billion desires spring in my heart

that was by me btw

Such eloquence could only spring from a mass communication student. :-)

I'm still trying to decide whether or not the star in that video you posted the link to is a child or a dwarf. The former would be more likely, I suppose, but then again, I've seen a few six-year-olds smoking, too.

Rajnikant's hair and carefully researched lounge pose are the real stars, though. Rajkumar's (KING OF CHARISHMA!) bell-bottoms and natty walking stick moonwalk move ain't got nothing in him.

Thanks for the link... what can I say, the way he shimmies across the dancefloor, I almost feel like flagging it as "inappropriate"!

Believe me when I say these songs, while hilarious, are only the tip of the surreal iceberg that is the Kannada film song. Just turn on Udaya TV near midnight and you won't ever need to use drugs. Tamil videos and Indian film videos in general may be strange, but Kannada films just take the cake. It's even more baffling for someone like me who has been there and been around the people so much. On the whole we're quite... well, among the four South Indian states, we're certainly the nerdiest.

Hang on, I just answered my own question!

I actually do need the subtitles myself, as my Kannada is more Mangalorean, and what they speak in movies -- and even worse, on TV -- is practically a foreign language. I have mixed feeling about subtitling Indian things. On the one hand, a literal translation leads to something that may be correct, but either sounds lewd* or completely bixarre since it is stripped of the nuance of the original language.

*Granted, if you actually pay attention to many Indian lyrics and interpret the metaphors, then we have some really filthy stuff that sounds completely innocent in its original language.

On the other hand, when people try to translate lyrics trying to make it rhyme in English, then that also brings up problems. If you pick up the Bunty aur Babli DVD and turn on the subs, for instance, there are a few clever and accurate turns of phrase ("they're turning tops / confounding cops"), but you soon realise that what is being written not only has nothing to do with the lyrics being sung, but that they're many times more complicated and confounding (especially Kajra Re).

I showed Bluffmaster to a Filipino friend recently and those subtitles were the right mix of literal and interpretive, even in the songs.

Another YouTube link (I had warned all of you a while back that this would turn into one of those regular blogs!), this time for an Indian ad, spoofing bad South Indian movies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ic_fbC7mlM

I have a sneaking suspicion that of the people behind this, at least one was a Southie, which shows that even we get the craziness of it all.