Bollywood Films (here is where the name came from......American movies were almost all made in Hollywood. Indian films were almost all made in the city of Bombay....now called "Mumbai" but the original name caught on as "Bollywood".....the "B" standing for Bombay".
People are usually either great Bollywood fans or NOT (there doesn't seem to be a middle ground). As a kid in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) there was no TV (it hadn't been "invented" there yet! Seriously!!). We had a choice of going to the cinema to see the LATEST Bollywood film (whose songs we all knew as they were played on Radio Ceylon all the time).....OR we could go to the Majestic Cinema to watch British or American films that were ANCIENT. So most of us preferred the Bollywood films and began to learn Hindi because of it (although there were subtitles in English, Sinhalese and Tamil)
On the "con" (against) side - Bollywood films are quite long (some 3-4 hours even!) by Hollywood standards. If you're a FAN, you count that as a benefit.....if you're not, you say "ach! TOO long!! Who can sit and watch a movie for 3-4 hours??" But let me tell you about the length element. For almost 50 years in Bollywood it was against Gov't. of India censorship to show kissing (or anything "heavier"!) on screen. Thus, a boy and girl in love couldn't just KISS.....they had to make a song and dance out of it instead.....the song sequence could take as long as 20 minutes. The other element is that people in the sub-continent wanted our money's worth!! After all, if we paid 6 rupees to see a film, we EXPECTED it to last a long, long time.
On the "pro" side - once you get Bollywood films in your blood, you cannot get enough of them! Names like Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwayra Rai, Amitabh Bachan, Abishek Bachan, Rani Mukerjee, Priyanka Chopra and Shahid Kapoor become household names.
To the AMATEUR who wants to watch a Bollywood for the very first time.....I highly recommend "Main Hoon Na" (translates to mean both "I'm There for You" or "Trust Me") with Shah Rukh Khan. It has high-powered ACTION (which guys will love) - suspense, good guys, bad guy, not-so-bad guy....of course it has songs and dances, comedy, sentimental scenes. It's a great starter film!!
Besides "Bollywood", there is "Tollywood" - now it gets confusing.....in OUR house "Tollywood" means Tamil language films but it can also mean Telegu language films. And Tollywood has its own set of superstars, but that's another blog.
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