Everyone who works in a newsroom has a list of stories they want to get around to but probably never will.
Here's one of mine from about six years ago: Find out what's going on with the Bollywood movies showing in Little Rock.
It was meant to be a look at the presumably immigrant culture that inspired the market for these films, with the fact that they were showing in a Little Rock cineplex serving as the news hook. It might be interesting to go to a few of these films and talk to audience members about how they perceived them. The films were said to be well attended, sort of a communal glue.
Back in the days when we had story meetings, I'd throw this idea out every few weeks. At one point, someone was going to do it, but it's the sort of time-consuming story that invariably gets pushed to the bottom of reporters' to-do lists. After a while I stopped hearing about the Bollywood movies.
I didn't have the time to do what I'd envisioned. More than that, my Bollywood game is not strong. I've seen a couple of genuine Bollywood films over the years, and been exposed to the genre by homages. But India produces more films than any country in the world (the U.S. usually shows up as third on these lists, behind Nigeria -- "Nollywood" -- and just ahead of China) and my knowledge of their cinema pretty much begins with Satyajit Ray's "Apu Trilogy" and ends with Mira Nair's informed-by-Bollywood oeuvre.
I am embarrassed by my ignorance, but not exactly ashamed. As I am sometimes told by the woman to whom I am related by marriage, "you can't be the Renaissance man anymore." There's just too much to watch, read and consume. So it's heartening when I find a film professor who will freely admit a blind spot when it comes to the films of Wong Kar-Wai or a music journalist innocent of Judee Sill. None of us can know everything -- and we never know all that we don't know.
That's not to say I couldn't review a Bollywood film (like John Lennon said, I'm an artist; give me a potato and I'll make something of it), only that my insights wouldn't have the benefit of a deep understanding of the tropes and conventions of a style that's reliant on tropes and conventions. Bollywood audiences are wised-up -- they're like fans of movies from directors like Tyler Perry and Kevin Smith, whose contract with the audience puts them in on the joke.
I admired how Guy Lancaster used to take pains to review Bollywood films for the Arkansas Times -- he wrote perceptively without condescension. But for me, Bollywood is like anime. I know just enough to fake my way through a conversation with someone who knows even less about the genre.
Guy stopped writing about Bollywood films four or five years ago, and I don't know whether that means they stopped showing the films, or whether he got interested in writing about other things.
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In any case, there is a Bollywood film opening in Central Arkansas this week. "Jathi Ratnalu" is in the Telugu language (Indian movies are in 23 different languages, and most of these have their own specific set of tropes and conventions). "Jathi Ratnalu" is more properly described as a "Tollywood" rather than Bollywood film, if you believe Wikipedia.
It's 45 minutes long. And it's a comedy that was supposed to be released in April 2020, but was postponed due to the pandemic.
I did find a delightful interview with director Anudeep K.V. at a site called indiaglitz.com. In that interview -- presumably translated from Telugu to English by someone whose grasp of English is as remarkable as it is adorable -- Anudeep reveals that his producers turned down "a very fancy offer from Amazon Prime Video. There are some other ... offers as well. But we felt the movie, which is a laughter riot, can be enjoyed only in the theaters. So the producers did not agree [to the Amazon deal] and held it until theaters opened."
Anudeep, who is from Sangareddy, a town of about 75,000 in the west central Indian state of Telangana, tells indiaglitz he was glad to get the offer to direct "Jathi Ratnalu," "although my first feature film, 'Pittagoda' (2016), flopped at the box office.
"It's the tale of three dumb men who get trapped in a heinous crime. They are naive and innocent. As the trailer suggests, you will find loads of situational comedy in it. The characters are serious, but like Charlie Chaplin, they make the audience laugh. I have been influenced by the people in Sangareddy in writing the film."
And now it's getting a worldwide release -- including opening theatrically in Arkansas.
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Speaking of movies I have no business reviewing, the Japanese anime musical "On-Gaku: Our Sound" hits streaming platforms and DVD this week. Kenji Iwaisawa pays an enjoyably quirky homage to both classic animation and garage rock.
It's about three high schoolers with no apparent musical aptitude who, having become bored with video games and low-grade confrontations with rival gangs, decide to start a band and end up performing at a local music festival.
Though the plot is hardly the point, we're meant to bask in the soft hand-drawn visuals and luxuriate in the music (by Tomohiko Banse, Grandfunk and Wataru Sawabe) both alluding to late '60s rock and '70s punk, with a rotoscoped concert scene that captures the energy and chaos of exuberant amateurs who don't really understand how they're making such awesome noises.
It took Iwaisawa more than seven years to assemble the film from more than 40,000 hand-drawn frames, and the result is a breezy 71 minutes long.
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