Friday 20 March 2009

You love cheese. You love Yaks. Why not combine the two?

My first interest in Indian culture came a few years ago, through the concidental timing of a great Peugeot ad and a cute Indian girl I worked with. The Indian girl taught me that Punjabi girls are the hottest of all the states, and the Peugeot ad taught me nothing at all, but did make me laugh.



The music by Bhangra Knights got me interested for a little while, until... well, something better probably came along. But while in India over the past 4 weeks I took every opportunity to watch MTV. Nearly every song was new to me (a novel concept for MTV) and most songs were soundtracks for movies, but every single song, without fail, was cheesey. Not just Fromage... This was Yak Cheese. The cheesiest of them all.

Like all good dance music videos of the past 8 years (thanks Benny Benassi) hot girls have been added to an otherwise boring film clip. But the Indian film clips for movie soundtracks can't help themselves, and have to have the huge dance offs I have secretly grown to love. Any single Bollywood soundtrack video will have more irrelevant dance-offs than a Jennifer Lopez clip. One of the silliest is from Dostana, a movie about 2 guys who... oh who cares, it's a stupid plot and an even dumber film clip (despite featuring Priyanka Chopra).

If you want to see the dance-off, click here. If you'd rather watch kittens being born, click here. (I'm serious; don't call my bluff...)

Anyway, the introduction to Priyanka Chopra was worth sitting through the dumb film clips for Dostana and I did watch another of her films on the plane- Fashion, which was actually pretty good.



There were 2 hip hop clips worthy of a mention. Both because I liked them despite not having a clue what they were banging on about, and because they were the only two songs which could successfully clear my head of the painfully boring Jack Johnson song 'Banana Pancakes' after 2 weeks.

The first was from a movie called Chandni Chowk to China which is a kung fu piss take and a great song but YouTube wont let me put it on the site... Click here for the video. The second song is from a movie I saw on the plane which was partly filmed in Gold Coast, and has glimpses of brilliance but is, on the whole, what we in the industry like to call Yak Cheese.

Check the film clip anyway. Snoop D O double G is in it.



As I sit here writing this drivel, 4Music is playing what looks to be a pisspoor attempt at a Bollywood dance-off by the Puddy Tat Dolls. I guess being half Filipino, half Hawaiian, Nicole Scherzinger is the only one in the dance troupe who thinks she can get away with wearing a Hindu Bindi on her forehead... C'mon girls, if you're going to dance on a train platform, you'll have to do better than the credits of Slumdog.



Your homework for this weekend is to watch an Indian film. Bollywood or otherwise and rate it in terms of cheesiness: "Cheese", "Kraft Singles", "Fromage" or the worst- "Yak Cheese". It's hit and miss but some of them can be hilarious.

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