Top but not safe: Katrina Kaif has competition coming from Deepika and Priyanka.

Many would agree to this instinctively and a lifestyle magazine’s survey reaffirmed it recently — Katrina Kaif is the most sexy Indian around. That makes it three years running that Katrina has come out on top in that list. Behind her at the number 2 slot is Priyanka Chopra, whose item numbers seem to have helped improve her standing.
Last year the number 2 was Kareena Kapoor but she has slipped six places to number 8. That is an ominous sign because the only thing that has happened in the interim is her betrothal. No-one will take this magazine’s survey too seriously but it is still a message to Kareena that she will have to reinvent herself. Her days as a superstar among actresses might be getting over. Katrina meanwhile, has been trying to deal with the publicity that came from her being snapped in a bikini along with Ranbir Kapoor in a Spanish beach. She is giving interviews in which she does not deny their relationship while not confirming it either.
There is also another reason why she needs to be in the limelight. Deepika Padukone is riding the high of her career with a series of superhits which make her a contender for the top actress vacancy which Kareena will leave behind.
Katrina believes many of her films, like Dhoom 3 with Hrithik Roshan and Aamir Khan, are on the anvil and once they become superhits, there will again be talk about her.  Deepika was number 3 in the list of sexiest women. But she wouldn’t be too bothered with that. As long as the box office counters keep ringing, what does it matter?

A strange withdrawal

‘Did they even know what was the stature of Manoj Kumar then?’— these were the words of Manoj Kumar after Om Shanti Om released in 2007 and he saw to his befuddlement that there was a comedy scene in which Shah Rukh had been pictured impersonating him to enter an event while the real star is thrown out.
It was not such a big deal and Manoj Kumar jokes are staple fare among ordinary people. In his movies he was often seen covering his face with his palm and there is one joke which goes that Manoj Kumar never gets a passport because all his photos are like that.
Farah Khan and Shah Rukh Khan had merely dug into this phenomenon when they envisioned that scene. Kumar didn’t exactly see the joke in it and filed a defamation suit. Shah Rukh went to his home and mollified him. He was promised that the scene would not be there in any future prints of the movie and the issue seemed to have been sorted out.
Some time back, the movie was released in Japan and Kumar found to his chagrin that the scene was still there. Once again he went in overdrive. He said that he been betrayed and demanded a public apology. And now comes another surprising U Turn — he has decided to withdraw the case. What is strange is the reason his lawyer has given for it. He says that because Shah Rukh and Farah did not remove that scene or give that apology, Kumar has realised that they are not contrite and therefore, since the case has not brought “a sense of responsibility” in them, he is withdrawing it.  But the whole point of the case was to teach them a lesson! Evidently, Kumar has negotiated some loops of logic that only he can comprehend.

Apt repartee

Ram Gopal Varma is a pale shadow of the genius he used to be and his stock in Bollywood is almost at rock bottom. The only time anyone pays attention to him is when he goes off on a tangent on Twitter.  Last Thursday was Teacher’s Day and Varma was at it again, with 140 word soliloquies on teachers. He started off by tweeting that he couldn’t wish teachers because he was never happy with them as a student.
He then said he had never heard of successful teachers and the Day was celebrated so that students could keep the morale of their low paid miserable teachers high while they themselves go on to better jobs.
He also said that if someone had taken inspiration from Karan Johar’s Student of the Year to make Teacher of the Year, the film would be the disaster of the year. That didn’t go too well with Johar who immediately tweeted to Varma,  ‘....Disaster of the year is your territory Ramu...no-one can ever replace the comfortable place you have made for yourself there.’ Touche, it was.

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Final resolution


Speaking of court cases, Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, the erstwhile script-writing pair, recently resolved a case of their own. It has been decades since the duo had a falling out but ever since they heard that there was a remake of Zanjeer in the offing, they had been together shouting hoarse about copyright violation. Zanjeer was the movie which began Amitabh Bachchan’s superstardom but it also launched Salim-Javed as superstar script writers. The film’s producer was Prakash Mehra and the remake is being produced by his offsprings.
Salim and Javed had been contending that when they sold the original script it was only for one time use and they were the owners of the story. They wanted US$1 million and had gone to court. Last week the High Court ordered that they would not give a stay on the movie’s release. This effectively meant that they would now have to suffer a long drawn out legal battle stretching years.
Both of them said that they would follow up the case all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. But now wiser counsel has prevailed and they have arrived at an out-of-court settlement. They would probably have not got the entire sum demanded but it would be enough of a victory to establish their right over the script.