TWITTER EXCHANGE: There is no love lost between Ram Gopal Varma and Anurag Kashyap.


Many years ago, when Ram Gopal Varma burst into Bollywood and changed the old equations of filmmaking, he gathered around him a large pool of really talented men who wanted to make movies they believed in.
Varma, always an enigmatic figure, gave many of them a break and they went to become big names. Varma however became a spent force, increasingly arrogant about the decline of his own creativity.
One of the men who worked with Varma in those days and co-wrote his finest movie, Satya, was Anurag Kashyap. But that there is no love lost between these two now became evident during a recent Twitter exchange after the debacle of Kashyap’s latest, Bombay Velvet.
It was started by Varma, who tweeted, ‘A director standing by his film rejected by the audience is like him telling a girl “I love myself and I don’t care if you don’t love me”’.
This was soon after Anurag had put up a Facebook post that said he stood by Bombay Velvet even though many had not appreciated it.
Varma is known to make such provocative tweets, many of which actually don’t make much sense. Usually, most people in Bollywood ignore it. But perhaps because it was such a sensitive time for Anurag, he decided to give it back to Varma, tweeting back, ‘sir i love you too much.. now put that Vodka aside and sleep.. lots of kisses’.
Varma’s reply was also tongue in cheek. He tweeted to Anurag, ‘well sir for ur info I stopped drinking ...I am not into kissing men but love you too’.
Then Anurag replied that they should have filter coffee together to celebrate Aag, the movie which is said to be Varma’s biggest disaster. Aag was a remake of the cult film Sholay but ended up as what many thought was a parody. Varma tried to lighten the online atmosphere by saying that they should both have coffee with Karan Johar, who plays the villain in Bombay Velvet. Anurag didn’t deign to reply after that.


Still reigning favourite

Kangana Ranaut has delivered yet again and no one is surprised. Tanu Weds Manu Returns, the sequel to the earlier hit movie, is also a smashing hit with both the audience and the critics.
The movie has again reinforced her standing as an actress who can carry a movie entirely on her shoulders. This one, in fact, had her in a double role and, what is striking is that though there is a hero in the form of the actor Madhavan, people are only talking about Kangana.
In interviews, Kangana does not really show any humility about how she has changed the way Bollywood looks at heroines. She says that there has been a decade of struggle behind it when she refused to toe the line that the industry had made for actresses.
She didn’t do commercial assignments like dancing at weddings and only worked in movies she believed in. In one interview, she was asked about her going for the party of Deepika Padukone’s movie Piku but Deepika not being seen in the Tanu Weds Manu Returns screening. Kangana said that she had invited Deepika but got no response and she was hurt by it. Kangana is off for a hard earned break to the US now before she gets into her other projects.  
There was however one sour note for Tanu Weds Manu Returns and that came in the form of some needless action of the studio that produced the movie. A leading tabloid had given a 2.5 star rating for the movie that, as compared to what other critics had given, was on the lower side. The paper then ran an astonishing disclaimer note the next day saying that they revised the rating to 3.5 based on reader feedback.
That reviews should be given a rating according to feedback was bizarre but it was suspected that the studio had pressurised the newspaper into it.

Taken for a ride


Amitabh Bachchan is a great online personality. It started with his blog which he would meticulously update and built a large number of avid readers whom he called his extended family.
Then he moved on to Twitter and Facebook where he brought in the same diligence and engagement with his fans. But such zealousness can sometimes backfire.
Some time back when the cartoonist RK Laxman died, Amitabh shared a commemorative cartoon that had been put up by one of his followers.
Unfortunately he didn’t give the credit for it. When it was pointed out to him, he however made amends and put up a note giving the name of the man who had made the cartoon.
Now he has done something similar again. A follower of his put up a poem that Bachchan shared on Twitter. But it turned out that it had been written by another man who has now sent a legal notice!
That is the difficulty of trying to make your followers happy by highlighting something that they write to him — there are so many that it is just not possible to do any due diligence.


Sudden exit

The actress Rekha might be a legend of sorts in Bollywood but let’s face it, she is not exactly flooded with offers. Super Nani, the last movie in which she played a major character, came out in 2014 and went without registering any ripple of sorts.
If she has to remain relevant as an actress, she needs to make the most of what she gets. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. It recently became known that she had just dropped out of a movie for which shooting had even begun.
She plays a mother figure in it and the news of her exit was sudden. One rumour says she didn’t like her look, while another claims that the director and her couldn’t agree on how she would portray the character.
In any case, she has now been replaced by Tabu. Other filmmakers would be wary of casting her now.

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