So, for Christmas, I gave my Dad Furious 7, an excellent movie. We watched it together Christmas afternoon (my second time, his first), and naturally, I started thinking about Deepika Padukone. Because, rumor has it, she was offered a role and turned it down for Happy New Year (or Ram-Leela, but the timing makes more sense with Happy New Year filming).
Now, Happy New Year is not the greatest film, and Furious 7 is excellent, but I still think Dips made the right decision.
I was totally right! They did hold back and release it at Christmas! Well, actually, according to the youtube posting date, on Salman’s birthday. But let’s be real here, which is celebrated more in India, the birth of Jesus or the birth of Salman Khan?
The title is the nice way to put it. The other way would be, “Salman Khan threw a birthday party while his stepmother went to the funeral of one of her closest friends.”
I though about not posting this today, because it is Christmas, but then I thought a little more, and I realized it isn’t really a sad post at all. Sadhana passed away yesterday, which I learned through Aamir Khan’s twitter. I have no idea how he found out. Spies at the hospital?
Anyway, Sadhana sounds like a nice lady who had a pretty nice life, and then died. Which is a pretty nice epitaph!
(If you feel the need to honor her by watching one of her films, I highly recommend Waqt. It is very cheerful and Christmas appropriate, lots of family values.)
I always enjoy these slideshows. There is such a random collection of people who choose to celebrate Christmas. Which is nice, because Christmas is awesome, and anyone who feels like it should celebrate it. And anyone who doesn’t, shouldn’t have to. And going by the randomness of these, that seems to be the policy followed by the Indian film fraternity.
(well, it’s mandatory for the Kapoors, who always celebrate with the annual Shashi Kapoor Christmas lunch. Which is also nice, because Shashi hosts it in honor of his late wife Jennifer, so it isn’t just a random holiday for them, it is a mandatory tribute to a beloved aunt/wife/sister-in-law/mother who started the tradition)
So, according to this (thank you Melanie for pointing it out!), Shahrukh just “confirmed” a sequel to Ra.One. I don’t exactly get a confirmation from the quote they use, I get more of a “yes, I am still interested!” from it. Which is still exciting, because I am also interested in a sequel! I loved Ra.One, every big stupid bit of it.
The article goes on to point out the dismal box office profits for Ra.One, to indicate that if this sequel does not happen, it may be for monetary reasons. However, I disagree, I think if it does go through, it is for monetary reasons.
The thing everyone forgets about Ra.One is that the profits weren’t in the box office, they were in everything else. And that Shahrukh owned all the rights, and claimed all the profits. Ra.One was the first Indian film to get a deal with McDonalds happy meals, it had action figures, it had comics, it had a video game, the sale of the TV rights alone practically covered all the production costs.
In this, the season of Star Wars, we must all remember that the money is in the merchandising.
Apparently, the prosecutors have decided to appeal his appeal, and open up the manslaughter case again. So he’s back to waiting for the court case to resolve before he can get married! So frustrating! I just want him to settle down and have a massive blow out wedding with a lot of photographs available to the public and various new feuds started and old feuds ended a the reception! Is that too much to ask?
So, Business of Cinema has updates for midweek. According to them, Dilwale is facing a steep fall, while Bajirao has a steady climb. However, they point out that Bajirao still has a ways to go to overcome Dilwale‘s very strong start last weekend. And, they assign blame for Dilwale‘s fall not so much to bad word of mouth, but to the resurgent protests in multiple cities.
I care about this deeply, of course, but not as much as I care about free speech and speaking truth to power and so on and so forth. And apparently Shahrukh agrees with me, since he recently avoided an opportunity to apologize and thereby end the protests, instead saying “I have not said anything that I should apologize (for). I will fall in my own eyes if I do that.”
Or whatever, but let’s not kid ourselves, it should be Kuch Kuch. It should always be Kuch Kuch.
Anyway, rediff has a poll as part of their week long Salman birthday coverage where you can vote for his best movie. I don’t know if I would really call Kuch Kuch Hota Hai a Salman movie, but they included it, so now I must vote for it!
You can vote here. (Maine Pyar Kiya and Bajrangi Bhaijaan are currently battling for number 1)
So, apparently Aamir saw a post on Facebook from a kid with progeria who wanted to meet him to thank him for Taare Zameen Par. So he arranged a meeting and brought a bunch of Taare Zameen Par goodies and talked with the kid and his family for a long while.
So sweet! And not publicized at all, the reporters only found out about it because the family posted pictures of Aamir on their Facebook page.
Not my favorite fan meeting star story, that would be the guy from Pakistan who illegally crossed the border to meet Pooja Bhatt and was then imprisoned for two decades (don’t worry, she eventually found out and went to visit him in jail), but still pretty sweet!
So, I saw a link through Times of India to an interview with Rohit Shetty about Dilwale box office. If you don’t want to bother following the link, here are the big take aways:
So, what do we learn from this?
So, the first weekend figures are out, and rediff.com has an analysis. Well, a lot of sites have an analysis, but I trust rediff the most.
The short answer is, Dilwale wins! But the long answer is more complex, and involves Salman Khan. Things that involve Salman are always complex.
So, if you happen to have obsessively listened to the Dilwale soundtrack on Saavn.com, you probably noticed that when you went to see it in the theaters, one of the songs was missing. And if you happened to have obsessively followed the filming news, you may have noticed that they filmed in Iceland (check!) and Bulgaria (check!) and Goa (check!), but also Hyderabad (no check!). So, where is the missing song and the missing Hyderabad sequence?
So, if you have watched your fair number of 90s Hindi films, you immediately went “Yes! That guy!” as soon as you saw the picture up there. He’s one of those people that wanders in and out of films, playing the guy who is like-the-hero-but-not-as-good. Friend, rival, enemy, brother, what have you. In, like, Everything!!!
He played Sanjay’s best friend and side-kick in Sadak:
(It is a special challenge as a side-kick to make Sanjay look like a good dancer)
A year later, he was in Khiladi, supporting Akshay:
(Shirtless Akshay presents different challenges. Like, being visible on the screen when he is blinding us with his hotness)
The same year, he was Aamir’s rival in Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander
(ooo, they are so evil!)
In 1994, he twice bested Shahrukh in a romantic challenge, in both Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa and Anjaam:
(I love this movie, and I really love this song. I don’t care that it makes no sense on any level. Also, did you know this actress married Shekhar Kapur, director of Mr. India and the Cate Blanchette Elizabeth movies?)
And the protests have started! Sort of lackadaisical ones, and in Delhi,so I guess Raj Thackeray’s efforts against SRK in Bombay didn’t take off? Is it like a family tradition now, for Thackeray’s to try to prevent the release of SRKajol films?
I do want to point out that the Dilwale protesters seem to be having a much better time than the Bajirao protesters. See, even protesting it, Dilwale is the better choice!
According to twitter, house full through out India, UAE, and not Egypt because they have to wait until the 30th (poor Egypt). Also, Madhuri wished him luck and Karan congratulated him. This picture SRK posted to twitter himself kind of sums it up:
So what I’m saying is, poor Bajirao.
I feel like with all the SRK coverage lately, I haven’t been paying enough attention to Salman. And terrible terrible things happen when Salman feels like he is being ignored. Plus, he did just escape from 15 years in prison, he needs to be celebrated! And he also just made the list of sexiest Asian men (that kid from One Direction is on top, Hrithik is second, SRK is 9, Aamir didn’t make it).
So, yesterday I posted about what a great business man SRK is. Salman just doesn’t seem that interested in business, but I think he probably has quite the natural knack for it, in his own totally nutso way.
I mean, there’s always a lot of SRK coverage. Supposedly, Neha Dhupia said in an interview “Only sex and SRK sell”, a quote which instantly became an aphorism. And with the way her career is going, she is probably going to be more famous for that quote than anything else. And thereby prove her point, because it’s the closest she’s ever come to being associated with SRK.
Anyway, on any random day if you turn to Times of India, they will have some kind of SRK slide-show or news story or something, because they know we will click on it. This habit reached it’s nadir/zenith when this article was briefly their top online headline. It works, of course, I not only clicked on that article but discussed it in depth with multiple people, and checked the site obsessively for any follow-up information they might have.
But with a movie coming out, there is this cycle (sycle?) where Shahrukh is giving greater access than usual, which means more to report, and because there is more reporting, people are thinking about him more and more, and are more likely to click on even old stories if they are posted on a homepage.
Which lead to this, an epic 37 page slide-show combining every single slide-show ToI has ever done on AbRam into one, leading off with the recent quotes about him courtesy of the Dilwale publicity express.
Notice how I put the really exciting picture at the top so we would remember why this really matters?
So, currently, the highest Shahrukh movie on the all time gross list for India is number 5. NUMBER 5!!! The shame of it! Ahead of him is PK, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Bahubali, and Dhoom 3. The whole list is here on wikipedia.
Now, you know what all these films have in common? They are all from the past 5 years. And the film at the top is usually from within the past 2 years. In America, we are used to that, the top grossers are always fairly recent, but in India that wasn’t always the case. Mother India set a box office record in 1957 that stayed in place for 3 years until Mughal-E-Azam surpassed it in 1960. Mughal-E-Azam held the record until Sholay beat it in 1975. Sholay held the record until Hum Aapke Hain Koun came along in 1994. Hum Aapke Hain Koun was toppled quickly by DDLJ in 1995. Then DDLJ lost it’s crown to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in 1998. That record held until 2001 when it was beaten by both Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham and Gadar: Ek Prem Katha. Gadar held the record until 3 Idiots in 2009, at which point everyone breathed a sigh of release because they could start pretending Gadar never happened (very very problematic messages in that film). And then 3 Idiots held the record for a long time, by a big big margin, until it was finally beaten by Chennai Express in 2013. All Shahrukh fans cheered and celebrated and laughed in the faces of their Aamir-fan friends, or at least that’s what I did. Truly, it was a magical time!
(Shahrukh, take a bow! You earned it!)
And then about 2 months later, Dhoom 3 came out and Aamir was on top again. It stayed up there for a year, until PK came out, and then Aamir had the two top spots. PK is still up there, but Bajrangi Bhaijaan did really well this summer and came close to beating it. And Bahubali, of course, is a huge deal since it is the only non-Hindi film up there (although it was distributed by a Bombay based production house, Dharma, which is very important in terms of overseas awareness and national reach in India).
So, on the micro-level, this just means we all need to buy as many tickets for Dilwale as humanly possible in order to return Shahrukh to his rightful ranking. I don’t care if you are actually seeing Star Wars, you buy your ticket for Dilwale!!!
But on a macro-level, in terms of global trends, economics, and the future of the industry, what does all of this mean and where does it come from?
So, I finally watched, Magadheera, yay! It’s just as good as everyone said it would be, like Bahubali but only slightly less so. And the hero has beautiful hair and the heroine is spunky and the special effects are super, and it has one sequence that was just jaw-droppingly beautiful:
It starts out just “kill a 100 men so you can show off a lot!”. But then it turns into this sort of endurance effort to show the triumph of the human spirit and soul and nobility, because he is proving himself to his ancestors and his warrior spirit. And then it goes from being bravado to triumph of spirit, to just pure “I must do this for the person I love.” It didn’t even feel romantic to me, more in that “mother lifts a car off her child” kind of arena. Which is why it was so powerful, it turned into something completely selfless and loving and triumphal.
Anyway, I don’t want to talk about any of that. No, what I find interesting in the clip above is the how the Muslim enemy leader comes to respect our hero’s bravery and achievements. Which was a huge relief, because it meant the Muslim character in this movie was going to be an “Honorable Muslim” instead of a “Rapacious Muslim.”
(Image above from santabanta.com)
So, Salman’s appeal was approved! He has been cleared on manslaughter charges in the 2002 reckless driving case. A triumph for something, certainly, if not exactly justice.
Now, I could talk about the issues with the court system in India, the price of fame and the power of money, whether punishment or reform is the purpose of the criminal justice system, and so on and so on, but I don’t really care about all that.
No, much more important, is: will Salman now, finally, get married? He has claimed for years that he wants to get married, only he couldn’t think about it with this court case hanging over him. Now that it has been resolved, time to place your bets!
This isn’t to say that I actually believe Salman has been putting off marriage because of jail. After all, Sanjay got married twice while waiting for his charges to resolve! But it was certainly a convenient excuse for Salman to pull out for the past 12 years every time things started to get serious.
Lulia Ventur is where Times of India is putting its money. Eastern European, been seen with him for years, he said something in a interview a few months ago about a family tradition of marrying outside his culture, and supposedly he bought her a house.
However, on the downside, she may already have a husband. I am sure a lawyer who can get a manslaughter charge to go away could also disappear an inconvenient husband. Again, though, it worked for Sanjay (his current wife may have been only about 75% divorced at the time of their wedding).
But I say, why not think outside the box! For example, Sangeeta Bijlani, Salman’s very first documented girlfriend. A former Miss India and a movie star, they dated back in the early 90s when both their careers were on the upswing. They broke up for unclear reasons (possibly he was cheating, possibly she just wanted to be married and he wasn’t ready), and she went on to marry Mohammad Azharuddin, the Muslim Captain of the Indian Cricket team who was banned from playing thanks to a match-fixing scandal. Apparently, her type is Muslims-at-the-top-of-their-profession-who-become-targets-for-possibly-too-extreme-punishments. Also, Emraan Hashmi is playing her husband in the upcoming biopic Azhar (lucky him! Emraan will make him even hotter than he was in real life). She is being played by Nargis Fakhri (poor her).
Now, Sangeeta got divorced back in 2010, so she is on the market again. She has stayed friendly with Salman, even visited him just now to congratulate him on getting off the charges. Is this the beginning of a campaign? One of those reminders that all the reasons they broke up in the first place now longer matter? I like the idea of someone age appropriate, someone with history with him. It would be sweet, like those high school sweethearts that reunite decades later!
After Sangeeta, of course, came Aish. Can you imagine the scandal if they got back together? It would be the biggest thing since ever! Frankly, I don’t know if the industry could survive, the camps would become so hard drawn it would be impossible to actually put together enough of a crew to get a film made. But even if it led to the end of Indian film as we know it, the scandal would be so juicy, it would almost be worth it! It even almost makes sense, the Bachchan’s certainly keep Aish on a tight leash, whereas the Khans let their daughter-in-law’s do whatever they want!
Plus, while Abhishek has a better family, Salman is the better catch just for himself. And, as Aaradhya’s mother, she’s got a lifetime connection to the Bachchan’s whether or not the marriage lasts. I could see Aish taking a calculated risk, and she definitely seems like the one-that-got-away for Salman, who would take her back in a heartbeat! Especially if she managed to play into his savior complex!
Speaking of scandal, what about Kat? What if she still loves Salman and only moved on to Ranbir because she thought he would never be ready to be married? Plus, Salman’s family looooooooooves her and the Kapoors, apparently, do not. Ranbir actually moved out of his family home to live with her, which is a pretty big sign, considering no man in his family has moved out of that house in the past 60 years. But can you imagine the end of Kuch Kuch playing out in real life, but with Salman playing Shahrukh, Kat playing Kajol, and Ranbir playing Salman?
But then there is my dream relationship. What if Salman sincerely didn’t want to get married until the court case was settled? What if he has been secretly hiding emotions in his heart for a long-time friend and, now that the sword hanging over his head is lifted, he will rush to her side, finally confess his emotions, and the music will swirl and they will be on a mountaintop! So, stick with me on this:
What if he has been in love with Karisma Kapoor for the past two decades?
Picture it: they meet on the set of Nishchaiy (1992) for the first time as semi-adults. She is just barely 18, he is dating Sangeeta. They become friends, more than that, he becomes her protector and defender onset and off (all of this so far is more or less true). He breaks up with Sangeeta a few years later, but by then Karisma is old enough to date and has started a relationship with Ajay Devgn. She breaks up with him, he moves on to Kajol, and meanwhile Salman is sewing his wild oats. Right when he is ready to get serious again, Karisma starts dating and becomes engaged to Abhishek Bachchan. Salman, around the same time, starts a serious relationship with Aish. Abhishek dumps Karisma weeks before the wedding. Meanwhile, Salman and Aish’s relationship implodes. Karisma has already moved on and started dating Sanjay Kapur, heir to a wealthy Delhi family, known for his polo playing and his drug charges. Salman starts dating 19 year old Katrina Kaif. Karisma’s marriage quickly turns into disaster. After two children, she returns to Bombay, where she is quickly welcomed back by her old friend, Salman Khan, who breaks up with Katrina around the same time.
So, all of the above is actually true and accurate, but imagine this interpretation. What if Salman has been in love with her for years? What if, in my lovely fanfic, Sangeeta broke up with him because she could sense he was in love with someone else, but by then Karisma was already with someone. What if he started dating Aish in a desperate attempt to forget Karisma and Abhishek’s relationship? What if Aish figured it out and confronted him, thus leading to the massive nervous breakdown that caused the very manslaughter accusation of which he was just exonerated? What if, never having recovered from having been rejected for Karisma, Aish’s whole marriage to Abhishek is just some obscure form of revenge, by getting the one man Karisma couldn’t get in revenge for her taking the one man she wanted?
What if Salman has been quietly waiting for Karisma to work through the last tangles of her marriage, afraid to speak his mind while she was still technically another man’s and while the threat of jail hung over his head? What if the music swells and they look in each other’s eyes, and suddenly….
Okay, so I know this is mostly me being crazy and reading too many romance novels, but after surviving her parents’ very public separation, supporting her whole family as a teenager, then being dumped by her first boyfriend, jilted by her fiance, and destroyed by her husband, I just want Karisma to be happy! And what could be better than to marry the one man with the power, fame, and, frankly, terrifying insane temper, to make all of that go away?
Named “Adira”, a combination of Aditya and Rani. I don’t know about this trend of made up names. Even “AbRam”, with that funky spelling, I am dubious.
Her birth was announced on twitter first by Rishi Kapoor, of all people, and then confirmed by Uday Chopra’s twitter soon after. However, a few hours earlier, SRK’s twitter had a random comment “…there really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child….” This could just be one of those random things he says sometimes, or it could be his trip to the hospital pep message for Adi. I choose to believe the latter.
No word yet from Amitabh, who is usually ALL ABOUT the baby announcements and congratulations. On the other hand, this baby is so very special, it’s possible he isn’t tweeting because he is actually at the hospital.
Moving on to the more important issues, who could this baby marry when she grows up? AbRam is of course an option, good family, right age, will probably be super handsome when he grows up. Would look good on her arm.
Then there’s Aamir’s son Azad, another good family, with producing background from his grandfather and great-uncle as well as his father. Plus, heightwise, it might work. Adira’s mother is of course super short, so it might be nice for her to marry someone whose father is super short, so they would match and look well in pictures.
Yug, Kajol and Ajay’s son, is also in a reasonable age range, should be comfortable with a strong matriarchy, and well-connected. Of course, he is also Adira’s cousin, but it is a very distant relationship and I think they could get past that. And it would solidify her claim on the Mukherjee owned studio complex, and an official Yash Raj-Mukherjee business merger would be great for the industry.
The Chopra’s do have a history of May-December marriages, which opens up the field beyond the current batch of babies. In the slightly older range, there’s Aarav Kumar. He hasn’t done much yet (since he’s like 13), but he looks exactly like his grandfather, mega-star Rajesh Khanna, and he is getting the karate training so he can be like his father, action star Akshay Kumar. Plus, his Grandma is Dimple, and she is awesome. Definitely a respectable match who would be okay with strong women. And could serve as a bodyguard as well as arm-candy.
There’s also Agastya Nanda, Amitabh’s grandson. He’s not an industry kid, raised in Delhi by a businessman father, but genetically, he is the ultimate prize. Grandson of Amitabh, great-grandson of Raj Kapoor. And a supportive spouse for the new head of Yash Raj studios should maybe have a business background instead of a straight film one.
And then of course the ultimate hope, she turns out to be gay and gets together with Aaradhya and achieves domination of the entire world.
Well, barely on Modi. It’s like a fragment of a quote from an interview where he talked about how he wasn’t going to talk about serious things any more unless it is on a platform specifically for serious things (is he considering a run for office? Let’s start that rumor! Or does he just mean another in depth essay or interview?).
Anyway, here is his quote:
“I think the developmental clause of his governance is fantastic. I am all for modernness and development. And it will be fantastic if he takes it up and makes it for the whole country,”
I think this isn’t quite “damning by faint praise”, but it is pretty close! He likes the developmental clause, but not necessarily anything else. And he is waiting to see if Modi is successful in instituting it for the whole country.
So, I just saw this
I’m glad I wasn’t the only person whose reaction of the possibility of Alia and Shahrukh co-starring was “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
I am interested in the implication that Karan is losing his pull with the star community, first Shudhi falling about half a dozen times, and now this. Of course, he’s also filming right now with Ranbir and Aish, so he couldn’t have lost all his connections.
So, “intolerance” is the new political hot potato among the filmi set. It started with a bunch of intellectual artists giving back their government awards, the “awards wapsi” movement, in protest of the recent spat of religious violence and Modi’s not very emphatic reactions against it. Some artists who had been involved in the film industry were included in this movement. And on the other hand, Anupum Kehr (so lovable onscreen! So hard to love off it!), decided to lead an anti-award wapsi movement, arguing that it was an insult to the Indian people to have these awards so cavalierly returned.
The big names were all successfully avoiding dealing with the micro-issue of Awards Wapsi, and the macro-issue of the Modi/BJP election and the changes it wrought, until Shahrukh decided to actually respond in his birthday interview. In response to a question, he said “there is intolerance, there is extreme intolerance… there is, I think… there is growing intolerance” and “It is stupid… It is stupid to be intolerant and this is our biggest issue, not just an issue… Religious intolerance and not being secular in this country is the worst kind of crime that you can do as a patriot.”
This got the usual responses, a bunch of hot-tempered politicians suggesting he “go back to Pakistan”, some other politicians apologizing-but-not-really-apologizing for their colleagues’ behavior. And the BJP lost the election in Bihar. A lot more went into the BJP losing there, but there is no way that SRK didn’t know that people were going to the polls in Bihar as he was talking, and that what he said could move a few thousand votes off the BJP ticket.
SRK having opened the floodgates, the next step of course was for the other two Khans to weigh in, as the most popular and powerful Muslims in India. Salman, hilariously, was cut off before he could give a full statement when Sonam Kapoor at their joint press conference literally leaned over and ripped the microphone out of his hands. He did manage to say something nice about how his family is so interreligious (Hindu born but Muslim convert mother, Christian stepmother, Muslim father, and Hindu sisters- and brother-in-law), but I doubt he will say anything more controversial than that until after his many many court cases are settled.
Aamir held off for a week or so, but when he did finally speak, he went hard. He opened by saying, “Kiran and I have lived all our lives in India. For the first time, she said, should we move out of India? That’s a disastrous and big statement for Kiran to make to me. She fears for her child. She fears about what the atmosphere around us will be. She feels scared to open the newspapers everyday.”
He then went on to discuss bigger issues in his typically passionate-yet-somehow-boring manner, but that opening! Man! That is something! Especially putting it in the mouth of his Hindu wife, pointing out that these issues affect not just the members of the Muslim community, but the many non-Muslims who care for them.
Anyway, many many people responded by saying this is not an intolerant country and if he thinks that, he should leave, because we can’t tolerate him (basically). And a few days ago, the first court case was officially filed.
“Advocate Sudhir Kumar Ojha lodged the FIR against Aamir and his wife at Town police station in Muzaffarpur district under sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc), 153B (Imputations, assertions prejudicial to national-integration) and 154 (Sedition) of IPC.”
I just, do these people not see what they are doing? In anger at being called intolerant, they are burning pictures, blackening posters, making death threats, and now, filing court cases. Now, does this sound more like tolerance, or like intolerance?
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