Cheaters. Plagiarists. Scoundrels. What will you call them? Countless times articles have been written on this topic but here I am, once again, trying to find some logic behind the mindset of Indian film-makers. Doubtless, I am a big movie freak. I love to watch quality cinema and I appreciate some of the nice, entertaining and most importantly original work of the film-makers of India and all around the world.
But as my number of DVDs increase and as I go deeper in the world of movies I find myself in complete anguish. It is not because my interest has wavered but because it has come to my knowledge that many of the Indian movies and songs have been copied from the movies/songs from all around the world.
Earlier I had some knowledge that some talentless lyricists and directors try to ‘recreate’ the magic of Hollywood in Bollywood. I laughed off when I saw the movie ‘The Killer’ which was a shameless copy of the movie ‘Collateral’. My belief in ‘Mr. Perfectionist’ ended with the release of ‘Ghajini’ whose central idea was copied from Nolan’s ‘Memento’. There are countless examples which all of us are capable of searching in the Internet.
Indian music is not a field of jokers or plagiarists. In early India any musician who dared to perform another artist’s work without reference was banished from the kingdom. The law book says ‘Copyright infringement is a cognizable offense that is punishable under law’. And I would like to describe law in India, but not today. I will blog about it some other day.
Forget law, is there no self-esteem in these morons (Moron = IQ of 50-70). India is definitely not a country which is incapable of producing geniuses like Hans Zimmer. AR Rahman is only one of the countless examples. The point is that when an enthusiastic and talented youngster wants to learn music in India he/she is mocked upon and sent to a technical course where the talent starts and ends in ‘Utsav’.
A kiss. Or a bed-scene. Our Censorship Board is over-whelmed in giving an ‘A’ certificate to a class or quality film. But why does it not ever try to ban the movies which ridicule this country because of some unoriginal work? This is quite an unfortunate phenomenon which is rapidly growing in India and the mass population is deprived of its right to view excellent and original work.
What prompted me to write this was an incidence of yesterday. There was a video put up by a friend of mine in ‘the great wall of Facebook’ which was the Russian song ‘Kalinka’. It was written by composer and folklorist Ivan Larionov. The Russian ‘Alexandrov Ensemble’ has performed the song.
The beats of a popular song ‘’Darling’ of the movie ‘7 Khoon Maaf’ closely resemble the original song. The song ‘Kalinka’ has been used by numerous bands and individuals before this. Though there are countless versions of the song, you may watch and enjoy one of the understandable version (which is also a copy) of this song here
Let us avoid watching the work which is badly reproduced in front of us. Maybe flops would make the film-makers think and come up with some original ideas of their own and the tag of cheaters would be finally removed from the Indian film-makers.
Nice one Tanmay! But nothing's gonna be done about this! The vast hindi hinterland is gonna lap up such songs and will not listen to calls against plagiarism for some time!! Case in point – Anu Malik, who was the king of such Plagiarism!! He is now a "Reputable" judge of talent!!
Thanks! Exactly…it is because of people like him that I think ten times before going to a Bolly hit! Hopefully talented Indian directors will live up to our expectations and not go the 'Anu Malik' way!
But there is a icing to this situation …take a bunch of rude people and go have fun mocking at these movies..it helps cool your anger…This will sound rude again but some 1% of the "sensible and intelligent" crowd boycotting the movies wont help. The movie is made for the other 99% who will watch the movies for the "KOOOOL" songs and katrina's moves in the item numbers, karena's…(i really dont know what) !
I agree!! Obviously life would have been less cheerful without Sheila 🙂 But the 'sensible and intelligent' crowd will always get the best of both the worlds 🙂