Day 1170
Jalsa , Mumbai July 2/3, 2011 Sat/Sun 12:19 AM
Your words of excited compliment, your enthusiasm of viewing excellence, your delirious praise and your love, are what make me live another day with respect dignity and will. This is most cherished and documented in a space, which physiologically belongs to the leftist region anatomically .. there shall it remain, irrespective of circumstances and condition.
Many write back in appreciation of my post of yesterday. Many find it most perceptive and honest. Many though question its very presence and why its need. Satyam as always most eloquent and researched makes very valid argument, as does the site www.ibosnetwork.com, which I copy now for your benefit ~
Box Office: Buddah Amitabh beating up on Delhi Belly
Saturday, July 02, 2011
The handful of trademedia of India, as it is often prone to, is giving a false trade picture on Delhi Belly and the Amitabh Bachchan starrer Buddah Hoga Tera Baap (including on costs of the two films). As at the box office, bookings for the Rs. 10 crore Amitabh Bachchan’s solo starrer Buddah Hoga Tera Baap are not only higher than being reported in India, but are now moving ahead of the Rs. 35 crore Delhi Belly in Delhi Belly’s hometurf, the multiplexes, while showing bigger jumps in single screens whereas Delhi Belly has opened weak with little hope of a pickup there.
This is relevant in light of claims of Delhi Belly (mostly in english) having had a bumper start in India, which is simply not the case, not even across the board of metros and multiplexes this time.
DB is good in select multiplexes and overseas pockets only. At 25-30% it has had a weak start in metros like Calcutta (10% in some cases), Jaipur, Pune, Surat and emerging Hindi metros like Kanpur and even Bombay is nowhere near as expected with Saturday collections clocking barely 25-30% bookings at multiplexes like Fame Adlabs still. Tickets are readily available most everywhere.
Buddah did not have a great opening on Friday morning either, as had been pointed to by IBOS reports earlier. The difference is Buddah’s picking up faster. And on Saturday itself Buddah will bypass Delhi Belly in a lot of the stations. Amitabh Bachchan films for example rarely do great business in Chennai but Buddah is going toe to toe there with the Aamir Khan production now (DB opened well in Chennai). Hema Malini also may have something to do with Buddah’s boost there as opening in Chennai was good for BHTB on Friday itself.
The reports on Delhi Belly are mixed depending on segment of audience being identified. Some like its toilet humor while others would rather dump and flush it down down the commode itself. The overall reports of BHTB are of the paying public overall approving Amitabh Bachchan’s return to the active role after a long time, overlooking the film’s other shortfalls. It may not have opened as Natwarlal or Kaalia as box office benchmark, but it’s certainly helping it go toe to toe in unexpected places and more impressively power over the likes of the bigger budgeted Delhi Belly as the weekend proceeds.
Transformers had the best start of the weekend on Friday in multiplexes but the film is not generating a great post-release report in India.
Now .. those that research and delve deep into detail and make effort to scientifically reach conclusions, must have their own mechanisms and one does not wish to argue or debate with them. Satyam states certain factors which in a sense endorses what the above site states. I will honor them and I shall also honor those that disagree. Because in a very warped manner, this is what my post of yesterday attempts to put forward. With the absolute and complete absence of a fool proof accountability, where does one draw the line in correctness. Where does one draw the line of projections. Where indeed does one give authenticity to figures and standings, blatantly headlined in manuals that shall go down in history as fact. No where. Hence why should I be prevented from believing one and not the other. Does the effect of viewing a film in the confines of a cinema hall filled with exuberance cheering and wild hysteria, get diminished when you get home and come across a press assessment of what you have just experienced. I would imagine not. You shared your moment with others, spent those electric thrills, for whatever they were worth and returned back to base. What economic outlook that experience stipulated would ideally be of little interest to anyone !
Komal~CA … makes an interesting point. He observes a temperament that indicates to him perhaps my condition being downcast. And then in his next paragraph comments :
“i understand that our inherent and insatiable longing for external validation is important ; efforts to fill this core desire shape our actions and course of events in our lives ..”
Yes I would tend to agree with what is stated, in a more general sense. But for one that has faced a blacking out of most of my careers high points, or to put it more succinctly, never received acknowledged validation, or ever showed any concern for it, to be sitting here after 190 films and 42 years in the profession and still generating debate on validity, is in itself proof enough on the irreverence shown towards what value means to me. Does it not identify or confirm to all conversely, the relevance of value attributed to me, without as much as a personal whisper. Which then I ask is of greater relevance ? Let me tell you in my most honest bearing. My relevance comes from people such as yourself. You have defeated the validity aficionados time and again, and .. with definite and collective authority. That for me is my value, not some piece of paper documented in printed ink. Let those that archival such documentation study and educate themselves and others they wish to. They shall never be able to argue or challenge what the mass, the admirer, the well wisher, the fan, the extended family opinionated. You have been and shall be the ultimate truth. And it is such a tragedy .. no tragedy would be the wrong word, it would favor the other I am afraid … it is such a irony, an irony that these self appointed soothsayers and naysayers of the community fail to observe, that with each passing episode, it has been the people that have refuted and rejected adverse claim, to ‘stand behind the line where I do stand’.
My will is not to succeed. My will prompts me to be in continuity. To walk where others trudge, to breathe where others suffocate, to swim in and out of tide, to speak perhaps in overbearing whisper, to not be ahead in lead, but to be a part of the pack that hunts. They repeatedly taunt my modesty, for, it worries them how my vocabulary does not entertain immodesty. They chuckle and snigger at this ‘act’ of mine as my greatest performance, for, they are not qualified enough to judge what an actual creative performance comprises of. They hide behind contrived self aggrandized confabulations, to cover and protect their own deficiencies, for they know in the dark of the night, behind closed doors, when they shall unmask themselves, they shall be saved from the horror of their own real shadow !!!
Good night dearest ones .. it is time for me to shut my door, to switch off the lights, to bring on the darkness about me and to rest in the comfort of my own reality.
I shall sleep well. Will they ?
Amitabh Bachchan
