Filmi Fundas

No love for the sari

Vidya Balan’s fashion sense has always been making news — for the wrong reasons. She’s had brief romances with unflattering necklines, too-tight clothes and out-of-fashion silhouettes before.

Once she began her tryst with the sari, however, nearly everyone seems to have agreed that the nine-yard statement works for Vidya, giving her a look which is both glamourous as well as ethnic. Vidya has experimented widely with the sari, throwing on a bright palette of colours and selecting different sorts of fabrics and blouse-cuts.

Vidya’s saris may have silenced a majority of fashion critics but there’s still one member of the film fraternity who is vocal about disapproving of them — former flame Shahid Kapoor. During the recent IIFA awards function in Singapore, Vidya dressed herself in a simple black Masaba Gupta sari, with bold golden embellishments. When she went up on stage to collection her best-actress award, Shahid Kapoor apparently passed a snide remark regarding her choice of wardrobe.

‘Do you buy all your saris at a discounted rate?’ questioned the actor, much to Vidya’s chagrin. The actress was visibly offended but chose to take the high road and abstained from replying.

Two titans on screen?

Rajnikanth and Kamal Hassan are two of the largest names in the Tamil film industry.

Both have their own followings and large fan-bases. And although they have been seen together on screen before, Kamal Hassan feels it is unlikely that he and Rajnikanth will be cast in a movie together again. The reason — they’re too expensive.

Recently, when he was asked whether there was a chance that crazed audiences could get to see him and Rajnikanth together in a movie, he said, “If you have Rajni and me on board, the sky is the limit to how much you can sell a film for. But there is also a limit to how much you can pay the two of us as actors.

When you finish giving him and me our remunerations, I don’t think there will be much of the budget left to make the movie with.” Hats off to Kamal for being so frank about his price!

The price of an appearance

Bollywood stars sure know how to rake in the moolah.

They charge obscenely large amounts for films, cameos and brief appearances, item numbers and of course, their commercial endorsements.
And simply confirming this fact is Salman Khan, who is one the highest-paid actors in tinsel town.

Apparently, he has raised his fee for each film to a whopping Rs 50 crores — including profit shares.

 Other than his films and endorsements, Salman has been quoting an extraordinarily high figure even for brief appearances at events — a jaw-dropping 1.75 crores.

What’s more, the actor also wants to be ferried to the event in question in a chartered flight.   Well, he may be one of the most sought-after actors in the film fraternity but it sure is expensive to party with Salman.

Sanjay’s project shelved

Sanjay Dutt has been nurturing dreams of his project Bihaad for nearly half a decade now. He’s always been determined to ensure that the project sees the light of the day. However, despite Sanjay’s best efforts, it appears that there’s a chance the project — which never went on floors — will end up being shelved.

Just to add salt to Sanjay’s wounds, another film-maker is going ahead with a film of the same title — and even getting it ready for a big release. This film, which is being directed by Krishna Mishra, is touted to be a very rustic and realistic film which is sure to catch the eye of the audience. Looks like Sanjay’s the one who missed out in this case.