Damn uni server will not let me use my other diary. So, although this is not strictly law related, I thought I'd talk about the movie I watched yesterday before I forget it. Or block it. Or something.
I don't quite understand the concept of remakes. Gus Van Sant has made a scene-by-scene remake of Psycho that inspired me to write a word-by-word remake of Don Quixote. Only this time, the windmills are pissed off. And they are in every scene. I'm a goddamn genius; the Jerry Bruckheimer of the modern novel. The only justification for a remake is this: that you add something new that deepens our understanding of the themes the original creator was trying to get across.
Which brings me to Kaante. It rips off The Usual Suspects (even down to using the same park pagoda in one scene), Reservoir Dogs/City on Fire and a couple of scenes from Heat.
The thing is, as it's a Bollywood production, the ear-cutting scene is prefaced with a quick musical number. You think I'm joking. They introduce the guy standing in for Michael Madsen with him singing about his eternal love and dancing. When all the thugs have finished preparing for the crime of the century, they celebrate with some singing and dancing. The guy they get the explosives from claims his merchandise helped blow up Kashmir. So they talk about loving India and throw him off a building.
I'm still terribly confused about what happened. All I know for sure is that they spent a lot of time walking in slow motion, there were dance numbers intercut with tense interrogations and that random patriotism seems to be a censorship requirement.
I remember one of my ex-flatmates watching Old Boy with me and her turning it off because it was "silly". She preferred Bollywood. Having now seen a searing exposition of the drama that can be conveyed by having the toughest guy in the gang dancing in unison with a bunch of women dressed as strippers, I can only hope that my flatmate is available for me to deliver a grovelling, all-singing and dancing apology.