Tusshar Kapoor could do with some of father Jeetendra’s luck. He has had only one commercial success out of three films so far. Diwali was particularly disappointing for him and Kareena Kapoor when their new movie ‘Jeena Sirf Mere Liye’, which opened the weekend preceding Diwali, turned a cropper. Kareena’s camp may not be as worried about the movie being a wimp at the box office, because she’s got other big banner productions on the floor and because it is the male lead who prospers or dies at the box office as far as the film financiers and distributors are concerned.

Bollywood’s new male leads – Tusshar, Abhishek Bachchan, Manoj Bajpai, Vivek Oberoi, Jimmy Shergill, Aftab Shivdasani, Arbaaz et al - are finding it difficult to entrench themselves as sellable stars. On the other hand, 2002 has been reasonably kind to the older heroes, with the exception of Govinda whose bombed-out run is a matter of serious concern after ‘Waah Tera Kya Kehna’ was washed out on its opening day.

However, between Dushhera and Diwali both Sanjay Dutt (‘Hathyar’) and Ajay Devgan (‘Deewangee’) notched up minor successes for themselves in a year that has been particularly dismal for Bollywood. The year 2002 has also been generous to Akshay Kumar, whose has zoomed back to the top echelons in the film market. It may be the coming of his first child that has changed Akshay’s luck and, of course, his career has been looking brighter since the flamboyant Casanova settled down with Tina Khanna.

Sanjay Dutt in ‘Hathyar’, an all-action underworld movie that continues the story told by director Mahesh Manjrekar in ‘Vastav’, has seen comparatively good grosses, That’s also helped actress Shilpa Shetty’s resurrected career-plan. Sanjay wasn’t that lucky with his second film of the season, ‘Annarth’, which co-stars former India cricketer Vinod Kambli and Sunil Shetty. It did not have the opening grosses expected from a movie starring Sanjay as well as a famous cricketer. Few cricketers have been able to make much of a career in the movies, but Sunil Shetty is not one to give up. He’d got Vinod Kambli into ‘Annarth’ and has roped in friend Ajay Jadeja for another Shetty-starrer.

Ajay Devgan has had success of a more meritorious kind in ‘Deewangee’. His performance in the film has won considerable praise from audiences. This would have pleased Ajay no end, because some years back he’d made a decision to grow out of the stuntman heroics he was so good at and widen his screen image. Opposite Urmila Matgonkar and Akshaye Khanna in ‘Deewangee’, Ajay comes up with an effective showpiece in a complicated dramatic role. At the losing end of the romantic triangle he finds himself accused of murdering Urmila’s sugar daddy and decides to pretend that he’s a schizophrenic with a split personality. The response of the younger generation to ‘Deewangee’ suggests that these days it is safer at the box office to put forward a complex drama rather than an inane teenage romance such as ‘Dil Vil Pyar Vyar’.

Shah Rukh Khan, ‘Devdas’ director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and financier Bharat Shah can be expected to harvest as much mileage as is possible from the film’s nomination as the official entry of the Indian film industry to this year’s Oscar Awards, for the Best Foreign Language Film. North Americans shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, if the threesome launch an expanded campaign in the USA in time to come. Aamir Khan’s extraordinary string of publicity bonuses, out of the Oscar campaign for ‘Lagaan’, shall be inspirational for the threesome and Bharat Shah, who is one of India’s diamond kings, can be expected to invest more money in the ‘Devdas’ campaign than Aamir did. The film’s nomination for the Oscar should enable the film financier to turn a new leaf in his public life and help shove his recent stint in jail into oblivion.

Madhuri Dixit surprised Bollywood’s pundits with an appearance in ‘Devdas’ that filmgoers say they preferred to the succulent Aishwariya Rai’s! Before ‘Devdas’ came along, the filmy pundits had declared that Madhuri’s numero uno status had been taken over by Ash. It turned out, however, that opinions expressed in popular newspaper polls and, incredibly enough, also in the reader’s columns of the national broadsheets were categorical that Madhuri had been liked more than Ash in ‘Devdas’! That shine in Madhuri’s eyes, every time she smiles, has returned to cast its spell once again. Understandably, the new issue of ‘Showtime’ magazine bills Madhuri Dixit as the actress earning the most in the last year and last week the big news on “color television” in India was Madhuri’s very pregnant persona at a couple of gala do’s.

Aamir Khan is the actor who is making the best use of his time, money-wise. He’s not only endorsing a series of Coca Cola TV ads, he’s also producing them. Ashutosh “Lagaan” Gowarikar has directed two of these, which seem to be of a string that’ll run-up to next year’s Cricket World Cup. Aamir played a Hyderabadi paan-coke wallah in the first one, but it is the second ad in the series, which features Aamir as a Punjabi farmer, that has become hot these days. “Tussi great ho!” says one of the girls, as Aamir draws a bucket full of Coke bottles out of a well. At this Aamir the “jaat” sniggers nonchalantly – “Yaaraan da tashun!” For his next feature film, the grapevine says that Aamir has two scripts to choose from, offered by directors Ashutosh “Lagaan” Gowarikar and ‘John Matthan Mathew (of “Sarfarosh” fame). But there is also the buzz that the inimitable Mira Nair is said to be keen to work with him soon!

Salman Khan chewed the cud for a month, after coming out on bail, before he went back to work; despite the incessant goading of his father, ex-scriptwriter Salim Khan. Salim was convinced that the earlier the actor got back to work, the better it would do him, but the young man bided his time. When he did return on 8 November, on the sets of the Satish Kaushik-directed ‘Tere Naam’, he turned up with long locks in the fashion of Shoaib Akhtar, the Pakistan fast bowler. That’s a good change from being decried last year as “a balding superstar”. The other film for which Salman is scheduled to shoot in the coming weeks is ‘Sanghar – The Destroyer’ in which, ironically enough, he plays a hardboiled cop. “Sanghar’ is being directed by actor Puneet Issar, who shot to fame in 1982. Issar was the actor doing a ‘Coolie’ fight-scene with Amitabh Bachchan, when Amitabh seriously inured himself.