SUPER HIT:  Salman Khan’s latest movie is well on its way to become a superhit within a few days.


Salman Khan’s latest movie Bajrangi Bhaijaan is well on its way to become a superhit within a few days and no one is really surprised. This is the Eid release that he is famous for and the box office seems to be still hypnotised by his magic.
For his fans there is also the joy of seeing him in person making various promotional appearances in the media. And since he is quite candid in his answers, it is also a lot of fun to hear the answers he gives to questions put to him.
In one interview he was asked about his reputation of not forgiving someone who he had a problem with. His reply was that it was true! That earlier people took him for a ride and if he taught them a lesson then they would end up as better human beings.
He then gave the example of a friend who had produced Veer, a Salman movie that had flopped. When he asked for his dues, his friend had not paid up. And then had in fact filed a defamation case against Salman. In the interview, Salman said that he would make sure that the man paid up.
In another show on radio, Salman had a few things to say about reviewers. This is a class that is not so swept away by his charisma and pans most of his movies. In the show, Salman more or less said that reviewers shouldn’t say bad things about a movie because it affects its fortunes.
Actually that would mean shutting down reviewing of movies altogether. He seems unaware that there is a better solution — just make movies that are so good that reviewers won’t have anything to complain about. But this is the kind of logic superstars like Salman in their hubris just don’t get.


Meet and greet


Ajay Devgn and Shah Rukh Khan aren’t exactly the best of friends. The favourite heroine of the audience when it comes to being paired with Shah Rukh is Kajol, Ajay’s wife. The combination has never had a flop and they were also great friends. But now even the Shah Rukh-Kajol equation is said to have cooled off due to Ajay following a commercial dispute when his movie was releasing at the same time as Shah Rukh’s and he was denied enough theatre screens.
Recently, however, suddenly out of the blue a photo started doing the rounds of social networks and it had Shah Rukh and Ajay sitting together at a restaurant in Bulgaria like old friends. Instantly there was speculation that the hatchet had been buried.
But Ajay, when asked about it later, seemed to indicate that it was not like an icebreaker. According to him, while he and Shah Rukh were not friends and don’t go out of their way to meet, when they did run into each other, it was cordial. He said the Bulgaria meeting was not a planned one and he really had no clue who took the photo.


Ramping it up

Forty-one is a tough age to make a comeback in Bollywood for an actress and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has her job cut out for her. Before her break from the industry following motherhood, her last two movies Guzaarish and Action Replayy had been a flop.
She is said to have two movies in hand now but only time will tell whether they will amount to anything substantial and again carve a niche for her among the audience.
But she was in the news again for another comeback. Aishwarya first made her name as a model before becoming an actress. Later this month, she is planning to walk the ramp at the India Couture Week and this too is something she is doing after a gap of five years.
The fashion designer whose work she will be exhibiting is Manish Malhotra and when she last walked the ramp it was also for him. It does not really mean she will be taking modelling with any serious intent. This is one of those things stars do for their designer friends. It gets them good publicity and also makes the show a success.

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Spectacular crossover

The incredible success of Bahubali, a film shot in Tamil and Telugu, has to be something that no one anticipated in Bollywood except Karan Johar, who released the Hindi dubbed version of the movie.
The movie, a spectacular fantasy tale, is unlike anything that Bollywood or India has seen before at such a scale. And even though it has actors who are virtually unknown outside south India, the Hindi audience were so completely bowled over that the movie’s initial taking matched those that have superstars like the three Khans.   
This is going to have many repercussions. For starters, it will probably see more filmmakers emulating such mammoth scale sagas with high quality special effects. Bahubali is actually two movies long, with the second part only coming out in 2016. This format is a rarity in Bollywood but you might see more of them too in future.
Interestingly a curious problem has arisen because the movie released just a week before Bajrangi Bhaijaan, the Salman Khan movie that was expected to fill all the screens available in theatres. But with Bahubali’s success, theatre owners were predictably in a dilemma over pulling it out to make space for Bajrangi Bhaijaan or to let the golden run continue. Salman himself in an interview said that he was apprehensive about whether his movie would be able to match Bahubali’s.
The movie’s success will also make its director SS Rajamouli a much sought after man in Bollywood. The last time Rajamouli made an impact there was when he made Eega, about a man reborn as a mosquito taking revenge on his killer. That too was dubbed in Hindi and did decent business, though nowhere near the kind of scale that Bahubali is witnessing.
Coincidentally, the story of Bajrangi Bhaijaan has been written by Rajamouli’s father, a noted film writer, who was also the storywriter of Bahubali.