Despite being one of the finer actors working today, Ben Kingsley has starred in a couple of the crappiest movies to come out in the last couple years. Now, I didn’t have to see BLOODRAYNE and THE LAST LEGION to know that they’re garbage. They just are. Now, having asserted my film snobbery, let me get on with the business of the day.
Reuters is reporting that Sir Ben spoke to The Times of India and told them he will play the Mugal emperor Shah Jahal, which is terrible news for me, since this means I’ll most likely have to abandon my own script about Shah Jahal which I’ve been working on since I was 5 years old. But who is this Jahal character I speak of and have been obsessing over for 20 years? Well, if you’re familiar with landmarks, India, or Indian landmarks, then he’s the fellow who built the Taj Mahal, as a monument to his late wife, Mumtaz Mahal.
Now you’ve got to be thinking to yourself ‘Wuzzuh? She must have been some woman to warrant the Taj Mahal!’ Well, if movies are anything like real life, which they almost always are, then that woman looked like Aishwarya Rai, the former Miss World, Bollywood superstar, and who Roger Ebert dubs, “the most beautiful on the planet.” Rai has been cast alongside Kingsley, after he asked her to star on the set of the aforementioned stinker THE LAST LEGION. According to him, she “generously agreed” to do the movie. After his wife’s death, the emperor spent years isolated in a prison cell, reportedly staring at the Taj from afar, after being imprisoned by his own son. Ungrateful dick.
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