Bollywood!

So one of the great things about South Asia is BOLLYWOOD!! Unlike Hollywood, Bollywood isn't actually a place - it refers to the Hindi Film industry here in South Asia. The films totally ROCK! Well, not all of them rock, but they're great fun! Now, to go see a movie in the theatre, it takes dedication :) The films are usually about 4 hours long (but they do have an intermission in the middle). They are full of drama, dancing, singing and more drama. In my opinion, the best part of a film is the dance/musical numbers that are in them. Crazy enough, a film's success usually depends on the quality of these musical numbers... So here is a good one for you to check out if you have time - it's fun!

There's one movie that has an even better song than the one shown above, but it was a little provocative at the beginning, so I didn't want to put it on the blog - but anyone that wants to check it out - it's awesome!! - Kajra Re. I have a few favorite bollywood movies... I LOVE the movie Lagaan - it's GREAT! It's a movie that takes place during the British Rule and is all about Cricket! It's awesome! Some other great movies: Kal Ho Na Ho ; Bunty Aur Babli and Salaam Namaste. Bunty Aur Babli is actually a copy of "Bonnie and Clyde". There are actually a bunch of bollywood movies that are copies of Hollywood movies - check it out here: Bollywood films and plagiarism .

So here's a few fun facts about Bollywood:

- The first "talkie" film (film with sound) was in 1931 and was called: Alam Ara - which means "Light of the World" in Urdu - cool hunh?

- Most Bollywood stars CAN'T sing and they lip-sync all of their musical numbers. Actually, back when the film industry first started, a woman named Lata Mangeshkar and her sister did all of the women's singing voices. They both had really high-pitched voices, and that is why women sing so high today - they set the trend!

- When Bollywood first started up, they would write the films as they went (and they still do that sometimes!)

- In the 1950's they made the first Bollywood color films but most of the film were Black & White until the 1960's

- Being in Bollywood is really like a family business. There are many Family Film Clans where the entire family and relatives are actors.

- So in 2002 (sorry, it's the earliest statistics I have), Bollywoood had revenues of $1.3 Billion and Hollywood had revenues of $51 Billion - even though Bollywood sold over a billion more tickets to their movies!

- Average cost per Hollywood film: $50 million. Average cost per Bollywood film: $1.5 million.

One of the biggest Bollywood actors is Shahrukh Khan - he is in a lot of films and even some game shows. He's the host of the Bollywood versions of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "Are you Smarter Than a 5th Grader". He's a huge heartthrob here:

Then... there's "BIG B" and his family. Big B - or Amitabh Bachchan is a HUGE actor here in Bollywood. He's been in a million movies (that's an exaggeration, but if you click on his name you can see all the movies he's been in - quite a few!). His son is Abhishek Bachchan who is quite famous too and just recently married Aishwarya Rai - former Miss World and a famous Bollywood actress.
And my one Bollywood claim to fame... I've met one Bolywood actress - Hazel. She's not a very big actress - but was in a movie that made it to the theatres this year :) When Adam and I went to the Hindi school in the mountains, she was there taking classes too :) haha! English is her first language and she wanted some help on her Hindi.
OK, so that was a lot of stuff in this post - hope I didn't bore you :) If I did, then check out that video above - totally fun!