Bollywood Embraces Kazaa Movie Downloads 522
MaximusTheGreat writes "While Hollywood tries to debate how to tackle P2P movie downloads, Bollywood the world's largest film industry has decided to embrace it. This could usher in a new era of legal movie downloads like iTunes for music, as Bollywood, the Indian film industry produces 1000 movies a year and outstrips hollywood by almost 3:1. Theaters worldwide sold some 3.6 billion tickets to Bollywood films last year, compared with Hollywood's 2.6 billion. In revenue terms Bollywood is already larger than the British, Hong Kong, Japanese and Italian movie industry and is growing at a very fast rate."
Re:Bollywood movies are terrible, though. (Score:3, Informative)
good movies (Score:1, Informative)
Re:my roommate in college (Score:4, Informative)
Where are the testosteroned rivals, here ?
Only one problem (Score:5, Informative)
But on the other hand maybe movie distribution will become the killer app for broadband in India :)
Re:Bad plots (Score:4, Informative)
S
The article is misleading. (Score:4, Informative)
This indicates revenue of a million a movie; that's a paltry sum which no American movie house would bother with.
"Bollywood's global annual revenues, estimated at $1.3 billion this year, are small change compared with Hollywood's $51 billion." --Business Week [businessweek.com]
This shoots down the other misdirection in the article. Sell all the tickets you want, Bollywood. You're still pulling less than 1/39th the cash that Hollywood takes in.
A lot of people watch these movies. I have seen a few. To a film, they were insipid. Do yourselves a favor and avoid the musicals at all costs.
But don't worry. They're not going to take over the film industry.
Re:my roommate in college (Score:3, Informative)
Well, he's wrong :-)
If I were to list my all-time favourite top-five films, it would include one from Bollywood: Lagaan, whose plot (apart from the singing and dancing) doesn't look anything like what you describe. And FWIW, the tunes are simply wonderful. It's the best soundtrack I have.
It is, of course, true that Bollywood makes a lot of what Westerners would think of as junk. But then, so does Hollywood.
It will be really interesting to see whether having easier access to their movies over the Internet will encourage Bollywood to create more movies of the Lagaan style rather than those simply created for home consumption.
It will also be interesting to see if Bollywood is still enthusiastic after someone finds a way around the "The file was programmed to self destruct after being viewed and could not be copied." limitation mentioned in the article.
Bullshit warning... (Score:2, Informative)
- The Film Ms and Mr. Iyer is not a bollywood movie (not a single song in it...) more a movie about Hindi/muslim differences see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329393 for IMDB info
- there is no price for best asian film at the Locarno film festival, this film got second prize from the youth jury...
my 2 words...VCDs are still there... (Score:3, Informative)
Why Bollywood is popular in some countries: (Score:2, Informative)
97% of movies shown in Africa were Indian moview dubbed in the local languages. An increasing percentage of foreign filmes being screened in the Middle East, Israel, Australia and now England and the US are Indian movies.
You could argue that the success of Indian movies in England and the US is because of large immigrant population from India. However, the other countries mentioned have few Indians.
When interviewed, most people said they loved Indian movies because there was an emphasis on family bonds and respect for elders - these are the foundation of Indian society - and had much in common with the societies in these countries.
They all watched Hollywood movies too, and definitely enjoyed them, but they said that something about Indian movies struck a chord in their heart.
Indians love Hollywood movies, Indians love Bollywood and all the other regional language movies - Indians LOVE movies, period. There is a long standing tradition of film in that country, and not all the output is song-and-dance.
Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Amol Palekar to name a few are extremely gifted directors and made some of the best movies ever. So, one shouldn't make sweeping statements about an industry.
Mainstream Bollywood, like Mainstream Hollywood is all a world of make-believe...it's just the ingredients that are different.
Re:India (Score:5, Informative)
israel is a "world power" because it is completely propped up with american handouts. the state of israel is the single biggest recipient of american foreign aid. thrity per cent of all u.s. foreign aid money goes there. thirty percent! that's $3billion a year.
not hard to be a "world power" with those kinds of freebies.
oh yeah, here's my source [ccmep.org]... and here [miftah.org] and here [csmonitor.com]
Re:it was a joke (Score:3, Informative)
I wish they did. It's ridiculous to say Bollywood has only 1 plot. Maybe, a second one accidently gets in here and there. (j/k)
Seriously, Bollywood movies suffer being built from a very limited number of templates. That's true in Hollywood only for those family feel-good goofy comedies and mindless action movies (but not ALL action movies suffer from this). Bollywood also suffers from ridiculous melodrama and absurd plot contrivances. Again, this problem in Hollywood is primarily limited to the categories I mentioned above.
The parent mentioned Monsoon Wedding. That isn't a Bollywood movie. It is refreshingly different from a Bollywood movie. Devdas is based on a noted novel and is completely botched up. The story concerns an alcoholic of rich pedigree who dotes on a childhood friend who is from a poor family. Except in the usual absurd style, their home is 5 times bigger and lavisher than a decent-sized suburban home here The acting is soap-style. All I'll say is that Lagaan is indeed a standout.
Re:Bollywood movies are terrible, though. (Score:4, Informative)
There are a number of great Indian filmmakers - of course, there was Satyajit Ray, one of the greatest filmmakers ever - but they don't enjoy the same beneficial relationship with Bollywood that American independents have with Hollywood.
Re:Do demographics factor in? (Score:2, Informative)
At the level of national and international distributors kazaa and internet is another avenue to tap the NRI(non resident Indian) market. This is substancial since the exchange rate of rupee always ensures a higher ROI on Indian films made in India and distributed elsewhere.
As for the people in India, with the increasing prices of movie tickets most of the folks can only afford one movie a month (say, a family of 4 with an annual income of $500, it's probably about 20% of the population). They are not even in the scene as props. Amen.
Re:India (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not talking about % im talking about sheer numbers. In the 1991 Cencus there were 101 million muslim's in India. According to CIA world fact book, there are currently 126 million in 2003.
And there are 180 million Muslims in Indonesia and 140 million Muslims in Pakistan. Therefore India is number 3 in muslim population. It isn't even close.
History of Bollywood (Score:2, Informative)
Hiralal Sen and F.B. Thanawalla were two other Indian pioneers engaged in the production of short films in Calcutta and Bombay in 1900. Around 1902, J.F. Madan and Abdullah Esoofally launched their career with Bioscope shows of imported short films. In 1912 , N.G. Chitre and R.G. Torney made a silent feature film Pundalik which was released on May 18, and it was half British in its make.
Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, more generally known as Dada Saheb Phalke was responsible for the production of India's first fully indigenous silent feature film Raja Harishchandra which heralded the birth of the Indian film industry. The film had titles in Hindi and English and was released on May 3, 1913 at the Coronation Cinema, Bombay. In 1917, Bengal saw the birth of its first feature film-Satyabadi Raja Harishchandra made by Madan's Elphinstone Bioscope Company. In Madras, the first feature film of South India Keechaka Vadham was made by Nataraja Mudaliar in 1919.
After stepping into 1920, the Indian cinema gradually assumed the shape of a regular industry. The industry also came within the purview of the law. The new decade saw the arrival of many new companies and film makers. Dhiren Ganguly (England Returned), Baburao Painter (Savkari Pash), Suchet Singh (Sakuntala), Chandulal Shah (Guna Sundari), Ardershir Israni, and V. Santharam were the prominent film makers of the twenties.
The most remarkable things about the birth of the sound film in India is that it came with a bang and quickly displaced the silent movies. The first Indian talkie Alam Ara produced by the Imperial film company and directed by Ardershir Irani was released on March 14, 1931 at the Majestic Cinema in Bombay; The talkie had brought revolutionary changes in the whole set up of the industry. The year 1931 marked the beginning of the talking ear in Bengal and South India. The first talkie films in Bengali (Jumai Shasthi), Telugu (Bhakta Prahlad) and Tamil (Kalidass) were released in the same year.
The thirties is recognised as the decade of social protests in the history of Indian Cinema. Three big banners-Prabhat, Bombay Talkies and New Theatres gave the lead in making serious but gripping sand entertaining films for all classes of the wide audience. A number of films making a strong plea against social injustice were also made in this period like V.Santharam's Duniya Na Mane, Aadmi and Padosi, Franz Osten's Achut Kanya, Damle & Fatehlal's Sant Thukaram, Mehboob's Watan, Ek hi Raasta and Aurat. For the first time Ardeshir Irani attempted a colour picture in 1937 with Kisan Kanya.
The decade also witnessed the release of the first talkie films in Marathi (Ayodhiyecha Raja 1932), Gujarathi (Narasinh Mehta-32), Kannada (Dhurvkumar-34); Oriya (Sita Bibaha-34); Assamese (Joymati-35); Punjabi (Sheila-35) and Malayalam(Balan-38).
The decade during which the second world was fought and Indian independence won, was a momentous one for cinematography all over India. Some memorable films were produced during the forties such as Shantharam's Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani, Mehboob's Roti, Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar, Uday Shanker's Kalpana, Abbas's Dharti Ke Lal, Sohrab Modi's Sikander, Pukar and Prithvi Vallabh, J.B.H. Wadia's Court Dancer, S.S. Vasan's Chandralekha, Vijay Bhatt's Bharat Milap and Ram Rajya, Rajkapoor's Barsaat and Aag.
The first International Film Festival of India held in early 1952 at Bombay had great impact of Indian Cinema. T
Sure (Score:2, Informative)
Re:it was a joke (Score:3, Informative)
That was its country of origin, no idea about the rating. In France (where I saw it) it was rated for age 12 and above. I suspect that was because of the violence and psychological stuff, not the nudity. "Eyes wide shut" had no restriction at all. In general, only violent/disturbing films and hard porn seem to get age-ratings in France; normal nudity is fine.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:2, Informative)
Pakistan, India and China have nuclear weapons but are 3rd world countries, nukes or not.
Japan has no nuclear weapons yet is a first world power.
1st/3rd world refers to the distinction discussed [slashdot.org] earlier [slashdot.org].
It may be less ambigious to describe the 1st world as developed and the 3rd world as not developed (or emerging), following a measure of standard of living, income, education, etc (this is a subject in itself). MSCI and FTSE use the term 'advanced emerging' as a subset of emerging to describe emerging countries with standard of living between developed and average emerging level, a useful term.
Re:it was a joke (Score:2, Informative)
You might prefer GreenCine [greencine.com] to Netflix. They claim to have a wider selection of non-mainstream stuff than Netflix. I haven't looked at the foreign films, but their anime selection is pretty much perfect - I have yet to look for an anime title and not find it.
No. (Score:3, Informative)
The reality is that Bollywood earns far more from outside India than within. This is not just because all revenue is in dollars (and not rupees), but also because the government doesn't tax all that forex earnings. Besides, those homesick non-resident Indians will lop up any mindless crap belted out by Film-istan, so the people who make movies don't really have to move out of their bright-sets-with-characters-in-black-and-white paradigm; they only have to continue making it more shiny and more masala-driven.
(Which is why the big thing in Hindi movies these days is films with ex-pat content; in a year that saw 200 or so film releases, I can think of exactly one film set in the Great Indian Hindi Heartland up north. Something that never happens with the regional language movies, incidentally.)
So while you're correct in your assessment that film producers think India will be unaffected, it would be incorrect to say that its core market will be unaffected. For good or bad, Bollywood's focus has already crossed the seas.
Re:it was a joke (Score:3, Informative)
Certification: Argentina:16 / Australia:R / Canada:R / Finland:K-15 / France:-12 / Germany:16 / Hong Kong:III / Italy:VM18 / Netherlands:16 / Norway:15 / Peru:18 / Spain:18 / Sweden:15 / Switzerland:16 (canton of Zurich) / UK:18 / USA:NC-17 (uncut version) / USA:R (cut version)
Quite a few countries rate the movie as R or 18 (the equivalent of R in most cases).