Want to know what it’s like to be in on the discovery of a new American classical play. Check out Boyhood. Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age tale is the best movie of the year, a four-star game-changer that earns its place in the cultural time capsule.

Hollywood (好莱坞) movies are regularly filled with violence. They can be exciting films but sometimes all you want is a little light­hearted entertainment.

So have you heard of Bollywood? All singing, all dancing and unrealistic, it is the perfect alternative to normal Hollywood movies. Bollywood is the Indian film industry, based in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay. 【小题1】 Yet Bollywood is the largest producer of films in the world. This year the Indian Filmfare Awards, Bollywood’s Oscars, turn 64 years old.

The typical Bollywood movie usually has the following ingredients：a cup of romance, a teaspoon of comedy, a dash of international sightseeing, served with a huge slice of singing and dancing. There will also be one brave hero, one beautiful heroine and one baddie (坏人).   【小题2】

Bollywood films are full of ideal things and free of daily worries. 【小题3】 The actors change clothes and locations within a single song. But the audience don’t mind. To Indian movie lovers, especially the poor, such films are a gateway to heaven. The films take them to a magical world away from their everyday troubles. The films tell them the impossible is possible and that true love conquers all.

【小题4】 Behind the beautiful scenes, Bollywood still emphasizes family values. In most films, if two lovers want to break an arranged marriage, they can’t just run away. They must win over their parents.

Bollywood films are decent refreshing replacements for those excessively stimulating Hollywood films. 【小题5】 They will take you to a brighter, more cheerful and colorful world, where it’s still cool to dance around a tree and sing a love song.

What benefits can you have from a film? A well-made film offers a whole world of things to watch. First there are the story aspects — the plot, characters, dialogue and themes. Then there are the technical aspects — the camera work, cuttings and special effects. And there are many other things, like the credits, musical score and the acting. A well-made film offers much more than you see in one viewing (观看).

Films are a means of communication. They can tell you things, just as newspapers do, or television, or any other means of communication. Sometimes they communicate important things to you, like ideas or lifestyles or ways of looking at the world. Sometimes people are aware of this, and sometimes not. The more you are aware of this, the better you are.

Notice, for example, the way films sometimes affect fashion. A star dresses or wears her hair in a certain way, and suddenly everyone is imitating (模仿) her. Boys in the 1950s could sometimes be seen wearing black leather jackets, idling (闲逛) on street corners and smoking cigarettes. They were imitating Marion Brando. His films taught them a certain way to behave.

Films can also teach politics. In Star Wars, the heroes were a bunch of lovable incompetents (无能者) fighting with guts (胆量) and not much else. They were, in fact, rather like the British in the early days of WWII. Their enemies, like the Nazis, had a big advantage in equipment and numbers of troops, and they were like the Nazis in discipline and heartlessness too. The whole film, in fact, was a re-run (重演) of WWII, and taught values like faith and love of liberty. This is all to the good, but the point is, did you notice it?