Zinda-BAD & Pazhaiya-pet

It's official now. Zinda is indeed a frame-by-frame remake of the Korean movie Oldboy, except for the ending which has been changed to suit the conservative mindset of Indians who would have protested violently if it was for the original! But every other aspect has been blatantly plagiarised by Sanjay Gupta who has become famous among ignorant audiences who presume he's done all the hard work. All his previous superhits have been remakes of famous movies and he even makes sure to copy their taglines!... Kaante was from Reservoir Dogs and Musafir was from U-Turn.

And the latest rumour is that the movie Pudupet by Selvaraghavan is a remake of none other than the brilliant Portugese movie called City of God(but it may not necessarily be true)!

I personally believe that Indians are the biggest plagiarisers of movies, internally and internationally! Ofcourse there are a few great and original directors, but the rest of them are just survivors. A paradigm shift is what's necessary for Indians movies to come of age. Directors and producers should stop looking at including commercial elements or heroic idiosyncrasies but instead concentrate on technical excellence and originality.

It's alarming to know that most directors write dialogues for scenes only on the day of the shooting and on the sets! Contrast this with the high professionalism of Hollywood, where each and every small operation is taken care of by an expert. I mean, in India, how often do we have specialist script/screenplay writers or casting pros? What we see most of the times is a boastful credit screen which screams out boldly:

STORY
SCREENPLAY
DIALOGUES
DIRECTION
"Mr.I-Know-them-all"

And then we also have these occasional starlwarts(whizkids) in the form of Karadi Man T.Rajendar who would spend endless rolls of film and numerous frames just to put his name under every possible title, including MUSICIAN, LYRICIST, EDITOR, CHOREOGRAPHER, ACTING COACH, POET ...and what not!!

Come on guys, give us a break! Is a movie about representing the beauty in the visual medium or about gratfying one's ego and garnering fame? Grow up India, grow up...And for those of you foreigners who do, please stop referring to all of Indian cinema as BOLLYWOOD!