This is now firmly the season of nasty surprises for movies with big stars. There was the recent Akshay Kumar starrer Gabbar Is Back that tanked at the box office.
And now Bombay Velvet — which had generated such high expectations given that it was an Anurag Kashyap movie starring Ranbir Kapoor, the hottest star in Bollywood — has come and gone without a trace.
Its fate has shocked everyone because generally it takes a couple of days before the audience loses interest and turns a movie into a flop. But in Bombay Velvet’s case right from the first day there seemed to be very few takers.
Even the critics were not too kind, perhaps because they were expecting a masterpiece but found themselves confronted with an admittedly good-looking movie that was weak on plot.
The debacle has left Anurag floundering. He put up a Facebook post accepting that the movie had not worked for many people and wrote, “Maybe when the shock of the narrative wears down, you will revisit it in the calm of your homes and will get into it. Maybe our experimenting with the narrative didn’t work for most but i firmly believe in the film.”
He said he had no regrets, was going to take a break but would definitely be back. He will however have to do some rethink on his movies. The ones he produces actually go on to do well but as a director, Bombay Velvet is the second straight flop after Ugly. So there is something that the directors he picks do correctly and he is missing.
Ironically the man who actually comes out from the flop of Bombay Velvet with some measure of gain is Karan Johar whose role as the main villain was much appreciated. This could actually start a whole new career for him as a mainstream actor.

Online star


For a man who was actually in oblivion after the heydays of his stardom got over, Rishi Kapoor’s has been quite a remarkable turnaround as a public figure.
He is now a regular as a character artist in big budget movies and they are often meaty roles.
He has three movies coming up in 2015 but the bigger splash that he makes is in the social networking world. His love-hate relationship with Twitter continues apace and he periodically says that he is going to quit the forum for the controversies his outspokenness gets him into. And then he goes on to create one more furor.
And so it happened recently again. When fuel prices were increased in the country, Rishi decided that he would make a small joke out of it. He put up a photo of a man urinating inside the fuel tank of a car and tweeted, ‘Oil prices increased again by government. “Protest”. I have found an alternate power source. Experimenting now!’
Many didn’t see the joke and taking it as a political opinion started tweeting abuses at him. Rishi then started retweeting the abusive tweets and said he was doing so to deliberately shame them.
He then called on his followers to go to clean up Twitter of such elements tweeting, ‘Folks embarrass trolls by retweeting their abusive language. Their self low esteem should be exposed’ and ‘Wise words. Be careful Trolls, idiots and uncouth. We are at war with you’. He is certainly having an exciting time online.

The surprise?

A much anticipated movie is Dil Dhadakne Do, the next fare of Zoya Akhtar. Her last two movies Talaash and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara were both well appreciated at the box office and by the critics.
Zoya’s movies often see big stars and that is because she is an intimate part of the elite of Bollywood, being Javed Akhtar’s daughter. Talaash had Aamir Khan and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara had Hrithik Roshan.
Dil Dhadakne Do also has something of a casting coup because it sees former lovers Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma coming together. There is also Farhan Akhtar, her brother, and Priyanka Chopra. Plus Anil Kapoor is in a grey-haired look.
But the news that took everyone by surprise was that Aamir might have a friendly appearance in it, surprise considering that he rarely does cameos. Recently, when the media caught Aamir at an event, they asked him whether the rumours were true. Aamir said he had no idea about them. But there is speculation that he was feigning ignorance, that his role is being kept a secret is so that the curiosity quotient increases once the movie releases.


In the news again


Now that the limelight has shifted away from the guilty verdict in Salman Khan’s hit-and-run case and him being able to get bail and stay out of prison, he is trying his best to keep as low a profile as possible and go about his work. But he is a superstar and therefore there will always be attention on him.
Perhaps that is why he found himself in the middle of a political ruckus. He was in Kashmir to shoot for Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The state is recovering after an era of conflict during which movie halls were shut down. It is only in recent times that Bollywood has started doing their shoots there.
Salman opined while he was there that it is time for the theatres to open again given that movies are anyway being watched by the populace on television. But a female extremist leader in the state decided to target Salman over this statement and publicly called him a ‘murderer’ and that he was promoting cultural aggression.
It wouldn’t have been a happy experience for Salman but he is also a more patient man now. In one media interaction when asked abut his legal cases, he coolly replied that his problems were too small when put into perspective of what was happening in the world. He added that he was not sure he deserved so much support from those who loved and stood by him but he was glad for it. Well, those are the bouquets and brickbats of stardom.

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