top hat . hairspray . chance pe dance . anvil- the story of anvil . blood

i love musicals. with their over- the –top song and dance set pieces and their characters full of charm and wit easy to love and laugh with. top hat’ is this classic fred astaire and ginger rogers farce from the 1940’s. some mindless plot about about mixing up identities is merely an excuse for some gorgeous dancing in pure white luxurious hotel rooms styled in florid hollywood art deco or in pavilions in the rain, and that lovely dance sequence in an italian hotel. and the conversations between the players are funny and sexy. ‘hairspray’ is john waters super camp tribute to college films of 1980’s looking back at the fab 60’s- think ‘grease’. while ‘grease’ could be seen as a classic to uphold all of the heteronormative values of the american dream- waters exaggerates these to show just how gay middle america really is with its big hair and over the top smiles. subversive but so endearing. nothing like that can be said of the awful ‘chance pe dance’. while shahid kapur and genelia try to make the best of it by being unwaveringly charming and perky the film plods along the same old same old route- delhi boy comes to bombay to make it big… and eventually through reality television does. and you know something is wrong in a dance film when you cant remember a single song. having hear raves about this film about a metal band which having had its 15 minutes of fame (by playing beside bon jovi, of all the people, in japan) in the 1980’s disappeared into nothingness; i thought it would be more than merely a rockumentary from vh1- it was not. except that it was also a reality tv show that follows the band as it scrounges together the money to record their 13th album. ‘blood’ which i just saw early morning today was a gorgeously made anime set in post-war japan. the last vampire is hired by the us to kill the shape shifting monsters. it all happens one halloween night. nothing earth shattering in terms of plot- in spite of the shallow metaphor regarding war thrown in at the end – how we kill each other in wars- but so so beautiful. to watch.