Aishwarya Rai Bachchan-the frost iv:review added - Page 2

Originally posted by: czarcastic.

lakshmi chaudhary for firstpost

They are really good at this type of articles. Who can forget that piece on Akira the Discovery Channel correspondent. 😆

I wonder what the pitch was that Yash Raj Fims made toDiscovery Channel while asking it to associate itself with their new magnum opus, Jab Tak Hai Jaan. You can see why Discovery would be interested. Yash Chopra was directing a film after ages. YRF has churned out a lot of blockbusters. India's answer to Laurence Olivier and Brad Pitt – Shah Rukh Khan – would be acting in the film. And then of course, Discovery would be represented by a character who'd stand for everything any channel would love: intelligence, entertainment, knowledge, adventure and skill – to name but a few brand qualities.

Unfortunately for Discovery, its face in the film, Anuskha Sharma seems to have undergone a ful-frontal lobotomy. Just consider what her Discovery intern is shown as doing on the job.

She strips to her bikini in freezing Ladakh and jumps into an ice-cold lake, on a dare. You almost wish SRK had held her under the water, instead of pulling her out once you see what is to follow. She then pleads with her British boss to allow her to shoot a documentary on SRK. Anushka who is called Akira, to add a little whimsy to her character, then heads off to shoot a documentary on SRK defusing bombs in Ladakh, all on her own. She is the one woman crew.

The good thing is that this at least shows that if you're considering making a documentary, all you have to do is badger someone at Discovery and they'll hand you a camera worth many many lakhs and they will send you off to a high-risk zone all on your lonesome. You're just an intern after all, so no sweat if you get blown to bits. We are then shown scenes of Anushka/Akira stepping on a bomb and triggering it, because she's listening to her iPod while shooting in a bomb-strewn zone. She also repeatedly hits on the person she's making a documentary about showing that our filmmakers knew about the Petraeus affair before Obama did.

And when rebuffed, she dances in mini-shorts in front of the army soldiers and pours them drinks. The message I got is that if you work at Discovery, you also need to entertain the troops. If the subject of her documentary is not traumatised enough by now, she then seals the deal by ensuring he gets hit by a car while he tries to save her from becoming road-kill because she doesn't know that you need to look before you cross the street.

One would think that Discovery would have learnt from the dance with humiliation which its competitor channel – National Geographic – had suffered a few years back. The producers of that classic film, Kaal had somehow convinced NatGeo to agree to be represented by John Abraham who plays a tiger expert and is shown in the opening sequence of the film grappling with an anaconda. While grappling with the anaconda, he is also dexterous enough to receive a call on his mobile phone and receive an assignment, keep a hold on the snake, turn to his wife who is dressed in leather mini-shorts and high-heeled boots, and inform her that the "holiday is over". The only positive from this brand association was that any intrepid explorer applying to NatGeo knew that you could take wifey along on work trips. Bear Grylls should really shift loyalties to Nat Geo.

Not all brand associations are so ridiculous and seemingly orchestrated by nitwits in corporate suits. Swades had offered a brilliant brand association to NASA when it showed SRK as a NASA scientist who builds a hydro-electric power plant in his Indian village. It was the first film to be shot at NASA itself, and showed him working on a rainfall monitoring satellite which was an actual NASA project. It also didn't show him breaking into a dance while working on his project at NASA, or displaying superhero powers. Karan Johar's Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna cast Preity Zinta as the editor of Vogue. Vogue couldn't have asked for a better advertisement for itself. Zinta was shown as a workaholic, attractive, extremely successful editor who was a hands-on mother. Yes, she had a dead marriage, but that's because SRK was shown as a limping sociopath. And she left him when she found out he was cheating on her. She exemplified everything Vogue wants to stand for – beauty, brains, confidence and zero dependence on men.

Aah, Discovery. When a fashion magazine takes better branding decisions than you, you should really hang your head in shame. But my hats off to the YRF marketing boys who pulled the gossamer over the Discovery marketing team's eyes. Or maybe we should be getting ready for a new Discovery where we will have glossy documentaries about the love lives of a bomb defusing expert.

Disclaimer: Firstpost is a part of the Network18 group which owns businesses in television which compete with Discovery Channel.

Originally posted by: czarcastic.

Aishwarya's big interview: The unbearable blandness of the Bollywood diva

"What are your favourites when you come to a restaurant like this?" asks David Frost as he and Aishwarya Raisettle down for meal at an Indian restaurant toward the end of their Al Jazeera interview. It's the ultimate softball question, the kind that sets up a celebrity to reveal something cute and personal, maybe even a wee bit funny.

Ash opts for neither.

"That's a tricky question. When it comes to food, I love my food, I am comfortable with my foods. I have never dieted. Never. I really enjoy food," she says, rambling on for excruciating minutes without ever answering the burning question. She enjoys all kinds of cuisine, "but there is something about Indian food. It's something we've all grown up with. It's so easily available anywhere in the world now'. But I am easy with food. I'm really not a very fussy eater."

After gently probing into Mrs Rai Bachchan's claim that she's never, ever dieted or exercised ' eye roll alert!' Frost returns valiantly to hot-button issue of food preference: "If you had to write down the last meal on earth, what would be the perfect Indian meal for you?"

A screengrab from David Frost's interview with Ashwarya Rai.

Crumbling under the heat of interrogation, Aishwarya finally gives up the goods: "I've never thought about it so strongly. I guess just basic food cooked by my mother. Very basic. Simple rice, dal, maybe a fish or a chicken curry made by my mother. I would love that. Simple basic food."

OMG, stop the presses!Aishwarya Rai confesses to loving ma ke haath ka khana!

The absurd exchange reveals a well-known but rarely acknowledged truth: interviews with top Bollwood actresses ought to be a prescribed cure for insomnia. Bigger the name, duller their answers. And more boiler plate.

This is Priyanka Chopra on her food preferences: "Fortunately I do not have a tendency to put on weight and can get away eating as much as I want to, which is a blessing in this industry. But even then, I'm not weight-conscious and eat well like a Punjabi kudi. I love eating ghar ka khana and am non-fussy about food."

Really, that's what it says right here in my "Complete Idiot's Guide to Being a Bollywood Diva."

The aim is never to venture an opinion ' or anything that could possibly mistaken for one. No, Ash doesn't have a favourite among her Hollywood outings. She picked each for "different reasons" because she "was in a different stage in her career." And Ash has "no idea" if she has made more movies than her husband, who she insists "maybe has made a few more" ' firmly squelching any notion that she may have outdone pati dev in quantity, leave alone quality of work.

This peculiar reluctance to actually "say something" is shared by almost all A-list movie actresses. Madhuri Dixit has "no answer" as to whether she would do a Dirty Picture. Katrina Kaif's beauty secret is "to be happy," whereas for Sridevi it's the "love of my fans and people around me." All directors are wonderful, motherhood is bliss, age is a number, blah blah, blah.

The irony is that this addiction to yawn-inducing sound-bytes makes for bad, unmemorable PR.

The men, on the other hand, have no problem mouthing off on all matters, not merely food. Bigger the name, bigger the mouth. SRK confesses to surviving on cigarettes, black coffee and tandoori chicken, routinely pisses off the Shiv Sena, and gleefully jokes that he is "Try-sexual." Ash's own father-in-law, Big B, has made waves for his many twitter faux pas, including the over-the-top display of enthusiasm when announcing her pregnancy. Salman Khan's entire persona is based on a cavalier disregard for niceties.

In a joint interview to promote Ek Tha Tiger with Katrina Kaif, it's Khan who fields the thorny questions, while Katrina sticks carefully to the PR template. Where Kat insists they had a "logical and stylish discussion" about a blouse that became a bone of contention between the two, Sallu bluntly cuts in, "It didn't look like a blouse. It looked like a bra kind of thing!"

The only women who seem at ease speaking their mind to a degree, are either C-list sex symbols like Mallika Sherawat 'who are looking for attention ' or the Vidya Balans and Shabana Azmis who have built their brand as a "serious actress." The beauty queens seem doomed to play Barbie both on and off screen. So trapped are they in their 'perfect woman' image that they dare not reveal even an iota of personality that may dent the fantasy. And no degree of success is sufficient to buy the freedom to be remotely human ' like say Catherine Zeta Jones who cheerfully confesses to loving "smoked salmon sandwiches on ground bread with potato chips in the middle, crushed down."

That's blech, yes, but hallelujah, not boring. So how about it Ash? Maggi noodles ' on toast with ketchup?