Bollywood Asianculturevulture vibes – January Blues: The First and the furious…

The first month of the year has seen two hits and the beginning of the awards season, as well as a lot more…and it’s all hotting up in B-Town despite the literal cold shoulder…

By Rodrigues C

HELLO from a ‘chilly’ Mumbai, where temperatures have been low over the last two weeks. The mercury plummeted to just 14.8C last week.

For the last four months or so (107 days), the entertainment loving masses of the country have been hooked on arguably television’s biggest offering of the year, ‘Bigg Boss’.

In its 17th year, the reality show, which is hosted by Bollywood icon Salman Khan, during the weekend, has a huge following probably because of the actor.

The show wound up on Sunday (January 28) with actors such as Madhuri Dixit, Ajay Devgn, R Madhavan and Suniel Shetty joining Khan for its six-hour long finale.

Comedian Munawar Faruqui was declared the show’s winner. Hundreds of people from the South Mumbai locality of Dongri, where Faruqui resides, took to the streets to celebrate his victory by bursting firecrackers and chanting ‘Munna Munna’ till the early hours of Monday. Later in the evening, thousands turned up on the streets of Dongri to welcome Faruqui with his trophy.

The internet is flooded with videos of the celebration. As far as memory goes, there have been no instances of such wild celebrations after a person’s win on a reality show in India.

The Hrithk Roshan and Deepika Padukone thriller ‘Fighter’, which hit screens on Thursday, (January 25) – a day before India’s Republic Day celebrations – has been doing well at the box office.

In fact, on Friday, the film overtook its first day earnings of £2.3 million and collected £3.9m. On Sunday, the Siddharth Anand directorial raked in another £2.8m.

Its worldwide collection now stands at £19.8m, with the India collection amounting to £13.5m out of this figure.

The film was the highest grossing film on the global charts during the opening weekend. ‘Fighter’, which was one of the most anticipated offerings of the year, is now the fifth Indian film to achieve this feat after Ranbir Kapoor’s ‘Animal’; Ayan Mukerji directorial ‘Brahmastra’ also staring Kapoor; Jr NTR and Ram Charan starrer ‘RRR’ (which won an Oscar for the song ‘Natu Natu’) and Thalapathy Vijay’s ‘Master’.

Anand also directed last year’s blockbuster ‘Pathaan’ which stared Shah Rukh Khan.

Another movie that has surprised everyone with its box office numbers is the Telugu superhero film ‘HanuMan’. Directed by Prasanth Varma and staring Teja Sajja in the lead role, the movie has become the first Indian movie of 2024 to cross the box office milestone of ₹250 crore (£23.8m) after its January 12 release. Overall the film has collected £16.4m in India and £5.1m overseas. The film collected £1.8m in its third weekend, which is the second highest after ‘RRR’s £1.9m.

The awards season in Bollywood is under way with a bang. By far the most prestigious recognition ceremony of the best talent in Bollywood annually, the Filmfare (magazine) Awards were held on the nights of January 27-28 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

This was only the second time in its 69-year-long history that the ceremony for the awards was held outside of Mumbai, the first being in 2020 when it was organised in Guwahati, Assam.

Alia Bhatt bagged the Best Actress award for her performance in ‘Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani’. Her husband Ranbir Kapoor took home the Best Actor trophy for his role in the recent hit ‘Animal’, which won six awards in all.

Vicky Kaushal, who was also nominated for Best Actor (Critics) for ‘Sam Bahadur’, won the Best Supporting Actor award for Rajkumar Hirani’s ‘Dunki’. Shabana Azmi was adjudged the Best Actor In A Supporting Role (Female) for her role in ‘Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani’.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra helmed ‘12th Fail’ surprised everyone by winning the Best Director and Best Film accolades. Hosted by Karan Johar, Maniesh Paul and Ayushmann Khurrana, the event saw performances by Ranbir Kapoor, Kartik Aaryan, Kareena Kapoor, Karisma Kapoor, Varun Dhawan, Mrunal Thakur, Janhvi Kapoor and Sara Ali Khan.

For Bollywood, January sets the tone for the entire year. The coming months will see some big films such as ‘Kalki 2898 AD’ (Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Haasan, Deepika Padukone), ‘Pushpa: The Rule’ (Allu Arjun, Rashmika Mandana) and ‘Singham Again’ (Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone) among others. There’s enough heat there to blow away the winter Mumbai blues and do remember it’s all relative…till next month!