Escape to the Movies: Dhoom 3
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
Mostly, it's a function of recent Indian/South-Asian immigrants to the United States forming substantially (read: demographically-trackable)-sized communities in U.S. cities being a relatively recent development; particularly in the eyes/concerns of movie distributors and theater owners. It's only really been within the last decade or so that you've seen many large first-run multiplex chains start to allow/encourage individual theaters to book big-sized screen space for Foriegn/non-English releases (before, you'd have to go to indie/arthouse/second-run theaters for most of that) in order to capitalize on their local demographics. So while some of the story is stateside Bollywood releases finally finding a fanbase among American critics and audiences, the bigger story is likely the emergence of Indian-Americans (primarily but not exclusively first and second-gen immigrant families) and Indian citizens residing in America (college students, STEM workers) now make up a big enough market force that Indian movies can open to profit in the U.S.Kahani said:
For example: Another underreported media-story from earlier this year was the relatively impressive box-office bow for a Spanish-language comedy "INSTRUCTIONS NOT INCLUDED." What was significant is that it opened in mainstream first-run theaters (mostly but not entirely in major cities) and drew it's audience despite doing almost ZERO marketing or promotion outside of the Latino television and radio scene.
Enthiran and RaOn are both Tamil movies, not Bollywood. And if I had to guess, so is this (judging from the style, Bollywood is generally even more music numbers)
There's a difference Bob, as a movie expert you are aware of that.
So why not inform the audience?
There's a difference Bob, as a movie expert you are aware of that.
So why not inform the audience?
So . . . it's a limited release being reviewed 3 weeks late. Which means that even if it was ever shown in Atlanta, it wouldn't still be there by now. I'd now have to drive all the way to Orlando, Florida, assuming the only info I could find on showtimes is accurate. So . . . thanks for getting my hopes up over nothing.
When I was seventeen or so, I actually saw Dhoom 2. It came on fairly late at night on some crappy channel (probably Channel 5) while me and a bunch of friends were hanging out. Now, it could be because of our age and the attitude we went into watching it (basically, 'ha Bollywood, let's watch and laugh'), but I thought it was God awful.
Any chance of a fair viewing was probably lost early on when one of the minor characters dropped a card on the floor, the 'funny one' picked it up, looked really earnestly at the other character and said 'You dropped something', extending this card out. Both me and one of my friends immediately and simultaneously yelled out "your gay card!" in response. And, well, none of us were taking the film seriously after that. Of course, the film didn't help itself by having a villain named 'Mr A' plotting to rob a series of museums around India... in a pattern that looked like the letter A on a map. Not only was this fantastically arbitrary (was he Mr A before, for some other reason, and plotting the museums in a pattern as vanity, or did he call himself Mr A because of the planned pattern? As I recall, the movie does not care to answer that), but stupid as all hell. The good guys eventually stumble on to the pattern, randomly plot the cross piece of the A shape (across most of friggin' India) and decide the museum that fits with the line they've basically drawn at random must be his next target. And it is! And they still fail to catch him.
These days I would probably have lapped it up, but as a cynical teenager, it was just too much. It went into the early hours, the movie showed no signs of wrapping up any time soon and none of us could muster the necessary suspension of disbelief, so we gave up.
But it remained this little pop culture gem for us, an in-joke for us that lasted years. 'Remember that terrible Bollywood film we watched, with the human statue villain and the A shaped plot?' 'Oh yeah, that guy dropped his gay card. Man, I'm soooo gutted we didn't start with Dhoom 1: The Dhoomening' 'Hey, they're really going to have to step their game up for Dhoom 3. The end of an epic trilogy.'
Well, none of us expected it was actually going to happen. So a couple of weeks back, a friend (one of the group that took the piss so long ago) currently in Australia tweeted me a picture of a cinema poster for Dhoom 3. I laughed, had a quick nostalgia trip and then mostly forgot about it. But... now Moviebob's done a freaking review of it. And apparently it has a huge marketing presence. And is big in the states.
It's an incredibly surreal experience. It's like the Truman show. Suddenly everyone is in on an old, throwaway joke between a couple of nobodies.
And, with all that said, I think the trailers make this film look awesome! I actually really want to see it. Unironically.
Any chance of a fair viewing was probably lost early on when one of the minor characters dropped a card on the floor, the 'funny one' picked it up, looked really earnestly at the other character and said 'You dropped something', extending this card out. Both me and one of my friends immediately and simultaneously yelled out "your gay card!" in response. And, well, none of us were taking the film seriously after that. Of course, the film didn't help itself by having a villain named 'Mr A' plotting to rob a series of museums around India... in a pattern that looked like the letter A on a map. Not only was this fantastically arbitrary (was he Mr A before, for some other reason, and plotting the museums in a pattern as vanity, or did he call himself Mr A because of the planned pattern? As I recall, the movie does not care to answer that), but stupid as all hell. The good guys eventually stumble on to the pattern, randomly plot the cross piece of the A shape (across most of friggin' India) and decide the museum that fits with the line they've basically drawn at random must be his next target. And it is! And they still fail to catch him.
These days I would probably have lapped it up, but as a cynical teenager, it was just too much. It went into the early hours, the movie showed no signs of wrapping up any time soon and none of us could muster the necessary suspension of disbelief, so we gave up.
But it remained this little pop culture gem for us, an in-joke for us that lasted years. 'Remember that terrible Bollywood film we watched, with the human statue villain and the A shaped plot?' 'Oh yeah, that guy dropped his gay card. Man, I'm soooo gutted we didn't start with Dhoom 1: The Dhoomening' 'Hey, they're really going to have to step their game up for Dhoom 3. The end of an epic trilogy.'
Well, none of us expected it was actually going to happen. So a couple of weeks back, a friend (one of the group that took the piss so long ago) currently in Australia tweeted me a picture of a cinema poster for Dhoom 3. I laughed, had a quick nostalgia trip and then mostly forgot about it. But... now Moviebob's done a freaking review of it. And apparently it has a huge marketing presence. And is big in the states.
It's an incredibly surreal experience. It's like the Truman show. Suddenly everyone is in on an old, throwaway joke between a couple of nobodies.
And, with all that said, I think the trailers make this film look awesome! I actually really want to see it. Unironically.
Put me on the list of "not in any theater anywhere near me despite being me interested in seeing it" people. I'd like to say the draw for me is an interest in the described Bollywood approach to movie genre, but to my shame, I will admit I just spent six minutes of this review looking at ridiculously beautiful people and can't help wistfully thinking to myself, "Yeah, I could spend three hours looking at beautiful people doing neat things on motorcycles."
EDIT: Are you fucking with me, captcha? "thank you, come again?" Is that an Apu Nahasapeemapetilon joke?
EDIT: Are you fucking with me, captcha? "thank you, come again?" Is that an Apu Nahasapeemapetilon joke?
This is some kind of a joke right? You can't compare Now You See Me with Dhoom 3. The two movies aren't anywhere near on the same level as far as characters, intellectual elements, plot or even special effects go. Completely different standards and scales. That's putting aside the fact that Dhoom 3 is a blatant rip-off of Now You See Me and/or The Prestige, if I was to tell you the sheer number of Hollywood "clone" movies that Bollywood releases every year (they don't even try to hide it) you would lose your mindShjade said:
Then there's budgets/profits...Now You See Me grossed US$350 million worldwide, compared to Dhoom 3's US$81 million worldwide (most successful Bollywood movie of all time). But forget money, just judging the movies on their premise alone is enough.
The sad part is that Dhoom 3 doesn't even represent the best of Bollywood. There are at least 5 other mindless over-the-top action flicks like this one with no depth or coherence. It's a bit like Michael Bay movies...except with special effects and the "whoa, awesome!" factor scaled waaaay down. Spiderman (2002 film) has better effects and action than Dhoom 3, the green-screening is so obvious in some scenes it's not even funny.
The only reason Dhoom 3 is getting attention is due to being marketed at westerners for the first time.
Gawd I hope not. I did not like that movie. No likeable characters and that freaking spinning camera thing made me seasick.Lyri said:
Now "Dhoom 3" on the other hand looks just like my cup of chocolate milk. An over-the-top genre-bending action movie? I'm there!
I'm pretty sure he mentioned that it's shallow by any definition. It's important though to not get mixed up about what is important in a movie. Does it entertain you?SoMuchSpace said:
Apparently he found the clusterfuck of shallow silliness sufficiently entertaining to give a reasonably positive verdict in its genre. Which is helpful if you enjoy "(Bollywood) blockbuster action flick" movies in general.
I for one don't, and as such probably won't be watching it. But hey, I also didn't enjoy watching Casablanca, which is generally considered a pretty decent movie.
The End is nigh! The Invasion of Asian Movie Studios is cometh!
Movies like Cloud Atlas and the next Kung-Fu Panda trilogy are co-financed by the Chinese and in Exchange the Chinese get to put some of their actors, art styles and other content inside of the movies.
Bollywood also starts out with just a single movie in the US Theaters every other year, but over time people will adapt and prefer that. Mark my words, 2050's Superman reboot will be a singing Indian Suparman!
Movies like Cloud Atlas and the next Kung-Fu Panda trilogy are co-financed by the Chinese and in Exchange the Chinese get to put some of their actors, art styles and other content inside of the movies.
Bollywood also starts out with just a single movie in the US Theaters every other year, but over time people will adapt and prefer that. Mark my words, 2050's Superman reboot will be a singing Indian Suparman!
You seem to really hate Bollywood. I wrote a massive wall of text for you on page 2, did you even read that? because i kinda feel like i wasted my time if you just want to unnecessarily hate on Bollywood and claim more random nonsense (with the spider man 2 part)Yuuki said:
3 Idiots is awesome. That film was my introduction to Bollywood, and the advertisement for Dhoom 3 I saw in my favourite local theatre first caught my eye because Aamir Khan was standing there in a sweet hat.Arif_Sohaib said:
OP: Yeah, this'll be my first film of 2014 hands down. Ever since I saw that cutout of Khan in that hat, I've been hoping for a great flick, so here we go!
Also, I feel like plugging Satyajit Ray, despite the fact that his directorial efforts are from decades ago, and he mainly worked in Tollywood rather than Bollywood (that is to say, he mainly worked in the Bengali language cinema based in Kolkata, rather than the Hindi language cinema based in Mumbai).The reason being that he isn't considered India's greatest film director yet for nothing. He's the guy behind The Apu Trilogy and Charulata, after all. Even made at least one film in Urdu.