This is what happens when you hit your biannual Bollywood kick right before you get on a plane: this song, in a loop on your head, for two hours.

Here’s the thing: it’s a really upbeat, catchy song, performed by Madhuri Dixit (who, for my money, is one of the best in Bollywood). If you do not read the lyrics, it sounds like the best time ever.

But if you read the lyrics, it is the happiest song about questionable-consent field-going EVER.

This alternate translation is even less encouraging of flirty/fun-time readings, since the words “by force” appear often.

I saw somewhere that this is a folk song? She said, not knowing a damn thing. (Then again, that might have been YouTube comments, which are hardly citable.)

Of course, if it was, everyone’s folktales/songs have undertones of Ye Ole Questionable Materiale, so it’s hardly fair to single out any particular song from anywhere (and using only one of many possible translations) for having strange subject matter (I mean, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, anyone?). I’m just saying that I first came across this clip without the translation, and enjoyed having it stuck in my head, and then I found the translation, and now I don’t know what to think. It’s too catchy to be wrong! Right?

P.S. It has now been stuck in my head four days and counting. I don’t even know.

P.P.S. The movie this is from is Anjaam, the first pairing of Madhuri and Shahrukh Khan, who would go on to partner her in several movies, my favorite of which is Devdas. (I have a total soft spot for sweeping historical epics, as you’ll see.) The plot of this movie, summed up as succintly as possible on Wikipedia. (You should click it; it’s a work of art.)

I have seen this whole movie, and can confirm it is exactly as cracktacular as it sounds. Immediate addition to the list of my favorite potboilers.

Obligatory: I will be at WisCon as of tomorrow! I will see what looks like 65% of you there.

Also obligatory: I will be part of the Lightspeed Launch Event!

Lightspeed Magazine Launch Event, Saturday, 10pm, Conference Room 2

Join us to celebrate the launch of Lightspeed Magazine (www.lightspeedmagazine.com), a new online science fiction magazine published by Prime Books (publisher of Fantasy Magazine). Lightspeed editors John Joseph Adams and Andrea Kail, along with publisher Sean Wallace, will be on hand to discuss this exciting new venture, and will present readings by the authors.

Alice Sola Kim, Genevieve Valentine, Vylar Kaftan, Cat T. Rambo, John Joseph Adams

I will be reading my story “The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball,” which is scheduled to be in the magazine this summer.

And when I get home, I have an awesome Bollywood epic to talk about! (I probably should have been talking about it since last year, but then it wasn’t available on DVD and I didn’t have Netflix yet, and so I forgot about it for a year before I thought to look it up again. When I am off the clock, my brain is pretty much a blank canvas with movies playing on top, and sometimes one slips through the cracks. Sorry, movie!)

I would be talking about it today, except that all my screencapping time last night went to laundry, and then a lot of staring at my clothes as I realized with dawning horror that I am completely unprepared for anything higher than 65 degrees. I foresee a lot of staying indoors, and/or little scuttling bursts from shade to shade as I hold up the collar on my all-black casual businesswear and hiss at the monstrous sun like an angel extra in The Prophecy.*

* Which is a straight-up awesome movie. I’ll go to the mat on this.

Wow, that was kind of a long hiatus! (I made the last one in 1996, it looks like.) I know this has become something of a habit, like that time I tried to make a picspam of my French vacation and only got two-thirds of the way through, so if you are a literalist it looks like I never actually came home but am instead blogging from an attic somewhere overlooking the amusement park in Rouen. (Note to that person: well-spotted, mon frère!)

But I have my act together now, and the time has come for another Catherine Cookson Experience!

Today’s is different from most of the others, because I genuinely love this one. It is a pulpy mess, and I enjoy every second of its cheesy glory. You will be able to tell this soon, but I thought I might as well warn you up front: this one is awesome, and I have the eight thousand photos to prove it! This is The Rag Nymph.

Vital Stats:

Era: 1850s, looks like.
Heroine: Millie
Siblings that require looking-after: Well, initially Millie is the one who needs looking-after (when you were niiiiiiiine!).
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): It’s like a Law and Order episode; it takes you almost until the end to find out, and by then you don’t even care.
Asshole Father?: Oh, jeez. Every father in this thing is a total jerkbag.
Romantic interest(s): Mr. Bingley, Paul Atreides. Tough call!
Bairnsketballs: Nope.
Fistfights: Somebody knifes a pimp. It counts!
Assaults: Oh jeeeeeeeez.

Under here, more When You Were Nine goodness.
Continue reading

This week at Fantasy Magazine, the fight-fest continues with Fantasy’s Top Ten Fight Scenes: The Battles.

This one was rougher than I had expected, largely because I wanted to get a range of battle scenes, and it’s much easier to find a range of movies in which two characters duke it out than it is to find a range of movies where a group of people ends up having a violent engineering dispute with another group of people, and because a lot of scenes that seem like battles on the surface are actually next round’s trope, One Against Many.

Anyway, you will recognize battle scenes from two of my favorite movies on that list; one of them is a legit, awesome fantasy battle (thank you, Buliwyf and various alternate-history personages), and the other I put in because it’s the shit. (It’s legitimately supposed to be a spec movie, so luckily it counts, but when you want a nice, low-tech battle, The Warriors is your jam no matter what.)

Next up, it’ll be time for One Against Many. I may end up with twenty of those; it is apparently fantasy’s favorite thing in the WORLD. (Because it’s awesome.)

Last week I stumbled on what is possibly the best historical doc ever on the Discovery Channel:

Cleopatra, Portrait of a Killer. (To be pronounced “KILLAH!” with Gloria Swanson eyes.)

Their premise is that Cleopatra, because she hinted around at various Romans until her brother/husband and her half-sister got bumped off and left her sitting pretty on the throne, is a stone-cold killer. Also they have an extra five minutes to fill, so we’re going to reconstruct some bones we found in Arsinoe’s tomb and decide where she came from! (Not interesting enough for its own show, I guess, but apparently a nice way to bring home the fact that Arsinoe was dispatched by a KILLAH.)

Here’s the problem with that: they must think we have never heard of a royal family before. Killing each other is what royal families more or less exist to do. (Last one standing gets the throne, you guys!) So, the fact that Cleopatra exerted some influence to rid herself of rivals to the throne is business as usual, and doing everything you can to keep yourself in power is not only business as usual, but history sort of vilifies you if you can’t manage it, so you might as well really go for it and become Oxnard the Wrathful or whatever instead of Plinkerton the Waffling.

(Also, if we’re talking about someone who is not afraid to fight for the throne, the ghost of Henry VIII heard this TV show title and looked up, superoffended.)

On the other hand, “Cleopatra: Portrait of Moderate Political Acumen” doesn’t have the same ring to it, I guess.

But long as we’re still competing for incestuous, murderous royal families, there’s another amber-filtered desert-dwelling monarchy that makes Cleopatra’s friends look like an episode of Blackadder. Just saying.

On the plus side, this had the best history-documentary extras EVER. They were really going for it, especially Cleopatra and Arsinoe, who did more intense-head-turns-to-the-camera than any other history documentary has ever attempted.

I think I’ve talked about this before, but I REALLY love extras. Extras in big movies, extras in small movies, accidental extras in crowd scenes, extras who look right at the camera, extras who are falling asleep, extras who outdance the leads, extras who are into it above and beyond the call of duty and gesticulate wildly in the background having a peas-and-carrots fight. But perhaps no extras are closer to my heart than the extras in historical documentaries, who usually look a little confused as to why they’re doing whatever they’re doing, but gamely push forward into a castle siege or something, just like they were told.

These extras came to win, though. They threw shade at each other and had silent freakouts and threw jewelry all over the place! I actually enjoy this Cleopatra in a completely non-facetious way, and watched the entire hour because I loved how much fun she was clearly having. You make it happen, Cleopatra!

Below, a clip from the show for your enjoyment. (She was a KILLAH!)