There have been superstars throughout the history of Hindi cinema but it is doubtful that there will be anyone to match up to Amitabh Bachchan.
It is not just the adulation that he was the recipient of when at his peak. Indeed, there are many who argue that Rajesh Khanna at his peak was probably even more popular.
But Khanna, once he fell out of favour, gradually got relegated to being a flop actor until he didn’t even get any movies.
Others like Dilip Kumar lasted longer but inevitably there was a timeline beyond which they could only play character roles. Amitabh was almost headed into the same zone in the late 1990s when the audience suddenly had enough of him playing the angry young man when he was clearly past middle age.
But then he made an astonishing comeback on the back of hosting a quiz show, Kaun Banega Crorepati. And now he is 73 years old and still exhibits no sign of becoming irrelevant to Bollywood. He still plays the lead character and still manages to deliver hits.
Last year Piku was a huge hit with both the audience and critics. And now he has done just an encore with Pink. The movie came in for great reviews as soon as it released and after more than a week having passed, it is clearly raking in good business.
It might not be in the revenue league of movies of the Khans or Akshay Kumar but the low budget courtroom drama with unknown faces except for Amitabh will still make much more than what was spent on it.
In Pink, Amitabh plays a retired lawyer with a mental condition who returns to court when three girls are hounded by the system when they go up against men who tried to molest them. Like Piku, much of the movie rests on Amitabh’s shoulders. If he continues to deliver like this, then his will be a career that can potentially go on for many more years.
Amitabh was also in the middle of a rather amusing issue recently. A former Supreme Court judge who has become active on social media for his irascible comments on public issues, recently launched an unprovoked rant against Amitabh saying that he had nothing in his head.
It did give the judge publicity but Amitabh refused to engage with him. When asked to comment, he brushed it off saying that judge was indeed right and there was nothing in his head.

Break up?
Another star couple seems to have broken up. Not that Sidharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt ever admitted to being in a relationship but for over a year there were these constant rumours floating around that the two were seeing each other.
But apparently it is now over. A gossip website even said that when Varun Dhawan, who is shooting with Alia at present, teased her about Sidharth she snapped back asking him to not do it because they had broken up.
It is hard to know what is the truth. Especially since Alia and Sidharth have just appeared in Kapoor & Sons and that the linkup had brought the movie a lot of publicity. And now that the movie is a hit, the break-up should happen makes it suspiciously like the culmination of a possible publicity stunt.

In house
One of things that is always talked about when it comes to the lifestyle of Salman Khan is how he has continued to stay in the same little flat for decades despite being one of the richest stars in India.
Even his father Salim Khan has been wont to point this out in some interviews. He and his wife too stay in the same building. He has said in the past that Salman had mooted the idea of moving to a bigger space because Salim Khan says he is too old to now feel comfortable in a new house. So Salman too decided to stay back.
Galaxy Apartments, where they stay, is always flocked by a big crowd who gather there to catch a glimpse of Salman. Recently however there was a rumour that Salman had finally decided to move to a new bigger place in keeping with his stature and the reason was speculated to be that he was going to get married soon to his Romanian girlfriend Iulia Vantur.
As it turns out, it might be nothing more than a rumour. Because Salim has spoken to the media denying that there is any truth to it. He also castigated the media for cooking up stories just because they didn’t have anything to write on.


The usual nuisance
Because of the numerous caste and community groups in India, it is always a testing ordeal for a filmmaker to deal with any subject located within a real context.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali knows this all too well. When he made Goliyon Ki Rasleela: Ram-Leela, which was a love story set within two warring communities, the groups rose up in protest because it showed them as violent. In the movie the name of the groups had to be changed. When he made Bajirao Mastani, the descendants of the historical king on whose life it was based on, protested charging him with distorting history.
But both the movies were successful and so that is perhaps why Bhansali’s next Padmavati is also a historical fare. Predictably he is facing the same obstacles again. Padmavati is based on a 16th century poem dealing with a time two centuries ago, when captivated by the beauty of a Rajput queen, the Delhi Sultan launches an attack on her kingdom.
Bhansali was going to shoot in Rajasthan and Gujarat but now a caste leader from Gujarat has warned that he would not allow shooting. Rajput leaders had apparently met this politician and voiced their concerns about Bhansali tinkering with their history.
The politician wanted Bhansali to allay those apprehensions before permitting shooting. The filmmaker has not reacted as yet but if he gives in to such threats then there might soon be other copycats trying to grab publicity through such threats.  

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