Sunday, January 7, 2001		Bollywood Bhelpuri

Take it from me: The Hindi film industry has done some crazy somersaults in Y2K. The (sardonic) summarising of Bollywood wrap 2000, is only an ambitious attempt to pick the highlights (and the lowpoints) from a year that was full of surprises... and a few nasty shocks — which, I’m afraid, continue to carry on even as I write this at (almost) the fag end of the year in filmland...!!!

So, what’re you waiting for, huh? Go ahead, curl up comfortably, munch on some crispies and read on..........

Hey! what shall we have first — the good news, or the bad? Coz that’s just the ding-dong, flip-flop way Bollywood was in the year now ending, you see. Well, without doubt, it was young honcho Hrithik Roshan who stole all the limelight with his phenomenal screen debut with Kaho Naa Pyar Hai... Making him the biggest, instant mega hero since the times of Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan. And, defying all movieland diktats, he has set an unprecedented trend by marrying childhood sweetheart, Suzanne Khan, on December 20 at Bangalore! Just when the filmdom rumour mill had gone into overdrive, insisting: "Oh, he can’t possibly do such a silly, foolish thing at this super stage of his career"

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!