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Bollywood Embraces Kazaa Movie Downloads 522

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-they-make-such-cute-movies dept.
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."
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Bollywood Embraces Kazaa Movie Downloads More

Bollywood Embraces Kazaa Movie Downloads

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  • No kidding, Spanky. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:14AM (#7794890) Homepage Journal

    Hollywood has been slow to embrace downloads

    Understatement of the year.
    • I second that nomination; perhaps this should be a poll...
    • Hollywood has been slow to embrace downloads

      Understatement of the year.

      Maybe ther's still using dial-up...

  • Bollywood movies are terrible, though. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:15AM (#7794894)
    A good analog would be if iTunes only offered JPop.
    • Not true.... Many filsm coming out of that part of the world are gaining fans all around the world. It is truly a refreshing change from the trash we usually get here. There are going to be some duds. I am surprised, though, that they sell more tickets than Hollywood does. The net gross is nowhere near as LA.....
      • I am surprised, though, that they sell more tickets than Hollywood does. The net gross is nowhere near as LA.....

        Perhaps that's because the developing world doesn't get ripped off for TEN DOLLARS or more to watch a fucking ninety minute movie.

        Most of us work jobs that pay a livable salary per year. Well, that's how they look at musicians, actors, etc.. they're all just doing a job, and not creaming off $20 million a picture.. this means ticket prices are lower and everyone can go enjoy the flick.

  • C'mon you KNOW you were thinking of this.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by i_want_you_to_throw_ ( 559379 ) * on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:15AM (#7794895) Journal
    Hooray for Bollywood
    That screwy, ballyhooey Bollywood!
    Where any office boy
    Or young mechanic
    can be a panic
    With just a good-looking pan
    And any barmaid
    Can be a star maid
    If she dances with or without a fan
    Hooray for Bollywood!
    Where you're terrific
    if you're even good!
    Where anyone at all from Shirley Temple
    to Aimee Semple
    is equally understood
    Come on and try your luck
    You could be Donald Duck
    Hooray for Bollywood!

    Hooray for Bollywood!
    That phony, super Coney, Bollywood
    They come from Chilicothes and Padukahs
    with their bazookas
    To see their names up in lights
    All armed with photos
    From local rotos
    With their hair in curlers
    and legs in tights
    Hooray for Bollywood!
    You may be homely in your neighborhood.
    Still, if you think that you can be an actor
    See Mister Factor
    He'd make a monkey look good!
    Within a half an hour
    You'll look like Tyrone Power
    Hooray for Bollywood!

  • But... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:16AM (#7794908)
    at least SOME films that come out of Hollywood show traces of originality and thinking outside the box. Every Bollywood film i've seen on TV could've been created with some sort of VB app.
    • I generally can't stand Indian movies, but there are a couple of good ones. Somebody earlier mentioned Lagaan, and I heard Devdas was also pretty good. But you'll generally not see these movies on TV --- just as the only Hollywood movies I ever see on TV are ones like Billy Madison...
    • Think about that for a second. How many GOOD hollywood movies do you actually see on TV(exluding cable channels)? At least for me, very few. For Bollywood(just like hollywood), you gotta look a little deeper. Then you'll find the good stuff. Instead of the "Stuck on you" type of crap that's in every market. ACtually, some of my favorite movies have been cross-bred. The movies that combine the indian and american cultures in one.

  • Bollywood (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Esion Modnar ( 632431 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:17AM (#7794912)
    Well... since they have them beat on quantity, they must have them beat on quality.
  • from new dehli, said every bollywood movie has the same plot:

    2 boys, separated at birth, fall in love with the same woman, except one is rich/ powerful/ a cop and the other is poor/ a farmer/ a thief... they fight each other for the woman, and there is much singing and dancing throughout

    he said that is basically every movie made in bollywood ;-P

    • Re:my roommate in college (Score:4, Informative)

      by mirko ( 198274 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:28AM (#7795029) Journal
      He obviously has not seen
      • Devdas [imdb.com] (modern Romeo&Juliet like),
      • Lagaan [imdb.com](cricket against the Brits)
      • nor even Monsoon wedding [imdb.com] (she prepairs to get married with a guy she doesn't know)...

      • Where are the testosteroned rivals, here ?

      • it was a joke (Score:5, Insightful)

        by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <circletimessquar ... il.com minus cat> on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:30AM (#7795053) Homepage Journal
        of course bollywood makes lots of different movies

        but an indian can make fun of his nation's movie industry if he wants to, just like americans like to say hollywood is too liberal/ too gun crazy, when the truth is of course more complex
        • > hollywood is too liberal/ too gun crazy, when the truth is of course more complex

          as a natural born citizen of the US, I think it's pretty safe for me to say that no it's not more complex, and that in fact, hollywood actually IS gun crazy. ;)

          If you define "liberal" as "lots of boobs and sex", then yes, hollywood is too liberal as well.
          • liberals hate guns

            so it's a contraction i was trying to show: either hollywood is too liberal in which case there are no war movies, all problems are solved without violence, and no one carries a gun (not true at all), or it isn't liberal

            so hollywood clearly is not liberal

            hollywood is what it is: an industry maximized to project to americans what they want to see, so whatever you call hollywood is twisting the truth of what it is

            you cannot blame hollywood for sex and violence in their films, you have to blame the amercian public: that's what they want to see, they vote with their pocketbooks

            hollywood makes movies to make money, not political statements

            you can't move into hollywood, change how it works, and suddenly change humanity. humanity is in control of hollywood through their pocket books, not vice versa.

            but certain segments of society think they can control hollywood and therefore change ugly sides of humanity, because they think that hollywood is somehow in control of what people think. that's a logical fallacy of not understanding how the cause and effect relationship between the movie and the audience actually works.

            conservatives complaing about the liberal media went out of vogue as soon as fox news grabbed ratings, so your complaint against "liberal" hollywood is outdated and contrived
          • If you define "liberal" as "lots of boobs and sex", then yes, hollywood is too liberal as well.

            Er, have to disagree with you there, in the strongest possible terms, I'm afraid. If you're talking about mainstream Hollywood films, then I'm constantly shocked at the lack of "boobs and sex" in them, compared to, say, European, or even British, Cinema. I think it's getting worse, too. I'm sure that there used to be more nudity in hollywood films, say fifteen years ago. This is a worrying trend. Violence is ge

            • Re:it was a joke (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Deagol ( 323173 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @12:41PM (#7795705) Homepage
              America (and thus Hollywood) has a fucked up sense about sexuality.

              Tired of the lack of decent domestic films, I've recently filled my Nexflix queue with foreign films. Apropos, just last night, my wife and I watched Sex and Lucia [imdb.com]. We saw the unrated version, but had it been rated, I'm pretty sure it would have received a "X" rating in the US. I have no idea what rating it had in its country of origin (Spain?), but I imagine it would have been equivalent to the US's "R" rating. Having lived in Germany for a year in my youth, I know that Europeans have a much more balanced view of sexuality than most Americans.

              The point is that while there was plenty of nudity and "graphic" sex (by US movie standards), it was presented so matter-of-factly, that it blended perfectly within the context of the film. Let's face it, people have sex, and they walk around naked (at times). In a US film, every furtive (or gratuitous) breast shot or sex scene is presented in such an eye-popping, oogling fashion, that you'd think such events were somehow not normal.

              The filming was top-notch, and the story was quite the mind-bender. I highly recommend it. I just hope the rest of my non-domestic film rentals prove to be of such quality. BTW, can anyone recommend good films from Central and South America?

              • Re:it was a joke (Score:3, Informative)

                by rsidd ( 6328 )
                Apropos, just last night, my wife and I watched Sex and Lucia . We saw the unrated version, but had it been rated, I'm pretty sure it would have received a "X" rating in the US. I have no idea what rating it had in its country of origin (Spain?)

                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, o

                • Re:it was a joke (Score:3, Informative)

                  by jrumney ( 197329 )
                  From imdb.org:
                  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).

        • Re:it was a joke (Score:3, Informative)

          by Gyan ( 6853 )
          of course bollywood makes lots of different movies

          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 prob
      • Monsoon Wedding isn't a Bollywood movie. It's made by a British company, with British money. The director might have an Indian name, but I'm pretty sure she's British, too.

        And it's rubbish, anyway.

        If you want to see a good British-film-with-Indians-in-it, check out "East is East".

    • Re:my roommate in college (Score:5, Funny)

      by .!.+(0.o)+.!. ( 671291 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:29AM (#7795044)
      every bollywood movie has the same plot
      you mean like Hollywood movies?

    • Re:my roommate in college (Score:3, Informative)

      by N7DR ( 536428 )
      from new dehli, said every bollywood movie has the same plot

      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 interes

  • Not gonna work... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by seanyboy ( 587819 ) * on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:18AM (#7794923)
    From the taking on titanic link: My guess is that at 8 per cent of the cost we can achieve 90 per cent of the production quality of any of their movies. The last mile will cost us more, given the current status of the technology available here-but even that we can achieve at, say, another 8 per cent. This is why Bollywood will ultimately fail. Sure, they have a bigger market, and they make more movies, but Hollywood knows the cost (and value) of western movies. The Indian distributers can flood Kazaa with as many Bollywood movies as they want, and they can expend that extra 8% of effort, but very few people in the west will spend money on this.
    • I don't think that's the case. I think this is their way to combat piracy. I'm talking about actual piracy. The mass duplicator of DVD style. It's prevelent EVERYWHERE. The middle east is filled with them. In fact, I'd say a small majority of the indian movies rented out in the U.S. are pirated. But if they offer them as a cheap download, it's better. Why go out and pay 3 bucks to rent a pirated movie, when I can pay 3 bucks and not leave the house. That's just my take on it though.

  • Outsourcing (Score:5, Funny)

    by IPFreely ( 47576 ) <mark@mwiley.org> on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:19AM (#7794936) Homepage Journal
    It looks like the tech industry isn't the only one being outsourced to India.
    • Not really, these studios don't make anything that even touches Hollywood in terms of Plot/Acting/etc...

      Lets just say that if a producer in the US has a movie to make, India is probably the LAST place he's going to look to shoot it...

  • They've done what? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ActionPlant ( 721843 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:19AM (#7794944) Homepage
    What have I seen that they've done? This is interesting and great news indeed if I can get films I actually like. Quality over quantity, remember. Looks like I'll be doing some googling this afternoon.

    Either way, it IS a good step, and great news.

    Damon,
    • Nothing [planetbollywood.com]...

      Their movies are kind of thrown together...mostly stuff that wouldn't even make a TeeVee movie here...

      The truth is, if any of their movies were half-way decent, we would be seeing Dubs and Subs of them available in stores, like we do with Chinese and Japanese films...

  • Bollywood (Score:5, Funny)

    by kjba ( 679108 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:19AM (#7794945)
    Sounds like this Bollywood thing bas a buge and beroic future abead.

  • *Sigh* (Score:2, Funny)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 )
    Bollywood Embraces Kazaa Movie Downloads

    Just when we thought the typos and lack of editing on slashdot couldn't get any worse, we get 'Bollywood' in the title. This is a sad, sad day for slashdot. (Note I did not RTFBlurb before posting.)
  • Man, would I like to know what goofy kind of file format they're using for that one. Probably some variant of DRM. Anybody know?

  • Now... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fizzlewhiff ( 256410 ) <jeffshannon@@@hotmail...com> on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:21AM (#7794964) Homepage
    Only if I was fluent in Hindi and enjoyed musicals.

  • Bad plots (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Heartz ( 562803 )
    The thing about bollywood movies is that they all have the same plot with slight changes and new songs. It's always
    1. Boy Meets Girl
    2. Girl doesn't like boy at first
    3. Somehow girl falls in love
    4. Dance dance dance, sing sing sing
    5. Girls father objects because of race/religion/caste/money
    6. Big fights and all
    7. Boy finally wins over father and gets the girl
    8. Everybody lives happily ever after

    99% of the stories in Bollywood have this same plot line and seriously, it's amazing they chalk up 3.6 billion tickets.

    • Re:Bad plots (Score:4, Informative)

      by sisukapalli1 ( 471175 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:31AM (#7795064)
      Bad plots are very successful in US too. Take, for example, the success of "reality TV". The only themes are greed (the final prize money) and lust (think, all the junk from Fox). Everything else is sort of padded on just like one would pad on a plot line in a pr0n film.

      S

    • Re:Bad plots (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dema ( 103780 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:42AM (#7795171) Homepage
      Yea, and than you have the Hollywood model

      1. EXPLOSION!
      2. GUN FIGHT!
      3. Advertisement
      4. EXPLOSION!
      5. GUN FIGHT!

    • Re:Bad plots (Score:2, Insightful)

      by tietokone-olmi ( 26595 )
      I heard someone say, though I forget when and where, that if all stories are stripped of the particulars down to the abstract bone, there are about seven distinct story outlines. Total. In any culture.

      Obviously, most of these were already explored by the ancient Greeks. Most likely even before that.

      If we were to apply this outline to, say, the first Matrix movie, we'll get:

      1. Neo meets Trinity
      2. There's nothing going on at first (apparently)
      3. Trinity remembers (or considers, or whatever) what the Oracle

  • goodness gracious me! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tuxette ( 731067 ) * <.moc.liamg. .ta. .ettexut.> on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:26AM (#7795006) Homepage Journal
    Good on ya, Bollywood!

    For those of you not familiar with Bollywood flicks, you kind of have to watch them in a similar way you watch Hong Kong kung-fu flicks. You have similar cheeziness factors, recurring themes (boy meets/loses girl and singing and dancing in one, "you killed my father..." and fighting in the other), and so on. It's good fun actually...

  • Do demographics factor in? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Helmholtz Coil ( 581131 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:28AM (#7795026) Journal
    I wonder if maybe one factor driving their decision was demographics, or the perceptions of demographics.

    It almost seems as though Bollywood's perception is that their core Indian market won't be affected by offering the movies online-the original article quotes something like 1 million out of 1 billion people in India have Internet access. So from their point of view, putting movies online can't really parasitize their existing market because it isn't connected. So they can only win-even if somebody finds a way around any protection on the movies, it still can only increase their customer base to reach people they haven't been able to in the past. In other words, even if only 1 out of 100 people actually buy the movie rather than watch any cracked version, that's still 1 more customer than they would have had otherwise.

    In contrast, Hollywood seems to perceive their customers as more connected Internet-wise, and so putting movies online will parasitize their existing market. Using the same 1 out of 100 people idea, Hollywood sees it as losing 99 rather than gaining 1.

    I'm not saying either or both is right or wrong, it just seems to me to be a difference in how each sees their core market.
    • Demographics are a huge part of Bollywood, if not everything in India. Like everything else, shows in the theater break down among class and wealth lines.

      For the lower class, movie tickets are dirt cheap. But this cheap ticket gets you standing room only, right in front of the screen, with thousands of other cheap ticket holders.

      If you can afford it, expensive tickets land you a seat in the balcony, where you don't have to rub elbows with everyone else.

      By this design, the movies are more of a soc

    • No. (Score:3, Informative)

      by The Cydonian ( 603441 )
      This has been commented upon for quite some time now in the Indian media, but the revenue base of Bollywood (that is *Hindi* movies; not Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali or other Indian movie industries) has shifted to the overseas market for quite some time now.

      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-resi

  • This won't work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by andy1307 ( 656570 ) * on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:30AM (#7795051)
    AS any ethnic Indian living in the US will tell you, you can walk into an Indian grocery store and rent a pirated video cassette for the latest Bollywood flock for 2$ or less. This way, people can watch the movie on their big screen TVs instead of waiting for the movie to download and then watching it on your computer.

    I'm not saying this is a bad idea...I'm just saying it won't work with Bollywood movies.

  • Only one problem (Score:5, Informative)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:30AM (#7795052) Homepage Journal
    (I'm Indian) I read about this a couple of weeks back. Apparently the number of downloads was 200. Not surprising: internet availability among home users is ridiculously low in India, 0.4% dialup and 0.02% broadband. Its increasing, but slowly.

    But on the other hand maybe movie distribution will become the killer app for broadband in India :)

  • How to cut costs in Bollywood? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:30AM (#7795055) Homepage
    Maybe they should outsource to America.

  • The article is misleading. (Score:4, Informative)

    by karmaflux ( 148909 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:32AM (#7795071)
    "India produces as many as 1,000 movies each year with revenues of more than $1 billion." -- The Globe and Mail [globeandmail.com]
    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.

  • Things You Would Never Know Without Indian Movies (Score:5, Funny)

    by tcak ( 513301 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:33AM (#7795081) Homepage Journal
    I might be off-topic, but what the hell....

    Introducing Things You Would Never Know Without Watching Bollywood Movies

    1. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to cleanse his wounds.
    2. If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.
    3. The hero cannot fall in love with the heroine (vice versa) unless they first perform a dance number in the rain.
    4. Once applied, make-up is permanent, in rain or in any other situation.
    5. Village girls who live among cows and sheep have perfect skin and teeth.
    6. A large group of goondoos can be shooting at the hero, but he will never be hit, unless of course he is attempting to save the heroine.
    7. A large group of goondoos can be shooting at the hero with machine guns, yet they will always miss. Every shot the hero takes from his small revolver will knock down at least ten opponents in a line.
    8. If you decide to start dancing in a field, everyone you bump into will know all the steps, and will be wearing coordinated outfits.
    9. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts-your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.
    10. A heroine will have time to change outfits several times in one song, however short.
    11. In the final scene, the hero will discover that the bad guy who he is up against is actually his brother and the maid who looked after him is his mother and the chief inspector is his father and the Judge is his uncle and so forth.
    12. 2 people can be dancing in the desert and out of nowhere, 100 people will appear from god-knows-where and joins them in the dance.
  • The US refuses to change while the world is changing all over. Best example is the tech industry. While jobs are moving overseas, ppl are fighting main companies to keep them here. Instead they should be trying to start their own companies and do their own work (Personally, I will be taking the opposite tack and simply locating the best coders throughout the world; OSS has shown that distributed works well).

    Hollywood should be embracing the change, but they will not until it is too late. Hollywood needs t
  • A number of people around here seem to think that all indian movies have the same plot.

    Perhaps that's true for many of them, but in doing so you're painting them with the same sort of brush that people use against Anime - "Oh, it's all animation!! That's for kids" turns into "Oh, it's all about singing and boys and girls. I couldn't possibly enjoy that".

    Yes almost all Bollywood movies seem to enjoy musical numbers. But that's part of the style. There are some movies that are really great - one example

  • I bet that they do well with this. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jhines0042 ( 184217 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:38AM (#7795138) Journal
    Ever look around and notice how many Indian folks there are in the US, working in Tech with access to the Internet?

    Ever seen a Bollywood movie in a theater in the US?

    Supply meets Demand and there are some people who like these movies here in the US where they can't (easily) see them in theaters.

    I'm sure that lots of folks will take advantage if this if for no other reason than to have something from their culture for their children (born here) to watch.

    Good luck to them!
  • Does the fact that Bollywood makes 3 times as many movies as Hollywood, but only sold 38% more tickets suggest anything about the quality of the movies?

  • Finally someone understands (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mr_lithic ( 563105 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:39AM (#7795146) Homepage Journal
    The main driver behind P2P downloading is not price. It is availability.

    Here is a thriving industry (The Indian and Pakistani film groups) offering their goods online to make them available to those who live in geographical areas that would not normally be accessible. It eliminates videotape piracy which is rampant in this marketplace and allows fans access to the content. Why have the Bollywood chiefs picked this up and the American and British Music Industry dropped the ball. Was it pressure from their distributors? Lack of knowledge of the internet? No method of micropayments?

    I would really like to know why it took a hardware manufacturer to bring in a system of legal digital content delivery (Apple and iTunes).

    It also is good to see one of the largest and most productive media producers embracing digital video distribution. This completely jumps the gun on Hollywood and leaves the North American producers playing catch-up.

  • So tell me, what was the #1 downloaded movie off Kazaa? I mean besides 'Orgy Party 5'... Something tells me it wasn't a Bollywood production regardless of how much more money they make. And go figure; the population of India is over 1 billion with the US lagging behind at only 300 million. Call it a stretch, but somthing tells me it's not international demand fueling their movie industry. They only have about 700,000,000 more potential viewers... Go figure.
  • From the article:

    The file was programmed to self destruct after being viewed and could not be copied.

    I'm sure that's going to be really effective. Go to suprnova.org and you can download a Hindi movie every couple of days.

    What these morons never seem to realize is that trivial restrictions may work with 99% of the population but it only takes one person to circumvent it and upload it for everyone else.

  • Bullshit warning... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Smoking ( 24594 )
    The business week article is not really good journalism:
    • 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...

  • Fantastic News (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gsdali ( 707124 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:45AM (#7795203)
    I think this will really take of with xpat indians world wide. I'd say that 90% or more of bollywood dvds and video sold outside India are pirates. So any way the studios can extract a bit of money from the xpat market is a bonus. $2.99 for one viewing is fair enough but how about $9.99 for something burnable to a vcd and $15.99 for something burnable at dvd quality.

    And while we're at it get hollywood doing the same. Sunday I wanted to watch about schmidt but not badly enough to go to the video store. They have taken a few quid off me if I could have downloaded it there and then. P2P isn't at threat it's a distribution method. With or without DRM there are plenty of people willing to pay for the convenience of media downloads.

  • VCDs are still there... (Score:3, Informative)

    by nilstar ( 412094 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:48AM (#7795225) Homepage
    If anyone has ever been to the street-markets in Bombay (or any other major Indian City) - you'll see VCD peddlers selling movies for less than $2.99. Most of them are bootleg and "screeners".... coming out 1 day after the official movie release in theatres. Don't think this won't stop that activity. In fact it might cheapen the price of VCDs to deal with this new "competitive threat"....
  • I don't get Indian movies either. I get a lot of exposure to them, but I can't say I enjoy most of them. Of course, I don't like classical music, musicals, or old movies, even though those genres were very popular at one time. And I don't understand daytime tv at all!

    My point is that as (mostly) Westerners, we have a hard time understanding how anyone could like those movies, because our culture is so different. I'm sure they have a difficult time understanding why some of the most popular shows on TV now

  • Bollywood tips (Score:3, Insightful)

    by akb ( 39826 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:52AM (#7795258)
    Its been pointed out that most readers of /. know nothing about Bollywood movies. Could some knowledgable people point out some links to reviews of Indian films that have subtitles or are in English?

  • While Hollywood tries to debate how to tackle P2P movie downloads, Bollywood the world's largest film industry has decided to embrace it.


    World's largest film industry? They make porn?

  • Bollywood Stats (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LinuxMacWin ( 79859 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @12:03PM (#7795357)
    ... as Bollywood, the Indian film industry produces 1000 movies a year and outstrips hollywood by almost 3:1....

    Well, Bollywood does not make 1000 movies a year. Indian film industry does make 1000 movies a year. The difference is that Bollywood (based in Mumbai earlier known as Bombay) is focussed primarily on Hindi movies. However, this constitutes maybe a third to a half of the 1000 movies a year. There are other languages / locations which make movies by the dozens and that make up the rest of the numbers. Most of the Southern states, which incidentally do not have Hindi as their primary language, have factories chruning regional language films. Tamil, Telugu, Malyalam and (I think) Kannada movies are made to the tune of 50-100 per year. There are other languages contributing a smaller share.

    Irrespective of whether the movie is Hindi, or one of the regional movies, they all do have similar formulaes. 95% of the movies adopt romance / action formula, with maybe less than 5% movies trying to do something different.

    However, Hindi movies are the ones which are known globally historically and people get the mis-impression that all Bollywood is Indian Movies (which is right), and all Indian movies are Bollywood (which is wrong).
  • I remember reading an interesting article in the Econimist a few years ago.

    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 s

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