The news of Aishwarya Rai being featured on TIMES cover has come as a shock and a surprise to anyone. Everyone is laughing over here, not only on seeing Ash's photo but also on reading the comments by Mr. Alex Perry. His comments and findings were not only off the mark but made little sense. Needless to say very few agree with his views on Bollywood.
One fails to understand as to why there is so much brouhaha over Ash being featured on the cover of Times Magazine, that too an Asian edition, considering that she is not even the first Indian actress to feature on the Times cover. Parveen Babi was the first Indian heroine to grace the Times cover. One can easily assume that Ash has been featured on Times cover not on merit or for her acting credentials but because of a good PR work and her beauty.
In this context one should note that Aamir Khan was to be featured on the cover and the photographer Atul Kasbekar had already shot the cover. But under mysterious circumstances it was Aishwarya who was on the covers all of a sudden and that too with some ridiculous titles like "The New Face of Film" and "The Queen of Bollywood". The editor of Times Magazine should know that Aishwarya who has just two hits and several flops to her credit is not at all eligible for these titles. It had to someone like Amitabh, Aamir, Om Puri, Madhuri or Shabana. In some recent polls conducted in India, 85% of the voters felt that Amitabh represents the Bollywood face and not Aishwarya (just 15% fell for her beauty) and 87% of them felt that Aishwarya is Queen of Bollywood due to her beauty and not her acting (just 13% of them felt that she can act). Further, 57% of the voters voted for Monica Belluci, who featured on the covers of Newsweek magazine, as hotter and beautiful than Aishwarya Rai who got just 43% of votes.
Further the media is unnecessarily making a hue and cry about Aishwarya featuring in Bride and Prejudice, made by an NRI director, which is not really an "International" or "Hollywood type" movie or a crossover movie. Bride and Prejudice is a regular Bollywood movie full of songs and melodrama. Besides, Aishwarya is not even the first Indian actress to feature in an all-English production. Did everyone forget about the late Persis Khambatta who appeared in one of the Star Trek movies and Padma Lakshmi who played the "lip-synching" wannabe singer in Glitter (Mariah Carey's movie)?
Mr. Alex Perry should do some research before commenting on the leading Bollywood queens in Bollywood and the current trends in Bollywood.
The fact that Aishwariya is being called the Queen of Bollywood is insulting, since this is Madhuri's official title. Tsk tsk. There are a lot of actresses in Bollywood who are much more talented than Aishwariya Rai. It's offensive that she is being regarded so high (purely based on looks, I might add), while they aren't being mentioned at all.
It's really good to watch the fame of Aiswarya rai gone global. The exposure of Bollywood movies is amazing and there are several better movies in the regional language like Bengali, Tamil & Malayalam. Why didn't the reputation of these films are not acceptable worldwide? Is it b'coz of inadequate strategies in marketing & distributing? Remember Rajinikanth's Movies(Tamil superstar) has a tremendous response in Japan.
Even an intelligent magazine like TIME giving importance to a dumb and wooden female like Aishwarya is a shock to me. I will never ever consider this woman to be a beauty let alone Queen. She is the epitome of artificiality and fake and everything that is false. What is an article without a mention about the one and only MADHURI DIXIT the ever beautiful and most talented under the SUN.
