Tubelight marks yet another milestone in the gradual shift of Salman from out and out commercial to well thought out roles that demand some acting prowess. And, the main director who has given him this new layer of creativity is undoubtedly Kabir Khan, the brain behind Tubelight. Cut to about a few years ago and if anyone would have pitched a question to Salman about cinema as more than just entertainment, he would have rubbished it. He had nothing but derision for non-commercial movies, including even some of those that he had acted in.
That he should now play a somewhat offbeat character might be read as his own evolution. But it still does not mean that he has any time for art for art’s sake. It is only now when it is unthinkable that any of his movies could flop that he is secure enough to test new waters. Also, there must be some awareness of his own limitation as an actor, as compared to the other two Khans.
Tubelight will, of course, not be an art movie by any stretch of imagination. It will have the same emotional manipulations of commercial entertainers and will most probably clock over Rs300 crore. What however, might be a hurdle in future to this new paradigm is his linking his family to his professional life. Salman’s long-standing manager has been asked to go and his family is said to be going to take charge of his career now. Tubelight stars his brother Sohail Khan, who also features in the just released trailer.
Salman is also launching his brother-in-law in movies, another addition to the long list of kin under his umbrella. Will the affection and pressure from family lead to him not being choosy again about the kind of movies that he does? That might not be so good as Shah Rukh Khan with his long line of flops is realising. The audience will lap up anything but only for a while. They also demand good stuff from their superstars.
Monstrous blockbuster
Move over Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh, a new superstar is in town. Or rather the movie is the superstar in this case. Bahubali 2, the sequel to the hit first edition, is bringing in mindboggling numbers that would even put the Khans to shame. And not just in the south India markets in those languages that the movie was shot in, but even in the dubbed Hindi versions.
The movie has made close to Rs800 crores so far and that is a number any Bollywood movie would be hard pressed to match. It has beaten all the Aamir and Salman blockbusters in this. True, the movie itself cost an astronomical sum to make but the gamble has paid off across every market and with stars who have no recognition outside the south. Plus the journey of the movie in the theatres is not even close to over yet. It is running to packed houses and still has a few more weeks of life left.
By the end of it, Bahubali 2 would have broken every record conceivable and chances are it will take a long time and a movie of an equal scale to surpass its numbers.
Rishi’s fury forces stars to show up
Rishi Kapoor, who was an angry man following the absence of young stars at Vinod Khanna’s funeral seems more than somewhat mollified. And the result of his changed mental state was evident in this tweet, ‘Thank you my film brethren for your solidarity shown towards the Khanna family. Hum mein ab bhi insaniyat baaki hai. Love you all’. This was in direct antithesis to what he had written a few days before in the social networking site when he had announced his umbrage at ‘chamchas’ who would go to a party but did not have time to attend a funeral. What led to his transformation? Because at a prayer meet called for Vinod, the younger generation stars were in full attendance. The reason for this probably had to do with Rishi’s public dressing down. The stars of the Hindi film industry only become sensitive when they feel a need to and clearly public humiliation is just the sort of treatment that makes them perceive it. And Rishi perhaps, knows this because he also retweeted what one of his followers wrote to him, ‘ur twt brot al celebrities fr vinod khanna’s prayer meet. pen is mighter than sword. respct sir’.
Legal wrangle over Sarkar 3
Trust Ram Gopal Varma to come out with new ways to keep the publicity machine rolling. Now that Sarkar 3 is to release this week, he has to cook up completely new things. One of the gimmicks this time is an interview with Amitabh Bachchan, which is projected as an in-your-face aggressive straight talk with the interviewer. An okay idea you would think, except that the interviewer in question is Varma himself. This gives him also some publicity along with the movie and in Varma’s mind there is no distinction even if the movie itself is a collaboration of many hundreds, with the finance being borne by someone else. And therein has come a niggle, too.
A production house that claims to have bought the franchise rights of Sarkar is planning legal action against the release. They have already sent a notice. Varma, in an interview to a newspaper, said that he was not a stranger to such tactics and that last minute legal wrangling is common in Bollywood nowadays with other filmmakers also experiencing it. He gave the example of someone from India who filed a case saying he had written the script of the hit Hollywood movie Independence Day. He said the release will go ahead as planned.
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