Shah Rukh Khan celebrated his birthday last week and for those who have been following him ever since he burst into Hindi movies in the early 1990s, it is hard to imagine that he has turned 51.
From playing negative characters whose screen presence made even more of an impression than the hero’s, Shah Rukh made a radical transformation into a romantic icon which, through movies like Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, propelled him to superstardom, a place that he has never relinquished even if he is no longer number one in the hustings, long overshadowed by the extraordinary run of Salman Khan and the phenomenal business that every Aamir Khan movie does.
In fact this is now one of Shah Rukh’s leanest periods with movies like Fan and Dilwale doing miserably by his standards. The birthday he celebrated was also low key, a beach party on the outskirts of Mumbai with close friends and family.
He is now banking on two movies in 2017, one the middle brow Hello Zindagi where Alia Bhatt plays the heroine. And then Raees, where he plays a gangster. If a movie could once again bounce him back into competition with the other Khans this would be it.
One thing that age has done to Shah Rukh is made him less aggressive. When he started out he was known for arrogance and anger. But after he became a superstar, there has been a mellowing down. Once in a while it does flare up, like when he quarrelled with a security guard who stopped his daughter and her friends from entering a stadium after a cricket match. Or when he had a fight with Salman Khan during the birthday party of the latter’s then girlfriend Katrina Kaif.
But the passing of time made the two give up the enmity and become friends again. To the extent that you might now see Shah Rukh do a guest appearance in Salman’s next release, the Kabir Khan directed Tubelight. Salman had done a similar cameo in the Shah Rukh movie Om Shanti Om nine years ago but since then the two have never been seen together in the big screen.
They will probably never work as co-stars ever, given their superstar status, but the closest alternative for their fans are such cameos.

Double hits
In the end Karan Johar’s feel for the Indian audience’s pulse trumped Ajay Devgn’s reliance on stunts and special effects as good as a Hollywood movie. Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Shivaay both released on the same date and it is now clear that the former has done better. But only just.
What is good news for their makers is that both the movies are going to be decent hits, crossing the 100 crore mark. From the Ae Dil team, Ranbir Kapoor will be the most relieved because he has finally broken the string of flops that had been trailing him and will once again be a serious contender in the A-list. Johar will be happy that the controversy over Pakistani actor Fawad Khan didn’t do any damage and in fact might have given lots of free publicity.
From the Shivaay team, Ajay Devgn will be quite content because he has shown his success as a director. The first movie that he directed, U Me Aur Hum, had been a washout. Shivaay will make amends for it and we will probably be seeing him make more action-oriented movies in future.   

The actress disadvantage
Speaking of Shah Rukh Khan, one actress who roots to act opposite him is Sonam Kapoor. Unfortunately, by her own reckoning, it is not true the other way round.
In an interview with a film magazine, she was asked on never having worked with him. Sonam has recently acted with Salman Khan in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, which went on to be a huge hit. Her answer was candid. She said that she had always wanted to work with Shah Rukh but he was just not keen. She had in fact sent several feelers whenever she thought there was a movie of his in which she could be the heroine but she never got a response. She was forced to come to the conclusion that he was just not interested and that she didn’t think it would happen in future unless he changed his mind.
She also said that this was just an instance of how the industry’s equations were when it came to male and female stars, because the former decided who the opposite woman should be. In fact Sonam is said to have got the movie with Salman because of some serious lobbying by her father Anil Kapoor.
But Neerja, in which she was the main lead, did great commercially, so maybe actresses like Sonam should stop wanting to act as armcandy opposite superstars and focus on performance driven roles. It might be better for their careers.

Not according to plan
The last movie that released of Sunny Leone was called Beimaan Love and there is no love lost between its director and the actress. Because he seems to be constantly badmouthing Sunny in the media making numerous allegations on her professionalism.
But a closer reading of his grouses would suggest that it is mainly her setting a limit to how much the movie would be allowed to capitalise on the sex-appeal quotient.
The director says he was not allowed to shoot bedroom scenes and that Leone would not show as much skin as he had hoped for because apparently she was going for an image makeover.
He also said that her husband was the one making all these interferences. Then there were somewhat unbelievable charges of him finding male actors unwilling to work opposite her.
You can’t really blame Sunny for his predicament. She used to be an adult actress but is more or less into mainstream cinema now. So filmmakers who want to only capitalise on the sex quotient might be heading for disappointment.  The movie incidentally did not do well, so the source of his anger might just be commercial failure.

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