Malaysian media unhappy with Bollywood stars

Bollywood superweights like John Abraham and Salman Khan have been wowing thousands of Malaysian fans sending them into hysteria over the past three days here. But media which is not too happy about the attitude of the stars.

"The antics of Bollywood stars have become legendary and as predictable as a bad film script," the widely read English daily New Straits times said today. Salman Khan, John Abraham, Bipasha Basu, Arbaaz Khan, Sohail Khan, Hema Malini, Esha Deol and several others are here as a part of the Global Indian Film Awards (GIFA) function which is over three days ending tonight.

Almost all events have started more than an hour late. The media, a majority of them from all local newspapers, TV channels waited for more than two and a half hours for the stars to address a press conference on Thursday at the Palace of Golden Horses Hotel. Event organisers Entertainment Popcorn misjudged their planning by arranging three events involving the stars on a single day (Thursday). These included the press conference with the stars, red carpet walk of the stars at the TGV cineplex and later the world premiere of Ravi Chopra's Baabul.

John Abraham and Ravi Chopra came to the room with the restless journalists after keeping them waiting for two hours but Salman Khan joined them after 20 minutes as organisers kept telling the media that Khan would be down in two minutes and then the press event would start.

"Apparently in Indian time, two minutes meant 20 and at close to 6 pm the all important Mr Khan - accompanied by about 10 burly men in black- deemed it a suitable time for him to come down from his suite," the paper said. Just as the first question was to be asked by a journalist, Ravi Chopra's mobile rang and he decided to take the call, really upsetting all the media personnel in the room.

As a result the red carpet walk was also greatly delayed though thousands of fans stood patiently for more than three hours waiting for the stars to show up. The screening of the movie too was thus delayed. "Now where else would you find something like this happening? Only in Bollywood," quipped the paper.

Source : Hindu