Shah Rukh Khan, idlis and ‘the Northie gaze’

The biggest Hindi film dance number this year wasn’t in a movie, but at a wedding—or, to be precise, a “Pre-Wedding” function. Aamir, Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan grooved together to RRR’s Oscar-winning song Naatu Naatu, and it was a treat to see these three men, pushing 60 yet undeniably—even bafflingly—charismatic. Ram Charan joined the dance but several people took offence to Khan’s tone-deaf jibes, including Ram Charan’s make-up artist Zeba Hassan Zaidi, who walked out of the function, labelling Khan’s words “disrespectful” on social media. An early Poacher scene features a character “raving” about another character’s virility, which, according to Santhosh, “may have seemed fine on paper in English, but when translated into Malayalam, one can only cringe if you are familiar with the language.” Similar problems abound in Abhishek Chaubey’s thriller Killer Soup. But just gone for Tamil to represent all of the south: the main characters, the Shettys, are from Karnataka, the story is from Telangana, actors are from Mumbai and Kerala, and all of them are speaking they are in a Thiagarajan Kumararaja film.” One of Killer Soup’s big gaffes is the character Arvind Shetty, played by Sayaji Shinde with a thick Maharashtrian accent and typically Mumbai “tapori” lingo.