Cinema Betty

As soon as I re-read The Silver Thaw I was so excited. A love triangle! Perfect! I had just watched a fantastic movie about that very thing. As you may know, I abhor Book Clubs with the heat of a thousand hot, hot suns. That's why I run a movie club with Betty Kylene called Cinema Domingo. Anyway, we've been looking forward to doing a Bollywood movie for a long time and after her extensive pre-views, she decided on:

Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam

I knew it would be perfect for Cinema Betty. Spoiled gorgeous rich girl falls in love with lightweight. Awesome Indian Barrister (Dutch Doctor equivalent) asks for her hand in marriage. When he realizes that she's in love with someone else, he moves heaven and earth trying to get them back together--because he actually loves her that much!

The movie will leave you wondering why Hollywood is incapable of producing romantic comedies anymore (The Wedding Date!), why Aishwarya Rai has to be so much more beautiful than any other woman in the history of the X chromosome and wishing you could understand all the nuances of Indian culture. Yes, there is one too many dance numbers, it is a bit on the silly side and you will have to read sub-titles for three hours but you'll thank me by putting it on the Netflix queue. It touches tragedy and pathos and slapstick and romance and duty and saris, saris, saris! Here's a taste. (RDD in white having his dawning realization, Tom Crouch in black and the most gorgeous woman in the world singing about lemons.) Without giving anything away, I will say that we get a pretty great HEA.


Betty Debbie and I agreed that Heaven Around the Corner had to be paired with a film with a lot of bridges. What better than...

The Bridge on the River Kwai

Our hero Simon Savage is a British civil engineer who builds...bridges--much like Colonel Nickolson... If we agree to call Claudia 'Colonel Saito'(who drinks a lot and throws tantrums) then it practically fits like a glove. Now, does that make our heroine William Holden?