Badayuni’s Baiju Bawra, you just need to catch a few words here and there. When Rafi starts off “man tadpat Hari darshan ko aaj…” you just catch on to that and simply try to hum along with the rest of the song, “man tadpat” that’s all you need to know. So when my Bulgarian fishmonger who escaped to Greece in 1964 and thence to the US sings a few bars of Anari, and my wife’s Romanian friend (decades younger) who married and moved to the US in 2000 joins the singing while we get the best cuts of fish, we aren’t looking for anything more than the moment – and then I tell them “Sab kuch seekha hamne, na seekhi hoshiyari…” and everyone nods “How true…”

Indian movies aren’t about the Indian way of life (OK I know you are going to say Purab aur Paschim etc., but I have run that by my friends from South Africa who maintain it has a point) they are universal in a certain way without raising anyone’s fears about loss of culture or any such thing.