Salman Khan is back in the news again and as usual it is not in a good way. He is promoting his Eid release, Sultan, and that means he is forced to give interviews, something he is decidedly not very good at nor does he relish. 
Never a man known to speak with diplomacy, he often puts his foot into his mouth. And so it happened this time too. He was being asked about the shooting of the movie, in which he plays a wrestler. 
He said that it was really difficult. In a regular wrestling match, a person only had to throw his opponent once over but when he was shooting he had throw really heavy people more than 10 times because the cameras would need to take different angles of the same scene. So far so good. But then he added that by the end, it was like being a raped woman who couldn’t walk straight. 
After a website put up the interview, there was a furore over how Salman had trivialised the trauma of a rape victim by making such a callous comparison. It gained traction until prime time news television was debating the issue. 
To be fair to Salman, he had noticed the gaffe almost as soon as it was made and in the short audio clip of that segment of the interview, you hear him say ‘I don’t think…’ after those words. But by then it was too late. Government bodies like the National Commission for Women had also demanded an apology from Salman and threatened to take action against him. 
Bollywood, which usually likes to make politically correct noises, stood by Salman but that was not surprising given that they don’t like to go against superstars either. An apology however did not come from Salman and one wonders why, since it would have contained the controversy. Instead it was his father Salim Khan who took to Twitter to say sorry on his behalf saying, ‘Undoubtedly what Salman said is wrong, the simili, example and the context. The intention was not wrong. Nevertheless I apologise on behalf of his family his fans & his friends. Forgiveness is to pardon the unpardonable or it is no virtue at all’. But it was not enough to quell the noises over what seems to be not such a big issue. It is after all not a crime to speak something stupid. 


Don 3 rumours


Rumour about a sequel to Don 2 has been making the rounds for quite some time now but its director Farhan Akhtar and Shah Rukh Khan have both refused to confirm it. Recently, there was again news being made on this front. 
It was said that Farhan is working on the script and Priyanka Chopra would not act in Don 3, whenever it is made. And that the actress replacing her is Jacqueline Fernandes. This is because Priyanka is not interested, and is keen on her engagements abroad where she has some plum Hollywood assignments. 
Meanwhile there have been another slew of reports that quote sources at the production house saying that the movie will not be made without Priyanka since she is an intrinsic part of it. Also that Shah Rukh Khan too has no dates in the immediate future and so Don 3, even if being made, is very far away. Till then everything is said to be mere speculation. What might work for it is if Shah Rukh Khan has a few more flops — because then to garner a big hit he would return to a tried and tested franchise like Don.


Short copy?


Shirish Kunder, husband of Farah Khan, who once got superstars like Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar to act in his movies but has not had any project after a string of flops, returned with a short film called Kriti, which has Manoj Bajpayee and Radhika Apte starring in it. 
The movie is a psychological thriller in which Bajpayee plays a mentally unwell man who is unable to decipher between what is real and what is his imagination. After Kunder put it up on YouTube, it got some decent responses. His movies have more or less always been panned by critics, so one would think that he had managed to turn a corner. 
But then the movie got marred in a controversy. A Nepali filmmaker put up a Facebook post saying that he had made a short film and found Kriti had many similarities to it. Kunder says that the Nepali film was released online in May and he had finished shooting in February, so he couldn’t have copied. But the Nepalese filmmaker had also shown the movie last October to a select group of friends online, and insinuates that that was how Kunder might have seen it.


Back on the hit train


It was not very long back that Alia Bhatt had come face to face with failure. Perhaps for the first time, a movie of hers, Shaandaar, had flopped resoundingly at the box office. She had spoken in interviews then about how it had upset her but that she was still very clear on doing movies that she believed in. 
As they say, success comes to those who take risks. Udta Punjab, which had been enmeshed in censor troubles, finally got released and has gone on to become a hit. The person whose acting is being raved about in the movie is Alia’s. She plays a de-glamourised migrant in it and has pulled it off very well because of how much she was willing to suffer for it. 
She said getting into the character had taken an emotional toll on her and even her health failed because of it. In her career, Alia has actually managed to seamlessly go back and forth from total masala entertainers to dark gritty realistic fare. 
Her performance in Highway was also like that. In one newspaper interview she talked about her acting philosophy and said she was not a method actor but more spontaneous in her approach. Meanwhile, she promises to continue experimenting and taking risks.


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