Superstars with Simran

For a short while, Simran was slated to play Pasupathi's wife in Rajni's next film Kuselan. While she wouldn't have been paired with Rajni, she would have atleast appeared in a Rajni film, thereby filling in the one missing piece in her otherwise superb resume. Unfortunately, that fell through, apparently due to her difficult demands and Meena, who played the part in the Malayalam original, was signed on. So instead of appearing in Superstar's film, Simran is going to be a judge (though according to the show's host Vijay Adjiraj, she's gonna be a friend, philosopher and guide to the participants) on Sun TV's new show Superstars. The show started yesterday and with one of my favorite actresses headlining it, how could I miss it? :)

Superstars is a reality show that will unearth an actor and an actress for Tamil cinema. From the initial field, 100 contestants - 50 actors and 50 actresses - are going to be chosen. These 100 contestants will participate in acting-related contests each week, with 1 actor and 1 actress getting eliminated each week. The actor and actress left standing at the end of 52 planned episodes will get a special prize(Vijay Adhiraj did not reveal the prize but the obvious one would be roles in a movie).

Yesterday's episode was more along the lines of a preview show. The rules were spelt out and we got to see short clips of some of the contestants practicing and being judged. A nicely decked-up Simran appeared only at the fag end of the show and after a few lines(mostly in English but a couple in surprisingly good Tamil), limited herself to smiling and replying to Vijay Adhiraj's questions in mono-syllables. A short clip, featuring Tamil cinema's superstars over the years, though not providing any new information, was probably the most interesting part of the show. It started off with MKT and presented P.U.Chinnappa, MGR, Sivaji and Kamal before finishing off with Rajni. Then came a salsa dance performance by the pair of Sai and Keerthi, who have apparently participated in several salsa competitions around the world. The woman was dressed real skimpily and her figure - or lack thereof - combined with her moves made her look really vulgar. Definitely not suitable for family viewing(since Kavya too was watching what I thought would be a harmless reality show, we had to rush to locate the remote control and change channels!).

I've had enough of the variety shows(where people simply imitate popular actors) and dance shows. Superstars seems to offer something different and could give two people a good break by getting them a foot in the door in the Tamil Film Industry. So the show has captured my interest enough to look forward to it next week too.