MovieChat Forums > Rang De Basanti (2006) Discussion > Ban the oscar!!!

Ban the oscar!!!

posted 17 years ago by ypkumar
20 replies | jump to latest

Guys..I always see a lot of discussions that lagaan shud have won the oscar or RDB shud win or someother Indian movie shud win....But they never do...

But why should we care...The judges at oscar have a different mind set for movies...Our Indian movies are just very different....We celebrate life in our movies...songs and dances...hungama and comedy...the ppl in oscar committee wud never understand all that....no wonder many oscar judges commented that the greatest drawback of lagaan was its songs....

Guys what i meant to say is that we dont need the recognition from oscar society...Ours is just a very different film industry...indian way of making films is for indians only...So I say, forget abt oscar and dont even send an indian movie for oscar nominations....eventhough it is gr8 it wud just be insulted on the international grounds....so why at all care abt it?

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ypkumar 17 years ago

Yeah...definately, we are having some movies which are a bit towards the hollywood style. I love Mr. and Mrs. Iyer. Khosla ka ghosla was gr8 too. I have not seen earth, neither fire, but Water was cool. I have seen DOR recently, by nagesh kukunoor. I liked the film. It had excellent story and good acting and i think it definately gave me a good feel of 'using India to make hollywood style movies'. Many directors are trying to explore new horizons in making movies. I saw 'mixed doubles' recently and I did not like it. I expected it to be at par with Mr. and Mrs. Iyer. Anyways I like that we r making efforts to make some west-style movies, but Iam glad that our movies are still wat they used to be - Musicals. Hollywood movies used to be musical too, but they are no longer so. Iam glad that we are mixing both the styles- musicals and western.

[–] shounak83 17 years ago

Well..now that Rang De Basanti hasnt been nominated in the oscar top 5, it is very easy to say that we shouldnt care about what the oscar or, for that matter,the entire american mindset thinks about our movies. But why was there so much noise when Rang De basanti was sent as an official entry to the oscars, -there were all sorts of speculation-whether it would get into the top 5 or not--so I hope all this angst about 'RDB' not getting a nomination is not the case of grapes turning sour.
Well, the problem lies in the assumption that most of us have -that if a movie works in India, it might work anywhere and definitely at the oscars. And that is where we go utterly wrong.I mean, going by that logic, movies like Dhoom2,'Krish'(though I personally thought that they were pieces of trash),should have been considered worthy of being sent to the oscars simply because they were liked by most indians(after all-they were two of the biggest hits of 2006).
But hey, when are we ever going to realize that a movie's boxoffice success story doesnt mean that it is an oscar material.
I mean, the only reason i see for a movie like 'Omkara',which I thought had more of an international callibre than most other movies, to be looked down by the Film Federation of India(who all are present in this federation anyway?) was because it hadnt fared as good as the other indian oscar aspirants, at the box office.
Lets get over all this and hey, even if we dont care about the oscars, there are always those silly, biased, over-the-top local film awards(screen, filmfare,etc,etc) that need a cleansing act.

[–] sdgreat 17 years ago

Ours is just a very different film industry...indian way of making films is for indians only..

That's not entirely true. Indian films are pretty popular in the middle east and africa, too! I learned that recently when I went to Kenya; I went to this fancy place with a live band performing at dinner, and was quite surprised when he started singing Kal Ho Na Ho! I was also quite surprised to see dozens of posters advertising more Bollywood than Hollywood stuff outside of a movie theater! I was amazed!

I guess that Indian movies just aren't really meant for American audiences. I thought that RDB would have a better chance than Lagaan because the characters don't actually break out into song like in most indian movies. But you're right- the Oscars really shouldn't matter that much! It's just always nice to recieve recognition.

However, I don't think that we should stop trying to send stuff in for the Oscars. Maybe they should start sending in stuff without much singing. They should have sent in Omkara, as it's something a western audience would have appreciated more.
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[–] MrNeurosis 17 years ago

I suggest that ypkumar you need to shut up. Instead of finding blames in Oscar better tell Indian directors to come up with good and original stuff. We Indians have way too bloated self egos. We can't even see our own shortcomings. Yeah ban Oscars as if they give *beep* about Indian movies.

Only Indians are cheated everywhere. On the entire globe only INDIA has license of being different. While all other Asian and European countries are doing fine at Oscars... so they must be un-original right?

Whats with this sh*t attitude? what are we good at internationally? cricket? football? can't win even one *beep* gold in Olympics. Yeah India is so different. We don't win because we don't deserve, not because of our "oh we are so different" attitude, which is just an excuse to cover our failure. It has nothing to do with our culture. We suck at making movies. And its time we admit it and stop making a fool of ourselves at Oscars every year.

[–] rsjaswal 17 years ago

How can you say "ban the oscar". Firstly, if you ever want to say something bad about someone, do the research. It clearly seems that you havent seen any other movies that have been nominated for "Best foreign Film". They were all thousand timeS better than Rang de Basanti. I have seen Water which i thought had great performances and it looked realistic.( and dont forget that the whole movie is in Hindi. where has oscar done any partiality?) Then there is Volver, Pan's Lybernith. so please Oscar is looking for something different, something that relates to the society . Rang De Basanti looked very unrealistic, despite dealing with realistic issues. .

[–] freedombent 17 years ago

They were all thousand timeS better than Rang de Basanti.

Sorry, but I couldn't agree with you at this point.

[–] saurabhyash2000 17 years ago

Mr. Ypkumar I think you have not seen classical Hollywood films like "Sound of Music" and "Singin' in the Rain". These movies have songs like Indian movies and they have won many academy awards.
If you think that Oscar Jury is unfair to Indian movies because they have songs, then you must be a fool.
Now, let me update you that An Indian movie Water has been nominated for Oscar even though it is a Canadian Entry.
The other thing is that if you feel that jury has been unfair to Rang De Basanti, then let me tell you that this movie is directly inspired from a spanish film, and Indians can't fool the Oscar jury. If we want to see an Indian film winning Academy Award, then we must have some original screenplays, rather than rip offs.

[–] riyan_555 17 years ago

CORRECTION!! RANG DE BASANTI ISNT INSPIRED FROM SPANISH MOVIE BUT FROM a canadian movie called " jesus of montreal" chck it out!! even sholay the greatest indian film is copied\inspired frm a hollywood movie !!!

[–] ragreen259 15 years ago

Geeze, Singin' In the Rain and Sound Of Music..? Bring it up to present... compare it to Moulin Rouge and Chicago--they definitely blow Rang De Basanti out of the water, there's no comparison, no way, no how.

[–] jishnu2 15 years ago

I could not agree on the original screenplay point. A movie can be nominated even if it is not original in all aspects, but still is a good movie overall. 12 was a Russian movie nominated for the best foreign movie oscar even though it was a remake of 12 angry men.

[–] TheEnigmaticRonin 10 years ago

" 12 was a Russian movie nominated for the best foreign movie oscar even though it was a remake of 12 angry men."

An "official remake", and a "unofficial rip off" is not exactly the same thing.

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[–] yourbikash 15 years ago

They were all thousand timeS better than Rang de Basanti

I agree they were better but not 1000 times...just better..and RDB is also a very good movie.

[–] trigger_jam 15 years ago

Well the Oscars need to break down their prejudices before they nominate another Indian movie. Since RDB didn't show slumdwellings and since the Oscar committee only considers slumdwellings as "real" India, it chooses to look over such "fantasy" movies as RDB.

[–] kyzasoze2003 15 years ago

The fact remains that while the likes of Lagaan was very good, it simply wasn't good enough to beat off the competition. But one day India will win.

And RDB had some stupid scenes in it, like Aamir and the other actor trying to be "bad boys" in their first scene in RDB. I expect that kind of behaviour from a child, not a 40-something. I felt like walking out of the cinema when I saw that. It's scenes like this that ruin the chances of an otherwise good film.

[–] speaker_mind 15 years ago

did u even understand the movie???
aamir plays the role of a graduated college student in his late 20s.
wat else can u expect from a college student...
college life is all abt fun..
maybe u donno that coz u might have never attended a college in ur life..
or u r one of those nerds who doesnt know anything else other than books...
next time dont ever dont ever comment bad for this movie..
this is the best movie ever made by india
and still u r crying.
shame on u...

[–] SammyOrb 15 years ago

You run into this problem for two reasons:

1) A lot of culture from other parts of the world are not marketed in the US. Try getting a CD of The Splean from Russia or Die Ärzte from Germany or Dir en Grey from Japan...or download a Tashike Miike film from US iTunes, or ANYTHING by Shahrukh Khan. I spend a lot of time trying to find good stuff from other places, and it's simply non-existent here.

I don't know what the deal is for sure, but I suspect that it has a lot to do with the big corporations that are marketing stuff in the US. They either remake *beep* for US audiences, like Vanilla Sky(US)/Open Your Eyes(Spain) or don't bring it here for wide release.

Indian film making is not well understood in the US. There are cultural differences that people don't get that have been exacerbated by these films never making it over here from the get-go. I just screened Don for two adult male film-goers who had never seen a Hindi film, and both of them (ages 39 and 56) burst out laughing when the first musical number started up. They didn't think it was *bad*, it just caught them off guard and they didn't understand it, which was interesting and frustrating, and indicative of the cultural divide that plagues all countries.

2) The Oscars are for all intents and purposes an American Award show, and the members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences that vote for the pictures are made up of Americans. That's why they vote for American movies. Just like the British member of BAFTA are British, so mostly vote for British films.

Just so you know, the Oscars don't even represent what the regular US film-goer even likes anymore, if they ever did. The most popular films here are never nominated. People hate it. They never have anyone watch their show on TV here, it always gets poor ratings. A lot of time the Academy will vote someone an Oscar based on lifetime work, rather than the film they are nominated for, etc. It's all shabby politics, and how well the advertising campaigns in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter do. So in that respect, we all get screwed, not just you folks. :)

[–] KartofflMuter 15 years ago

Sammy-Were you possibly comatose when Slumdog Millionaire won? because I'm pretty sure it won the Best Film Oscar for 2008 and while you may argue that the director was English,his co-director was Indian,the book was written by an Indian,the cast was Indian,it was filmed in India,and a lot of the crew was Indian. Then never forget,the music was written by A.R.Rahman, same as Rang De Basanti and Lagaan and most of the really big hits lately.As for the availability of Indian films, try Amazon. That's for your average movie. For your obscure oldies,DVDs, and CDs, Nehaflix has a complete selection and frequent sales. Movies are also available online. It's the 21st Century. Please trade in your jack ass for a computer.

[–] Kobebucsfan 15 years ago

if movies like Amelie, Michael Clayton, Little Miss Sunshine (LMAO) can get nominated, then RANG DE BASANTI should also.

[–] the-fearless-america 9 years ago

dont be so sad, as far as i watch a few indian movies. it has a good trendline. it was developing by time to time. and im sure for the next decade maybe indian movie will be recognized by people in the world.

but if we were talking about oscar. it is so freaking high dude. oscar was just "only" for the experts, talented, perfect-made, superbly acted, straight deep plot, and extraordinary cinematography. if you want to compete this movie with "pan's labyrinth" in the oscar, then you must be joking. really laughable. even this movie not worth to be nominated. every aspect of this movie is just average, maybe below average a bit. the one thing that exceptional from this movie is just it's "plot". it's relatively inspiring and moving but also it cost too much duration and the plot was freaking wide. if you want competing with oscar nominee with only one great aspect of a movie, it's like you are dreaming kid.

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