An Indian Summer

I'm very happy to see Anurag Basu's Hindi film KITES fly so high in the charts. KITES is the first Bollywood (I hate that term as I find it belittles Indian cinema) movie to crack the US Top 10 with a cume of nearly $1 million. Over here in the UK, KITES came in at #5 with a staggering £273,958 on just 70 screens. It's big news and with the coming release of Brett Ratner's 'REMIX: KITES', which will be a more accessible though pretty pointless version of the movie for Western palates, KITES may finally be the Hindi movie to crossover into the mainstream. This year 3 IDIOTS and MY NAME IS KHAN have proved that commercial Indian cinema has an eye to coax dour white people into shaking off their repressed personas and embracing the cinematic fun Hindi cinema offers. The worry is Indian producers are going to have their eye on an international hit and will eschew the very elements that have made Indian cinema distinctly Indian. Modern commercial Hindi cinema is by no means great, but it is special in its own way and especially to the sub-continental diaspora who really value what it has to offer. It would be a shame to whitewash it.