About Bollywood MoviesThough some purists deplore the name Bollwood (arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood), it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. Bollywood (Mumbai) and the other major cinematic hubs in India (Tamil - Kollywood, Telugu - Tollywood, Bengali - also called Tollywood, Kannada, and Malayalam) constitute the broader Indian film industry, whose output is the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced and in number of tickets sold. Bollywood is a strong part of popular culture of not only India and the rest of the Indian subcontinent, but also of the Middle East, parts of Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and among the South Asian diaspora worldwide. Bollywood is also commonly referred to as "Hindi cinema", even though use of poetic Urdu words is fairly common. There has been a growing presence of English in dialogs and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see movies that feature dialogs with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. A few movies are also made in two or even three languages (either using subtitles, or several soundtracks). Most Bollywood films would be classified as musicals. Few movies are made without at least one song-and-dance number. However, they do not fit easily in the "musical" category as defined by Hollywood movies; they usually contain a great deal more in the way of plot and action than is found in the typical Hollywood musical.
Indian audiences expect full value for their money, with a good entertainer generally referred to as paisa vasool, (literally, "money's worth"). Songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills--all are mixed up in a three-hour-long extravaganza with an intermission. Such movies are called masala movies, after the Hindi word for a spice mixture, masala. Like masalas, these movies are a mixture of many things. Bollywood plots have tended to be melodramatic. They frequently employ formulaic ingredients such as star-crossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, corrupt politicians, kidnappers, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences. There have always been Indian films with more "artistic" aims and more sophisticated stories, both inside and outside the Bollywood tradition. Bollywood conventions are changing, however. A large Indian diaspora in English speaking countries, and increased Western influence at home, have nudged Bollywood films closer to Hollywood models. Film kisses are no longer banned; the once-ubiquitous "wet" scenes, with damp saris molded to an actress's curvaceous form, have been replaced by skin, pure and simple. Plots now tend to feature Westernized urbanites dating and dancing in discos rather than arranged marriages. Plots can be less melodramatic, more sophisticated. Some Indians think that this is "progress"; others miss the masala films of yore. - The preceding paragraphs were derived from a full article available from Wikipedia and its use is governed by the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2. |
