FILMIKHABAR

PLEASE VOTE IN THE BOLLYWOOD HALF-YEARLY AWARDS HERE, IN CASE YOU HAVENT
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BEING A KHAN IS NOT A CRIME!

Deepa Ravi (leap 24) was right when she replied to my comment on her New York review that “It (9/11) hurt America below the belt and hit them hard. They are still recovering from it!” The Americans took a stew of measures to see to it that something like WTC Attack doesn’t repeat again on their soil. However, many of their steps have at times hurt the religious sentiments of the people. The SRK incident last Saturday confirms this.

Many are criticizing Shah Rukh Khan for ‘over-reacting’. Some say that he did this for promoting his film My Name Is Khan (MNIK). Why would SRK do something like that? He has been in the industry since around two decades. We haven’t seen him before doing such cheap marketing gimmicks for his films, have we? And MNIK is some 7-8 months away-why would he arouse a cheap controversy to market his film which has such a long time to release? And 12 days back, he had already made enough publicity for MNIK when he held a press conference, announcing the tie-up with Fox Studios.

What infuriated about this incident that the officials doubted SRK and his star-status and that they took 2 hours (which is really a long time) to question him. Kabir Khan (Director, New York) is right when he said about this incident, “How much time does it take to find out who Shah Rukh Khan is? A Google search would give more hits than Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise put together”. This clearly shows that it is possible that Shah Rukh Khan was subjected to secondary inspection because of his Muslim identity.

Not only SRK, many others Khans of Bollywood are of the same opinion that they have been subjected to secondary inspection because of their last name. Zayed Khan also agrees and says that when he’s on a tour, he is the only one from his team who gets detained while others are cleared in no time at all. And if the officials are questioned, they say it’s a random checking. At this, Zayed rightly says, “Tell me, how can there be random checks on 5 US airports one after another and in all of them only yours truly gets detained for additional checking?” A valid point, indeed!

New York director Kabir Khan’s ordeal is much bigger. He has spoken about this but unfortunately, it never made it to the headlines. Before New York, Kabir Khan had shot 6 times in US. At that point of time, FBI came up with 29 South Asian names and they ordered that anyone having those names should not be allowed to enter US at all. Unfortunately, one of the 29 names was Kabir Khan! He must have had a tough time explaining the officials.

So the point is-people have faced discrimination because of their religion which is completely unjustified. And how come SRK is wrong if he made his unsatisfying experience public? Amidst all this, Amar Singh enters taking full advantage to blast SRK. He says that even Big B was subjected to security checks and further says “There are two types of people in society—one, who make an issue out of an incident and another, who cooperates with procedures”. Very funny, esp when Amar Singh says something like this since he’s famous for making issues. He made an issue during the 2007 Filmfare Awards and this year, during the Sajid-Ashutosh feud in Star Screen Awards, he was the only one who took sides. Double Standards!
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READY FOR SHADOW?

Two films are going to release in two weeks-one is intentionally a spoof and the other is a spoof, unintentionally! The former is Quick Gun Murugan and the latter is Shadow which releases tomorrow! I am sure everyone must have seen the promos of Shadow, which proudly proclaims as to how its lead actor Naseer Khan is actually a blind man and yet, does so many stunts in the film. Although kudos to Naseer Khan for achieving this considerable feat, his dialogue delivery and his dancing style has become the laughing stock! And the makers intentionally show the unintentionally funny scenes of the film in the promos! It is difficult to say how the film will turn out to be but one thing is for sure. Naseer Khan is getting the same response as Kamaal Rashid Khan (of Deshdrohi, remember?) had received!

This post first appeared on MouthShut.com: http://www.mouthshut.com/diary/bbhfolooo/Fenils-Bollywood-Talk62