Bollywood Banter

THE CHANGING NARRATIVE OF BOLLYWOOD “When I started my struggle at 19, I wanted to just be a Bollywood hero, after a point I realised that I should stay true to my art and focus on acting. Actor pehle banja, hero public banayegi”. These words by Siddhant Chaturvedi, aka MC Sher from ‘Gully Boy’, best explains the new age of Bollywood and the new cohort of lead actors that have emerged. Bollywood has been around for a long time but for the most part it was all about stardom. A select few men (until recently) would enter the movies on a bike, look at a girl once, dance to a couple of songs, beat up a few people and then get married to the girl. There wasn’t much creativity or attention to detail involved and sometimes the plots didn’t follow or make sense, but it didn’t seem to matter. Many an actor, ranging from Shammi Kapoor to Amitabh Bachchan and more recently Salman Khan, have made more than just a living by doing this. However, recently this me...

RANVEER SINGH - BOLLYWOOD'S CURRENT SUPERSTAR  "Apna time aayega". The catchphrase from Ranveer Singh's new film, ‘Gully Boy’, is an accurate summary of his career. The boy who broke into the movies in 2010, with the rom com ‘Band Baaja Baaraat’, did win hearts but people were not entirely convinced. The next few years weren't easy. With box-office flops such as ‘Kill Dil’, ‘Lootera’ and ‘Ladies vs Ricky Bahl’, people had started to slot Ranveer in the Bollywood mid-card. "He's nothing special, just another one of the many" they said. Then came 2015, the year that changed it all. With stellar performances in Zoya Akthar’s, ‘Dil Dhadakne Do’ and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s, ‘Bajirao Mastani’, Ranveer was once again the talk of the town. He showed his pedigree with two diverse roles and people were raving about his talent. People were expecting great things but were left slightly disappointed in 2016 as he gave an averag...

Bollywood's next step -  "Ek Ladki ko dekha toh aisa laga"  It is not often that an industry that has been alive for as long as Bollywood has throws up a mainstream movie with a topic that it hasn’t championed before. So to walk out of ‘Ek ladki ko dekha toh aisa laga” after witnessing mainstream Bollywood’s first attempt at portraying the topic of homosexuality was a unique experience. The idea of homosexuality still isn’t fully accepted by a large population of India and many people think of it as some sort of a ‘disease’ that can be cured. It is often said that cinema has the power to influence people in ways no other medium can, and in a country like India where film superstars are placed on a pedestal only matched by cricketers, this idea rings true even further. After ventures into the topic in films such as Kapoor and Sons, where there was a homosexuality angle, and Aligarh, considered by many to be an Indie film, starring Manoj Bajp...