It is not unusual that a filmmaker should actually make a movie on a true life incident but when it takes a contrarian side in a controversial case where the courts have given their verdict, then it doesn’t fit the norm.
In recent times, there has rarely been a murder that has gotten as much limelight as the killing of a teenager Arushi Talwar inside her home while her parents were in the next room.
The servant was also killed and his body found in the same house later. After a long legal process in which the evidence was not properly collected by the police, the parents were held to be guilty.
Even now a large number believe that they are innocent and recently a non-fiction book revealed a shocking lack of due process during the investigation and trial.
And now, there is a movie on the case. Called Talvar, it is directed by Meghna Gulzar and written by Vishal Bharadwaj. That the filmmakers were leaning towards the parents’ innocence seems to be clear in the movie, but since they couldn’t openly say so, given that the judicial process is still on, they found an interesting narrative device of looking at the same event through the eyes of different people involved.
In interviews, Meghna says she had been following the case which had piqued her interest. But the amount of research she and Vishal put into it is extraordinary by Bollywood standards and it spanned a number of years.
The movie has every critic raving about it but the box office collection has been average. A movie like this, which is realistic in tone, wouldn’t have a big probability of becoming a commercial hit.
Going vegetarian
Recently when the second edition of the Indian Super League — which is promoting club soccer in Indian in a big way — took off, the stage at the opening night saw some great Indian personalities of this age.
These included Tamil superstar Rajnikanth, cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar and Aishwarya Rai. There were also two new generation stars who shared the space — Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt.
It went to show how these two have now risen to the very top within the span of a few years. Alia especially has been in the news for an upcoming movie called Shandaar with Shahid Kapoor.
There have been promos in which she is seen sporting a two-piece bikini and the images had gone viral. One thing many have commented on is how much weight she has lost.
Alia was asked about this recently and she said that many have told her about her weight loss and she was even a little concerned about it, but that she trying a detoxification diet that was responsible for it. One of the things that Alia did was to go entirely vegetarian, reportedly to get into shape for the bikini scene.
Meanwhile Shandaar is slated to come out on October 22 and is directed by Vikas Bahl, who earlier made Queen.
There are high expectations from the movie and with Alia’s good run in recent times, it won’t be a surprise if the movie is a hit.
Writers on strike
Bollywood has always had a problem with giving creativity its due. The business side, producers mainly, treats writers and lyricists as the lowest rung of the ladder, paying absurdly low fees, delaying compensation and also drawing up unilateral contracts.
Some time back, Javed Akhtar led a movement for copyright protection that met with some success. There was an amendment made to the copyright law, which gave considerably more protection to holders.
Recently, once again, the issue of writers not getting their due came to the fore when screenwriters all went on a strike. The reason was the delay in the renewal of a memorandum of understanding that producers have with different industry bodies specifying working conditions.
Besides the screenwriters, many other industry craftspeople also joined the strike leading to the halt of shooting of movies like Aamir Khan’s Dangal and Shah Rukh Khan’s Dilwale.
What the writers demanded was a contract that specified minimum pay and no arbitrary termination, among other things.
They are reasonable demands and it is a testament to Bollywood’s attitude that such a contract does not exist now.
Writers often get paid according to the whims of producers and often they get exploited and not paid anything because they are told this is an opportunity for them to get a break into the industry. But the strike seemed to have worked because the producers seem to be willing to negotiate for a minimum contract.
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Kareena Kapoor is 35 years old and now has to search for roles that are either offbeat or have much older actors opposite her, like the three Khans who are all touching 50.
Once in a while, because of her long standing and appeal, she gets to act against actors who are younger than her.
Ki And Ka, directed by R Balki is such a movie. Kareena has been cast against Arjun Kapoor, who is five years younger to her. He plays her husband in the movie. Their age difference is quite noticeable but perhaps the director has factored that in, since we don’t know the exact details of the story other than Arjun being a stay-at-home husband who supports the career ambitions of his wife.
But there has been an interesting news item from the movie’s shooting. Apparently, the script called for some intimate scenes between the two actors.
After her marriage with Saif Ali Khan, Kareena is known to not entertain such scenes. In this case too, she flat out refused to do it and asked for it to be changed. And she apparently got her wish after Balki decided to tweak the script to not have those scenes. It might not make much of a difference anyway to the movie.
The larger question will still be whether the pairing is going to be acceptable to the audience.
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