The Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament has started and now everyone can expect to see more and more of Shah Rukh Khan. He owns Kolkata Knight Riders, one of the teams in the franchise. It had been mired in controversies in the beginning leading to abject performances.
There was talk of Shah Rukh’s overbearing intrusiveness in the cricketing. But last year, he pulled a little miracle when his team went on to comprehensively win the IPL. This year, once again, it is Shah Rukh in the limelight.
He helmed the gala inaugural night. He performed himself and used his enormous clout to organise the participation of other stars. But, as usual, once again controversy has dogged him and this involved another superstar across the continents — Jennifer Lopez.
It had its genesis in an article on her in the New York Post with the headline: ‘Diva list kills J.Lo India gig’. It mentioned how the IPL had approached her and the extraordinary demands made by Lopez to perform at the event. “Sources tell us the pampered pop princess’ manager, Benny Medina, had asked that a private plane be made available for her, along with numerous hotel rooms to house her huge entourage, which included an army of stylists, assistants and a personal chef,” said the article.
IPL decided to drop her and instead booked Pitbull, the rapper. But now you are seeing news bytes about Lopez’s managers sending Red Chillies, Shah Rukh’s company that was handling the event, mails about how unprofessional they were in revealing these confidential details of negotiations to the media.
There’s some confusion over who exactly leaked it; the cricket team or the event management company. But in any case, Shah Rukh’s name is the one being bandied about in the headlines. But it shouldn’t be bothering him too much. He is now used to it when it comes to the IPL.
Remake issue
Remake issue
Sajid Khan is not having a very good time nowadays. The latest film that he directed, Himmatwala, was expected to become a bumper hit. Enormous amounts had been spent on its publicity and there was near universal consensus that it was going to earn it all back.
There was also the fact that his earlier films, all slapstick comedies, had done very well. But Himmatwala has turned out to be a dud of sorts doing average business. Amidst all this bad news, he was suddenly in the news for an unsavoury episode.
It involved another director, Rohit Shetty, who is also equally successful and coincidentally, adept at making slapstick comedies which go on to become blockbusters. Rohit had bought the rights to a 1982 films called Angoor, probably one of the best comedies among Hindi films. Getting to remake it was going to be a big thing. But Rohit has learnt that Sajid is also making a film with the same plot. Sajid’s contention is that Angoor itself is based on the Shakespeare play Comedy of Errors and so he is not really piggybacking on the movie even if the story is the same. But there are a million plots out there, why does he have to do exactly this one?
Face time problem
Face time problem
Six years ago when Om Shanti Om released, the audience were tickled to see one scene in which a lookalike of yesteryear star Manoj Kumar is stopped from entering an event because his face is covered with his hand and the gatekeepers don’t recognise him.
This was a dig on a popular mannerism of Kumar during his heydays. There have been jokes on this particular habit of his, including one which said that Manoj Kumar never gets a passport because all his photos have his face hidden by his hand.
It was this that director Farah Khan used as fodder for a harmless joke in Om Shanti Om. There was only one problem. Manoj Kumar himself was not amused. He just didn’t get the humour and took the scene a little too literally. One of his statements at the time was that the filmmakers had no idea of what a big star he was at the time because no one would have failed to recognise him.
Farah and the movie’s actor Shah Rukh Khan went to Manoj Kumar’s residence, apologised and tried to mollify him. He was told that nothing could be done about the movie screenings but in later television and other versions it would be removed. And he was appeased. But the story didn’t end there.
Recently Om Shanti Om was released in Japan and to Kumar’s chagrin, he came to know that the scene was still there. He has now gone to court and filed a defamation suit. The case will drag on for years and it seems to be an overreaction on his part. But then there is also the fact that former stars really have nothing to do except hang on to the memories of their old glory.
Sunny days
Sunny days
Sunny Deol, who had virtually disappeared from the public eye, is suddenly in vogue again. He has two movies lined up for release.
One of them is called I Love New Year and the promos of that have started airing. It shows a drunken Sunny weaving to a song and has already become a talking point. There is, however, an interesting thing about it: while his family has a number of men who can hold their drink like father Dharmendra, Sunny himself doesn’t drink at all. And he says that since the clip has started being shown, he is getting approached by a number of filmmakers asking him to perform drunken roles. Not bad for a teetotaller.
The other movie that he’s coming in is a sequel to Yamla Pagla Deewana which starred all the three Deols — Sunny, Bobby and Dharmendra — and was a surprise hit. In fact, after the screen fortunes of the Deols went down some years back, they seem to have been resuscitated by acting together. It’s an unusual sort of way to go about their careers, but as long as it works, who’s complaining.
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