Happy Saturday! Sorry I only put up one post yesterday. But I had so many on Thursday! So you could entertain yourselves with those.
Yesterday was a travel day for me, I went to work in the morning, left at noon and zipped to the airport, flew for two hours, then drove for an hour through rush hour back to my sisters, then played with the baby and had dinner, then watched Queens of Mystery with my sister and went to bed. So, no blogging time unfortunately. But I did get to hear a new song! My nephews favorite song of all is this one, which is EXTREMELY inappropriate!
Anyway, stuff to talk about! It’s Javed Akhtar’s birthday, what is your favorite Javed Saab song or script?
Of the top of my head, “Muksaanein Jhooti Hai” from Talaash is my favorite song lyrics. And I think Trishul might be my favorite script, although the film didn’t quite live up to it.
I get to show my brother-in-law one movie per visit, should it be Andhadhun or Badla?
Right now, I am leaning Andhadhun.
And I guess whatever else you want to talk about! I am out of ideas and going to go cuddle a baby after I brush my teeth.
dontcallitbollywood 
A lot of travel time eating away of your quality time…whish you a happy weekend 🙂
Javed had two birthday bashes (an informal retro one the night from 16th to 17th) and a ‘formal’ one yesterday….and today, on the way to Pune, he and his wife had a car accident and Shabana had to be hospitalized…
Did you watch the ‘fireplace’ chat with Jeff Bezos?
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From what someone else said, the Bezos talk was closed doors and not recorded. But if there is a recording out there somewhere, I want to see it! Let me know!
Nice that Javed celebrated! Maybe I can repost some of tmy Javed posts for his birthday, and also to fill space while I play with a baby instead of blogging.
On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 9:46 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Did you see what Bezos’ girlfriend wore to the Bollywood party? Holy vulgar display. It was so inappropriate and tone deaf to local norms about showing your body.
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Picture link!!!
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It’s also just ugly? Yes? And Karan Johar could carry off that jacket, maybe Ranveer or Ayushmann, definitely NOT Bezos
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Wait, this video really shows what I’m talking about. Her face, holy God.
https://twitter.com/voompla/status/1218427155652104192
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One of those “what does he think he looks like versus what he actually looks like” moments. She’s just being herself, but Bezos? Why is he not embarrassed for looking ridiculous showing off this woman instead of seemingly proud of himself?
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Oh my gosh. What is she even doing? She looks so uncomfortable moving in that pasted on dress. And why is her face like that? How does one get permanent duck lips?
OK sorry, but ugh, yes, why be the walking symbol of someone else’s midlife crisis?
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Yes! It’s one thing to be a beautiful woman dating an older man, but that pose and that face is saying “I am a prize to be shown off”
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For the non-Hindi speakers, you can hear the photographers speaking in the background of the video. One of them calls Bezos’ girlfriend “Rakhi Sawant!” and then another one says to shut up because “The audio is on!! Everyone can hear!!” 😂
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Bezos’ clothes all throughout the India trip remind me of Justin Trudeau’s snafu. He looked like such a fool roaming around everywhere dressed like an Indian groom at a wedding. Bezos has at least kept it a little more low key.
This is how Trudeau and family were dressing –
They got flak from everywhere – both Canadian and Indian media thought they were nuts.
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I worked at a bookstore for 10 years. I had to stop watching when SRK said he bought all his books from Amazon.
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Didn’t he say that it is something he buys in stores?
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Just after 10 minutes in He said he does all his book buying at Amazon, but he buys his underwear in stores. Honestly it was awkward. But it was also then that I fully realized this was supposed to be a Bezos love fest and as much as I adore SRK and Zoya, I really don’t want to pretend to love Bezos. I didn’t get past 13 minutes.
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Must have been an industry thing, if Hindi film wants to keep making money from Prime, they need to make nice.
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I haven’t watched the video yet but did they cut out the part where SRK plugged Big Basket? It’s a major competitor to Amazon and people who saw the chat live mentioned it. He said something like “I buy books from Amazon and everything else from Big Basket” and specifically mentioned that he was going to promote his brand. (He’s the brand ambassador of Big Basket)
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Bezos has been under a cloud during the whole India trip.
Amazon also had an anti-trust case filed on them just before Bezos arrived. There were protests in a lot of Indian cities against him by small business owners.
Zoya’s Gully Boy was presented by Amazon and she has shows like Made in Heaven on Prime. Not sure why SRK was involved but it was probably just a paid engagement as predicted earlier. Or may be also has something coming up with Prime.
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(edited out slightly political content)
Maybe he has something coming up non-content related? Or different-content related? If he wants to sell Ra.One toys, or Don comic books or something like that, Amazon could be good. He’s been trying to do merchandising for a while and it has never worked. That would be exciting if he finally figured it out!
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Here’s the official photo that Prime Video put out.
https://i.ibb.co/jvj5cc7/82780287-615173982605971-2692257829590589438-n.jpg
SRK conspicuously absent.
I can spot Maddy, Bhushan Kumar, Lara Dutta, Sajid Nadiadwala, Kamal Hasan, Madhuri Dixit, Vidya Balan, Siddharth Roy Kapoor, Rajkumar Rao, Patralekha, Vishal Bhardwaj, AR Rahman, Manoj Bajpayee, Farhan Akhtar, Ritesh Sidwani, Ritesh Deshmukh, Genelia, Bhumi Pednekar, Kabir Khan and lots of others I don’t recognize
I don’t know if these people are affiliated with Prime or what. No idea what most of these connections are.
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I’m guessing they are all connected, just because I can identify some of them. Manoj Bajpayee and Madhavan both starred in Prime serieses, Ritesh I think co-produced something, Madhuri is shopping her production house stuff, Vidya is married to SRK who needs to shop his stuff too, and Rajkumar and Patralekha are the ones I am really interested in because they were big with ALTBalaji which makes me think ALTBalaji is moving their library to Prime.
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I got your package but forgot to tell you, thank you!
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Oh i am so glad it arrived! Now let’s see if Angie’s ever gets there. FilmiKudhi’s i get to hand deliver.
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I’m really happy, since the universe decided to bestow this masterpiece upon me:
So I’m deep in my Govinda feels. Desillusioned with Harsh K. on insta, he has nothing in his head except greed and a desire to show off. He’s pretty but I absolutely cannot stand him as a person.
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Lauren Sanchez has been inappropriate since she co hosted Good Day LA back in the late 90s. And Bezos can not pull off that jacket. Although I wish he would pull it off. So much mid-life crisis there. Yuck. To be fair, as much as I dislike Lauren, it’s just the cleavage that’s wrong to me. Or maybe just the very fake boobs in close proximity to each other. I’ve certainly seen Bollywood stars in cholis that showed off as much, plus lots of open midriff above the lehenga.
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Heck, I can picture the exact same kind of dress being appropriate, if it was just pretty and stylish. Like, a simple dark color, no see through sleeves, full skirt with no slit, and just a simple illusion netting slice down the front. That would be perfectly fine. This is just “Whoa, BOOBS!”
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Yeah, BW stars show off cleavage too so that’s not a big issue. But what she represents is awful. Her face and body looks full of plastic surgery, being a home-wrecker and hanging off her gross boyfriend’s arms – he looks like a walking and talking mid-life crisis.
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Agree 100 pct. I have a real bone to pick with women who go after married men…makes me really mad. The men are for sure to blame for going along w it but women should be allies to other women and not fall into the trap of looking for their worth with men and ‘winning’ by taking someone else’s husband. Just vile. (Cough) Priyanka Chopra (cough)
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The SRK-Zoya-Jeff Chat:
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If you watch the whole “fireside chat” they leave in the Big Basket plug. (which by the way is way cool. When we were in Mumbai, in an airbnb we got Big Basket because it was the only on line shopping we knew about because of Shah Rukh and shopping is complex there. Not only will they deliver in a small window of time, they come in and unpack the groceries!!!)
Have no idea why Shah Rukh agreed to do this. He was very low key, not humorourst. (hardly) and he let both Zoya and Jeff speak way more…which is unlike him. I’m hoping they paid him alot.
He did say one fascinating thing: “to quote Mel Brooks, I want the peace of fame, the peace of fortune and the peace of being remembered by history.” The audience tittered a little, thinking this very rich, very famous man was joking, but he wasn’
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Molly wrote the above by the way
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Huh, I don’t think of Zoya as someone who talks a lot! I mean, she’s charming and interesting in interviews, but I can’t remember her taking the lead in something like this before.
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I think SRK and Zoya took turns asking questions, and hers were short and to the point. SRK embellishes more because this is the kind of thing he can do in his sleep. He got in a couple of good digs – after Bezos said he admired the energy in India, he cracked that now everyone would go home and work extra hard for Amazon. Mostly Bezos talks, which is mostly boring. CEO taking up space because he’s used to being the most important guy in the room. There was a funny moment where SRK asks them both what they find to be the biggest waste of time, and Zoya said sycophancy, then changed it to butt kissing. (And SRK took it one beat further to butt licking, he was mostly well behaved but a touch of naughtiness crept in). Fluff. My money is on this being a paid appearance, his energy was of trying to be a good host, nothing more complex. Maybe the Twitter mentions are paid too. Other stars do it.
One teeny nugget of information from Bezos: hours watched on Prime India are six times what they were two years ago, and India is the fastest growing market (or one of the fastest growing, he was hedging his words carefully). With the added implication that they then buy more stuff from Amazon. (“We’re happy with the business results.”)
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I felt like Bezos was having a hard time understanding Zoya or pretending like he doesn’t understand her. It was there a few times but most notably when she asked who were the most influential women in his life. SRK answered “mom, sister, wife and daughter” and Bezos went off into a bizarre direction with a story about his grandfather.
Amazon doing well is not surprising. Netflix is poor competition in India. They have very little Indian content and most of it is bad. Prime gets almost all the new movies and their original series have more buzz too. Plus it’s way cheaper. I don’t know what Netflix is doing in India.
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Hard to read how well it’s doing from that statement. Growing by a multiple of six is better than not growing, but tech companies tend to use multiples to avoid citing hard numbers. Like if they started with 20 users, multiplying by six isn’t that impressive, but if they started with 20 million users it is. Missing the key piece of information.
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Huh, how interesting about his responses to Zoya. When Shahrukh spoke, did he seem to listen better?
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Maybe? Hard to tell if this was a female thing or just entitled make CEO being bad at listening thing.
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My sister had a boss once who said to her in a joint meeting “sometimes it is hard for me to hear your voice because it isn’t deep enough”.
And this is why I will never quit my job because I work for the one decent male boss in the world.
On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 6:44 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Finally saw the chat and it was definitely a lightweight one intended to soften Bezos and get him to be liked by Indians. SRK was pretty subdued and asked easy questions that would have easy answers. At one point, he did joke, “I’ve paid Amazon enough. It’s about time Amazon starts paying me now.”
Choosing SRK was odd to begin with when they could have just used Farhan and Zoya. Or gotten Akshay who is already doing a show with them but he didn’t even come to the event, unless it’s been shelved.
Interestingly, SRK has now tweeted twice about Bezos, which is extremely rare for him. I’ve seen him meet up sometimes even with Prime Ministers and Presidents and then completely ignore it on social media. Sometimes they post about it but he doesn’t. So for Bezos to get two separate tweets is really something.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say something is definitely brewing. Either he’s raising the stakes with Netflix or he has something coming up with Amazon. It could be anything from a movie to a show to some type of retail tie-up.
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