RE:Nishabd is outstanding work of art-----well done Ramu
by gabri on Mar 12, 2007 12:15 PM
undoubtedly Amitabh Bachchan is a superstar and thats abt it , he is a good actor but not the best . but in the personal life AB is superstitious, selfish and lier. Nowdays he is doing an advt in favour of samajwadi party and in this advt he is making a wish to reborn in uttar pradesh.BESIDES he is declaring that crime is vey low in uttar pradesh. by doing such advts he has shown that how cruel he is to the poor people of the nithari who had lost their child due to the corrupt adminstration in the UP. he is not the god. his soul will learn a lesson if god fulfills his wish and he reborns in a poor faimly of Nithari. Friends he playing with the emotions of tthe poor people and must be taught a lesson.
All the fans standing outside 'Pratiksha' waiting for his darshan did not translate into money when Amitabh was down and wanted it most. When Amitji lay in financial ruin, The magic was lost. The money was gone. Fans deserted him in droves. Amitabh was alone. (Mein aur meri tanhaayi)
Just when all looked lost, in walked a starry eyed Amar Singh and introduced hope, and the Ambani connection into Amitji's life (and those large superstitious rings on his fingers.) The success of KBC that followed, rekindled his celebrity, fan following, and brought endorsements, movie offers - and wealth - back into Big B's life.
It may be difficult for us fans to comprehend but most of Amitji's assets today are essentially post KBC (and post ABCL bankruptcy). All the block busters - including Deewar and Sholay - from his golden years, and nostalgic dewy eyed fans like us, dont translate to money on his balance sheet. We are mere Goodwill! ("Oof tumhare oosul, tumhare adarsh. Kis kaam ke hai tumhare is oosul jo ek waqt ki roti tak nahi bana sakta?")
The hard knocks of life taught him that we fans are fickle. Here today, gone tomorrow. It is money, that keeps his - much like our - life going.
Amitji strode the world of cinema churning blockbusters for the best of 4 long decades! He left us spell bound all these years making us feel like Alice in wonderland. Every time we went to the theaters and looked at the silver screen he gave us one magical performance after another. He rarely failed us. He gifted us some of life's greatest moments. And some of our fondest memories.
At 64, and with time running out, Amitabh realizes that his best years are behind him. He has more years lived, than left.
All good things in life come to an end. However hard he tries, he may never be able to produce another Deewar or Sholay. Not even one last time. Not even for us.
All the great dialogue writers, sriptwriters and directors of his hey days are no longer around. The hey days themselves have long gone by. Times have changed. Tastes have changed. People have changed. The industry itself had changed. Even the reigning Shahenshah of Bollywood has changed!!
All good things in life come to an end. Amitabh has accepted this reality.
Only one thing remains the same - Our expectations of him.
Perhaps it is time we changed too.
Lets enjoy his talents, voice, songs, his mere presence, the happiness of seeing him on TV and films while we still can. In addition to being his, and our, passion - his acting also happens to be his livelihood. Lets not begrudge him that by holding his every role against our stringent moral expectations.
Lets celebrate and enjoy Amitabh's talents while we still can.
RE:Amitabh Bachchan - a Different View!
by Eric A Chhapgar on Mar 03, 2007 08:30 AM
Dear Setu,
I accept some of what you say but wud like to debate most of the other. Amitabh is an icon. He is the epitome of "perseverance". He is not just to be admired for his phenomenal acting but also for his never say die spirit. He was written off when he initially joined the film industry only to stand against all criticism and lord over as a "one man industry". Then as can happen to the best he fell on hard times and yes, some fickle fans wrote him off. He cud have accepted defeat but that%u2019s not the mark of the man. He again persevered and now at the age of 64 is the busiest and most talked actor. Compared to his contemporaries of yesterday, he is far more successful and in fact proves to be a serious competitor for todays actors 25 years younger to him.You may say that Deewar, Sholay can never be repeated. Sure, that%u2019s why he moved with the times and gave us Black, Khakhee, Baghban, Dev, Sarkar, Eklavya, just to name a few.
Fact is that every role he does is far beyond our expectations. Only issue is that we insist on seeing him as the same angry 30 year old Vijay and cannot accept that he is 64. Funnily we can accept that from Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Clint Eastwood and most other Hollywood stars. But for Amitabh we want to compare him with his movies of yesterday which is unrealistic.
Lets admit it. We still feel the excitement when we see him on the big screen or on the small screen. Not wanting to bring the inevitable comparison with SRK, but Amitabh made the small screen sizzle with his magnetic personality.
RE:Amitabh Bachchan - a Different View!
by Airtel - Sreeni on Mar 03, 2007 05:52 PM
May the world come to an end , may i breath for the last time, would always want him see as young man of deewar, if possible don%u2019t mind cutting 10 year of mine for him, I want my son to grow the way I did, my first film was sholay , my uncle pointed at a man run on the train and said this amitabh , from then I want always see him and see him young , may god bless him with good health and a strong, healthy life longer the mine
RE:RE:Amitabh Bachchan - a Different View!
by gabri on Mar 12, 2007 12:13 PM
undoubtedly Amitabh Bachchan is a superstar and thats abt it , he is a good actor but not the best . but in the personal life AB is superstitious, selfish and lier. Nowdays he is doing an advt in favour of samajwadi party and in this advt he is making a wish to reborn in uttar pradesh.BESIDES he is declaring that crime is vey low in uttar pradesh. by doing such advts he has shown that how cruel he is to the poor people of the nithari who had lost their child due to the corrupt adminstration in the UP. he is not the god. his soul will learn a lesson if god fulfills his wish and he reborns in a poor faimly of Nithari. Friends he playing with the emotions of tthe poor people and must be taught a lesson.
RE:Amitabh Bachchan - a Different View!
by Jay V on Mar 02, 2007 05:28 PM
Hats off sethu to your love to indian cinema... have read earlier also your post in rediff.. admire your understanding and knowledge about the subject you write... keep it up sir...
RE:Amitabh Bachchan - a Different View!
by Dileepan Raghunathan on Mar 02, 2007 12:20 PM
Don't keep repeating the same message in order to recieve more rediff points...
RE:[object]
by setu madhavan on Mar 27, 2007 11:28 AM
Dileepan,
I didn't know about rediff points - still dont know what I can do with them even if I earn them. From your reaction it looks like those rediff points are really precious - but honestly I am not interested.
True, I may have repeated the same post in different articles about Amitabh only because I consider it relevant to the topic.
If I have indeed posted it twice in the same dicussion board - I apologize for the inconvenience, even though I dont think I did that.
Thank you for enlightening me about rediff points - I will research that further.
RE:Amitabh Bachchan - a Different View!
by manglik mohali on Feb 28, 2007 10:27 AM
Bollywood just needs to think while making a remake or I may say "Inspired from" Hollywood films. You cannot blindfolded copy Hollywood movies and serve Indian audiance.... P. Lowe Check out this topic here. http://lomonet.com/india/india-bole/viewtopic.php?p=15#15
"He is genuinely a kind man", claims Jessica Hines, Amitabh Bachchan's English biographer who met him seven years ago at London University. She has attempted to reveal the life of Amitabh beyond super stardom in her book %u2018Looking for the Big B%u2019. Here is an excerpt from her work:
How come I'm in Bangkok? Well, apparently now, three years later, Amitabh wants to talk to me about the book. He's here shooting for yet another film, so I've flown out to meet him.
Hang on just one goddam moment! I hear you cry, didn't you start writing in 2002? What the hell happened? Quite a lot, actually, thank you very much. For a start, I have had personal experience of all of Amitabh's film personas. It has been an edifying experience.
It all started when I sent Amitabh a copy of the first draft of the book. He didn't like it. Well, that's a bit of an understatement. 'He went mental' would be more accurate. Threatened to sue me and anyone else it might be useful to sue. He would, I was informed in an email, fight me to the last drop of blood in his veins. A threat which, even at my most upset, struck me as a little filmi.
It was as if the real Amitabh has been replaced by one of his film roles. I had wanted to find the key to the man on screen for so long that I appeared to have manifested him. Abracadabra! A loud poof! A head nose of cordite et voila: he was suddenly the Angry Young Man - Vijay in Trishul, to be exact. (Just my luck to get Vijay, the most extreme version, and not one of Amitabh's more lovable characters, like Anthony Gonsalves from Amar Akbar Anthony).
I replied that instead of fighting me to the last drop of blood in his veins he could just tell me what he didn't like and I would change it. Mais non. All communication cut. To say that I was devastated would also be a bit of an understatement.
It was like being sucker-punched by your dad. It had never occurred to me that he might not like the book. But maybe I had been looking so hard at the past I had failed to recognize that he had changed again. Who he is in the minds of the public these days ? man of the Millennium, the good man of India, a living demi-god, a goddam gen-u-ine hero ? has so little bearing on the man he was in the seventies and eighties. Was it that he didn't want people reminded of it? It was his idea that I write his biography in the first place ? was I supposed to help perpetuate the myth he himself had created? I had been a fool to think I could help him get behind his image, dig up hidden memories and present the whole story.
I felt I had become trapped in someone else's life; caught in some weird loop that appeared to have no resolution in sight. I wrote Amitabh; I lived Amitabh Gothic ? all spooky portents and a dark brooding man curled up around my hard drive, my head, my heart and my life.
Or perhaps this angry Vijay ?Amitabh is the real Amitabh, with his blistering white light of rage coupled with a determination to get his own way, no matter what. Is that what lay beneath the Amitabhs I had explored over the last couple of years?
Then, in September 2004, Amitabh and I managed to reach a kind of uneasy truce. I had finished the second draft and sent it to him, asking if he was going to help me with the book. When he replied to my email in a reasonable manner I felt shockingly alive. Amitabh is a hard habit to kick ? especially for an intensity junkie like myself.
It was bizarre; I went and saw him at his hotel and it was as if the last nine months hadn't happened; as if he hadn't threatened me with ruin, causing me deep depression and many sleepless nights. We ate Chinese food. We watched Lost in Translation. Amitabh didn't enjoy the film; didn't really see the point. Ah, the irony.
The following week we talked about the book. He didn't like the fact that I had repeated what his father had written in his autobiography. He said that, in India, people were impressed that his father had been so open and honest about his life, but they had the decency not to talk about it themselves (he also felt that I had used the source too heavily, which he thought ethically incorrect). I pointed out that in England a biography would be expected to include such information: his parents had obviously shaped Amitabh, and were therefore essential to the telling of the story of his life. Especially since it was all already in the public domain. I think he understood this but he still didn't want me to talk about it. He spun out again. So I spun too. And more angry words were exchanged. I felt he was trying to own my mind. I told him that if the past couple of years had taught me anything, it was that nobody owned me. (Me getting my filmi melodrama bit in too.) We both stomped off in a huff.
I'd always imagined that I was a true believer at the Church of Amitabh Bachchan within the greater religion of Bollywood. But now I am not so sure. Perhaps I was always just engaging in participant observation and 'methoded out'.
(Courtesy: Looking for the Big B: Bollywood, Bachchan and Me By Jessica Hines, Published by Penguin India)
This post is to Mrs Shweta Nanda daughter of Mr Amitabh Bachan- What's wrong with you. How can you allow your father to do this role? Arn't you ashamed of him? If you folks need money just ask and the public will give. But This is indeed shocking. Deteriorating to this level for money! Or is your high society okay that your father lecherously looking at a daughter's friend... ??????????? C'mon wake up and tell him to retire and do social service.
Aishwary Beware. Rethink your marital options. You need a family with some values...Are you planning to go in this family who on the one hand goes to Sankat Mochan Banaras and involves the devout iNDIANS and on the other hand plays such a role... Think again..Even Salman has more protocol and poise..!
To Rediff Editors what the hell are you doing - do you have no responsibility to us people? Why can't you tear him apart..What are you carrying his stupid video with that shorts clad stupid girl who shows off her legs and who has never probably seen a real elderly figure in her real life...else she would atleast have objected and worn a full dress !
RE:Don't go offtrack. Focus on the subject. AB owes to the nation.
by Eric Chhapgar on Mar 03, 2007 08:40 AM
Who is this idiot who cannot understand the difference between a movie and real life? OK let me say this real slowly so you can follow.. real slowly....this is a movie! there are actors who play a role..not everyone who plays a villian is a rapist...not everyone who plays role of a god is god!...they do this for entertainment and for artistic challenges...you may like the movie or not like the movie...but you cannot badmouth the actors or their family for the 'role' that they are playing...if you understand this..good! if not please tune on to your Saas-bahu serials on TV...
RE:Don't go offtrack. Focus on the subject. AB owes to the nation.
by Jay V on Mar 02, 2007 05:17 PM
Think you have really lost your mind.... boss this is a movie... try to enjoy it or leave it... what has amitabh's family values to do with nishabd.... i am sure he must have considered his options before signing up anyway... if he is not bothered, we are not bothered then why are you bothered my dear?
RE:Don't go offtrack. Focus on the subject. AB owes to the nation.
by Reian on Mar 06, 2007 11:54 PM
Instead of AB owing to the nation, I think u need to appologise 4 ur stupid article.I dont think anyone educated enuf in the age we r living, could understand cinema is just a buisness world now a days, and a movie is a director's creation. Acting is pure proffesion these days, so if AB sr. AB jr. and Ash does a Kajrare act, it doesn't mean they will do the same in their personal life too. And as far as Nishabdh is concerned, I don't find anything wrong in this film. The real world is much more dirtiest and relationships being abused in real lifes is can not even shown on the cinema world. Love is a feeling, beyond age, religion, sex, and above all mortal things. Ram Gopal Verma has done an execellant job by make this film and we need to salute him for making such different films. People like you have double standards in living life too, so these type of objections and reactions r expected if someone tries something new. Hats off Ramu, the director, AB, the actor, AB, the singer, Rewathi, the actress and above all Jiah, the debutant 19 year old girl for giving us a wonderful experience called NISHABDH.
RE:Don't go offtrack. Focus on the subject. AB owes to the nation.
by denver on Feb 27, 2007 05:33 PM
Why are bringing Shweta Nanda and Aishwarya Rai into this arguement? Leave them alone.
RE:RE:Don't go offtrack. Focus on the subject. AB owes to the nation.
by anand iyer on Mar 01, 2007 11:39 PM
Yea there is no need to bring the daughter and daughter-in-law into this....there are numerous cases where even if - the dad is a rapist or a sex addict (like our amitab bachan)...the children went along well....
It probably had to happen. The transformation of Indian cinema and the gradual transformation of its only true blue icon, Amitabh Bacchan. Which is effecting which, is a question that would be difficult to answer. Forbidden barriers are now being challenged. What was a conceptual smoke ring is now a reality. It has been said that the individual is always ahead of the society. So true. Black was a marvellous depiction where sounds of silence (of Rani) made a harmonious symphony with the guttural exhortations of determination (Amitabh). The under current of romance? and its culmination in a lip-lock had such a natural beat to it!Why wasn't the great man chastised then? As AB himself has put it in his inimitable way, yes senility is not the end of desire. After all, a woman's compliment is still the ultimate aphrodisiac to a man, who is almost continuously in search of a statement, gesture or a look (real or imagined) that would make him feel special, nay, superior to the next guy. So if a 60 year old gets it from a 16 yr old, so be it! However, there is no getting away from the hypocritical society and the unforgiving social milieu. Rozana epitomises the resultant guilt. "I want to, but I can't" is a mindless litany which he is struggling with. Yes, Nishabd makes sense - it might appear depraved even decadent but then most truths are. Provided you have the courage to face it.
heard the million myriad voices.. some lies, some partial truths.. but largely errors (of comprehension and/or judgement).. those who appeal to our rational self by asking us to take cinemas and role in isolation are either being naive or propagandists... any medium of communication (cinemas being a rather powerful medium) does affect the psyche of the masses.. it appeals, impells, compels, enlightens, enlivens, saddens, etc.. movies carry aspirations, social realities, fantasies, etc. and affect us in multiferous ways.. More than a mere actor AB is also a brand ambassador and a star for which he owes to the public.. (now don't gimme tht simplistic argument he didn't ask for it 'coz he revels in it, makes money out of it and hence is cognizant of it and acknowledges it..) the actor self is part of the AB personality/brand/stardom and being an icon/ambassador he cannot shun cultural sensitivities... Mr AB, when you advertise for Cadburies, appear as brand ambassador for UP, or appear in an AIDS/charity message you try to influence people by way of charisma and you cannot be callous about it.. Be an actor alone or a commoner to do as you please but DO NOT play with cultural sensitivities and claim to be a role model/ brand ambassador / icon... There's a difference between guts and cheap thrills / foolhardiness / sensationalism... To have convictions that stand the test of time requires true guts and courages... Rest is delusion.. folks, stop deluding urself plzzz..
RE:senility is the word
by kumar vikalp on Feb 24, 2007 04:00 PM
By the way, I admire him as an actor and think that he has done a wonderful rendition of this Vishal Bhardwaj song... He should definitely sing more in future..
Well does Indian cinema impact society?? I feel it does not coz We Indians watch movie for entertainment and watch it once and forget and never learn any message from the movie,btw most of the movies have no message in it. Bollywood has never attempted to show some thing real and throughout his career Big B has never done roles which can bring him fame abroad,its just now he is experimenting some new things and I feel people should encourage him to do such roles ,rather than passing lame comments. I feel Bollywood makes cheap C grade movies most of times eg:- Srk Don,Dhoom 2 ,Krrish,salame ishq. All movies make no sense and have no content and almost all copied from Hollywood. Now some one is making a attempt to do some thing which no one has ever dared to do. Such roles are very easy to Do in Hollywood as such things are accepted there but In our country such things happen and we still dont wana accept. Can u imagine what Big B must have gone throgh while accepting this role. He must have had to think from all directions and taken a bold decession. Its easy to criticise and pass on stupid remarks . All i can advise to our country men is its high time that we grow up and start accepting facts
RE:impact on society?
by Sanjay on Feb 25, 2007 09:25 AM
Sure there is difference between films and real life. And we do tolerate films that are complete fantasies. However a film like Nishabd is a psychologically demented fantasy portrayed by a man who has been considered an idol of sorts and hence it is harmful to society.
some pepole have commented why cant bollywood be original ? the reason is Hollywood has done a lot of experiments and they have left nothing for thr rest of the world and India is known to just copy others,be it movies or Software technology. We r good imitators but not creative people who can show world a new way..But am sure not many here would wana agree as hypocrizy is flowing in our blood from generations and keep flowing for generations to come
