Heh-- Have you seen the "Benny Lava" video, Frank?

It's like Miami Vice meets Bollywood.

Now I'm imagining The Usual Suspects with musical numbers.

There were no musical numbers in...wait, I think there was a party scene. Anyway, it wasn't a typical song-and-dance extravaganza.

That was, perhaps, the most impressive display of geekery I have ever seen.

I hadn't seen that episode in a while, but it was during the height of my Next Gen fannishness. I doubt I could repeat the feat today.

It's like Miami Vice meets Bollywood.

See, that one makes sense, because the music was such a part of the original.

Anyway, it wasn't a typical song-and-dance extravaganza.

No dancing, singing Kayser Soze? What a pity.

Well, according to Wikipedia:

"Benny Lava" is an Internet meme that began when the video for the song "Kalluri Vaanil" from the Indian Tamil movie Pennin Manathai Thottu was uploaded to YouTube by mondegreen director "Buffalax" [1]. The video was edited to include English subtitles that approximate the original Tamil lyrics phonetically.

The name comes from Buffalax' redubbing of the Tamil lead line "Kalluri vaanil kaayndha nilaavo?" as "My looney bun is fine, Benny Lava!". Since then, Prabhu Deva has commonly been referred to as "Benny Lava" on the internet. Much of the video's appeal rests on the sexual innuendo in some of the subtitles. The video has been called "the web's craziest dance clip" or "Crazy Indian music video," and the song in the video has become a popular ringtone[2].

But it LOOKS like Miami Vice meets Bollywood.

[link]

No dancing, singing Kayser Soze? What a pity.

There is a special appearance by Baby Spice, though.

FYI, the Indian equivalent of Keyser Soze is named...Murtuza Arzai.

Everything about the Trek movie still makes my skin crawl. Which weirds me out because I'm not sure exactly what it is I'm appalled by. I love the original show because I was raised on it, but I never cared about the spin-offs because they were boring and lacked fist-fights, and I wouldn't know about most of the canon violatons unless they were pointed out to me. So it's not that.

I've been trying to figure it out all day, and I think this is at least part of it: Star Trek is Not Cool, in some essential way. Star Wars can be Cool; Star Trek, no. Star Trek is about humanism and optimism and rationality and I believe those are good things, but they are not Cool things. So I see a trailer that is practically shrieking "this is cool and edgy and dude, Kirk is such a rebel, and he's even riding a motorcycle -- that's how damn cool this movie is!" And that really seems so anti-Trek that it offends me and makes me get all fangirly about it and then I hate myself.

But I must repeat that for all the flailing attempts at being cool, they kept the pajamas and miniskirts, and that's just fucking stupid. And somehow seems to encapsulate what's Wrong about the movie for me -- it seems like they totally missed what made a cheesy show iconic, and randomly decided the important thing was the uniforms.

[Also: I can occasionally identify TOS episodes by the planet. My brother's better at it. But I am awesome at recognizing episodes of Buck Rogers. Which is even dorkier, so thank you and good night.]

But I must repeat that for all the flailing attempts at being cool, they kept the pajamas and miniskirts, and that's just fucking stupid. And somehow seems to encapsulate what's Wrong about the movie for me -- it seems like they totally missed what made a cheesy show iconic, and randomly decided the important thing was the uniforms.

It's funny that you harp on this because a friend of mine was really glad they kept the uniforms. Heh.

Star Wars can be Cool

Not any more. I think Lucas made it impossible with The Phantom Suckage, Send in the Clones, et al.

Star Wars can still be cool if you've never seen the last 3 movies. Or the Thanksgiving TV Special... t shudder