September 22, 2006
I Really Shouldn't Blog This, But...Humor
The “little superstar’s” moves are actually pretty tight (he’s a little person, not a child). Rajnikanth is there, and according to some of the Youtube commentors, there is some discussion of whether he should be smoking cigarettes or not. Oh, and the hip hop/ electro track is by MC Miker G & DJ Sven (“Holiday Rap”). I have no idea what movie it is (Rajnikanth has been in hundreds)… though I suspect someone out there might know.
amardeep on September 22, 2006 08:31 PM in Humor · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
Amardeep. You just blogged about a break dancing brown midget, ahem, I mean, "little person." You just gained so many cool points in my book.
O H M Y G O D D D D D D D . . .
I loved it. That was just brilliant. My god he was better than MJ himself.
Tamil humor in movies used to consist entirely of fat Men Fridays with thinur besmudged foreheads speaking in falsetto, this is a huge step fwd
Huh..??.. are you talking about how tamilians are portrayed in Hindi movies.. Humor in movies has been used from the advent of Tamil cinema (N.S.Krishnan et.al from 1950s) to spread egalitarian ideas and this is no step fwd..
No dude, I'm Tamil and I'm just pointing out that most humor in Indian mass market cinema is physical in nature. I do know that there are Tamil movies that are message oriented and utilize more subtle humor. I am a 3 Stooges & Farrely Bros fan and enjoy this kind of thing, but there is a bit of the squirm factor over finding amusement in a person whose life must be very difficult
Amardeep, honestly - you da man!
The little person actually goes by the name of "Jackie Chan" and used to regularly feature in tamil movies in the late 80s/ early 90s. I think this particular movie is "Maveeran" - the tamil version of "Mard", with Rajnikanth taking over Big B's role.
Holy crap!! That was soo hyphy!
You just made everything better by posting that.
...Holy crap. Just when I thought Solla Solla Enda Perumai was the shit, you post this up. Agreed Amardeep, your cool points just keep rising exponentially.
That dude is actually threatening to bite thalaivar's thing off. Note how he bares his teeth and menacingly shakes his head in the vicinity of the lungi. In fact, he starts with various grasping/clutching actions. He's excited with anticipation and rattles his limbs to show that. It's anticlimatic that he just weakly retreats when Rajni puts a symbolic substitute in his mouth towards the end.
you know what makes me laugh harder...
is that someone sent me this link about 6 hours before you put up this post.
Guys, I'm afraid I don't deserve too many cool points for this -- 168,000 people had already seen the clip before someone left a tip on the News Tab alerting us to it! I should also point out that I posted this at 8:30 on a Friday night ;-)
Amardeep, it's midnight, i got back from the library at 9:30 and ate ramen noodles [eeewww!]. stop hinting at your lameness and take a look at me. i win.
A brilliant work, epic in scope with obvious echoes of both Bakhtin and Arbus. Kudos, my good man! Kudos!
I just showed this video to my little sisters and we've resolved to learn his dance steps. So we can be cool too.
you provided much needed comic relief for me tonight! thanks.
Wow. Using the little person angle as the base of humour or not, his moves are mesmerizing! As for smoking, when they're talking as Rajnikanth lights up, The Little Superstar asks for a puff, and Rajni tells him that kids shouldn't smoke, at which point The Little Superstar reminds him that he's actually a little older than Rajni. Hehe.
He actually says that he's TEN years older than Rajnikanth. He also threatens to tear him up if Rajni doesn't give him the bidi. Sorry, Taz. Didn't realize little sisters were going to be reading this. I hope to see this at the next meetup :-)
Uuuhhh, I kinda knew these steps to begin with. Rajnikant and Prabhu Deva are my idols.
Marble floors, Prabhu Deva, Rajnikant, and MC Hammer on tape results in some weird, weird, experiences.
That just made my day! Thanks Amardeep.
I like the dance, but I just don't see what's funny. Tamil cinema has a long history of using people's appearance for "humor". Much easier to put up a fat man, black man/thin man/short man/bald man than to have your humor be entirely based on writing good jokes. Usually the aspects of appearance used are things that people have no control over.
You know...it doesn't hurt to take the PC stick out of your ass every now and then.
Aiyooo what about the fact that Rajni still plays the protagonist even though he is old enough to be the grandpa of his leading ladies. I noticed in the scene that he is looking old enough to be the Appa of the woman who is playing is Amma.
Same goes for the highly over-rated AB and Shahrukh "stuttering" Khan. They current crop of women they are running around the trees with were in diapers when these guys started in movies. Looks like the shelf-life of men and women in desi movies is radically different.
Amen!
Dugg! (no 1 in digg/videos!)
@ Kurma .. oops, I thought I heard ten minutes!
The little person actually goes by the name of "Jackie Chan" and used to regularly feature in tamil movies in the late 80s/ early 90s. I think this particular movie is "Maveeran" - the tamil version of "Mard", with Rajnikanth taking over Big B's role.
Is Jackie Chan his real name? I wonder how they'all come up with they-ah names in Tamil movies. There is "Shivaji" Ganesan and then there is this dude name Napoleon. Not sure if I am spelling it correctly. I think he might spell it as "Napolean" a la Veeran and Selvan.
the movie is "Adisaya Piravi" - http://imdb.com/title/tt0318275/
Very common in Classical music too. "Maharajapuram" Santhanam, "Delhi" Balaji etc. My guess is, just like people use last names in the West to distinguish between the many Steves and Janes, people use these nicknames in the Tamil cinema.
I am still undecided if I should laugh or cry after watching this video.
lol Yeah, good point. However, I'm sure that even you, when you first saw this, had an instinctive response of "Holy shit! A dancing midget!" before the PC'ness kicked in.
Yeah, the "PC'ness" was not my first response. But neither was "Holy shit! A dancing midget!". I thought "typical Rajni movie stuff. Hey, that guy's not bad at all". I did enjoy a lot of this kind of stuff in Tamil movies and used to laugh while I was a kid. So, it's not a surprising thing to me. But I also used to throw stones at stray dogs and catch insects and crush them for no reason.
Why is having some compassion or empathy same as being "PC"? It seems that the only thing that's politically correct nowadays is to be "politically incorrect". I'm not blaming anyone for laughing at this as a first reaction. But how about taking a moment afterwards to think about how the "midgets" are sufferers or extreme discrimination. Almost all jobs they can get are the ones where others can laugh at them such as in movies, circuses and the like. A restaurant called Señor Pepe's in Chennai has a 3 ft guy in a sombrero at the door. They've been doing it for 10 years and folks love it (I'm not exactly sure why) and many laugh.
Senor Pepe's. Oh man, I remember the midget at that restaurant. I went there about once or twice. Is that same man still around?
Man, little brown would TOTALLY win in a dance-off with Verne Troyer.
By the way, would anyone else other than me pay good money to see that? God, why can't there be pay-per-view by request line?
Am I high or did I just see what I think I just saw?
PrabhuDeva es an dios. This bidi-smokin badass looks like he probably trained with PD.
Word. I spent most of my teenage years biting Prabhu Deva's dance moves. He is the man, and the source of my adolescent fascination with bidi smoking.
Prabhudeva was totally the man. The hit combo was PD's dance and Rahman's music.
I gave up very VERY quickly. Why don't we see such dancers (of any height) in Bollywood? That'd be cool.
another clip from the little guy's movie:
Little superstar kicks ass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iw2uT43D-s
Why should you blog this? That clip rules, period. The kid rocks by any standard. Sometimes you gotta forget about your own color or whatever, man....
Why shouldnt you, i mean...
HEY - our little superstar made it to VH1's Best Week Ever!
We've made it!!!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2542115979461212026&q=kannada+english&hl=en