SRK, Charm and KBC
Ok now this is not a well thought out post but rather an instinctive one. Was just watching the second episode of the SRK-hosted KBC with a lot of curiosity as I had missed the first episode and had seen only in bits and pieces on news channels ( These guys can create breaking news out of a fly sitting on Thackeray’s head!).
I hate SRK as an actor.I hate him! I have even started pitying him now after watching him play caricatures of himself in films like Don and KANK. He is growing old, he doesn’t look the conventional hero anymore, his skin is sagging and has developed dark circles under his eyes.Anyone who loves him or hates him is saying “SRK buddha ho gaya abhi” these days. The fun part is SRK knows it and has started playing safe: Venturing more seriously in production, signing more and more lucrative advertising contracts (read spree) and now KBC.
According to me, the stint with KBC is another attempt to amass vitamin M (70 freaking lakhs per episode!) and sustain popularity by an intelligent self-made businessman called SRK. Anyone who hates him or loves him has to admit that he is a phenomenon beyond explanation. Nobody could tell that an ordinary looking guy (In my opinion he was monkey faced in his younger days!) from delhi who did theatre with Barry John and loved playing football would become the superstar and Badshah of an industry which sells dreams to an entire nation. What makes him special is the absence of any filmy contacts, chocolate boy looks, a good body or even extraordinary acting skills. I respect him for being a self-made king. In fact, I am in awe of him for his confidence, self-belief and vision. I love to read his interviews full of vanity, wit, sarcasm and indulgence. I love him in Swades and I love him in Kabhi haan,Kabhi na. otherwise, I hate him.
In KBC, he is cracking jokes, massaging contestants, mouthing lines from Devdas in haryanvi, taking digs at AB, speaking in Tamil (or was it telugu?) and putting in oodles of energy in every minute of the episode. Basically, doing everything he can to outdo Ab and impress the audience. And to quite a decent extent, he succeeds too. I feel he is desperate, but I feel he is charming too. His sense of humour has always been in place and he maybe the dumbest actor of them all, but is the most intelligent animal in bollywood when it comes to connecting to the masses. Is he better than AB ? Too early to say, unfair to compare. Will he sustain this energy and humour in the long run? I think yes, since he is naturally gifted with them. The only danger I see is that of he going overboard with the funny part or being rude with the audience in the coming episodes. It was easy for AB to fake his charm on a low energy day as he played more of a formal host saying all the ‘nice’ things. SRK will have to be on his toes and make the magic work constantly even when in a bad mood or feeling low. While AB read lines from a scroll-screen, SRK’s spontaniety will be completely on his own. Whether the audience will remain amused by his histronics till the end of the season and will Star’s gamble pay off is the big question.
Tab tak bhaiyo aur behno, kahi mat jaaiyega, to know the developments on K-B-C padhte rahiye P-F-C!
P.S.: SRK gave his own watch to a contestant who lost tonight. Now how harder can he try to be nice….
Tags: Television
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
i agree with you..i don’t like SRK as an actor (these days) i feel he’s reached his desperate peak and now he’s holding on for his dear life. Look at actorsl ike Irfan Khan or Pankaj Kapoor..okay or in the younger bunch..even Akshaye Kumar..Ajay Devgan…they are usually efortless..SRK uses all the muscles in his face to give one expression. KBC and SRK for me..is not going well together..SRK grasped this tone to his voice like any typical game show hosts do and thus he’s acting or rather over acting once again8-|…even though a lot of the stuff he is saying might very well be from his own head….however…king of bollywood..will always be SRK for all the reasons you mentioned
Chalo accha hai at least one person agrees with me before the backlash starts. Dhanya ho gaya main…. But I quite like the different opinions.That’s what makes PFC fun.:)
CT: please have first opposition:)
Without talent one cant have that success which SRK has got. He may have less or more talent then other contemporary actors but he has talent thats for sure. He has always been an achiever since his school days and it says a lot. Whatever field he entered he made an identification for himself there. Thats not an easy task.
Being SRK is not making Cars or scooters in licensed era when there were no competitors and few cos had license to manufactire cars and scooters so qhatever quality these cos were giving public had to buy those products as there was no option. But now we have whole lot of choice and now its our intelligence which kind of product we need. When Whole lot of actors are present and so many are are called highly talented if SRK rules then it shows people show faith in his talent. May be people dont understand or like extra talent and their hunger is appeased by mediocre talent like SRK only.:)
STAR TV has not opened Charity, They have to sell their programme and has to earn money and has to gather more and more audience. If such shrewd businessmen thought SRK will be helpful in selling their show then He shd have some appeal on mass. No living actor gives as lively interviews as SRK gives and educationwise also he is far more educated then his contemporary. His wide mass appeal works in his favour as far as KBC like programme are concerned. Even if he is not actor in the legacy of Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, he can works wonder on TV show because people dont need his acting there but his honest feelings when he address them. Moreover he is more daring then AB as far as his comments are concerned so people will get lively bytes. Please watch, if you can arrange, the video of release of music viedo Yash Chopra directed for poems of then PM Atal Biahari Vajpai and you will praise daring of SRK. He certainly is a phenomenon.
i think we should leave that guy alone. let him do what he wants to do. and you have the choice to watch or not his movies,his interviews,kbc etc etc…like the news channel it is disheartening to see pfc falling into the kbc rage. i thought pfc is all about cinema.why waste time on television.
RK,I don’t consider your comment as opposition at all..In fact, you say quite the same as what I feel.Except maybe for the talent part. Because ‘acting’ is different ballgame altogether than what SRK does according to me.He is a performer,not actor.
Now Rony’s comment is what I call opposition!:)
RDC:
Thats fine that we shd leave alone SRK for doing what he likes, as those who dont like him may choose not to watch anything related to him.
But TV is also a medium related to cinema, dont we see cinema on TV? Is it waste of time if we discuss, a film saw on a channel or a serial saw on TV.
One of the Mahesh Bhatt’s wonderful film Janam I could see through TV only. Buniyad, Tamas, Rag darbari all are TV produts :d
But you know, I actually kind of liked him in KBC inspite of him looking desperate. That’s why the post. If I had not liked him, then I would have continued hating him and there would be no motivation for writing all this stuff.
CT: knowledge comes in a Flash:)
and now you are enlightened as your name suggests abt SRK :d
i don’t think SRK is doing anything out of desperation at this point. he has too much money to be desperate… and well, he’s SRK. SRK isn’t a name anymore, it’s a brand. but if you take SRK the person, and you see what he’s doing as his daytime job, then what is he doing different than any of us would be? keep in mind he’s a family man also. he’s only doing what he’s doing at this point to give his family a strong financial future. the money is for them, really. and i don’t see anything wrong in that. what family man doesn’t want to give his family a good future? and if in the process he’s having fun by experimenting with a TV medium instead of films, so be it.
to be noted, i can’t stand SRK the actor, but i respect him tremendously as a person, for all the reasons that you mentioned in your post, chaitanya.
@Chaitanya: I agree that SRK has become stale as an actor, but I do like SRK the personality. Also, I love the fact that he’s able to surprise me in movies / movie-moments. If he’d just stop doing Karan Johar / Yash Chopra movies, he’d be much better the actor for it – for I always feel that his most ‘hammy’ performances are in these movies.
But here’s an undeniable fact: SRK has immense screen presence. In fact, I have never seen any other current actor hold his own oppposite Bachchan except SRK in ‘Mohabbetein’. Despite the fact that neither actors had much acting to do (they just had to stand there and mouth off those long dialogues), electricity just crackled whenever they appeared on screen together. Of course, after that they have always played buddy-buddy in everything else.
I personally liked SRK in ‘Darr’, ‘Baazigar’, ‘KBKN’, ‘Asoka’, ‘Yes Boss’, ‘DDLJ’ and ‘Swades’. Of course, now he’s fallen into what I call the ’superstar-syndrome’, where the actor essentially begins rehashing the same role again and again. If Rajini eventually became everyman, Bachchan became Vijay. And SRK became Rahul.
a question that always come to my mind when i look at srk film or a mf hussein paintings….forgive me if i offend anybody as i have no knowledge about paintings…but yes getting back to the point i wonder why these two things sell…and why somehow srk after being labelled the bad actor still manages to pull the largest audience to the theatres…i think what we fail to understand is srk is not a great actor, but the truth is that he is the greatest entertainer…and so naturally KBC 3 will turn out to be the most entertaining shows on telvision.
to be honest i loved SRK in Swades..and probably only in Swades from what i can recall..and maybe if i wanted to be generous i’d say films like Darr and Baazigar as well…KANK/Don..might have been brave steps which only SRK would be willing to take…but just because he’s brave doesn’t mean he has to be a good actor..when it comes to making a brand out of himself..nobody can do it better than SRK..not even AB..for me..he’s SRK the buisnessman before he’s SRK the actor
Chaitanya :
I Agree: I don’t like him as an actor but for one Gem
Hey Chaitanya that Haryanvi Devdas if I am not wrong is Mr. Anurag Kashyap’s brain child. In one suh chats he was mentioning something like that. Don’t want to elaborate but if he ever visits these posts…hope he writes about it….
Yaar it was like watching Lage Raho Munnabhai. The sequel packed more punch than the previous version. Who could ever imagine that SRK would take over the throne and sit pretty, as if it was always his? Everyone was scoffing at the fact that SRK would take over the hot-seat. But he has done that and there is a seamless transition of KBC from an oh-so-propah feel to jadu ki jhappi & hi-5s galore. Completely disarming, infinitely charming
At one point of time I couldnt stand bachchan in kbc anymore..the shudh hindi, the excessive modesty became a pain in the arse. SRK has got a wacky sense of humour. I think the ‘desperate to please’ stance, the pjs will be interesting to watch. I am no SRk fan but do not ‘hate’ him either. Whats the haryanvi devdas thing about?
@ CT…Just saw KBC on youtube..the first episode…SRK wasnt bad at all…considering its his first show….yes he was trying hard..i mean real hard at times…..but,i think in a few more episodes he might get used to it and be a bit more natural.
On the negative, what stuck me was…that his high-energy and the typical background music of KBC dont go hand in hand…there was a dischord there…..
SRK IMO needs to slow down..he talks to fast….that puts that extra bit presuure on the contestant..and SRK..SRK…SRK…when will you stop talking about your self? he even needs instant approval…hehe
but people did laugh on his jokes…maybe that’s SRK
(from a non SRK fan)
this is in reply to sana who hails irfan khan as a good actor… man u have to check him out in a recent telugu film n he sucks… hes disappointed the audience so badly… evven a b grade villain in telugu can do better than him.. an actor has to excel in any language n tht is his true brilliance… pity bollywood for not recognising this..
I saw it last night and SRK seemed extremely nervous and very desperate as well. Hugging participants, Mujhe dost bolo, Brngali, Telugu, and in the end he almost asked the participant to quit as his answer would have been wrong! Clearly he was not confident in first show. For his sake atleast, I hope he gains it in coming episodes else his attempt to follow Big B’s path would end up giving him a flat face, like “Don” did
These guys can create breaking news out of a fly sitting on Thackeray
Saw the first episode on YouTube yesterday. He did start of kinda nervously, but by the time the second contestant was on he was into his groove. The quips about George Clooney were spot-on, and his tongue-in-cheek brand of humor is beginning to work.
The shuddh-Hindi dig was unwarranted, though..and that stupid music-video just has to go!
Give me a break. You can be an SRK hater all you want. It doesn’t change a thing. He is the most successful actor and has been since DDLJ. He continuously proves himself over and over. Idiots like you try to put him down for everything he does… but guess what? He continues to be the most loved and popular bollywood actor in the WORLD. Not just most of India. Every country you look at, he is the voted favourite. Whether its the U.S., U.K., Canada and on and on. And now you attack him because he’s TOO NICE??!! Haters like you make me sick. Your pathetic jealousy and envy are transparent. Get a life.
Hi
hi srkkkkkkk u r d great u have given a shape 2 kbc ur simply the best and u r extremely handsome in kbc and hot too best luck for ur future and God bless u:d/:x