DreamGirls, 2006 [* * * *]

This was a really disturbing movie about the american music industry. The shift from blues to pop for black singers who needed to appeal to a white audience.

Somehow the glitter we get sold persists in our memory as gold - from bollywood, hollywood or motown. We forget that they've clawed to the top over their betters. They aren't just moments captured on film or record - they're the victors who wrote their own history.

Dreamgirls is a thinly-fictionalized version of Motown Records greatest success, Diana Ross & the Supremes. As Berry Gordy promoted Diana Ross, we see for the first time how 'Flo' Ballard, the lead, was mentally abused and driven to depression and death at 32.

It first hit Broadway as a play in '81. Diana Ross claims never to have seen it. I dislike fame (not fortune;) -related stories because they're always untrue. I disliked this movie.

But the vocals are terrific, and Beyonce looks fantastic with that peculiar finished quality of stars, like Diana Ross in real life. There's something strange about stars - they're complete, unhesitant, unlike the rest of us. Like they've been practising many lifetimes for this one. I often wonder how much learning they give up when they are forced to trade themselves as certainties.

Ambition, someone once said, makes monsters of men. Esp in entertainment biz. The women are caricatures too - they're very much 'anything-my-man-wants'-overdressed, always on display toons. They're hopping into bed and casting couch, looking for protection and promotion, redefining 'love' so that it's quite secondary to getting ahead and their egos - very urban america as it is even now.

(Somehow the movie reminds me of Bangalore in this IT/call center boom. The ambitious, desperate, willing, senseless boys and girls who've invaded our city. Sad... Recession, drive them away!:)