Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: A top Malaysian English-language daily on Saturday slammed Bollywood stars including Salman Khan for their lack of punctuality and boorish behaviour at a three-day Indian cinema extravaganza being held here.
''It's the same old Bollywood story. The antics of Bollywood stars have become legendary, and as predictable, as a bad film script,'' the New Straits Times said in a full-page commentary.
The Bollywood bigwigs are here to attend the Global Indian Film Awards function, an annual event that was launched last year in Dubai. The event began with the international premiere of Khan's latest movie, Baabul on Thursday.
On Friday, a soccer match between Indian stars and Malaysian ministers ended in a 2-2 draw, and the event was to climax with an Oscar-style awards function.
Khan and other Bollywood actors are wildly popular in Malaysia, not only with its ethnic Indian population but also among the majority Malays.
The New Straits Times ire was fuelled by the dismally organised press conference before the premiere on Thursday to introduce the makers and stars of Baabul, including Khan, co-star John Abraham and director Ravi Chopra.
Abraham, Chopra and music director Aadesh Shrivastav arrived more than two hours late for the press conference, held at the luxury Palace of the Golden Horses hotel where the stars are staying. But still the press conference could not start because Khan was missing.
He came 20 minutes later after journalists were told by the organisers that he will be ''down in two minutes'' from his suite.
Just as a reporter was going to ask the first question, Chopra decided to take a call on his mobile phone, ''while the roomful of journalists stared at him in disbelief,'' the Times said in the article titled ''No need for Bollywood song, dance.''
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Asked for his opinion about the movie, Khan said with unintended irony, ''Men have always made laws to suit their convenience.''
The late press conference meant that the Baabul premiere got pushed back by a couple of hours, leaving scores of dignitaries waiting at the cineplex including Malaysia's Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor waiting.
But hundreds of Malaysian fans who had assembled at the cineplex to catch a glimpse of the stars did not mind waiting for several hours in a crush of bodies. Hysterical cheers and screams, mostly from female teenagers, went up as Khan and Abraham walked by on the red carpet.
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