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Krishna DVD and more animation fascination
My Krishna: aayo natkhat nadlal DVD finally came today. The DVD itself is gorgeous. It comes in a thick, sturdy case with a ton of freebies - including a disc of CD-ROM games, a sheet of adorable stickers, glow-in-the-dark Krishna tatoos, a glittery Krishna desktop standee, a plastic peacock feather (which is supposed to be a bookmarks but works just fine for Krishna cosplay if you ask me), and a holographic "friendship bracelet." The inside of the DVD case is printed with shameless advertisements for even more swag, and website URLs for where to get it.
I haven't tried the CD-ROM games, so I can't comment on that. As for the extras on the DVD itself, it comes with theatrical trailers and THE WORLD'S CUTEST MUSIC VIDEO for the pop version of "Aayo Natkhat Nadlal," in which a bunch of cute kids in cute costumes dance around and sing and are terribly cute. The song itself is bilingual English and Hindi. The little "Krishna rap" bridge in English just slayed me. "Just live it up, bro! It's cool to be naughty!" Yes, those are actual English lines from the rapping part.
And you know what? Because it's Christmas, here's the music video for you. I tried to rip it with English subtitles, but I don't think that it worked. Anyway, Merry Whatever Holiday You Celebrate, and prepare to be ded from cute.
Other things about the DVD... It comes with subtitles in way too many languages. Also, like most Bollywood DVDs, in addition to chapter stops, there is also a menu that lets you skip directly to the musical numbers. I love that.
Now, as for the movie itself... I stand by what I predicted before. That 3D animation is shudder-inducingly creepy. No amount of cute music or cute voice acting can save it.
Since I've been on a big animation kick lately, and have been snatching up whatever nehaflix.com has on sale, here are some mini-reviews of what I've seen/purchased in the past couple months:
Hanuman
The 2006 animated extravaganza. I've been looking forward to seeing this since![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carbonicgirl tipped me off to its existence. The DVD that I got came with only one extra, and that was a little illustrated booklet of the Hanuman Chalisa, in both Hindi and English. Which is actually INCREDIBLY useful for me, since I'm supposed to be studying my devanagari. (A transcription of the devanagari would have been useful, though, rather than just a straight English translation. But I am a n00b so I still need crutches like that.)
Hanuman killed me from cute even more than Krishna did. Of curse, the latter half of the movie is a lot less cute than the first half, what with the mass gore and bloodshed, and Hanuman terrifying innocent Lankans by setting their city on fire.
The "Mahabali Maharudra" pop music video - this time featuring adorable children running around in Hanuman cosplay - rivals Krishna's music video in terms of sheer awesomeness. Also, props for getting somebody to wear ten heads and cosplay as Ravan.
On thing I'm pissed about, though, is that my DVD has no Hindi language track, even though the case advertised both English and Hindi audio options. Instead, the only option that I have is English. (The musical numbers, for some reason, are still in Hindi however.) The English voice acting is fabulous, but I wanted to hear the movie in Hindi, dammit! The false advertising on my DVD case makes me sad. T_T (I'm pretty sure that I didn't get a bootleg, either, as it's an R2 DVD and not a region-free one, and it all looks official and such... Damn.)
Vikram and Betal (volume 1)
This 2004 series is the first major success for Green Gold Animation, the studio behind Krishna: The Birth. For a series of stories told by a dead demon to a king, these are pretty entertaining. Vaayu looks like Jesus, though, I swear. The animation hardly counts as "animation", however. It looks more like a bad internet flash video, with character designs that a fifth-grader doodled on the back of his school notebook.
Extras: Previews for other DVD releases, including Beyblade (WTF anime), Fun 'n' Learn (which looks terrifying), Tales of Panchantra, Tales of Akbar and Birbal, Multiplication Tables (again, terrifying, what with the dancing numbers and all), and Yoga for Kids. Finally, there was a preview for Vikram and Betal, and it's like, WTF, this IS the Vikram and Bertal DVD, kthx.
Krishna: The Birth
Green Gold Animation's 75-minute "movie" about Krishna's birth. Unlike Vikram and Betal, this adorable movie uses REAL, ACTUAL, HAND-DRAWN, 2D ANIMATION. Of course, it's not very good animation, but like Hanuman, the movie is just so charming, that it's easy to overlook the primitive animation.
This movie surprised me by very much more dark and ominous than, you know, cute. It was more about the circumstances leading up to Krishna's birth, rather than Krishna himself, so it's not a happy story. I mean, Krishna isn't even born until ten minutes from the end of the movie. There were also no musical numbers either, which surprised me. However, the sweeping orchestral background score was all kinds of awesome.
This DVD only came with one extra, and that was a foam cut-out of child!Krishna that can be mounted on your wall.
The Legend of Prince Rama
Okay, this is a cheat, since it wasn't produced in India, but rather in Japan.
Anyway, let me get this out of the way right now: THIS MOVIE IS FABULOUS AND BLOWS EVERYTHING ELSE OUT OF THE WATER. Imagine if Studio Ghibli made a Ramayana movie. Well, this would be the movie. The animation even looks strongly reminiscent of Ghibli's trademark style. Even though this movie dates back to 1992, the animation still looks gorgeous today.
DID anyone from Ghibli work on this film? I can't find any information, but the character designs and animation technique are so spot-on Ghibli, that I have a hard time believing that nobody from Ghibli was involved.
My DVD copy came with both English and Hindi language tracks, and English subtitles. No other extras to speak of, but whatever. Both the English and the Hindi voice acting is pretty fabulous. Clips of this movie are all over YouTube, so you should definitely check it out.
Songs and Stories of Ganesha! vols. 1 and 2
ELEPHANT-HEADED, WINNOW-EARED, TWISTED-TRUNKED, ONE-TOOTHED LORD. Yes, that's actually written inside of the DVD case of Volume 1.
More animation that doesn't quite count as "animation." Still, these are stories about Ganesha, and anything involving Ganesha is automatically made of win. These DVDs are great - lots of cute songs, moral and spiritual lessons, and of course, Ganesha, who is, you know, Ganesha. Of course, because these stories are "for kids," parts of them are ridiculously sanitized. For example, in this version, the producers went with the "Shani gives baby!Ganesha the evil eye and his head burns to dust" version of baby!Ganesha's death, rather than having his own father accidentally twist his head off. See, in this version, Shiva is like the uber-perfect-father, so of course he would never do anything as silly as twisting off his own son's head. Still, the scene in which baby!Ganesha is killed is probably the most graphic and disturbing scene in the entire series.
Bonus points for the unintentionally hilarious depiction of Parvati's mid-life crisis. For all of the producer's efforts to depict Shiva as the perfect man, there's still this hilarious "Shiva can't satisfy Parvati wink-wink nudge-nudge" subtext that filters through.
As for extras, both DVDs come with a ton of freebie stuff - bookmarks, puzzles, stickers, Ganesha standees, etc. Volume 1 even comes with an audio soundtrack. "Hear Lord Ganesha's 108 names!" is advertised on the CD. I have yet to.
Long Long Ago: Hanuman
Three animated shorts about Hanuman from the Long Long Ago TV series. I have NO idea when these were made, but they look quite antiquated. Anyway, I keep saying that I'll enjoy bad hand-drawn 2D animation more easily than bad 3D animation or bad 2D flash animation. So yes, there is much bad 2D animation in here - in fact, the absolute worst out of this lot, and some of the worst that I've ever seen, period. We're talking, like, Superfriends bad here. This is some shit animation, yo. But nevertheless, it is hand-drawn, and it is infused with charm and wit and wonder, and it IS about Hanuman. Therefore, win.
Geethanjali bargain-bin bonanza: Jataka Tales, Bhima and Ekalvaya, Arjuna and Karna, and Krishna.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH MY EYES!!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
I have no words to describe the terrible "not really animation" used in any of these collections of animated shorts. It's worse than the worse internet flash video. Ugly, stiff, strange, and brain-melting, especially where the "action sequences" are concerned. Boring, slow-paced, and charmless. I think that one of the Karna shorts consisted entirely of Karna standing in one spot and blinking. I also don't know why Bhima and Ekalvaya are logical choices for being grouped together on a single DVD. That these were all made in 2006 is unforgivable.
Also, only English soundtracks on all of these. The voice-acting is grating and terrible. There's a strange mix of Hindi and British accents going on, too, which just breaks too much of the fourth wall for me.
These are officially the Ed Wood entries of the Bollywood animation industry. And no, I haven't seen the Pandavas 3D animated atrocity yet, and I don't plan to. So for now these and only these titles will be getting my Ed Wood award.
I haven't tried the CD-ROM games, so I can't comment on that. As for the extras on the DVD itself, it comes with theatrical trailers and THE WORLD'S CUTEST MUSIC VIDEO for the pop version of "Aayo Natkhat Nadlal," in which a bunch of cute kids in cute costumes dance around and sing and are terribly cute. The song itself is bilingual English and Hindi. The little "Krishna rap" bridge in English just slayed me. "Just live it up, bro! It's cool to be naughty!" Yes, those are actual English lines from the rapping part.
And you know what? Because it's Christmas, here's the music video for you. I tried to rip it with English subtitles, but I don't think that it worked. Anyway, Merry Whatever Holiday You Celebrate, and prepare to be ded from cute.
Other things about the DVD... It comes with subtitles in way too many languages. Also, like most Bollywood DVDs, in addition to chapter stops, there is also a menu that lets you skip directly to the musical numbers. I love that.
Now, as for the movie itself... I stand by what I predicted before. That 3D animation is shudder-inducingly creepy. No amount of cute music or cute voice acting can save it.
Since I've been on a big animation kick lately, and have been snatching up whatever nehaflix.com has on sale, here are some mini-reviews of what I've seen/purchased in the past couple months:
Hanuman
The 2006 animated extravaganza. I've been looking forward to seeing this since
carbonicgirl tipped me off to its existence. The DVD that I got came with only one extra, and that was a little illustrated booklet of the Hanuman Chalisa, in both Hindi and English. Which is actually INCREDIBLY useful for me, since I'm supposed to be studying my devanagari. (A transcription of the devanagari would have been useful, though, rather than just a straight English translation. But I am a n00b so I still need crutches like that.) Hanuman killed me from cute even more than Krishna did. Of curse, the latter half of the movie is a lot less cute than the first half, what with the mass gore and bloodshed, and Hanuman terrifying innocent Lankans by setting their city on fire.
The "Mahabali Maharudra" pop music video - this time featuring adorable children running around in Hanuman cosplay - rivals Krishna's music video in terms of sheer awesomeness. Also, props for getting somebody to wear ten heads and cosplay as Ravan.
On thing I'm pissed about, though, is that my DVD has no Hindi language track, even though the case advertised both English and Hindi audio options. Instead, the only option that I have is English. (The musical numbers, for some reason, are still in Hindi however.) The English voice acting is fabulous, but I wanted to hear the movie in Hindi, dammit! The false advertising on my DVD case makes me sad. T_T (I'm pretty sure that I didn't get a bootleg, either, as it's an R2 DVD and not a region-free one, and it all looks official and such... Damn.)
Vikram and Betal (volume 1)
This 2004 series is the first major success for Green Gold Animation, the studio behind Krishna: The Birth. For a series of stories told by a dead demon to a king, these are pretty entertaining. Vaayu looks like Jesus, though, I swear. The animation hardly counts as "animation", however. It looks more like a bad internet flash video, with character designs that a fifth-grader doodled on the back of his school notebook.
Extras: Previews for other DVD releases, including Beyblade (WTF anime), Fun 'n' Learn (which looks terrifying), Tales of Panchantra, Tales of Akbar and Birbal, Multiplication Tables (again, terrifying, what with the dancing numbers and all), and Yoga for Kids. Finally, there was a preview for Vikram and Betal, and it's like, WTF, this IS the Vikram and Bertal DVD, kthx.
Krishna: The Birth
Green Gold Animation's 75-minute "movie" about Krishna's birth. Unlike Vikram and Betal, this adorable movie uses REAL, ACTUAL, HAND-DRAWN, 2D ANIMATION. Of course, it's not very good animation, but like Hanuman, the movie is just so charming, that it's easy to overlook the primitive animation.
This movie surprised me by very much more dark and ominous than, you know, cute. It was more about the circumstances leading up to Krishna's birth, rather than Krishna himself, so it's not a happy story. I mean, Krishna isn't even born until ten minutes from the end of the movie. There were also no musical numbers either, which surprised me. However, the sweeping orchestral background score was all kinds of awesome.
This DVD only came with one extra, and that was a foam cut-out of child!Krishna that can be mounted on your wall.
The Legend of Prince Rama
Okay, this is a cheat, since it wasn't produced in India, but rather in Japan.
Anyway, let me get this out of the way right now: THIS MOVIE IS FABULOUS AND BLOWS EVERYTHING ELSE OUT OF THE WATER. Imagine if Studio Ghibli made a Ramayana movie. Well, this would be the movie. The animation even looks strongly reminiscent of Ghibli's trademark style. Even though this movie dates back to 1992, the animation still looks gorgeous today.
DID anyone from Ghibli work on this film? I can't find any information, but the character designs and animation technique are so spot-on Ghibli, that I have a hard time believing that nobody from Ghibli was involved.
My DVD copy came with both English and Hindi language tracks, and English subtitles. No other extras to speak of, but whatever. Both the English and the Hindi voice acting is pretty fabulous. Clips of this movie are all over YouTube, so you should definitely check it out.
Songs and Stories of Ganesha! vols. 1 and 2
ELEPHANT-HEADED, WINNOW-EARED, TWISTED-TRUNKED, ONE-TOOTHED LORD. Yes, that's actually written inside of the DVD case of Volume 1.
More animation that doesn't quite count as "animation." Still, these are stories about Ganesha, and anything involving Ganesha is automatically made of win. These DVDs are great - lots of cute songs, moral and spiritual lessons, and of course, Ganesha, who is, you know, Ganesha. Of course, because these stories are "for kids," parts of them are ridiculously sanitized. For example, in this version, the producers went with the "Shani gives baby!Ganesha the evil eye and his head burns to dust" version of baby!Ganesha's death, rather than having his own father accidentally twist his head off. See, in this version, Shiva is like the uber-perfect-father, so of course he would never do anything as silly as twisting off his own son's head. Still, the scene in which baby!Ganesha is killed is probably the most graphic and disturbing scene in the entire series.
Bonus points for the unintentionally hilarious depiction of Parvati's mid-life crisis. For all of the producer's efforts to depict Shiva as the perfect man, there's still this hilarious "Shiva can't satisfy Parvati wink-wink nudge-nudge" subtext that filters through.
As for extras, both DVDs come with a ton of freebie stuff - bookmarks, puzzles, stickers, Ganesha standees, etc. Volume 1 even comes with an audio soundtrack. "Hear Lord Ganesha's 108 names!" is advertised on the CD. I have yet to.
Long Long Ago: Hanuman
Three animated shorts about Hanuman from the Long Long Ago TV series. I have NO idea when these were made, but they look quite antiquated. Anyway, I keep saying that I'll enjoy bad hand-drawn 2D animation more easily than bad 3D animation or bad 2D flash animation. So yes, there is much bad 2D animation in here - in fact, the absolute worst out of this lot, and some of the worst that I've ever seen, period. We're talking, like, Superfriends bad here. This is some shit animation, yo. But nevertheless, it is hand-drawn, and it is infused with charm and wit and wonder, and it IS about Hanuman. Therefore, win.
Geethanjali bargain-bin bonanza: Jataka Tales, Bhima and Ekalvaya, Arjuna and Karna, and Krishna.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH MY EYES!!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
I have no words to describe the terrible "not really animation" used in any of these collections of animated shorts. It's worse than the worse internet flash video. Ugly, stiff, strange, and brain-melting, especially where the "action sequences" are concerned. Boring, slow-paced, and charmless. I think that one of the Karna shorts consisted entirely of Karna standing in one spot and blinking. I also don't know why Bhima and Ekalvaya are logical choices for being grouped together on a single DVD. That these were all made in 2006 is unforgivable.
Also, only English soundtracks on all of these. The voice-acting is grating and terrible. There's a strange mix of Hindi and British accents going on, too, which just breaks too much of the fourth wall for me.
These are officially the Ed Wood entries of the Bollywood animation industry. And no, I haven't seen the Pandavas 3D animated atrocity yet, and I don't plan to. So for now these and only these titles will be getting my Ed Wood award.
bhima
Re: bhima
bhima's definitely one of pandavas whom i love the most, after all, when it comes down to it, he's often the only one who leaps to Draupadi's defense, right or not. yuddhisthir just plain gets on my nerves. i'm sorry, i know he's the epitome of righteousness and all that, but more often than not, i feel like just shaking him by the shoulders and yelling, "grow some balls and defend your wife!!!!". oy.