DISGUISES AND MAKE UPS

I have always been fascinated by the deadly art of illusion in the Hollywood movies- the images of ghosts in EVIL DEAD for instance, is a truly remarkable art of make ups. The make up artists dedicate considerable effort to bring out the grotesque, beautiful, scary, princely and alien faces. Of the recent movies, I have shown here two images of "works of art", one Hollywood and the other Bollywood.

The hollywood and bollywood comparison is always bound to happen when I splash two images- and Hollywood is still light years ahead of the rest of the pack. But Bollywood is slowly but surely catching up in the make-up department. The first picture is from 300, and it shows a grab of the persian warrior elite(The Immortals), as shown in the movie. The movie is itself is a technical masterpiece with unbelievable graphics and costume design. The other picture is from the Bollywood hit DHOOM 2, and it is remarkable in the context of Indian cinema make-up history. Very few images come across my mind as splendid as this. True, this is nothing special in Hollywood but it really did fool the audience into thinking that this was someone else, and not Hrithik.

Surely, we can expect some good movies with better graphics and costume design in the Indian movies of the future. There were many disasters in the name of make up and camouflages in Indian movies until very recently. A mere moustache would make a woman into a man and the joke is, the movie goes about seriously with that disguise! Many instance of a wig being very obvious is also seen; and a lot of other ventures in the name of "graphics" looked like playing a 90s era computer game! But good news is that Indian cinema makers perhaps have taken note of the comedy show and they are getting pretty serious about it.

Shankar is a remarkable director who always uses some sort of graphics or employes elaborate make ups for the actors in his movies, and his techniques though not really on par with Hollywood, are definitely a cut above the rest; Ram Gopal Verma focusses on the grotesqueness in his horror films (which is getting better) and we have a host of budding wannabe artists who are getting there at the top.

Maybe we will soon see an Indian version of movies like Jurassic park, X-Men,...