Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Alex Deleon Sita Sings The Blues" RIVER TO RIVER, FLORENCE 2010 – PARTING SHOTS A BLUESY RAMAYANA CLOSES FEST by Iskandar SinhaSita Sings the Blues To start with last things first, this highly varied Florence Indian film week came to a rousing close on December 11, 2010, with a brilliant feature length animation entitled "Sita Sings The Blues". SITA is the heroine of the Indian national epic known as the Ramayana, a tale close to the heart of every Indian person. In the story she follows her husband Prince Rama into exile in a forest where she is kidnapped by the evil king Ravana of (Sri) Lanka. While remaining faithful to her husband, Sita is subjected to a variety of temptations... Director Nina Paley is an American animator who was inspired by a reading of the Ramayana in 2002. In this hilarious semi-modern adaptation of the classic Indian epic Sita looks like a Sanskritic Betty Boop, and does indeed sing the blues at various stages of this rip-roaring 82 minute piece of work. In the film filmmaker Nina finds herself in a similar situation when her husband who is in India on business decides to break up their marriage via e-mail. Shadow puppets narrate both the ancient Indian tragedy and the modern Western comedy which are intertwined, all with musical numbers choreographed to 1920 Jazz standards. The visuals are a juicy blend of Walt Disney and classic Indian imagery and the result is a totally enjoyable flick that I hope will be seen widely for the sheer joy it radiates. PS: All the songs are by twenties American blues singer Annette Hanshaw,

The_Film_Cricket Nina Paley spent four years making the film on her own computer, and is credited the film's director, writer, producer, editor and animator. The result of her labor is a strange, confounding, colorful, daffy and sometimes hilarious imagining of the legendary Indian folk tale of "The Ramayana." In it, Ramayana (referred in this film simply as "Rama") is a blue-skinned Indian prince who dumps his wife when he suspects that she committed adultery while she was in the clutches of the creature who kidnapped her. The story is narrated by three wisecracking shadow puppets who discuss the story in an effort to orient themselves – and us – on the progress of a story that is probably far more complicated than it needs to be. Meanwhile, in another parallel story, Paley tells her own autobiographical journey of how her husband dumped her and left her with a broken heart that ultimately resulted in her creating Sita Sings the Blues. The main story, though, involves Rama being forced into exile by his father, at the request of his wicked stepmother who wastes no tears on her blue-skinned stepson. She tells him – with an Indian accent – "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." Rama is married to the beautiful Sita, and asks her not to join him in his exile, but Sita is determined that a woman's place is next to her husband. She sings the rapturous joy of being with Rama through Hanshaw's evocative jazzy tune "Here We Are" as the two lovers spent time playing hide and seek. Her joy isn't even deterred when Rama kills a group of blue demons who come out of the woods to do harm to the couple. It is the songs that evoke the most magical moments of Sita Sings the Blues. Sita (pronounced "See-tah"), who looks like a Middle Eastern version of Betty Boop, sings Hanshaw's songs with a sexy, laid-back style and always punctuates the numbers with a happy "That's all" (which was Hanshaw's trademark). All of the songs speak to the situation at hand, and every time Sita opens her mouth to sing, it brings a smile to our faces. Even when she's sad, the film's visuals still evoke a jolly tone. Paley allows the film's visual palette to compliment what is happening to Sita during these musical interludes: When she sings "Am I Blue?" she literally turns blue. When she sings "Lover Come Back to Me", it is accompanied by repeated scenes of her lover dropping her. Sita maintains her loyalty to Rama, but trouble is afoot when an evil ten-headed king named Ravana is informed by his sister Surphanaka (sporting a nasty set of fangs) that Rama has killed his prized flock of blue demons, so he plots to get revenge by kidnapping Sita. Spurring Ravana on to the idea of a kidnapping, Surphanaka describes Sita this way: "She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Her skin is fair like the lotus blossom. Her eyes are like lotus pools. Her hands are like… from… lotuses. Her breasts like… BIG… ROUND… FIRM… JUICY… LOTUSES." Ravana asks his underling to transform himself into a golden deer to distract Rama while he kidnaps Sita. Blissfully unaware of the kidnapping plot, Sita is snatched right out of her house while in the midst of singing of her devotion to Rama with "What Wouldn't I Do for that Man", a song that eventually proves prophetic. Anguished over the disappearance of his beloved Sita, Rama plots to rescue her with the help of the monkey warrior Hanuman who – if I understood correctly – was apparently created by the gods just for that purpose. Sita, meanwhile receives a threat from Ravana that if she doesn't agree to marry him, that his blue demons will cut her to ribbons. Hanuman shows up to rescue Sita while she mournfully sings "Daddy Won't You Please Come Home." It is during this number (which includes Sita's own claranet solo) that Hanuman proves to be an adept warrior as one of the blue demons sets his tail on fire and he, in turn, uses it set fire to Ravana's palace. He leaves Ravana's island and returns to tell Rama the whole story. Why Hanuman didn't just take Sita back with him is a question that the narrators debate. Rama and Hanuman amass a giant army of monkey warriors to return to Ravana's island and rescue Sita. The plan goes into effect as Sita happily sings "Who's That Knocking at My Door?" The blue demons are dispatched with ease and the ten-headed Ravana is decapitated over and over and over again. Sita is delighted to have her beloved come and rescue her, however he is thoughtless, suspicious and jealous. Rama tells her "You have lived in another man's house so you are unfit to be my wife. He cannot have kept you in his house for so long without touching you". Seeing Sita as damaged goods and cuts her loose. Sita is broken-hearted and sings of her sadness with the melancholy tune "Mean to Me". Sita Sings the Blues represents all the reasons that I love the movies. It is lively and fun, it tells a great story that is equal parts comedy, drama, romance, heartbreak, adventure, comeuppance, revenge, all mixed into a musical that is bouncy and fun. It tells a story that is universal in a way that we've never seen before, using various techniques and camera tricks to tickle us and treat us and allow us regard it with wonder. I like this movie a lot.

suresh-raj-07 This movie depicts the lack of knowledge on Ramayana. The director seemed to be confused at most of the places, not only with the name of the places but also with the characters. It would have been appreciated if the gods and goddesses were made to dress properly. this is mere disrespect to Hindu culture. It reflects narrow mindedness of the director and the entire team. Making fun of another culture is not secularism. secularism is respecting every religion. I have grown up seeing Ramayana acts and also watching it on TV. The goddesses were never dressed the way director has shown them in the movie. This is projecting the wrong information about Hindu culture.

MisterWhiplash Nina Paley is the kind of filmmaker that makes the auteur theory look dated. This isn't a case of a director putting her vision on the screen via a crew of technicians and a cast of actors. This IS her vision, down to all of the designs and animation, which she did over the course of five years (a dedication of time that recalls a director like David Lynch on Eraserhead or Inland Empire). It was all done on computer- reportedly only one intern helped animate some of a battle sequence- and it's being presented for free on the website for Sita Sings the Blues. And yet, if you have a chance (as I had) to see it on the big screen, it's one of the events of the year if you love animation and daring in film-making.It's a personal story of Paley's break-up with her boyfriend (who did it, savagely, over email), and put into a context of the story of the Ramayana, an ancient Indian story about a woman, Sita, and her bond with the blue-skinned Rama over a lifetime. At the same time Paley uses animation and music and documentary and the free-wheeling expression of cinema to make it unconventional. We see Indian drawing figures ala Monty Python animation discussing story points as they go along, which name is who's and what detail really happened, etc. And then there are musical segments put to Annette Hanshaw, a 1920's jazz singer, to illustrate Sita's journey through the turbulent ups and downs of romance.Sita Sings the Blues is joyous entertainment. One can tell that Paley was exorcising some past strife, namely from her own break-up that we see in the film in a scraggly Dr. Katz style of animation, but what's most striking is how it's tragedy is never ever a downer. On the contrary this is a comedy in a fresh sense, where the absurdity keeps coming in little unexpected ways, like with the figures of the monkeys in battle, or how the discussing members talk over the details of the Sita cast members. And the musical numbers are just about the best one has seen all decade (which goes without saying the lack of competition, but still), as we see Sita sing her feelings and thoughts, sometimes in happiness and sometimes totally down in the dumps (re: her pregnancy and abandonment after being rescued).There's a complex web of emotions that Paley navigates through, and she does it so confidently that it's hard not to marvel at her achievements here. It's an independent film in the best sense of the word, the truest sense, uncompromised by studio interference or for any kind of 'demographic'. It's a dark comic feminist musical fable that includes an intermission, a cast of hundreds (animated, not voiced), and it strikes up your heartstrings in the best possible ways. It's a post-modern breakthrough, and I can't wait to revisit it, oh, right about now I would say.