I am a Shahrukh person, not an Aamir or a Salman person. But I can still appreciate not-Shahrukh stars for the wonderful people they are, even if that person is not my particular person. And Salman is wonderful. Which is what I have said for 3 years running now, and it is still true.
So, Happy 52nd Birthday Salman! Here are the first 20 reasons I love you:
1.1. The way you looked in Maine Pyar Kiya, which is distinctly different from how you looked in every film after that.
2. The fact that you wrote a script for a movie in which Sridevi plays an angel and you play a little boy she magics into a man
3. That you paint in your spare time, and you do it shirtless
4. That you have trigeminal neuralgia, one of the most painful and debilitating diseases in the world, and never mention it in interviews or use it to excuse your behavior
5. That you are the Khan who is the most joyous and natural dancer, who seems to actually enjoy the song sequences
6. This
7. This
8. This
9. This
10. And this
11. That you wished Farhan Akhtar well in an interview, because you grew up together, and you still think of him as the little boy who you let ride behind you on your bike.
12. That Priety Zinta testified against you in court, and years later, when she was trying to get back into the industry by producing her own film, you still agreed to do a cameo for her.
13. That you were quicker to defend your ex-girlfriend Katrina, when she was being criticized for being photographed on vacation in a bikini with her current boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor, than Ranbir was.
14. That you paid for your beloved little sister’s lavish wedding, made sure every important person in the industry attended, and mended fences with Shahrukh prior to the ceremony so we could all enjoy this picture of the two of you with the bride
15. That you agreed to the cameo in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai as a personal favor for Karan Johar, because you grew up together, after he had been turned down by everybody else.
16. This
17. This
18. This
19. This
20. This
dontcallitbollywood 
Happy Birthday Salman!
Salman in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is one of my favorite characters of his!
LikeLike
Hold up. He paints in real life? So did he do any of the paintings in Ek Tha Tiger?
Of course he paints shirtless 😆
There’s a video circulating on Twitter of Salman having his body CGI’d to give him a six pack and muscles and there’s lots of mocking going on but hello, the man is 52. Better to have a conversation about how the filmi industry doesn’t let leading actors age or give them mature romances or realistic action movies to star in (and that goes double for the women).
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think the video would allow Salman to cover up in the future. If anything, the khans have gotten way too competitive about their physiques. Everybody knows their real age and nobody thinks their “transformations” are “real”. Once the public is aware of the CGI ansthe steroids, the fascination slips away.
LikeLike
I think he might have done some of the Ek Tha Tiger paintings, they were in his style. He also did at least one of his recent movie posters. And he sometimes auctions off his work for charity.
Or how about a discussion on body ideals? How we have lost the ability to be attracted to a “normal” body, or at least to acknowledge that we are attracted to a “normal” body? Salman is a very very handsome man, at any age and in any shape. He doesn’t need CGI to get us excited. You were talking about how amazing he and Madhuri looked in Hum Aapke Hain Koun, they are both still stunning looking people, but Madhuri isn’t being offered love stories, and Salman feels like he needs CGI.
On Tue, Dec 26, 2017 at 5:32 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
The body ideals thing is sooo frustrating. I agree on Salman being handsome, he’d still be handsome with gray hair and just a normally fit body.
Wouldn’t it be great to see a filmi version of It’s Complicated, only instead of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin we could get Rani, Shahrukh and Salman all looking their real ages? But like attractive and sexy versions of their real ages.
LikeLike
I recently watched Dabangg for the first time and IT WAS AMAZING!
Made me actually like the guy instead of straight up not bothering to watch any of this movies.
Aamir is the serious type who make good movies about society. Shahrukh~ the king of romance and Salman makes comedy movies that make everyone laugh with his macho power. I realized that most of his movies that fared at the box office as well as the song selections you chose, portrayed him as a funny character with a macho persona. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was an outlier. xD
Happy Birthday!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes! He is macho, but also laughing a little at how silly macho tropes are and making us laugh with him. At least, in the really good movies.
LikeLike
I couldn’t find your Monday general discussion post but I really wanted to show you this:
“While I was watching the trailer of Akshay Kumar’s new film pad man,I could not help but notice that Pad Man,a film based on the true life of Arunachalam Muruganathan,a social entrepruneur of Tamilian descent has been re-characterized as a north indian protagonist by Akshay Kumar.
This has also happened in Airlift,a movie based on the real life mass civilian evacuation of non resident indians from Kuwait to India.Airlift was based on the real life story of Mathunny Mathews,a Malayali Christian businessman who was written into the movie as Ranjit Katyal,a punjabi character.
I am seething with anger at this convenient whitewashing of the Tamil and Malayali identities of Muruganathan and Mathews and writing them into scripts as savarna North Indian characters. These are true stories of real people.Erasing the ethnicity of these extraordinary people is not just unfair on so many levels but also disgusting.
Films are not just forms of entertainment.For many people,it is also a retelling of lived experiences and personal histories. I remember how excited and happy I was when I watched movies like Dawaat-e-ishq, Bobby Jasoos and Sairat ,which were all set in my hometown Hyderabad. By changing the unique aspects of people,places and stories to fit them into some generic and inoffensive moulds is a great disservice to the art of storytelling.
Do not be fooled by news articles heaping praise on Akshay Kumar for “bravely” taking on films like Airlift or Padman. These are calculated business decisions made with the same fiduciary motives as any masala entertainer.
Via: Abhilasha CheruKuri”
This is why I hated that trailer.
LikeLike
Airlift was so strange! Over the end credits they had a little thing about the real person, and I was looking at it thinking “wait, what?” It’s not just the southern part of it, he was Christian too. Even if you have to northern it up a little, for the Hindi audience, they could have made one of the other prominent characters in Airlift southern, besides the one complaining Malayalam character. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but Akshay is part of a group of businessman trying to organize things, and I think all of them were obviously northern Hindus. Although I may have forgotten something. Anyway, make it Akshay as the hero and his best friend and partner in heroics be a southern Christian. Same with Padman, you can find a way to make it appeal to the North without totally changing the story. The real story has him in the south, and then going north to help spread the word. So if you want to make it a northern story, skip the origin part of it and go straight to the bit where he has a successful invention and is trying to make it popular in the UP and places.
On Tue, Dec 26, 2017 at 9:16 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
North Indians aren’t idiots. It doesn’t matter to us if the character is a malayali Christian because even I’d he spoke hindi would a thick accent, we’d get it. The language barrier is a real barrier. Bollywood’s view of what it thinks the audience would accept is not a reflection of real life anyway
LikeLike
Such an interesting topic!!!
Heard of a Hindi film called “Manthan”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manthan
It was the India’s official submission for Oscars for 1976 and won a few national awards too.
It was based on “The Milkman of India” – Dr. Verghese Kurien, a Keralite Syrian Christian who became Dr. Manohar Rao in the movie.
LikeLike
Wasn’t Manthan directed by Shyam Benegal? I always thought it was about a dairy cooperative in Gujarat? Am I totally mixing it up with something else?
LikeLike
Yes, you’re correct. Its about the milk revolution, Amul. The architect or the father of it all was Dr. Verghese
LikeLike
Manthan was the first Indian film I ever attended. I saw it just after it came out — in the basement of an art museum in the U.S. That was it’s big North American release. (I really liked it, particularly the sound track.)
LikeLike
LikeLike