The Telegraph: tremors in Bollywood as markets hug Hollywood. Not surprising. Given the most Indian directors haven’t gone beyond the tired themes of love, friendship and boy-meets-girl bubble romance, why should people pay to watch Hindi films, especially now that English ones are also available in the local lingo? Film music standards have come down, dialog has gone to the dogs, the dresses actresses wear are more substantial than the plot (and that’s not saying much for the dresses); in general, Bollywood has gotten predictable — and still refuses to acknowledge the advances Hollywood has made in cinema. The incredibly talented Govind Nihlani, who made Tamas and Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa and probably couldn’t make a bubble-romance movie to save his life, puts it very well: Audiences are not excited by us anymore. Their tastes have changed. Darn right.

Last week, it was my ill fortune to see Kaante, a bad re-make of Reservoir Dogs (hey, I was bored and had nothing else to do), which apparently had been shot fully in LA and promised ‘Hollywood production values’. Boy, was I disappointed. Bad editing, a cameraman who had a bad case of the jitters (guys, even heard of the Steadicam? Oh, the jitter was meant to induce a film noir effect, you say? Ok. but to me it mostly looked like film-noir-by-accident), the most ridiculous bank robbery ever committed onto film, and Sanjay Dutt (and most of the rest) spouting scatological profundities like he was still in the Mumbai docks — that surely left the largely ‘family’ audience embarrassed (it was the opening weekend, most came to see what Amitabh Bachhan was upto in this movie). Two days before, I was at the India premiere of Die Another Day — nothing earth-shaking, but solid production values and good, if mindless, fun. Don’t know why I bother with Hindi movies at all: guess its some renegade hope-against-hope within me that this time they’ll get things right.

Of course, when Nihlani says, We can’t make a Titanic here, he is only half right: Ang Lee needed only $12M to complete Crouching Tiger (which was the most expensive Chinese film to date): nowhere near $270M for Lord of the Rings or $300M for Titanic. Danny Boyle needed even less to complete 28 Days Later, which did well in the British charts this year (he used Digital Video to cut cost); whereas Sanjay Bhansali burned through almost Rs 50 crore ($10M) to create Devdas, the most expensive Hindi movie, which turned out to be a barely passable song-n-dance turkey where the sets looked very good. It barely made its money back. I think the lesson is clear: big budget (by Indian standards) films will have storylines to support their budgets, and (if used) the effects have to be real, not cheesy phong-shaded monsters. That means a world-class production facility in India. And ’til you have that, dramas (I thought Road was passable, and the box office gave its thumbs-up to Raaz, for example) will do well. And the further you are from boy-meets-girl crap, the better.

PS. This might be a good Hindi film to watch this winter: Mr and Mrs Iyer. Interesting storyline.