Word: bollywood
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...teaming of Hollywood and Bollywood seems, at first glance, an odd idea. Western audiences have never really taken to the epic song-and-dance routines of Indian cinema; and Hollywood features, with some notable exceptions, rarely threaten the box office mojo of India's star-filled Bollywood fare, movies that, in any case, are increasingly copying the themes and styles of Hollywood blockbusters and giving them an Indian twist...
...industry is now worth $2.4 billion a year. Though that is less than a tenth of Hollywood's take, India's industry should double in the next five years, while its American counterpart will be lucky to grow 15% or so in that period. The business side of Bollywood, once a byword for dodgy tax deals and shady financing, has gone legit in the past few years, too. Indian companies are now more professionally run, and a few innovators are far ahead of Western rivals in experimenting with things like distributing films over the Internet...
...like parts of The Love Guru because they sometimes take the form of an Indian musical, with Myers' sitar strumming becoming the bass line for the Dolly Parton song 9 to 5 and he and co-star Alba giving their all to a Bollywood-style dance number. I approve of the opening narration in the stately tones of Morgan Freeman, which turns out to be Myers speaking into a "voice-over box" set on the "Morgan Freeman" key. And I'm a big fan of Timberlake's farce skills; he shows here that he has a future in movies...
...unexpected pregnancy. Dev, whom Meera had first fallen for as she watched him compete in a school singing contest, is working as a clerk. But he's a tortured artist, and a baby, for him, would only derail his lingering fantasies of making it big in Bombay as a Bollywood playback singer. Meera's father, meanwhile, still hopes that she'll go to college and make something of herself beyond being a housewife, which for him symbolizes the feudal India of illiteracy and ignorance...
...opposition to this trend is hardly confined to conservatives: The government ban on the Bollywood serials passed by near unanimity in parliament, with support from U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai...