a singer and a movie
Feb. 14th, 2008 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonI'm listening to the cd of music that Safticraft included with my recent order, and I'm terribly taken with the song Isma Albi by Majida el-Roumi--it's totally, totally Arabic big band swing revival! Here's a different song of hers, this one's Arabic movie musical--both American and Arabic style, and both really well done. I'm going to have to dig up more of her stuff.
Speaking of blending cultural references, I watched Bride and Prejudice over the last few days. I found it frustrating. If it hadn't been for the entertaining sight of Naveen Andrews (Sayyid on Lost) leading his Bollywood crew in a song and dance number I probably would have given up on it partway through. Most of the acting was good; Aishwarya Rai was a wonderfully sympathetic Austen heroine, and of course she is luminous on screen. Martin Henderson's Darcy, however, was stiff and wooden for the first third of the film in a way that conveyed bad acting rather than anything about Darcy's character. He got better as the film went on, which leads me to believe that the directors made some poor choices on the actor's behalf. Some of the Indian characters were sympathetic, some were funny, and some made me wonder if stereotypes are still offensive if they are propagated by a member of that culture (though I did think the Silicon Valley fellow was pretty darn funny, but he could have just as easily been a white nerd and said/done many of the same things). The songs were *awful*, truly awful. I think they were going for some kind of Baz Luhrman sound mixed with Indian pop, but ended up just bland and wretched. It was literally "june/moon" stuff. I actually yelled at the movie when a song used that rhyme. So all in all, it was a good idea for an adaptation and some elements of the movie were effective (the use of color was striking, much of the film was visual candy), but it was executed in such a way as to undermine both the source material and the infusion of new ideas. I give it a C+/B-
Speaking of blending cultural references, I watched Bride and Prejudice over the last few days. I found it frustrating. If it hadn't been for the entertaining sight of Naveen Andrews (Sayyid on Lost) leading his Bollywood crew in a song and dance number I probably would have given up on it partway through. Most of the acting was good; Aishwarya Rai was a wonderfully sympathetic Austen heroine, and of course she is luminous on screen. Martin Henderson's Darcy, however, was stiff and wooden for the first third of the film in a way that conveyed bad acting rather than anything about Darcy's character. He got better as the film went on, which leads me to believe that the directors made some poor choices on the actor's behalf. Some of the Indian characters were sympathetic, some were funny, and some made me wonder if stereotypes are still offensive if they are propagated by a member of that culture (though I did think the Silicon Valley fellow was pretty darn funny, but he could have just as easily been a white nerd and said/done many of the same things). The songs were *awful*, truly awful. I think they were going for some kind of Baz Luhrman sound mixed with Indian pop, but ended up just bland and wretched. It was literally "june/moon" stuff. I actually yelled at the movie when a song used that rhyme. So all in all, it was a good idea for an adaptation and some elements of the movie were effective (the use of color was striking, much of the film was visual candy), but it was executed in such a way as to undermine both the source material and the infusion of new ideas. I give it a C+/B-
