Just read /saw some excerpts from Aishwarya Rai’s appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show. She is a super ambassador for India and seems to have pulled off a great PR exercise for India.
One notable fact stated on the site is that “The movies made in Bollywood?India’s Hollywood and the film capital of the world?reach more than five billion people worldwide, twice that of Hollywood.”. The Oscars yet claim to award the best movies in the world and completley ignore Indian movies. The sorry part is that Indian producers keep running for recognition from the Oscars as if millions of Indian fans screming and cheering for them isn’t good enough.
Recently the Marathi movie Shwas was in the running for the best foreign film and so was Lagaan earlier. Both were good movies but the hype and drama surrounding their Oscar nominations was unbearable. The Govt. actually contributed lakhs of tax payer money to help them promote the movie.
If the Oscars really are fair awards, I wonder why the producers had to spend 1000s of dollars on introducing the movie to the jury and making them see it. Aren’t judges supposed to view all movies and judge based solely on the merits of the movie?