Bollywood Dreams

Not everybody takes to Bollywood films very easily. First of all, the story has to be very interesting. To me, the visuals all have to be above exceptional (beautiful women wearing colorful saris, great wide scenes, etc), and if it has music, it's gotta be great music.This film is originally called "Rangeela" which has something to do with colors. It stars the ever so beautiful, Urmila Matondkar. I have many of her films on DVD. She stars in this film with Aamir Khan (who was in my first Bollywood film that I've watched and bought called "Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India".) Since "Lagaan" I've bought over a hundred Bollywood films and the main reason why is because I fell in love with almost every Bollywood actress in India."Rangeela" is a great film to start out with if you're curious about what is coming out of Bombay. (India's Hollywood). Most all Bollywood films have songs throughout their films. Sometimes this can be annoying but I've learned to accept this. The only time that Bollywood songs pop in the film that annoys me is when I'm watching a serious Bollywood film. They have many violent films also which really catches me off guard and looks silly to me when they break into a song after a violent shootout and someone who is the main bad guy, suddenly does a happy sounding song and dance with their enemy in the film. Yes, this has happened (i.e. "Mission Kashmir"), and it's rather stupid.However, Bollywood has a lot of great films if you're the kind of movie fanatic that enjoys good looking actors and actresses. Sometimes, that's all it takes to increase your interest in the film."Rangeela" has a nice, easy to follow story. And all the songs are very cool, and fall into place very nicely (just like any Walt Disney film would). In fact, the songs in this film get sexier and sexier as the films goes on. You will love Urmila Matondkar as you watch this film and you will be wanting to see more of her films. She has dozens and dozens of films.Let me recommend some of her films that I enjoy. She's in "Judaai", "Mast", "Daud", "Pyaar Tune Kya Kia", and several more.I suggest though, that you look for the original version of "Rangeela" instead of this DVD. The original has a better video quality and 5.1 stereo sound. The reason I rented this "Bollywood Dreams" is because I wanted to see if it had an English dub option. But, no it does not, nor does most all Bollywood DVD's. You'll have to get use to reading English sub-titles.You will enjoy this film more as you see Urmila looking at her absolute sexy best! You can go to IMDb (dot com) to enter Aamir Khan and Urmila Matondkar to see what other films they have done. It's easy to rent any of them through Netflix or you can start a DVD rental account at any Indian goods like I did in the beginning.Also, you can go to IndiaFM.com to see pictures and collect desktop Wallpapers of all sorts of beautiful and handsome Bollywood stars. You'll get hooked on Bollywood before you know it. I've enjoyed Bollywood for more than 5 years now. Like I said, I own hundreds of great Bollywood films. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments option below.After watching this film, rent or buy "Ghulam", which features my favorite actress Rani Mukherjee starring with, yet again, Aamir Khan. Another easy to follow story with excellent sexy songs and videos.Namaste!

Rangeela (The original Hindi name for Bollywood Dreams) has been my favorite "Bollywood" film since childhood, as if I were to give out awards for best Hindi (Bollywood) film director, music composer, and actors both female and male, they'd all go to people credited in this film. The music alone is nostalgic enough since it reminds me of long road trips across Southern Ontario in the family car, as I imagined myself to be on the picturesque hills of northern India as I watched the forest go by combined with A.R. Rahman's transporting compositions. A.R. Rahman didn't get much international acclaim for his music until Slumdog Millionaire, but by then he had changed his style and I still believe he was at the height of his genius in the 90s with film soundtracks like Rangeela, Daud, Dil Se, and Taal.Putting aside the 5-star soundtrack by a composer in his prime, the director Ram Gopal Verma was also at his prime in the 90s and early 2000s. This film may have been localized in North America as "Bollywood Dreams", but even though admittedly the simple plot of the film is about a young woman who wants to become a Bollywood actor, RGV's style and direction was far from typical Bollywood at the time. He brought an inteligence, an attention to detail, a strive for higher quality, uninhibitedness, unique perspective, and above all else, originality, that was far too often missing from most films coming out of the "Bollywood" industry/machine (not to mention actual proper editing for once). This is probably why, along with its success in India, one of his films managed to reach the international stage, and deservedly so. This wouldn't happen again with a Hindi film until the even bigger hit in the early 2000s, Lagaan, which coincidently had the same lead male actor, Aamir Khan.That brings me to the other thing RGV has been brilliant for - finding and bringing out amazing new talent from his actors. From Aamir Khan he brought out a role that transformed and revitalized his career, setting him on the path of being one of the only real, successful method and character actors in the Hindi film industry. Even more impressive than that is discovering the talent in Urmila Matondkar, who might otherwise have only been seen as an invisible, typical, no-future actress before RGV's lens fell upon her and a true match-made-in-heaven was realized. Urmila is easily the greatest discovery RGV has ever made and brought to Indian cinema. There couldn't have been a more real Mumbai "girl next door" ever shown in films before Milli in Rangeela, as Urmila'a naturalness in every scene, especially with Aamir Khan, makes the film come off more like a home video of a real person, totally unaware of a camera being on her. India had never, and I'd argue has never since, had an actor as talented as she is beautiful and sexy as Urmila. It was impossible for her not to become the first crush for a young boy like me back in the late 90s.The dance coreography to go along with AR Rahman's music certainly didn't help my beating young heart either, since Urmila especially performed with total power and precision with dance moves the likes that Bollywood had never seen before, with a hybrid of western and classical Indian moves. After all I've said, it's actually this aspect of the musical that was known to be the biggest reason why people kept coming back to the theaters again and again. The dancing, the music, and the acting... supported by a simple but refreshingly down-to-earth (especially among Bollywood films) take on the age old love-triangle story.I've bought 2 other releases of this on DVD from Indian distributors like Eros and this release has easily and by far the best picture quality. Makes me wish more Hindi classics had been released in North America like this, because apparently thats the only way top quality discs of Indian films are guarenteed. You wont even find picture quality as good as this online for classic hindi films like this from the 90s. The dull English title is pretty much the only lamenting aspect of the localization (but I admit a direct translation of Rangeela would have sounded awkward too, but it'd have represented the tone of the film much better). I'm surprised there wasn't an english dubbing available, which would have been intereting and neat but unnecessary (I would still prefer to watch in Hindi). English subtitles are inaccurate and lack effort, as usual for most Hindi films, but they get the job done and mistakes (i.e. typos) are more minimal than usual. Some unprofessional typical of Hindi film dvd releases still manages to make it in with its extremely inaccurate chapter selecting. Chapters almost never begin at the beginning of a scene. In fact selecting one of the songs from the menu has you watching the musical scene from nearly its end! But the picture quality trumps that problem for me.

Excellent entertaining film with a very good choreography.