It is hard to associate age with Aamir Khan. It was just three years ago that he played a college student in Three Idiots. And not just an old student but a character who in the initial scene joins the first year of an engineering course. That should have placed his screen age at 18. And yet, even though he looked nowhere near 18, he carried it off with poise. It comes as something of a shock to know that Aamir Khan celebrated his 48th birthday just a couple of days ago.
A few years ago when he was making Ghajini, even then in his mid-40s, he went on an exercise routine to get a six pack. The only role in which he sported grey hair was his wife’s directorial debut Dhobi Ghat, where he played a middle-aged artist.
During its promotions a reporter had asked him how it felt to be on screen with grey hair. Aamir had candidly replied that his hair had started greying in his mid-20s and he had been colouring it ever since. One of the things that the media did on his birthday was pull out the names of all the heroines he had worked with at the start of his career. They included Juhi Chawla, Madhuri Dixit, Raveena Tandon, Karishma Kapoor and Manisha Koirala.
You are struck by how almost all of them have disappeared from Bollywood, which is also a testimony on the low shelf life of heroines. Meanwhile, Aamir was not in Mumbai to celebrate his birthday. He was, as expected, at work shooting for Dhoom 3 in Switzerland.



Horror queen

It’s quite strange to watch Bipasha Basu on television nowadays. She’s always visiting one haunted house or other, chased by a camera recording her expressions.
This is all in advance of her latest release Aatma, a horror film. Bipasha says that all these trysts with ghosts are giving her insomnia. But then she has no one else to blame. With Aatma, Bipasha is firmly getting the title of India’s horror queen. She has earlier done Rakht, Raaz and a sequel to it, all based on supernatural themes. The Raaz franchise actually went on to be a decent grosser in the box office.
In any case, she really does not have too many options nowadays. She was not cast in Race 2 even though Race had been such a superhit. Instead, tellingly, the filmmakers chose to go with younger actresses like Deepika Padukone and Jacqueline Fernandes.
And so any movie which revolves around her is a welcome extension of the career, so what if the genre is horror.  


Blame it on...

If you don’t know who Koena Mitra is, she was a model who starting with the early 2000s got meaty and sensuous roles in a couple of big budget movies and then faded away.
At one point, when she was in the limelight, people suddenly looked at Koena and wondered what had gone wrong with her face. She had been quite a looker with a Bengali sultriness about her and then you saw her with a nose which looked a little unusual in its form and cheeks which seemed a little too sunken.
It was plain to everyone that a cosmetic surgery had gone wrong. Recently, Koena gave an interview to a tabloid in which she described the horrible experience and how it had consumed her career. She said that her bones became inflamed after the surgery. She remained cooped up inside her home for months and when she couldn’t bear it any longer, decided to face the world.
And then she had to undergo more surgeries to correct the first one. She is now trying her luck in the West. Granted it is a slightly tragic tale but one should also temper it by taking an objective look at Koena’s acting skills. She would have needed a lot of luck to get to star territory, even if she had not had this bad episode.


Turf war again
 
For some reason, Shah Rukh Khan’s name is getting increasingly involved in ugly commercial spats with other film stars. Some time ago there was the confrontation with Ajay Devgn when both their films, Son of Sardaar and Jab Tak Hain Jaan released on the same date.
Ajay had alleged that Jab Tak Hain Jaan had unfairly monopolised theatres by browbeating their owners. And this time, it again seems to be a repeat of the same imbroglio but with another superstar, Akshay Kumar.
The genesis of it is strangely with Salman Khan. Normally, the holiday of Eid is reserved for a movie by him and it turns out to be a whopping blockbuster. Bodyguard, Dabanng, Ek Tha Tiger are all cases in point. Understandably, no other filmmaker wants to compete with him on that day. Unfortunately Salman dropped the movie slated for Eid this year, Sher Khan, and the other movie he is shooting for, Mental, will not be ready in time.
This news immediately led to other big banners lining up a release on that day. Shah Rukh recently called all the managing crew of his movie Chennai Express for a conclave and then told them that the movie would be released on Eid. Akshay Kumar’s Once Upon a Time in Mumbai-2 is also coming out that day.
UTV, the producer of Chennai Express, is apparently forcing theatres to give all their shows to the movie saying otherwise they would not sell them Himmatwala, an Ajay Devgn movie slated to release this month-end. The producer of Once Upon a Time... is Balaji Telefims, owned by Ekta Kapoor. She is no small fry and will not mind getting into a gritty fight if the movie’s fortunes are going to be affected.
Akshay Kumar has often in the past publicly hinted about negative publicity campaigns being run against his movies. So he is also going to be none too pleased with this new development. A good recipe for some great fireworks.

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