Salman Khan’s Tiger Zinda Hai has easily crossed  Rs300 crore in net domestic box office revenues, making this one of his biggest hits ever.
In one television interview recently he was asked to explain the debacle of his previous release Tubelight, which stands out as a blip against the soaring graph of his recent successes. Salman did not run down the movie and said what was responsible was fans coming to see it with a certain expectation of what his character would be like and then being jolted by the fact that it went against the stock image. For instance, in Tubelight he gets beaten and that is not something his fans like to see. Salman said something similar had happened earlier in a movie called Tere Naam, in which he comes across vulnerable in the second half. The movie became a hit but people came just to see the first half where he is his usual strong self and walked out after the interval. Tiger Zinda Hai had no such ambiguities. He is larger than life and does not have any shade of frailty.
Salman also made news for another reason, this time related to a court case dealing with an alleged poaching of a black buck about two decades ago in the state of Rajasthan. He had to make a personal appearance in a court in Jodhpur, a city there, which bizarrely made him a target of a local gangster who was also being taken to the same court a couple of days later. The gangster, who belongs to a community that venerates the black buck, told media persons that Salman would be killed in Jodhpur. This might have probably been a casual sound bite but the police weren’t taking any chances. They increased his security. Also, there were reports of some armed people in Mumbai coming for him and the police got his shooting stopped so that he could return home.
Salman’s father Salim confirmed to the media that there was indeed an apprehension of a threat and they were ensuring his son’s safety. But his shootings were proceeding on course though cycling on the roads, which Salman is known for, might take a back seat until the issue abates.

Saif’s Kaalakandi gets decent reviews

Saif Ali Khan’s Kaalakandi released last week to decent reviews. The actor who desperately needs a hit has a running history of flops over the last few years. Nothing he touches, in all genres, with good directors and bad, turns to gold.
Kaalakandi is a dark comedy, not the kind that will make hundreds of crores. It is primarily a multiplex offering for the urban crowd and even moderate business being done should be some reprieve for Saif. Meanwhile, in his media interviews he is getting asked a lot about the other celebrities in his house. There is his wife Kareena who is returning to movies after a maternity hiatus. His daughter Sara is going to have her first release later this year. And then there is the favourite of the photographers, his baby son Taimur. In an interview, Saif said he hoped that the kid would not let all this attention affect him as he grew up.

Karan keeps his peace
with Kangana Ranaut

Karan Johar has had not very nice experiences when it comes to Kangana Ranaut and more than once. There was the time when he called her to his chat show Koffee With Karan and she proceeded to give him a public dressing down as the ring leader of nepotism in the film industry. It opened a can of worms with actors from film families even now being asked to defend themselves from having an easy entry into a Bollywood career.
Then there was the IIFA awards event last year in which Saif Ali Khan, Varun Dhawan and Karan got together on stage to make snide jokes on nepotism in which they also mocked Kangana. But instead of laughs what they got was the disapprobation from the media the next day leading to them publicly apologising to Kangana. It would have been safe to assume that Karan would prefer to stay as far away from Kangana as possible. So, it came as something of a surprise to hear that they were together in a television show once again. The show is a talent competition to spot future Bollywood stars and Karan is one of the judges. Kangana came a special guest for an episode. Industry folks who watched with keen interest for any fireworks were however in for a disappointment. News from the shooting said that it was all very cordial. Kangana did try to spice it up when asked a question as to what does Karan give his guests to drink and she jokingly replied that it was poison. Of course, Karan, in the light of his accrued knowledge from the past, was not going to take the bait.

Mukkabaaz  does not 
meet expectations

In 2015, Anurag Kashyap’s big budget movie Bombay Velvet with a true blue superstar in Ranbir Kapoor released and then sank without so much as a trace. What was worse was that Anurag, who is a darling of the critics, found no good reviews coming from them. To anyone who saw the movie it was self-evident that it was a below average fare, poorly scripted and unentertaining. The next year Anurag made Raman Raghav 2.0 which also flopped miserably despite having good actors like Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vicky Kaushal in it. 
And now Anurag’s new movie Mukkabaaz has just released with him testing the sports genre this time. But, since he never takes the normal path, the story is set around rural and small town boxing competitions. Most of the initial reviews seem to laud the movie though it is still nowhere near the praise he drew for Dev D or Black Friday. Ironically what makes a movie work when it comes to Anurag is perhaps the inverse scale of it. The less money he spends on a project, like the present one with unknown stars and shot on the cheap as against Bombay Velvet’s extravagance, the better the movie turns out. It is however tough for an acclaimed filmmaker to refuse money and continue doing low-budget movies. That is the unusual predicament of Anurag.


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