Asoka

[Ron Edwards]

What a weird movie. I mean, you have ...

- This hard-core, operatic, empire-toppling plot going on. Grim and horrific and blood-stained, broken hearts everywhere. Marriages to the wrong people, at least ten failed or successful assassinations. All kinds of grief. Battles with charges and elephants. (Real elephants, cool)

- Plain fun romance, with really good-looking leads and the usual funny bits of flirtation vs. hard-to-get that go with it, plus the key misunderstanding, and so on. The guys get to walk around bare-chested with swoony, floaty scarves; the chicks all have tattoos.

- Songs. Yeah, songs. Basically 80s-style music videos, right in the middle of the movie. It's like watching, oh, Throne of Blood or The Seven Samurai, but then once in a while, some girl or a bunch of villagers will just ... sing! And dance all these sexy numbers. This goes on for a solid pop-hit length of time and then it's over, and we're back into the movie.

- Swordfights with this odd dance-style, leaping, stylized choreography, like the overwrought Chinese opera stuff in the Shaw Bros films, except all with this Hindi culture motif. But among all the leaping, almost all the decisive moves are quite nasty-looking and worth a scene re-play.

I am rock-solid positive that India never really looked like this back in 300 B.C., but it should have, and I'm certain that's what Svastara looks like on Weyrth. The Riddle of Steel is the perfect game for this sort of movie, excepting the musical numbers.

What the hell are they doing over there in Bollywood? I'm renting some more of this stuff.

Best,
Ron

[Brian Leybourne]

The Riddle of Steel is the perfect game for this sort of movie, excepting the musical numbers.

What, you mean Jake's NOT going to record a musical entitled "The Music of the Riddle of Steel" and sell it? Aww... :-)

More seriously, yeah, I know what you're saying. Most of the Bollywood stuff is pretty bad, but a few kind of make you sit up and say "wow".

Brian.

[wraeththu]

Bollywood loves it's musical numbers.  It's as if they watched too many Elvis movies as children, and now they think there are bandmembers waiting in the bushes with guitars and drums for every scene.

Great little movie though.  Personally, I was just surprised to see a movie made about such an important Buddhist figure.

-wade jones

[Jake Norwood]

Hmmm...you know my wife and mother are both Yogies...

Now I gotta go see it.

Jake

[Bankuei]

And here I thought I was the only one to be fiending for more info on Svastara!  Other good things to check out are the tales, Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the movie Kama Sutra: A tale of love(not porn related, thankyouverymuch).

East Indian tales are rife with SA's, honor, loyalty, vows, betrayal, love, and everything that makes a good TROS tale.

Chris