don

January 19 movie: Don. Oh. My. God. This movie is amazing. 70's Bollywood extravanganza starring Amitabh in dual roles as a bad ass crime lord, and a kind-hearted slacker who has to impersonate the crime lord. The soundtrack is unbelievable. It's wacka-chicka brilliance. The movie is kind like an Indian Superfly. If that sounds the slightest bit appealing to you, you should rent this right now. Dishoom!

[Edited to add:] Georg did some research and discovered that while there is a soundtrack album for Don, it only includes the songs, not the score, i.e. the incidental music. Which is a shame because the score is definitely the best part of the movie. It was written by Kalyanji-Anandji, and the main theme shows up on Bombay the Hard Way, slightly remixed by Dan the Automater. Not that the songs are bad! We liked them too. Especially one near the end, in which Amitabh sings about the joys of mixing drugs, in this case a drink called "opiate" and betel leaf.

There's apparently an "unofficial soundtrack album" which someone made by ripping the incidental tracks off the DVD, which Georg is trying to track down. Meanwhile I had given myself today to goof off, so I spent the afternoon playing around with my Mac and figured out how to do the same. I probably won't have the patience to go through the entire movie and put together an entire unofficial soundtrack of my own, but I did make MP3s of a couple of the best tracks:

First, Roma's theme (approx 30 seconds). Roma is the heroine, played by Zeenat Aman and spends the movie kicking bad guy ass with her mad kung fu skills. I dare you to listen to this without jumping up and boogieing.

Second, the main title theme (approx 2.5 min). I haven't yet figured out how to rip a video clip out of a DVD, which is too bad because this theme plays over psychadelic green and orange images guaranteed to give you a major flashback. If I can figure it out before we return the movie on Monday, I'll post it on Youtube. Otherwise, rent the movie yourself! You know you want to. Be sure to get the original from 1978, starring Amitabh. Not the remake from last year starring Shahrukh Khan.