The Sunday Tribune - Spectrum (original) (raw)

EARLIER COLUMNS Salman needs a saviour! December 24, 2000 Meet the �obsolete� Devgans! December 17, 2000 Twinkle has the last laugh! December 3, 2000 Wanted: A fairy godmother for Sonali Bendre! November 26, 2000 Bachchan is the best! November 19, 2000 The Champion Deol November 12, 2000 Searing salute to Kashmiriyat November 5, 2000 A special festival treat October 29, 2000 Third time (un)lucky? October 15, 2000 Raveena�s new gameplan! October 8, 2000 Music is the real hero October 1, 2000 Enter, Govinda the anti-hero September 24, 2000 Hrithik strikes again September 10, 2000 A winner on the cards? Spetember 3, 2000 Will Abhishek�s jadoo work? August 27, 2000 Magic of being Mahima August 20, 2000 Delightful duo August 13, 2000 This Papa is really great! August 6, 2000 Raving about Raveena July 30, 2000 Akshay-Shilpa: Are they, aren�t they ? July 23, 2000 This �Kunwara� is crazy July 16, 2000 And the guy involving himself in the most incredible, wrong wrangles, was "body builder" Salman Khan. Apparently, he presumed that by merely taking his shirt off and dancing/fighting topless, he�d have the filmmakers as well as the filmgoers eating out of his hand. Well, he presumed (prepostrously) wrong! Sans a major hit in Y2K, this shaved, smooth Khan is left licking his wounds as film after film of this so-called "superstar" (sic) bombed at the box office. So much so that today, no popular heroine is willing to work with him! "Woh toh hamein bhi dooba lega" (he�ll make us sink with him) is the unanimous (terrified) verdict! Talk about sinking... and there couldn�t be a more appropriate example than that of Abhishek Bachchan. This young son of the Big B has created a record of shocking sorts by licking the b.o. dust in ALL three of his pictures, imagine! What the hell is he up to, for Chrissake? Is he aiming (albeit in the negative) to find a (pathetic) place in The Guinness Book, by any chance?! Preity Zinta and Rani Mukherji ran/sat/cuddled back to back for many movies together.... but nothing dramatic or devastating turned up. It is, of course, anomatter altogether that Zinta succeeded in making her shapely, sensuous screen presence felt (the males� adrenalin in sure surged!) with a string of films.... appreciably Kya Kehna and earlier, Sunghursh. She still has a whole lotta steam �n� sex appeal to play a long innings... provided she doesn�t get knocked around by a new, more sensational newcomer........... Alright, now let me capsulate some other happenings of Bollywood 2000, right? A surprisingly large number of stars took to home productions. And direction. Sunny Deol (Dillagi); Ajay Devgan (Dil kya kare, Raju Chacha); Shah Rukh Khan & Juhi Chawla (Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani); Aamir Khan (Lagaan); etc. The b.o. response? Very mediocre and hardly encouraging. So far, at least. Quite a few big, mega-hyped movies took a thrashing when none was expected. Anil Kapoor�s Pukaar, Hamara dil aapke paas hai, Bulandi; Sanjay Dutt�s Khauff, Jung, Kurukshetra; Bobby Deol�s Hum to mohabbat karega, Badal, Bichho; Sunil Shetty�s Krodh, Aaghaaz; Aamir Khan�s _Mela;_Shah Rukh Khan�s Hey Ram, Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani; Govinda�s Hadh kardi aapne, Joru ka ghulam, Jis desh mein Ganga rehta hai; Madhuri Dixit�s Pukaar, Gajagamini. And, of course, all the three (non) starrers of Abhishek Bachchan � Refugee, Tera jadoo chal gaya and Dhai akshar prem ke! The (undeniable) nexus between filmmakers and the underworld mob was eminently highlighted with the shocking arrest of producer Nizim Rizvi and his renowned diamond merchant financier, Bharat Shah by the Mumbai cops and CID sleuths! The negatives of their on-anvil release � Chori chori chupke have been confiscated ... and leading man Salman Khan is being interrogated for his alleged links with the mafia as also his (frequent) tours to Dubai for "stage shows"! Hello Brother is neck-deep in big trouble, brother!!! A terrible year for Mr Biceps. But the year clearly belonged to Hrithik Roshan . Cheers!