carla
Junior artiste
Posts: 62
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Post by carla on Mar 10, 2015 14:32:36 GMT
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Post by moviemavengal on Mar 10, 2015 16:08:05 GMT
Loved your article, Carla! I totally agree with your points and comparisons. Salman to Bruce Willis is particularly apt, and I do think SRK is heading into Amitabh territory as well.
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Post by dancelover on Mar 10, 2015 19:49:55 GMT
Bruce Willis, maybe so, though perhaps Salman is more dominating, but I have been considering Salman-since-Wanted as "The John Wayne of India." Especially since Wayne was 40 before he began doing only "John Wayne-type" roles.
Anapuma Chopra says in her SRK biography that he always wanted to be Amitaub.
I don't see Aamir as having any match; his talent-combinations are unique. IMHO Clooney is not up to his weight. Dancelover
Loved your article, Carla! I totally agree with your points and comparisons. Salman to Bruce Willis is particularly apt, and I do think SRK is heading into Amitabh territory as well.
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Post by emily on Mar 10, 2015 21:10:46 GMT
Very, very nice. Thanks for sharing. Loved your article and the speculation as to where our Khans will head next. They defy age!
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carla
Junior artiste
Posts: 62
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Post by carla on Mar 11, 2015 19:28:48 GMT
Thanks, folks. dancelover, I hadn't thought of John Wayne, and the idea makes me wish I knew more. I don't know much about the demographics of his popularity. Was there a similar classes/masses kind of divide with respect to John Wayne? I think of John Wayne as embodying a certain kind of idealized, mythologized Americanness - I don't think Salman is regarded as idealized Indianness in the same way. Still it's a fruitful line of thought.
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Post by dancelover on Mar 11, 2015 22:48:55 GMT
Yes, John Wayne was demeaned by the Criticizing Classes until nearly the end of his life, when he made True Grit. Dancelover Thanks, folks. dancelover, I hadn't thought of John Wayne, and the idea makes me wish I knew more. I don't know much about the demographics of his popularity. Was there a similar classes/masses kind of divide with respect to John Wayne? I think of John Wayne as embodying a certain kind of idealized, mythologized Americanness - I don't think Salman is regarded as idealized Indianness in the same way. Still it's a fruitful line of thought.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Mar 15, 2015 14:21:38 GMT
Good article, carla! I personally don't feel that modern Hollywood stars map particularly well to the Khans, just because the biggest Bollywood stars are bigger than anything Hollywood has produced in a couple of generations, but it's a provocative way to look at it, and I think you have a good handle on where the three Khans are likely to be going.
On the Salman/John Wayne comparisons: Wayne made a lot of moderately critic-friendly and well-reviewed movies early in his career, by directors who became ALOT more revered once the French canonized them as auteurs in the pages of Cahiers du Cinema, but from the early 60s to the end of his life he was making fairly unpretentious, often vaguely sexist entertainers that appealed to working class and middle class Americans rather than upper class ones. From what I can tell, these movies got the same shrugging "eh, it's one of HIS movies, what do you want?" type reviews that Kick did. Like Salman, he was treated more respectfully by the media and people in general after they learned of his health struggles (cancer for John Wayne, some kind of neurological disorder for Salman). The whole "American Icon" thing was more something that came up after Wayne's death or very late in his life, and was more a matter of people getting nostalgic for what he and his movies claimed to represent, and I could certainly see that happening to Salman, since his working class fans think of him as a "regular joe" and "one of us".
My impression of Dangal is that it's going to be one of these movies where the hero plays younger and older (or less young) versions of himself, which was a staple for 40+/50+yr-old stars in the 70s and 80s, and to a lesser extent in the 90s as well (Khuda Gawah). Dilip Kumar and Jeetendra supposedly did a lot of that, and I think Amitabh did a fair bit of it as well. FAN is also rumored to have elements of this.
Something that may help the Khans and stars slightly younger than them, although Hrithik's the only one in his forties who's gone there yet, is the upcoming boomlet of historical* movies: we have Byomkesh Bakshy, Mohenjo-daro and Bajirao Mastani coming up, along with a couple of South Indian films that are likely to get Hindi dubs and maybe even a prominent release, like Baahubali and Rudramadevi. It's a genre where you need a certain force of personality that a lot of the younger guys can't muster: Ranveer and actors slightly older than him (Ranbir, Shahid) are realistic age-wise for Bajirao, who died in his early forties, and all those three guys would do pretty well in that role I think, but you can't exactly turn the Student of the Year guys (or Tiger Shroff or Imran Khan) loose in a role like that and expect them make an impression.
We are also seeing the beginning of a drive towards two-hero, older-and-younger movies, with Brothers, Dilwale, that Varun/John Abraham vehicle directed by Rohit Dhawan, possibly Baby 2 (if you believe the rumors about that one happening and Varun being involved) hitting the ground. Aditya Chopra has reportedly been shopping around a Kabhi Kabhie remake for sometime, but with his BFF Shahrukh in the Amitabh role, nobody seems particularly willing to try the Shashi or Rishi roles.** (Dilwale and Baby 2 would be with directors who have proven their ability to handle ensembles without over-favoring the stars, and the Varun/John movie is with Varun's brother.)
Something that may hurt the Khans (and will almost certainly hurt the next tier down in age/popularity, unless they control the budgets of their films very tightly) is the drive towards low-risk, low-reward projects like Badlapur and NH10. The Khans mostly operate on a profit-sharing basis, with the producers having to pay for their care and feeding on location shoots, and maybe pay for their staff, but the Khans themselves getting paid out of the net business on release and the satellite rights. Even so, the Khans make *event* movies, which by definition tend to be expensive.
*by which I mean movies set before most people involved in the making were born; not things like Gunday, Om Shanti Om, Special 26, the various gangster movies, which were set in eras that at least some of the people behind and in front of the camera can remember pretty clearly.
**This does not mean that anyone thinks SRK is particularly a glory hound, just that they think Aditya is going to show favoritism to him without him asking for it.
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