Bad and ugly

Salman Khan is taking his title of Bollywood’s numero uno bad boy rather seriously. The actor, who has been accused of being involved in host of unsavoury actions — from stalking his girlfriends to running over people sleeping on pavements and doing away with wild life — is going to essay the role of the original bad guy of Hindi cinema — Mogambo. He will play Amrish Puri’s role in Anees Basmee’s remake of Boney Kapoor’s Mr India. And we hear he is going to look so different that even Sallu fans will have trouble recognising him. Apparently, well known international make-up artists will be flown in to give the actor his new look for the Rs 100-crore film. Poor Salman. This is like giving a boy a bad name and hanging him.

City lights

Steig Larsson’s Millennium books and their cinema versions aren’t the only trilogy that people are talking about. Closer home, director Milan Luthria is in the news for a set of three films that he wants to dedicate to Mumbai. In 2006, when he directed Taxi no. 9211 starring Nana Patekar and John Abraham, Luthria didn’t think that Mumbai would be his theme again. But clearly the city continues to haunt him, for his new venture, a romantic action film starring Ajay Devgn, Emran Hashmi and Kangana Ranaut, is called Once Upon a Time in Mumbai. He hasn’t named his third film yet, but he stresses that it will be an action thriller on Mumbai. Now we know why it’s called the Maximum City.

Bottom line

He bares his butt. He kisses a man. And now Maradona Rebello, a 23-year-old model-turned-actor who shocked audiences with his antics in his debut film Pankh, released earlier this month, is all ready to appear in a film that is being touted as India’s answer to Brokeback Mountain. Maradona plays the role of a man who has an affair with his gay brother’s wife in Dunno Y... Na Jaane Kyun. That’s the spirit, Maradona. But please, butt us no butts.

Not a twit

One thing you can say about Ranbir Kapoor — he can withstand peer pressure. While many in Bollywood — including Shah Rukh Khan — are going bananas on Twitter, the young actor says he will stay away from the social networking website. For though he is on Twitter, Kapoor says he finds he is not interested in posting his views. His last tweet, for instance, was eight months ago. The actor says he’s not interested in keeping the world apprised of such earth-shaking developments as what he’s been eating or who he is hanging out with. He would rather let his films speak for him, says Kapoor. Now all that he has to do is keep mum.

Muse mania

A hundred and twenty six years after she took her life, Calcutta artistes are commemorating Kadambari Devi, Rabindranath Tagore’s sister-in-law and believed muse. The group You and I, primarily comprising vocalist Soumyajit Das and pianist Sourendra Mullick, has put together a progamme of music and poetry that reflects the life of Kadambari Devi, who died on April 19, 1884. “She is a kind of poet-maiden or a muse,” says Sourendra Mullick. So she has been interpreted not just through the poems of Tagore but the works of other poets such as Jibanananda Das and Shakti Chattopadhyay. The songs again are not only Tagore’s but include thumris sung by Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Begum Akhtar. The death of a muse, clearly, is being seen through the many facets of a prism.