Akshay Kumar – shooting mess!

Akshay Kumar – shooting mess! by Master

Firstly, Akshay, and to a lesser extent Salman, were the only stars you could have signed a movie with just for the paycheck allure. All the other stars eventually started looking for scripts and the folks they make movies with. As everyone became selective and hard to get, Akshay utilized that completely and was available for any businessman turned producer waiting to make a movie. They could only get Akshay, as no other top star would ever do a movie just for the money. Akshay does so many movies, he has no qualms about script, director, or even leading lady. He doesn’t mind if the director is incapable or the leading lady is some art house heroine like Nimrat Kaur (Airlift) or Huma Qureshi (Jolly LLB2) or Radhika Apte (Padman) or even Mouni Roy (Gold). Akshay is worried about his role and paycheck. Yes, he will hear the script, but it’s more about projects, and he’s fine to do the movie as it’s less risky if doing multiple movies and if they are working according to his schedules.

Master on Bollywood box office rut and stardoms

Folks easily missing the point with Akshay Kumar. Yes, most of them struggling but there’s a huge difference. Salman Khan has 2 releases and even with lazy 10 yr remake and hideous promotions and with a horrible director, Kisi ka Bhai, Kisi ji Jaan did over 26+ cr on Eid and Tiger 3 did over 42 crs on Diwali. That’s what the stars can do and if the content is bad, it’ll flop and that’s fine as long as you have pull.

Krish on Bollywood and lack of appeal in South India

BW is always struggle hard to penetrate interior Telugu and Tamil market without a face. Jawan doing 60cr with 40L footfalls is a good start. But they probably never gave it a release like a normal Tamil movie no idea why. 100cr would have been excellent. The kind of movies that does really well in whole Telugu and Tamil State

Independence Day 2023: Bollywood’s flag-bearers of patriotic cinema (Updated)

Independence Day 2021: Bollywood’s flag-bearers of patriotic cinema, from Manoj Kumar to Akshay Kumar

Shaikh Ayaz
India at 75: Patriotism or jingoism? A look at why the Indian flag is flying high in today’s Bollywood movies, from Uri to Shershaah to Bhuj and looking back at the original Bharat Kumar.

Independence Day. Can you imagine this occasion without Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak, Nehru, Netaji Bose, BR Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh, Sardar Patel… and from the Bollywood side, Akshay Kumar? You might as well add John Abraham and Kangana Ranaut to that list, lest the duo have any hard feelings later. These are just three of the Hindi marquee stars, with a little help from Ajay Devgn, who are responsible for the extraordinary rise of patriotic-themed Hindi movies in the last decade. Put another way, if the “josh” of nationalistic content is high these days — sorry, Uri (2019) guys — blame it on the Desi Boyz (2011) and our very own Rani Jhansi (Manikarnika, 2019) who famously called herself an “ultranationalist.”

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Krish on Amitabh Bachchan

As a kid who grew in the 80s, all i can say that Amitabh is the greatest superstar there has ever been. My first movie of his in theatre was the 5th or 6th rerun of Mr Natwarlal in Anand theatre Thane and that was sometime in 1984 or 1985 when the movie actually came in 1979 and i saw that in a packed house then. Unfortunately the electricity went and we had to come back home sadly 😦

An Jo on AB’s and SRK’s come-backs

On AB’s and SRK’s come-backs…

Quite surprised at the turn — maybe the colors of Holi did play their magic — of tide here: Marcus, Master, everyone acknowledging AB’s unparalleled stardom: Been wanting to write this for a long time. As I believe someone said here, it is difficult and futile to compare stars of different eras and their levels of connectivity to the audience.

Dichotomy of Opinions on the identity of ‘PATHAAN’ – An Jo

Dichotomy of Opinions on the identity of ‘PATHAAN’

“Munna/Jay – Now I cannot sit quiet with a dumb analyst’s, politically motivated reply and hitting below the belt by using ‘Jo’ Blow. I really do not have much time due to my travel and personal issues with close relatives’ health [which I have mentioned], but some hidden moles are just coming out and making a mockery of film criticism. NEVER, have I mentioned that PATHAAN is a bad film or a fine; honestly because, I haven’t seen it. I have put in my qualifiers that my reactions are purely based on the trailer, and the tropes SRK and his team have used to mint millions. I apologize since in one statement I used Z’s marital status; but even that, was with a semblance of decency. Still, I owe him an apology just on a human basis.

NewYork Magazine on “How a Nepo Baby Is Born”

How a Nepo Baby Is Born

How a Nepo Baby Is Born Hollywood has always loved the children of famous people. In 2022, the internet reduced them to two little words.

In 2022, the internet uncovered a vast conspiracy: Hollywood was run on an invisible network of family ties — and everybody was in on it! Everyone is someone’s kid, but it was as if everybody were somebody’s kid. Euphoria, the buzziest show on television, was created by the son of a major director and co-starred the daughter of another. Actress Maya Hawke was not only born to two famous parents but looked like them, too. Half of Brooklyn’s indie artists had dads with IMDb pages. Even Succession’s Cousin Greg turned out to be the son of one of the guys who designed the Rolling Stones’ lips logo. Aghast, content creators got to work. An unwieldy phrase — “the child of a celebrity” — was reduced to a catchy buzzword: nepo baby. TikTokers produced multipart series about nepo babies who resembled their famous parents, exposés on people you didn’t know were nepo babies (everyone knew), and PSAs urging celebrity parents to roast their nepo babies “to keep them humble.”

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Shivaay’s note on Oppenheimer and Nolan’s return to character oriented cinema

Oppenheimer and Nolan’s return to character oriented cinema

As I watched (and rewatched) the teaser of Nolan’s next Oppenheimer, one cannot but help noticing the master film maker’s return to character oriented cinema, a brand of story telling that has made him one of the finest film makers of contemporary times. Not that films like Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet were mediocre by any yardstick (such is the genius of Nolan that even his underwhelming films are perhaps few of the decade’s best!) but the entire idea of building a plot around the central protagonist(s) is something Nolan seemed to have forsaken in exchange for larger than life concepts where characters fitted in as nothing more than pawns.

On the ‘my moments’ with THE Bachchan…(part 3) by An Jo – Updated

Part 3
Continuing from the closing moments of the ‘70s, extending onto the late‘80s, time for the 48 year old AB to compete with the ‘young Khan’ blood: the innocent-looking Aamir, the go-getter/ham-expert SRK, the non-actor but damn good-looker/vada-pav seeker Salim Khan’s son.

“The best of Bachchan” by Shivaay (Updated)

The best of Bachchan 2a… 1980-85 : Sellout man!

Megastardom firmly established, it was time for film makers to feed off the same & fill their coffers!!

1. Shaan : Vijay Kumar

Suave, stylish and a Bond like figure in Hindi cinema, Shaan’s Vijay Kumar continues from where DON left off 2 years ago. A highly underrated film that eventually got its due despite record breaking costs thanks to director Sippy’s post Sholay demand!

Screen Test (The New Yorker Oct. 17, 2022 issue)

When the Hindu Right came for Bollywood

Read the complete article HERE

Rahul on Amitabh and Hrithik’s “Agneepath”

The new Agneepath worked and that’s a good thing, mainly for Dharma and HR. The latter tried a new interpretation of Vijay Dinanath Chauhan. And HR himself said that if he tried to reprise the role in a similar way to Amitabh, he would have failed there as Amitabh Bachan was unbeatable in that element. HR’s Vijay Dinanath Chauhan was less larger than life persona and more of the common youth rebel who takes the law into his hands, more vulnerable also. It looks like a younger phase in life to Amitabh’s, where the former is coming into his own, while the latter starts to rule supreme soon after he comes on screen.

An Jo on Bollywood, Boycott and stuffs

picture credit

@Nykavi; thank you for coming back to the blog and commenting. I am afraid I might have to disagree with you on some points.

The BFI (Bombay Film Industry) has always, and always been left of center or in cases, maybe, at the center, the minimum extent possible. Aamir hasn’t taken anyone for ride. His association with VVC is bad; though it resulted in a fantastic performance from him in 3I but with a very weak film that, at most deserved 2.5 stars. A really poor film ripped off from engineering college jokes from my time and whats app forwards as to how a DC motor starts and is shut down!! And Chatur was made a clown, a real clown, whereas, infact, on the terrace when he combats verbally with Aamir, that was THE BEST scene of the movie and every sentence, every sentence he utters carries a meaning. I am an engineer, and I understand the sentiments we were working with.

An Jo on ‘Gangubai Kathiawari’ and ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ performances

The Performances’ weightage

Over the weekend, I finally watched ‘GANGUBAI KATHIAWARI’ on Netflix. Two things struck me; one, the horrible negation Aamir is getting for LSC, and two, the over-praise that Alia got for GK.