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Yeah, I was hoping the trailer would change my mind here but this doesn’t look all that interesting. Also, Farhan’s adopted a gym body here which doesn’t strike me as a very plausible runner’s physique.
I know that they chose the July 12 date because how ZNMD fared on the same week last year but I hope they do realze that Ramadhan would already be under way by it. It may not matter any way….
Ahaa RO Mehra at his worst is better than most in Bollywood
Liked all 3 of his movies till now esp Aks 1st part & rdb
Unlike what many feel–this subject has lots of possibilities
Expecting a good movie here
Though Farhan passes the ‘resemblance test’ (bolstered by some androstenedione!) but this sheer lack of acting wherewithal in a film that begs for it is/will be the sore thumb!
Someone like irrfan and even manoj Bajpai would’ve been awesome here
Infact this was a film for abhishrek ( if there was ever one!)–but not surprisingly rom couldn’t muster courage to have another d6 box office performance
One does wonder though if this Farhan starrer will fare any better box office wise –perhaps excel is also pumping money into this deal and Farhan is using it as an ‘acting career advancement’ tool as well …
Disappointed with the choice of lead actor..and what is with that six pack? Did Milkha really have that? Is that a mandatory outcome of the exercising required for a runner’s physique? Just not sure..
Anyway, here’s how MS got the title of THE FLYING SIKH
I like this trailer, it’s one of the best I’ve seen from Bollywood recently. I can understand not liking the choice of Farhan for Milkha, but I’m a bewildered by people protesting the implausiblity of his physique- almost all of the runners at the Olympics this year had similar musculature, females included:
yup. it’s only the current ones pumping steroids who look like that. milkha singh was actually on the skinny side, with toned arms and legs obviously, which is natural for runners. but not the obscenely muscled and defined body that looks completely out of place here.
I do realize that Milkha Singh did not have a similar body, but what I meant was that it was still within the realm of believability (especially by Bollywood standards) since many runners/ sprinters today have similar bodies.
But it’s ridiculous to suggest that all Olympic athletes today are pumping steroids to attain their physiques. Many of them develop their physiques in healthy ways. Even some of my friends who are University-level athletes in sports such as triathalons, rowing, boxing etc have similar physiques that are the result of extremely protien heavy diets and rigorous workouts.
P.S.- I’m sure that many Bollywood actors themselves are either steroid addicted (the men) or anorexic (the women) or using liposuction- but what I mean is that it is possible for athletes to gain such a body without indulging in an unhealthy lifestyle-even in Bollywod, Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone, for instance, are known to be athletic and very fitness-oriented.
agree on bollywood standards point but since this is supposed to be higher on authenticity and details scale and his body id an important thing to get right that they worked hard on, i guess i supposed they’ll go with more ‘authentic’ rather than ‘hot’, it just rings false, that’s all. just one of the things in the trailer i didn’t care about.
on the point about athletes, i have less faith than you. just hearing and seeing things at least here in the us, the highly suspicious sports culture and ‘falling’ of many icons (armstrong, anyone?). anyway, my personal opinion, shouldn’t have brought it up.
“guess i supposed they’ll go with more ‘authentic’ rather than ‘hot’, it just rings false, that’s all.”
Agree- but I don’t expect a very high level of authenticity in Bollywood, even in biopics. So I can accept his physique since the fact that he is an olypic athlete lends some degree of plausiblity to this body type, and since they’ve atleast bothered to get the face/ hair resemblance pretty spot-on. I mean, there are rumours circulating that Priyanka Chopra is going to be playing Mary Kom in a new biopic, atleast this isn’t that bad!
ugh! don’t even get me started on that! but i expect bhansali (whom i have a very low opinion of) to pretty things up. the problem i think is, i actually did expect better from mehra, even by bw standards. that’s why i said i was disappointed. i was actually curious about this project and even liked the choice of farhan since, as you said, they did get the look right. my expectations have been suitably lowered.
“milkha singh was actually on the skinny side, with toned arms and legs obviously, which is natural for runners. but not the obscenely muscled and defined body that looks completely out of place here.”
good observent point about ‘selective’ toning of body parts, as opposed to a generalised beefcake look…
As a filmmaker, he aims to create movies with “global viability”.
“Right from my first film ‘Aks’, the idea was to tell the story to the world, not to some diaspora in New Jersey and emotionally blackmail them in the name of ‘Karva Chauth’.
“My ‘Rang De Basanti’ was exactly that – to tell the story of Indian youth to the world. It got a BAFTA nomination and was a curriculum in Australia. In ‘Delhi-6′, I went a step ahead to bring in some spiritualism and philosophy but couldn’t tell the story well – not as well as I would have liked to. But no regrets,” he said.
With his upcoming offering “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”, inspired by the life of India’s best known sprinter Milkha Singh, he is aiming at the same.
Haven’t read beyond the excerpt here but It’s always kind of a bummer when Indian filmmakers turn into apologists for movies that don’t do well at the box office but are otherwise interesting works. I don’t mean to suggest filmmakers can’t be self critical, but I’ve never heard Mehra or any other filmmaker talk about the problems they might have had with the films that clicked.
But isn’t that human nature overreall? Its close to the saying, “Dont try to fix something that’s not broken.” I think it may apply here as well, If something clicked why go looking for issues with that product and just move on?
very well said GF. On Mehra – I can’t resist bringing in aamir-factor here. RDB was shaped up very well because aamir’s involvement as an actor also rubs magic to the entire project – we have seen this with ashu/farhaan/reema whose other projects haven’t matched the success with their aamir-projects. Mehra really needs to balance his idealism with the commerical viability of the project because he on his own does not have the conviction to carry off a risky project which aamir has. BMB shd be a B.O. hit although i believe.
I’ve said this before more expansively but there are two ways of looking at it. Aamir wouldn’t do a film like D6 because he would always be certain about its box office prospects. Aamir is not just looking to do the meaningful film but one that has a minimal box office chance. This doesn’t of course mean he doesn’t take risks. And despite his instincts he’s still sometimes unsure of the final result. But 99% of the time he has a pretty uncanny sense about these things. Abhishek on the other hand (not in the current phase obviously) is much more likely to ‘forget’ the box office if the subject appeals to him in some instinctive sense. Pragmatically it is obvious that this is a much more risky path but my point here is that it’s not the very same project that becomes great with Aamir and then poor otherwise. It’s not as if Aamir takes on D6 and then fixes the script. Because not every script can be fixed that way. One could certainly argue against D6 but any changes in the script would not make the film more viable. However a certain kind of change would but then that film would bear little resemblance to the current work. So it’s important not to mix up these things. For instance Aamir didn’t ultimately work with Ratnam. Abhishek did Guru and it worked, with Raavan it was the opposite, Yuva was in between. If Aamir had to do a Ratnam film he might just have done Guru. On the other side it’s clear that a number of these directors when they worked with Abhishek were also inspired to do even more edgy stuff. This isn’t hard to understand. They took the actor because they liked him, they did riskier stuff, other actors might have impeded them on this score, Abhishek didn’t. It’s like Ratnam’s current Kadal. Many suggested that it should just have been a pure love story. A kind of AP deal with some masala thrown in. Sure that would have made it a sure-shot success but then it wouldn’t have been new terrain for the director. All of this is not a criticism of Aamir, nor is it one of Abhishek (except of course that in a box office sense there is more suffering on his path!) but it’s not the very same deal in each case.
Ultimately (and I’ve always believed this) the way actors think gets reflected in their choices, even the more cynical ones. So even as Abhishek is trying to do very commercially safe stuff at the moment the choices are not always the most obvious ones in certain ways (in other words the choices might be very commercial ones, even lowbrow ones, but he might for instance prefer a certain brand of commercial/lowbrow cinema over another kind). Much as Saif no matter where he is in his career tries to do the ‘cool’ multiplex deal. So on and so forth. Of course the irony here is that even Abhishek has refused a number of important directors when it comes to more meaningful stuff (most infamously for Aamir’s part and then Siddharth’s part in RDB.. but yes it might have been a different sort of film at that point.. then there was Company earlier.. there’s been other stuff that hasn’t necessarily done the media rounds). So it’s not as if he signs on to anything risky. My point is that whether insanely commercial or risky whatever choices an actor makes within those subsets can be distinctive.
Thats a really good summation on Aamir and Jrs choices of films. But I do feel like that things do change when Aamir is on board it may not be on the script level, But he does tend to pick and choose the roles that he thinks will benefit the film and going against the directors vision at times (not that I am complaining it has paid off well) In the case of Dil Chahta hai he was to do Akshaye Khanna’s part, Same goes for RDB he was to do Madhavan’s part and as he mentioned in few interviews for Dhobi Ghaat he did persuade Kiran to cast him and basically manipulated her by doing an audition for it. Whatever the case maybe, we do get to see a good final product though. Would love to see him and Jr work together in a Ratnam film rather than D3.
agreed mostly.. and yes I’d love to see him and Aamir in a serious film. On the rest though my point is that this is a practical box office prescription rather than necessarily one for the most important cinema. The two can sometimes coincide of course but they don’t have to. In other words Aamir of course does meaningful films, this even even when he attempts very commercial formats. So even when he does a film for very commercial reasons he attempts to do something more with the genre (Fanaa is my classic example here.. or later Ghajini.. these are not films comparable to the best he’s done elsewhere but these are better films for their respective genres within the Bollywood context). But by the same token his choices pre-suppose the lesser (if not non-existent) possibility that he would be associated with a Kaagaz ke Phool. Because he would never find it completely reasonable as a box office decision. Here Aamir is willing to live with the underperformer but not the absolute flop. Put differently when Aamir has an MP he learns from it, he learns not to repeat the mistake. And so on. But my point is that there is no ‘problem’ with MP much as there is none with Talaash. Those who pick holes in these films are the very same who think there is never a problem with a box office hit. So once again I’m not arguing against Aamir here, I’ve always highlighted his choices, even moreso as a worthwhile project for his industry. But there are nonetheless consequences to these choices. Because if you exclude a number of films on these grounds you also exclude plenty that might be potentially great but too far ahead of the present to really be appreciated by present-day audiences and/or critics. The absolutely great films or even the absolutely great classics come about not simply as a series of calculations or ‘reasonable’ decisions. There are fabled stories of such mad decisions in every industry in the world. Ironically Aamir himself took such a risk with Lagaan! It was absolutely mad to do a period piece that long that revolved around cricket to such a degree (within those larger colonial contexts). But by the same token he hasn’t necessarily been as mad with his ensuing choices. Though I like many of the latter, perhaps even more than Lagaan in some cases (though I wouldn’t argue this as a critical matter), all those films are still more comprehensible to me as rational choices than Lagaan. and this is an important distinction, precisely for a star who’s achieved so much in such extraordinary fashion that he could really now start taking those greater leaps forward. And specially when he now has the D3 kind of film that promises the ‘absolute’ gross he can afford to take greater risks elsewhere.
I echo your comments above. And to add to that, I personally think that he has paid his dues in the 90′s by giving some flops and he is now become very cautious in picking up project that are commercially viable at the same time brings some sort of satisfaction to the actor as well as the upper bencher audiences, He has found a great mix for himself. Indeed Fanaa and Ghajini are the best examples of this lot and I did hear him in an interview once saying that hey if I need my audience to come watch movies I do need to make a Fanaa once in a while and plesae them. Ghulam and Sarfarosh were both critically acclaimed films,but I feel they never got its due that they deserved. That’s maybe one of the reasons he weighs his options and leans tad bit more on the commerical aspect of the film (nothing wrong there). But yes, RDB, TZP, Talaash they are all risky projects and if there were any other actors in it, It may not have been as successful as it is today. Now to read your other piece above of Guru Dutt and Aamir.
aamir wouldn’t sign them because they are weak scripts. to think abhi is some kind of courageous warrior who is signing them because they are so edgy is ridiculous. he signed d6 after the success of rdb, probably thinking d6 will work well too. it’s also possible these were better scripts that didn’t translate well or got off-track while filming, may be that’s what mehra meant. so may be abhi thinks they are not houseful kind of box-office deal just like aamir did with talaash, but i am sure he is not going into these knowing full well that they will be outright critical and/or commercial failures.
i agree with the point of aamir being a cautious actor. but to think he missed on these ‘great’ projects because of his caution is laughable. going by the actual end result, he hasn’t missed out on anything.
November 29, 2012 at 11:04 AM
Always interested in anything Mehra does but I really regret he did not choose a more interesting subject.
November 29, 2012 at 11:13 AM
Yeah, I was hoping the trailer would change my mind here but this doesn’t look all that interesting. Also, Farhan’s adopted a gym body here which doesn’t strike me as a very plausible runner’s physique.
November 29, 2012 at 11:20 AM
I know that they chose the July 12 date because how ZNMD fared on the same week last year but I hope they do realze that Ramadhan would already be under way by it. It may not matter any way….
November 29, 2012 at 12:34 PM
jarring background score, farhan’s steroidy look. ugh! at least they are lowering expectations with the very first look.
November 29, 2012 at 1:54 PM
Ahaa RO Mehra at his worst is better than most in Bollywood
Liked all 3 of his movies till now esp Aks 1st part & rdb
Unlike what many feel–this subject has lots of possibilities
Expecting a good movie here
Though Farhan passes the ‘resemblance test’ (bolstered by some androstenedione!) but this sheer lack of acting wherewithal in a film that begs for it is/will be the sore thumb!
Someone like irrfan and even manoj Bajpai would’ve been awesome here
Infact this was a film for abhishrek ( if there was ever one!)–but not surprisingly rom couldn’t muster courage to have another d6 box office performance
One does wonder though if this Farhan starrer will fare any better box office wise –perhaps excel is also pumping money into this deal and Farhan is using it as an ‘acting career advancement’ tool as well …
November 29, 2012 at 7:01 PM
Disappointed with the choice of lead actor..and what is with that six pack? Did Milkha really have that? Is that a mandatory outcome of the exercising required for a runner’s physique? Just not sure..
Anyway, here’s how MS got the title of THE FLYING SIKH
http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/more/videos/view/id/1424694/bandwidth/high
November 29, 2012 at 7:42 PM
I like this trailer, it’s one of the best I’ve seen from Bollywood recently. I can understand not liking the choice of Farhan for Milkha, but I’m a bewildered by people protesting the implausiblity of his physique- almost all of the runners at the Olympics this year had similar musculature, females included:
http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/08/02/canada-trying-to-return-to-olympic-sprint-glory-days/
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/assets_c/2012/08/London%20Olympics%20Athletics%20Women%20Marathon.JPEG-09df7-79424.html
November 29, 2012 at 9:22 PM
The old time Olympic runners did not have six pack ph
ysiques.
November 29, 2012 at 9:25 PM
yup. it’s only the current ones pumping steroids who look like that. milkha singh was actually on the skinny side, with toned arms and legs obviously, which is natural for runners. but not the obscenely muscled and defined body that looks completely out of place here.
November 29, 2012 at 9:48 PM
I do realize that Milkha Singh did not have a similar body, but what I meant was that it was still within the realm of believability (especially by Bollywood standards) since many runners/ sprinters today have similar bodies.
But it’s ridiculous to suggest that all Olympic athletes today are pumping steroids to attain their physiques. Many of them develop their physiques in healthy ways. Even some of my friends who are University-level athletes in sports such as triathalons, rowing, boxing etc have similar physiques that are the result of extremely protien heavy diets and rigorous workouts.
November 29, 2012 at 9:59 PM
P.S.- I’m sure that many Bollywood actors themselves are either steroid addicted (the men) or anorexic (the women) or using liposuction- but what I mean is that it is possible for athletes to gain such a body without indulging in an unhealthy lifestyle-even in Bollywod, Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone, for instance, are known to be athletic and very fitness-oriented.
November 29, 2012 at 10:03 PM
agree on bollywood standards point but since this is supposed to be higher on authenticity and details scale and his body id an important thing to get right that they worked hard on, i guess i supposed they’ll go with more ‘authentic’ rather than ‘hot’, it just rings false, that’s all. just one of the things in the trailer i didn’t care about.
on the point about athletes, i have less faith than you. just hearing and seeing things at least here in the us, the highly suspicious sports culture and ‘falling’ of many icons (armstrong, anyone?). anyway, my personal opinion, shouldn’t have brought it up.
November 29, 2012 at 10:04 PM
agree with you – akshay has the best (natural) body in the business.
November 29, 2012 at 10:12 PM
“guess i supposed they’ll go with more ‘authentic’ rather than ‘hot’, it just rings false, that’s all.”
Agree- but I don’t expect a very high level of authenticity in Bollywood, even in biopics. So I can accept his physique since the fact that he is an olypic athlete lends some degree of plausiblity to this body type, and since they’ve atleast bothered to get the face/ hair resemblance pretty spot-on. I mean, there are rumours circulating that Priyanka Chopra is going to be playing Mary Kom in a new biopic, atleast this isn’t that bad!
November 29, 2012 at 10:16 PM
ugh! don’t even get me started on that! but i expect bhansali (whom i have a very low opinion of) to pretty things up. the problem i think is, i actually did expect better from mehra, even by bw standards. that’s why i said i was disappointed. i was actually curious about this project and even liked the choice of farhan since, as you said, they did get the look right. my expectations have been suitably lowered.
December 1, 2012 at 10:23 AM
“milkha singh was actually on the skinny side, with toned arms and legs obviously, which is natural for runners. but not the obscenely muscled and defined body that looks completely out of place here.”
good observent point about ‘selective’ toning of body parts, as opposed to a generalised beefcake look…
November 29, 2012 at 8:28 PM
2001 – Lagaan
2007 – CDI
2013 – Bhaag Milkha Bhaag..
Fantastic…one of my most awaited movies…
February 14, 2013 at 11:25 AM
As a filmmaker, he aims to create movies with “global viability”.
“Right from my first film ‘Aks’, the idea was to tell the story to the world, not to some diaspora in New Jersey and emotionally blackmail them in the name of ‘Karva Chauth’.
“My ‘Rang De Basanti’ was exactly that – to tell the story of Indian youth to the world. It got a BAFTA nomination and was a curriculum in Australia. In ‘Delhi-6′, I went a step ahead to bring in some spiritualism and philosophy but couldn’t tell the story well – not as well as I would have liked to. But no regrets,” he said.
With his upcoming offering “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”, inspired by the life of India’s best known sprinter Milkha Singh, he is aiming at the same.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/indian-cinema-is-still-a-cottage-industry-rakeysh-omprakash-mehra/372611-8-66.html
February 14, 2013 at 11:32 AM
Haven’t read beyond the excerpt here but It’s always kind of a bummer when Indian filmmakers turn into apologists for movies that don’t do well at the box office but are otherwise interesting works. I don’t mean to suggest filmmakers can’t be self critical, but I’ve never heard Mehra or any other filmmaker talk about the problems they might have had with the films that clicked.
February 14, 2013 at 11:51 AM
But isn’t that human nature overreall? Its close to the saying, “Dont try to fix something that’s not broken.” I think it may apply here as well, If something clicked why go looking for issues with that product and just move on?
February 14, 2013 at 2:15 PM
well said..
February 14, 2013 at 3:33 PM
very well said GF. On Mehra – I can’t resist bringing in aamir-factor here. RDB was shaped up very well because aamir’s involvement as an actor also rubs magic to the entire project – we have seen this with ashu/farhaan/reema whose other projects haven’t matched the success with their aamir-projects. Mehra really needs to balance his idealism with the commerical viability of the project because he on his own does not have the conviction to carry off a risky project which aamir has. BMB shd be a B.O. hit although i believe.
February 14, 2013 at 4:34 PM
I’ve said this before more expansively but there are two ways of looking at it. Aamir wouldn’t do a film like D6 because he would always be certain about its box office prospects. Aamir is not just looking to do the meaningful film but one that has a minimal box office chance. This doesn’t of course mean he doesn’t take risks. And despite his instincts he’s still sometimes unsure of the final result. But 99% of the time he has a pretty uncanny sense about these things. Abhishek on the other hand (not in the current phase obviously) is much more likely to ‘forget’ the box office if the subject appeals to him in some instinctive sense. Pragmatically it is obvious that this is a much more risky path but my point here is that it’s not the very same project that becomes great with Aamir and then poor otherwise. It’s not as if Aamir takes on D6 and then fixes the script. Because not every script can be fixed that way. One could certainly argue against D6 but any changes in the script would not make the film more viable. However a certain kind of change would but then that film would bear little resemblance to the current work. So it’s important not to mix up these things. For instance Aamir didn’t ultimately work with Ratnam. Abhishek did Guru and it worked, with Raavan it was the opposite, Yuva was in between. If Aamir had to do a Ratnam film he might just have done Guru. On the other side it’s clear that a number of these directors when they worked with Abhishek were also inspired to do even more edgy stuff. This isn’t hard to understand. They took the actor because they liked him, they did riskier stuff, other actors might have impeded them on this score, Abhishek didn’t. It’s like Ratnam’s current Kadal. Many suggested that it should just have been a pure love story. A kind of AP deal with some masala thrown in. Sure that would have made it a sure-shot success but then it wouldn’t have been new terrain for the director. All of this is not a criticism of Aamir, nor is it one of Abhishek (except of course that in a box office sense there is more suffering on his path!) but it’s not the very same deal in each case.
Ultimately (and I’ve always believed this) the way actors think gets reflected in their choices, even the more cynical ones. So even as Abhishek is trying to do very commercially safe stuff at the moment the choices are not always the most obvious ones in certain ways (in other words the choices might be very commercial ones, even lowbrow ones, but he might for instance prefer a certain brand of commercial/lowbrow cinema over another kind). Much as Saif no matter where he is in his career tries to do the ‘cool’ multiplex deal. So on and so forth. Of course the irony here is that even Abhishek has refused a number of important directors when it comes to more meaningful stuff (most infamously for Aamir’s part and then Siddharth’s part in RDB.. but yes it might have been a different sort of film at that point.. then there was Company earlier.. there’s been other stuff that hasn’t necessarily done the media rounds). So it’s not as if he signs on to anything risky. My point is that whether insanely commercial or risky whatever choices an actor makes within those subsets can be distinctive.
And I thought this would be a brief comment. LOL!
February 14, 2013 at 5:05 PM
Thats a really good summation on Aamir and Jrs choices of films. But I do feel like that things do change when Aamir is on board it may not be on the script level, But he does tend to pick and choose the roles that he thinks will benefit the film and going against the directors vision at times (not that I am complaining it has paid off well) In the case of Dil Chahta hai he was to do Akshaye Khanna’s part, Same goes for RDB he was to do Madhavan’s part and as he mentioned in few interviews for Dhobi Ghaat he did persuade Kiran to cast him and basically manipulated her by doing an audition for it. Whatever the case maybe, we do get to see a good final product though. Would love to see him and Jr work together in a Ratnam film rather than D3.
February 14, 2013 at 6:32 PM
agreed mostly.. and yes I’d love to see him and Aamir in a serious film. On the rest though my point is that this is a practical box office prescription rather than necessarily one for the most important cinema. The two can sometimes coincide of course but they don’t have to. In other words Aamir of course does meaningful films, this even even when he attempts very commercial formats. So even when he does a film for very commercial reasons he attempts to do something more with the genre (Fanaa is my classic example here.. or later Ghajini.. these are not films comparable to the best he’s done elsewhere but these are better films for their respective genres within the Bollywood context). But by the same token his choices pre-suppose the lesser (if not non-existent) possibility that he would be associated with a Kaagaz ke Phool. Because he would never find it completely reasonable as a box office decision. Here Aamir is willing to live with the underperformer but not the absolute flop. Put differently when Aamir has an MP he learns from it, he learns not to repeat the mistake. And so on. But my point is that there is no ‘problem’ with MP much as there is none with Talaash. Those who pick holes in these films are the very same who think there is never a problem with a box office hit. So once again I’m not arguing against Aamir here, I’ve always highlighted his choices, even moreso as a worthwhile project for his industry. But there are nonetheless consequences to these choices. Because if you exclude a number of films on these grounds you also exclude plenty that might be potentially great but too far ahead of the present to really be appreciated by present-day audiences and/or critics. The absolutely great films or even the absolutely great classics come about not simply as a series of calculations or ‘reasonable’ decisions. There are fabled stories of such mad decisions in every industry in the world. Ironically Aamir himself took such a risk with Lagaan! It was absolutely mad to do a period piece that long that revolved around cricket to such a degree (within those larger colonial contexts). But by the same token he hasn’t necessarily been as mad with his ensuing choices. Though I like many of the latter, perhaps even more than Lagaan in some cases (though I wouldn’t argue this as a critical matter), all those films are still more comprehensible to me as rational choices than Lagaan. and this is an important distinction, precisely for a star who’s achieved so much in such extraordinary fashion that he could really now start taking those greater leaps forward. And specially when he now has the D3 kind of film that promises the ‘absolute’ gross he can afford to take greater risks elsewhere.
I wrote a related post on this three years ago:
http://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/aamir-and-the-guru-dutt-chance/
February 15, 2013 at 9:45 AM
I echo your comments above. And to add to that, I personally think that he has paid his dues in the 90′s by giving some flops and he is now become very cautious in picking up project that are commercially viable at the same time brings some sort of satisfaction to the actor as well as the upper bencher audiences, He has found a great mix for himself. Indeed Fanaa and Ghajini are the best examples of this lot and I did hear him in an interview once saying that hey if I need my audience to come watch movies I do need to make a Fanaa once in a while and plesae them. Ghulam and Sarfarosh were both critically acclaimed films,but I feel they never got its due that they deserved. That’s maybe one of the reasons he weighs his options and leans tad bit more on the commerical aspect of the film (nothing wrong there). But yes, RDB, TZP, Talaash they are all risky projects and if there were any other actors in it, It may not have been as successful as it is today. Now to read your other piece above of Guru Dutt and Aamir.
February 15, 2013 at 10:04 AM
aamir wouldn’t sign them because they are weak scripts. to think abhi is some kind of courageous warrior who is signing them because they are so edgy is ridiculous. he signed d6 after the success of rdb, probably thinking d6 will work well too. it’s also possible these were better scripts that didn’t translate well or got off-track while filming, may be that’s what mehra meant. so may be abhi thinks they are not houseful kind of box-office deal just like aamir did with talaash, but i am sure he is not going into these knowing full well that they will be outright critical and/or commercial failures.
i agree with the point of aamir being a cautious actor. but to think he missed on these ‘great’ projects because of his caution is laughable. going by the actual end result, he hasn’t missed out on anything.
February 14, 2013 at 11:33 AM
I think you will like what he has to say so would request to read the whole article
aside- loved his Karva Chauth line above…