There’s a distinct yardstick that separates a real true-blue star from the rest of the pack in Bollywood and that is the ability to deliver a hit as a solo hero in a movie. Once he has crossed that barrier, he has jumped from aspiring to established. But it is a difficult thing to sustain. Most of the actors manage to get there and then taper off, slowly transforming into second lead and then just character artistes. 
And Sidharth Malhotra better watch out because the first signs of this happening to him are there. Sidharth began his career with Student Of The Year, the Karan Johar directed superhit which also launched the career of Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt. After that he seemed to be sailing fine. There was even a superhit in the form of Ek Villain. 
But in recent times, things have changed. Last year, Baar Baar Dekho – which had him opposite Katrina Kaif – was a resounding flop, coming and going without a whisper. And now the just released A Gentleman has met an even worse fate. The movie had zero impact at the box office. 
These are not small budget indie films but big commercial projects with all the expectations of profit, based on Sidharth’s appeal as a hero. Both the flops were of the romantic genre, so perhaps the market is indicating that he is not cut out for romance roles. It might therefore be wise of him to test a few other genres – like action. For a relatively new star, two back to back flops will still take some doing to come out of. 

Food for thought

The trailer of Chef, the official Hindi adaptation of the Hollywood movie about the relationship between a father and his young son being mended through food, is out and has Saif Ali Khan in the lead role testing his kitchen skills. 
During the launch, he gave some nuggets about how the director did not want a double to do the cooking scenes and so Saif was forced to learn all about it himself. At the event he was asked what he liked cooking and his answer was spaghetti. This is a dish that actually does not require too much cooking, but it is still better than nothing. 
And maybe the Chef experience will add a little to his repertoire. There is much riding on the movie for him. He has had a pretty long run of movies that didn’t do any wonders at the box office. 
While Chef is not the typical fare that would be a huge blockbuster, the Indian audience has shown that it often gives unexpected rewards to a movie that makes them feel good, which is what the Hollywood version did. 
Chef’s director Raja Krishna Menon did pull off a big hit with Airlift last year and that too was an unusual fare. A future movie that could have been huge blockbuster for Saif was Race 3. Race and Race 2, both of which were multistarrers with him in the lead role, had been big successes. 
Given that filmmakers usually keep a good thing going, it was thought that Race 3 would be a safe harbour for Saif. But there has been a twist in that story. Recently, its producer announced that the movie would have Salman Khan instead. Saif was asked about this at the Chef event and his response was that he had known last year itself about the plans to make the movie with an entirely new cast and had been okay with it. And that while he had not known the latest news, he thought Salman would do a good job. 
The reason Saif got dropped is self-evident – his market value is deteriorating. That is why Chef becomes all the more important for his future. Food might save him. 

One more rerun

If anyone thought the Kangana Ranaut, Hrithik Roshan spat was over then they are wrong. It had begun with Kangana claiming that she and Hrithik had an affair, and with the latter denying and saying some imposter had fooled her with fake e-mails. A truce had been called when the matter got ugly in public. 
Periodically, however, salvos are fired from both sides. Sometime back Hrithik’s father Rakesh Roshan said that the truth, if they revealed it, would be shocking. This time it is Kangana who has once again opened the can of worms. In a television interview, she hit back at both him and Hrithik saying they hadn’t been able to prove anything about her being fooled by an imposter and that they had made fools of themselves. 
According to her, they owed an apology and while she had been willing to meet and sort the issue out, they had been running away scared from her. She even made a strange connection of her situation to the case of the recent abduction of a Malayalam actress in which a superstar there was involved and said that she had also feared for her life. That might be a bit too dramatic but she has certainly done enough for the Roshans to come back with an oral response.

Same Singham

Singham has been one of the bestselling Bollywood franchises in recent times. Both Singham and Singham 2 were big hits and while the movies were originally in Tamil, Ajay Devgn successfully owned the role of an honest and ruthless dialogue-spouting policeman in the Hindi remakes. He is now completely identified with the character. 
It was therefore a surprise when rumours started doing the rounds that Sunny Deol was going to be in Singham 3 playing the main character. And the reports even had details like Sunny making a courtesy call to Ajay informing him about taking on the role before actually signing it. Turns out nothing of that sort has happened. In an interview to a tabloid, Ajay said that it was all a rumour and Rohit Shetty, who directed the first two Singhams, will also be doing the third and was already working on the script. And that he would be the lead actor as usual. 
Meanwhile, his latest movie Baadshaho has hit the screens. And while the commercial success of it will take some time to be guaged, critically it has been panned. 
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