Sita Sings the Blues

Sita Sings the Blues_720p(480P)

It sure helped that I watched this DVD with my daughter, a geeky but lovable ancient religions major. She helped me to understand what was happening when it got confusing and I really think she should have done the DVD commentary. The story is the "Ramayana" as told from Sita's point of view. She is the wife of the lead character from the story, Rama. However, since it is from her point of view, a lot of Rama's cool adventures are omitted from the story, so it's not really meant to be a complete retelling of this classic tale. Again, according to my super-cool daughter, practically none of the "Ramayana" is there, just the bits about Sita. She would score the movie an 8 because some parts of the film were included more for art's sake than to help further the film--in other words, there were a lot of distractions. For example, the random, somewhat trippy music video in the middle of the movie was distracting and sometimes the modern day segments spliced in had little to do with the part of Sita's story being told. However, despite the criticisms, she did really like the film and liked the discussion of the feminist aspects of the film, as often how badly Sita was used is rarely explored--a Western interpretation of the story. As for me, a boob of a history teacher who is familiar with Hinduism but am far from knowledgeable, I enjoyed the tale but really wish they'd told more about the "Ramayana" and disliked how repetitive the story was. Many times, the story was told and then immediately told again using different art. However, like my wonderful daughter, I really liked the 1920s style musical interludes with Sita but think that perhaps one or two could have been omitted to tighten up the story. Overall, it's a weird but fascinating story told with really unusual artistry--especially because there must have been a half dozen or so completely different styles used throughout the film. A very interesting experiment that left me wanting more.

I am very mixed on this movie, but I really did not like it more or less. However, there are some really great stuff in the movie as well. The Good: The animation was done by one person which is not a small feat and she used four kinds of animation to tell the story. Personally, I liked the use of the 20s music for Sita to sing in a kind of music video of her feelings. Very stylish animation, very different, but my favorite. It was also very funny especially the three narriators arguing and acting as a "Peanut Gallery" The Bad: She tried to add too many kinds of animations that take away from the story including a semi biographical bit that was poorly animated about the breakup with her husband. Also some parts were just plain weird. To improve this movie, I would take out the biographical animation and the breakup rage animation and it would be a pretty interesting and funny movie, but the bad parts ruined it for me!

This movie combines all the wonderful elements of mythology with the winsome voice of Annette Henshaw and her own life experience as her marriage dissolves. This movie combines the absolute best of animation, music and myth. It is wonderful for kids, adults, those familiar with the Ramayana and those who know nothing about it... Worth every minute of it's one hour and twenty minutes... don't MISS the opportunity to watch it! As soon as the DVD comes out I am going to buy it to use in my Mythology class. I believe it is the perfect video to introduce the Ramayana to my students.

Animated (in various ways) story from an Indian book dealing with gods, demons, a beautiful wife, her husband and an evil king (or something). This is shown with intermissions of a (badly animated) modern day tale of a woman and her boyfriend who leaves her for a job in India. At first this was fun. The changes in animation were good, the music was just wonderful (1930s and 1940s (I think)) songs and there were some clever tricks. But this got tedious after a while. The animation got dull, the story moved SLOW (not helped at all by a unamusing Greek chorus commenting on the action) and all the female characters are treated like dirt and can't live without a man in their life. There's also an intermission AND a pointless musical number that are padding...for an 83 minute movie! Halfway through I considered leaving but it was raining out so that kept me in my seat. The wonderful music numbers are a definite highlight...but what you have to sit through to get to them is boring. A 2 for the animation and music alone.

"The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn't know how other people would take it." BB King The fine recent animations such as Persepolis and Wall-E have set an intelligence standard hard to equal, much less surpass. While Sita Sings the Blues at least equals those in intelligence and wonder, it surpasses them in imagination considering the parallel stories of wives unfairly abandoned by their husbands are set in modern and ancient times, based on the well-know Ramayana story in India. Although the animation seems a primitive 2-D next to Pixar's successfully realistic product, director and almost everything-else-in-the-picture Nina Paley suffuses the frames with brilliant colors and variable landscapes. Heroine Sita is shaped in circles and curves to make her voluptuous and expressive in an endearingly abstract style. I have never seen such richly subversive animation that pushes the feminist agenda without offending. The story, after all, is clear about the failure of mankind over the millennia to stop the sexism that puts women through humiliation without retribution. Paley's success at entertaining with a wildly imaginative palette and lovable characters and cats contradicts, however, the generalization that all women suffer degradations centuries old—she is an artist and entrepreneur, who, faced with a restrictive copyright law that doesn't let her market the film because of Jazz singer Annette Hanshaw' 1920's performance (the music is in the public domain, but not the publishing) distributes her film free (find it in 10 installments on YouTube). Hanshaw's Betty-Boop like singing is the apex of pleasure in this multi layered story, whose intricacy is richly rewarding, sometimes difficult even for Indians to decipher, such as the three Indian voice-overs who wittily try to figure out the details of the Ramayana legend. I rarely make the time to return to a film before I report on it—this time I will happily return to hear Sita sing the blues and put the beautiful mosaic into order.

if you really wanna know this story about Ramayan then you should watch (1992) Movie "Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259534/ this movie is nothing but garbage. shamefully western people people picks Hindu religious stories and Most respected people and make comedy movies to degrade them. i don't understand are they testing hindu peoples tolerance? you are doing all this because no hindu shoots you in your head for insulting his religion just like muslims, well that day will come soon when hindu people will lose their patience and attack those who insulting hinduism just like muslims. i think thats why you people doing this so later you can declare hindus terrorist too. why don't you make fun of Jesus? you know what make movie like this of Prophet Muhammad i dare you.

My comment on the film: Bloody marvelous. "Sita Sings the Blues" shows how one person with a laptop computer and something to say can make a far more satisfying work than 90% of the garbage that gets cranked out by people with a thousand times the money but one-thousandth the inspiration. Whatever its entertainment value (which I found considerable), "Sita..." is a work of ART; it's an individual statement. But it's not simply the "message", either; in terms of execution, Nina Paley made as effective use of this tool (Flash animation) as I would ever expect to see. My comment on previous comments: Some have suggested that the piece would be "better" if Paley had left out the autobiographical bits, but that's simply nonsense. Her own story is integral to understanding how and why she chose to tell Sita's story the way she did. It isn't simply "background" to the telling of a story from the Ramayana; the piece is a meshing of Sita/Nina. By making the legendary story relevant to one woman's life, we see that it can be relevant to the lives of many. If the "point" of the work were simply to present the Ramayana on film the way "The Ten Commandments" is a filmed presentation of the Book of Exodus, it would be kind of silly to have Sita break into Blues songs in the first place, wouldn't it? Ms. Paley uses Sita's story as raw material, and uses Annette Hanshaw's recordings as raw material, to create something new and personal and totally contemporary. I can only hope that John Lassiter sees "Sita". Not that I think Pixar has any need to learn anything from Nina Paley, but maybe he can channel some Disney bucks to her so that it won't take her five more years to produce a follow-up. (Just so long as she's allowed total creative control.)

Featured in last year's edition of Animation Nation, I finally got a chance to watch this masterpiece by filmmaker Nina Paley when she released it on the Internet under the Creative Commons License. And it is without a doubt that this piece of animation is well worth every minute of your time, especially when the visuals just arrests your attention from the get go, and has some wonderful music and songs by 1920s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, who provides the titular Sita with her singing voice. Based on the epic Indian tale of Ramayana, focusing on the love triangle between Rama (voiced by Debargo Sanyal), his virtuous wife Sita (Nina Paley herself), and the adversary in the form of Ravana (Sanjiv Jhaveri) who lusts after Sita and kidnaps her, I have gotten a glimpse of this storyline when it got featured in films such as Swades and the more recent Delhi-6. Essentially the extracts in those film featured how Ravana kidnaps Sita for her beauty, and wanted to make her his wife, only for her to hold out enough for Rama to find them, and to kill Ravana in an ensuing war. The story here expands that tale a lot more, starting with how Rama got banished from his kingdom by his father the King, and together with Sita, roams a forest until her kidnap, their reunion, and how Rama decided to banish her given his incessant suspicion that she may not have been pure, and got violated. It's a sad love story in a way, and this film provided just enough to pique your interest in wanting to read up more. It's quite amazing how Paley herself directed this piece of magic, and adopted various animation styles to tell a story, and a musical, and has a separate tale set in the modern day to parallel that of the epic tale. I am speechless by how wonderful the opening credits got designed, fused perfectly with the song playing in the background. Her choice of the Annette Hanshaw tunes were a wonderful touch that fit the story to a T, and this can only be attributed to some astonishing creativity and innovation that Paley had demonstrated, and I can't help but to want more. The shadow puppet narrators (Aseem Chhabra, Bhavana Nagulapally and Manish Acharya) stole the show each time they're on, as they sound just like your good pals who can't wait to give you the lowdown on what they know about this tragic love triangle. They're hilarious and never at any point felt deliberately so, with that very natural feel about the way they want to tell a story. I would have loved to experience this in a big screen theatre setting, but I guess that would not come anytime soon. So the next best alternative was to download the highest resolution version available to watch this astounding piece as well as to admire the striking attention to details that Paley so lovingly and respectfully put into the characters. You would do yourself a favour and watch how Sita Sings the Blues, as it's a definite must-watch in my books!

The vocalist in Sita Sings the Blues is Annette Hanshaw, a jazz vocalist 75 years ago, now probably unremembered by all but researchers. She is remembered now as one of the integral elements in Nina Paley's beautifully animated first film, produced on her laptop computer over a period of five years. For me, this is a landmark film in dissolving my resistance to animation. The other elements so well integrated are the personal history of Nina Paley's broken marriage, the analogous situation of Sita's rejection by Rama in the Indian epic, Ramayana, and animated (in both senses) conversation about that epic. I first enjoyed this in a press screening for the 2008 Seattle International Film Festival. Then I took visiting relatives, including a 9 year old granddaughter, to see it. All were delighted. This is that rare film that appeals both to children and adults. The animated Sita reminded me of Betty Boop, but with a greater emphasis on the *. Time does march on.