Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Blogging MouseRaj Continues!

So now we've learned that MouseRaj's first project will be an animated feature titled Roadside Romeo, starring the voice talent of Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan.

(I could make some kind of crack right now along the lines of "Kareena has a voice???" but I won't.)

Right now they're planning to market primarily in India, but Disney would like to take the film to a world audience. Um... yeah. Because children everywhere love reading subtitles. Are Kareena and Saif planning to do an English-language track? Or is MouseRaj going to recast with Lindsay Lohan and Justin Timberlake?

(And BTW -- be careful when distributing in Canada; in parts of Toronto, "roadside" is urban slang for "promiscuous.")

The film is about a lost dog. It's also been reported to include "Bollywood-style dance numbers."

So it'll be one dog in the front, with two blonde dogs on either side, backed by about five rows of dogs, all dancing. The real question is whether they will dance on four legs, or whether MouseRaj will anthropomorphize them and have them dance on two legs, doing the patented BollywoodBhangra arm movements with their front paws.

And if they are anthropomorphized and dancing on two legs, will these dogs be wearing clothing? And if not, will their genitalia just kind of be glossed over? Will the blonde dogs have feminine curves? Will they be the kind of anthromorphized animals with long, human hair (and the two ears poking out)? And in that case, will there be dogs with moustaches?

Will the sexual metaphors be canine-related? That is, instead of two flowers blooming, will we see... um... rain falling on a fire hydrant? Or better yet -- someone unscrewing the fire hydrant and water shooting out?

Will the dogs pee on the tree after they dance around it?

MouseRaj's second project is an animated version of Dhoom 3 featuring SRK. Before I get all "Dhoom is now for children???" I want to ask this: if we're capitalizing on Bollywood stars' voices, why is no one tapping Mr. Bachchan, the only Bollywood star actually known for his voice? Or... did they ask and he refused?

The article notes that Disney has already made an animated Ramayana. (Yeah, I went WTF and where can I get a copy???!!!, just like y'all did.) However, I did the research and found out that they're actually referring to a film made by Nippon Animation (the distribution rights are handled by Disney).

This film's title? Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama.

It is now on my list of goals to make an animated film titled New Testament: The Legend of Prince Jesus.

Anyone know how to draw?

5 comments:

Beth Loves Bollywood said...

1) I love dogs and I love Bollywood, but I'm not sure I'm keen to put those two things together.
2) I can't draw, but I make a mean sock puppet. Stop-motion animation, anyone?

P said...

Hhahahah!! Its sooo lame that am actually looking fwd to the ani movie!

Anonymous said...

Blue,

Yeah, the whole Ramayana-is-a-legend bothers me no end, but looking past that, I've seen that animated version of Ramayana and it's not too bad - the illustrations are kind of on the amar-chitra-katha side but Rama was suitably hunky, and improbably blue-green, just like in the ACK comics, so quite familiar looking. I remember it as being pretty abbreviated, which is to be expected, but not a bad effort overall.

Bitterlemons

Anonymous said...

a legend about a dog prince?

Seems as likely as all the legends about Jesus...or any other religion. But that's my skepticism coming out again...

I just wanna know what the songs are gunna be like... I mean, what'll be the big "be our guest" number or what will the villain sing, if not "poor unfortunate souls."

Let's just hope it's not bad...

Blue said...

Daniel, Roadside Romeo is about a lost dog. The Ramayana is about Rama -- look him up on the wiki.

Making a cartoon that calls Rama a legend is rather like making a cartoon that implies Jesus is made-up. ^__^

As for the musical numbers -- go to YouTube and do a search for "K3G shava." You'll get a prototypical Bollywood musical number.

Then all you have to do is imagine the animated version! (With dancing dogs!)