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The fabulous thing about the internet is that one moment you can be living in the USA, minding your own business, knowing diddlysquat about India - and the next thing you know you're attending the handy Indian theater down the street you never knew existed before (watching films you can't understand a word of) and frantically trying to get a grip on the difference between Telugu and Hindi movies.

Well, these things happen. Since I've seen two whole Telugu movies now - Thammudu and Annayya - somebody asked me what it's like sitting through these lengthy, foreign, non-subtitled films and how they compare to Hollywood movies.

A little background: the reason I started going is that I had the good fortune to make friends with an Indian actor through the internet. I'd acquired most of his material on videotape before seeing him in the theater and had shared a good bit of it with a number of friends. When I had the chance to see him on the big screen some of these friends went too. Essentially we were there strictly as a private fan club for this actor. That's a nice idea, but not necessarily a good thing to do when the actor in question is the villain, not the hero, so you end up with a group of people in the audience reacting the wrong way to the wrong parts of the film... such as somebody screaming the guy's name at the top of her lungs the instant he shows up onscreen, which the innocents around you take as a sign of insanity. I am NOT the one who did that. I think the one who did is not even ashamed about it.

As for what I thought of the movies, well... compared to Hollywood films, they're really long. Hollywood makes lengthy epics: Gone With the Wind, Schindler's List, Titanic. The average Hollywood film lasts from an hour and a half to maybe two hours; anything over two hours is considered a "long" movie, and requires a sweeping plot to justify the time taken to tell it. A domestic drama or comedy that long is an automatic risk for box-office failure. "Meet Joe Black" is a recent example of a film that was criticized specifically for its length - and other things too, but mainly the length - which was not supported by the type of story it was telling.

It's not fair to apply the same criteria to Indian movies, which as I understand it are traditionally two and a half hours or longer; it's the way they're done, and the customary audiences expect it. So while I tried to be patient, I did find myself noting scenes that took up a lot of time and simply weren't necessary to the story. They usually seem to be either comic segments that are entertaining but don't really accomplish anything, or speeches. Though I can't follow the dialog, it's easy enough to tell when one character is giving another a lecture. Whenever somebody starts lecturing in these movies, they go on and on.

I noticed a certain lack of realism in some respects. While the stories were essentially realistic, some details about the filming were a bit jarring. Two factors which jumped out were that although the sympathetic characters were supposed to be common working people and not rich, they all lived in magnificent houses full of beautiful furniture and artwork. In Hollywood movies, poor and middle-class people are shown in realistic poor and middle-class surroundings.

Also, the women always looked stunning, even when they were just waking up in the morning; their hair always looked like it had just been combed and their faces were always perfect, as if they had slept in their makeup.

I also noticed that in both these films young people were punished by being thrown out of the house by their elders, and they spent the night outside freezing. Why didn't they just go to a friend's house? And since I was paying so much attention to the VILLAIN in these movies, I also noticed with some amusement that it seems the villains have to be extremely bad so they really deserve what's coming to them! They're not merely greedy or bad-tempered or vengeful; they're pathologically cruel.

One thing that invariably comes up when Americans watch fighting in Indian movies: the fights are mostly cartoonish, and even when the action is realistic (as in the kickboxing scenes), the loud exaggerated sound effects make it seem like it isn't. For the record, though, I went to the trouble of comparing some fighting in Indian movies with some in non-Indian movies while having the sound off completely on the tv. It wasn't exactly a scientific survey, but my verdict is that the Indians win. With no sound at all to enhance the effect, Indian actors tend to do a much better job of looking like they're actually hitting each other than American and European actors do.

I had been told that the standards of acting are rather different than in America, and that I was likely to think there was a lot of overacting in the Indian movies. I found that to be true; the actors often seem to be making faces and using a lot of phony gestures rather than expressing real emotions in a natural manner. In Hollywood, less is more and the hallmark of a truly fine actor is the ability to express with subtlety. I didn't see much subtlety in Thammudu or Annayya, but despite that it's clear that there are some very talented actors in India.

We all liked Chiranjeevi and Soundarya very much. I knew what a big deal Chiranjeevi is and was sceptical about it, but he won me over. He has tremendous personal charm onscreen, is hilarious in comic scenes and very affecting in drama, and really is an awesome dancer.

I was less taken with Pawan Kalyan because I didn't like most of his attempts to be funny; his method of comedy mostly seemed highly exaggerated and desperate. However, I found him appealing in dramatic and light low-key scenes and see in him a real gift for character acting.

There were some things about the movies that we found enthralling. One was the color. After leaving Annayya one of my friends said "Compared to the Indians, we live in a gray world." Everything is just a treat to look at onscreen with these movies, and the musical numbers are terrific. Hollywood doesn't make musicals any more, and we miss them. The choreography, art direction and just plain first-rate imagination that goes into the musical sections is sensational.

The mixture of western and non-western elements tends to raise a lot of questions, such as whether it means anything when some female characters dress in casual western clothing and others always seem to be in saris. As a family eats a traditional meal, you see American snacks on the kitchen counter in the background. While the culture differences give the movies a slightly exotic flavor, in some ways the familiarity of it all was more of a surprise. The dope slap is the same all over the world. Cool!

So it was different and lots of fun, and we're hooked. Special favoritism toward certain villains aside, we'll be going to see more of these in the future. I'd kind of like to see Chranjeevi again!

Want to voice your opinions. All you gotta do is to email us at gvramana@usa.ne