Step 1 ANSWERS A Bollywood recipe

Exercices complémentaires:

Path A: Select 3 numbers from the text and write them with words.
Ex. 13,000 → Thirteen thousand
4 % → Four percent
40,000 → forty thousand
$1.5 million → One point five million dollars
$47.7 million → Forty-seven point seven million dollars
2,400 → Two thousand and four hundred
$ 5,000,000,000 → Five billion dollars

Path B: Select three numbers from the text and explain what they correspond to.
Ex. 4 percent → percentage of people going to the movies regularly.
13,000 → number of cinemas / theatres in India
40,000 → number of cinemas / theatres in the USA
¼ → proportion of people in the USA compared to India
$1.5 million → the amount of money for an Indian film
$47.7 million → the amount of money for an American film
2,400 → number of films produced by Bollywood film industry every year
$ 5,000,000,000 → amount of money produced by Bollywood film industry

Find a portmanteau word (a word composed out of two other words) and its explanation.
Bollywood is a portmanteau word. It is made up of the word Hollywood and of Bombay which is the
previous name of the current Indian city of Mumbai. It means that like Hollywood, Bollywood is a film
industry. Unlike Hollywood which is located in Los Angeles, California, USA, Mumbai, previously called
Bombay, is the capital of Maharashtra, on the western coast of India where Bollywood was set and
developed.

Bollywood uses not only song and dance in its films but also melodramatic plots and typical
ingredients that appeal to the audience. There are lovers and villains, coincidences and reversals of
fortune. These different ingredients make these spiced-up movies successful.

Bollywood films mix musicals, love stories, comedy and thrilling actions.

List the weak points of Bollywood.

The weak points of Bollywood are that the Hindi-language film industry cannot reach all the people
speaking Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam or Kannada or people outside India.
Bollywood films are characterized by lower budgets than in the Hollywood films -- more than thirty
times less -- and the Indian people are not moviegoers partly because the number of theatres is hardly
more than one quarter of American theatres while the Indian people are four times more numerous
than the Americans.

Compare Hollywood and Bollywood film industries.

The Bollywood film industry was named after Hollywood. So the Hollywood film industry is more
widespread. Bollywood films are mainly musicals while Hollywood film genres are more varied. The
Hollywood and Bollywood film industries are seen around the world, but the American people are
greater moviegoers, whereas the Indian people buy fewer cinema tickets although their population is
four times as large. Another significant difference is the number of theatres available in each country,
as in India there are only 13,000 and in the USA there are almost four times as many.

Do you like Bollywood films?

I like Bollywood films because they are colourful and lively. The stories are about Indian society and
the questions raised by traditions and modern life.
I don’t like Bollywood films because the plot is interrupted by singing and dancing and it makes them
difficult to keep track with. Moreover, the subjects are at a distance from my personal life, the
questions are very different from European concerns.