Show Biz

2008-10-02T02:46:00.000-07:00

Top 5 Women oriented films in Bollywood

2008-03-08T20:07:00.000-08:00

She is soft and yet very strong inside. Her endurance is beyond imagination. She can handle trouble and carry heavy burden with equal ease. She displays many emotions from joy to jealousy, from fear to fondness and from sadness to surprise. What's more she is truly someone who wears many hats each day as a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter and a professional and yet excels in all her roles. She is none other than the Woman.

Even in reel-life, no Bollywood potboiler is complete without a woman's presence. Her presence simply lights up the screens thereby creating an unmatchable aura within the dark confines of the cinema hall. Hence, on this special occasion of Women's Day Bollywood Hungama takes a trip down memory lane and brings you some of the top women oriented films to have hit the silver screen.

Lajja

In a land where women are worshipped in the name of Laxmi and Durga, they are also tortured, abused, humiliated and sometimes killed. Lajja showcases the journey of one such woman (Manisha Koirala) who is on the run, hiding from her husband. Whilst on this expedition to seek safety, she comes across three strong-minded women (Mahima Chaudhary, Madhuri Dixit and Rekha) who are bearing the punishment of being independent women. Drawing relevance to real life situations, the film makes one aware that though our society has progressed, somewhere these malpractices still continue against women. Lajja is the poignant story of those women who become prey to man's malevolence but still continue to fight.

Dor

Life has varied stages for women, but worst is if in the due course she loses her life partner forever. Dor is one such movie wherein Ayesha Takia married at a young age is forced to renounce happiness and live a life of repentance when her husband dies. When a family member dies, it sure is a moaning period but for how long will a woman moan. Doesn't she have the right to be happy ever again? Somehow, a woman is expected to moan all her life. Ayesha Takia's character in Dor suffers everyday. Gul Panag, who becomes Ayesha's friend, then makes her release that her life is not over and that she deserves to live happily like any other human being. Ayesha takes her first step towards her new life and moves on.

Chak De India

Very often sports are considered as a male dominant activity. Chak De India discards this pre-conceived notion. The film throws light on the forgotten game (which is also our national game), Hockey, and displays how the 'chakla belan chalane wali ladkiyan' can also make their nation proud. Chak De India emphasizes that women may not be physically stronger than men, but can put up a strong fight with undying energy and can match them even in the toughest of sport. Not just emphasizing on the physical fitness, but the film through the characters of Vidya Sharma and Preeti Sabarwal, also shows that women are very much capable of creating space for themselves in a so called 'male dominated' society.

Astitva

Is the identity of a woman always marked with that of her husband's? Does a woman have a separate identity within a marriage? Astitva is the story of a woman (Tabu), who forgets herself and her desires to fulfill her duty as a devoted loyal wife. Where a man, (Sachin Khedekar) can break the laws of marriage and gets forgiven, a woman is condemned for the same. Living in the 21st century, when the so called 'broad-minded' son refuses to accept her, she decides that it is never too late to rediscover her lost identity. The film very clearly indicates that women can stand with or without men. Just because she has immense patience and endurance, one must not take her for granted. Her silence does not signify her ignorance.

Mother India

When we talk of women oriented films, it is impossible to not include Mother India. The film was a complete package of social relevance. It narrates the story of a village woman (Nargis) who supports her husband in his work and also manages home. After an accident when Rajkumar loses his hands, Nargis takes over as the earning member of the family. Even when her husband runs away looking at his helplessness to get the family out of debt, she stands determined to fight the survival match. A disaster strikes when the entire village is swept away by floods. She also loses her youngest child in it. But the woman remains strong fending for her two sons for whom she is both the mother and the father. She fought for what she believed in and stood up against injustice, even if that meant to sacrifice her own son, because she believed what he was doing was wrong. Such is the trait of a woman. She can be humble and forgiving, but at the same time, if needed, she can also be merciless.

The super wives of Bollywood

2008-03-08T20:06:00.000-08:00

The woman of today is no more dependent on her man to carve her individual identity. In every stretch and field, the female species matches the male and at times ever overtakes him. Bollywood too is no exception. On Women’s day, we celebrate the spirit of those Bollywood wives who have gained recognition of their own and are not overshadowed by their successful husbands.

Seema Khan – Seema Khan, wife of actor-director Sohail Khan has an identity of her own and is not dependent on her husband when it comes to gaining recognition. Though not involved with the film industry, she has many film celebrities as her clients. That’s because she is a fashion designer who runs her own boutique in Mumbai. She also has her own designer label.

Her clientele includes brother-in-law Arbaaz Khan, sister-in-law Malaika Arora Khan, Amrita Arora, Sonali Bendre and models Tapur, Gauhar Khan, Mridula and Nina Manuel. Seema has showcased her collections at the Lakme India Fashion Week 2006 and many such eventful occasions.

Husband Sohail Khan was once quoted saying that he cannot afford his wife Seema Khan for designing for any of his productions as the prices charged by her are on a higher range. Perhaps that explains why Bollywood still eludes her!

Tania Deol – Bobby Deol’s wife, Tania maintains the Deol legacy of bahus staying away from films. But at the same time Tania happens to be the most known name amongst Deol wives. Tania got married at a young age and had nothing to do at that time other than accompanying Bobby on his film sets. So she took up a diploma course in interiors and soon gained a liking towards designing coffee tables, chairs and other furniture pieces.

With her inherent sense of aesthetics, she graduated from single pieces to conceiving a theme and recreating an entire space. Starting off from furniture, she now also designs accessories like candles, chandeliers, lamp shades, lights and wall hangings. She does consult architects but has a mind of her own.

With a workshop stationed at Sunny Super Recording Studio, her client list boasts of names from the corporate and movie world.
Gauri Khan – From being a campus girlfriend of Shah Rukh Khan to being the wife of the biggest superstar of Hindi cinema, Gauri Khan has graduated gigantically. The couple got married before Shah Rukh started in films and are still going rock-solid in times of treacherous temptations.

Gauri has been a terrific support system to Shah Rukh Khan and has stood like the Rock of Gibraltar for him in all phases. Her movie connection was always linked with SRK in the means of designing costumes for his films like Baazigar, Karan Arjun to Kabhi Haa Kabhi Naa. She took charge of Khan’s production outfit, Red Chillies Entertainment, and turned producer with films like Main Hoon Na, Paheli and Om Shanti Om.

Recently Gauri even appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine. And this time without SRK!

Mana Shetty – They started their dating in Udipi restaurants during their courtship period. And today Suniel Shetty and wife Mana Shetty add grace to the elite events of moviedom. Though Mana has not partnered Suniel as a producer or designer on any of his projects, she is known for being the reason of peace and contentment in Suniel Shetty’s life.

Mana is one star wife who doesn’t need Bollywood to define her identity.

Katie Holmes Says She Went To Heaven After Falling in Love with Tom Cruise

2008-03-08T20:04:00.000-08:00

Katie Holmes claims her life is a dream come true.

The former ‘Dawson’s Creek’ actress says being married to Tom Cruise and
becoming a mother to their 22-month-old daughter Suri has completed her and
she can’t believe how lucky she is.

She said: “Being in heaven was falling in love with Tom and having our
daughter. I’m such a lucky woman. Sometimes I feel like I’m dreaming. It was
always my dream as a child to marry Tom Cruise!”

Katie, 29, began dating 45-year-old Tom in April 2005, and has been madly in
love with the “most wonderful human being” ever since.

She told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper: “We just went on this great date
together, and it’s been wonderful ever since. He’s the most amazing man in
the world. I’m so happy. I love him. I feel like he’s made my life.

“He’s just amazing. He’s kind, generous, smart, he’s Tom Cruise - he’s the
most artistic man I’ve ever met. He makes me laugh like I’ve never laughed.

He’s made me feel joy like I never have before. There are so many things.
He’s the most wonderful human being I know.”

Katie Holmes Makes Victoria Beckham Mad Over Tattoo Comment

2008-03-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

Katie Holmes has reportedly made her pal Victoria Beckham mad after making comments about her new tattoo. Sources alleged that the Spice Girl got a new tattoo of the phrase “De Integro,” which means “afresh.” She asked Holmes to get the tattoo also, but the actress refused saying it was “trashy.”

Beckham, who is married to soccer star David Beckham, was said to be “pretty shocked and upset” by the comment.

Meanwhile, Holmes has gushed about her husband Tom Cruise in an interview with In Style magazine. She said it was love at first sight. “It happened in an instant. When you fall in love, it’s like time stops. I try every day to make Tom know how much I love him. It gets better and better,” she said.

Filmfare Awards :Shahrukh sets new standards in poor taste

2008-03-07T04:38:00.000-08:00

In this age where awards are a dime a dozen and when the National Awards are seen to be mired in a bureaucratic mindset, the Filmfare awards are the ones that still command respect and legitimacy in the industry and amongst the viewers.

Over the years they have changed, from a simple gathering of the film world’s denizens, to a ceremony that is watched by millions on television screens. Keeping pace with the changing demands of television presentation the awards have evolved into an Oscars style ceremony that has its own MC,s and entertainment pieces.

The latest ceremony was by far the best in terms of its style and visual appeal. The presenters and the recipients both came on stage in a smooth sequence and the audience looked a million bucks.

To my mind, and those of millions of other viewers, what these awards will be however remembered for, is the display of crassness by the two MC’s of the evening, Shahrukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan. To be fair to Saif, he was at best a supporting cast. The entire evening belonged to Shahrukh and what a mess he made of it. When, at the start, he announced that the evening would be a no holds barred affair as far as the jokes and commentary was concerned, never could have one been prepared for the show of pettiness and bad taste that followed.

Sharhukh set the tone by making that comment about not being invited to the Bachchan wedding. If it had ended there things would have been alright. Shahrukh spared no one and went on lurching from one poor joke to another. Although the Bachchans were his main target he hit out at many others too.The style was all 'Oscars' inspired but minus the finesse. Shahrukh was out for settling scores and humiliating everyone he has some grudge with. There was no humor there, only poorly veiled animosity. The audience looked shell shocked at many of his ‘jokes’. They seemed unsure whether to clap or not.

The’ Na-Real’ awards were another low. If he was aping the Razzies from the USA he should have known that in those awards, for bad performances, the ‘winners’ are aware of their awards before they turn up to receive them, that is, if they turn up at all. Those rewards are not clubbed with the 'Oscars' ceremony. Poor Vidya Balan was caught totally off guard and was visibly upset. She tried to handle her hurt by taking a swipe at Saif and Shahrukh but it all fell flat and was sad to watch. How churlish is it to ‘honor’ a film actress in front of her peers for poor taste in clothes?

Who gave the stage to Shahrukh to run amok and do as he pleases? Since when has he become the final word on everything relating to the industry? Om Shanti Om was his first vehicle to poke fun at his seniors and contemporaries but not many minded as it was a spoof anyway. This evening, however, was about honoring and appreciating the best from various branches of the film industry.What went wrong?

All one can surmise is that maybe Shahrukh, at the moment, is too blinded by his phenomenal success and power to care. His recent attitude in the cricket match and smoking controversies points to an ego that has ballooned out of control. Maybe he has forgotten that it is the same industry and his peers and fans that have made him what he is today.

Kareena Kapoor gets private jet set

2008-03-07T04:36:00.000-08:00

Bollywood actress Kareeena Kapoor or Bebo, has been presented an out of the world gift by smitten lover and actor Saif Ali Khan- nothing less than a private jet hired for jet setting to her favorite place Goa whenever she likes.

Bebo has been riding high these days with the success of her movie, Jab we Met, a new man in her life, Saif, and winning the Film fare ward for Best Actress.

Saif on his part is enamoured by the ‘internal and external beauty’ of his ladylove. He has expressed his love dramatically by tattooing her name on his arm, presented her with a diamond ring worth crores and promised her diamond earrings according to gossip. The latest is the hiring of this private jet.

Kareena is fond of Goa and was there recently for the shoot of her new movie,” Gol Maal returns.” According to friends, the busy pair now want to spend quality time together in Goa and that is why the Jet in question.

Kareena is also excited by her win in Jab We Met. She wanted to sign for director Imtiaz Ali’s next venture but that place has apparently gone to Deepika Padukone. Bebo has said she bears no grudges on this account.

Her good temper might be attributed to the generous gift by her boyfriend, which will see her jet setting whenever she likes to her favorite haunt.

Bollywood acting school to open in London

2008-03-07T04:35:00.000-08:00

An Indian acting school is to open in London later this year, allowing would-be stars to learn the arts of Bollywood in the capital, organisers said Thursday.

Stars of the huge Indian film industry will help teach at the school, Actor Prepares, the first international branch of a training academy set up in Mumbai by renowned actor Anupam Kher.

Kher, a veteran of some 400 films, shot to Western fame in the 2002 global hit "Bend it Like Beckham", in which a young Sikh girl rebels against her traditional parents to play football like her idol, England star David Beckham.

"During the filming of 'Bend it like Beckham' it became obvious to me that there was enormous potential to build much stronger links between UK and Indian cinema," Kher said, announcing plans for the new school.

"The huge success of the movie shows what happens when you combine UK and Indian artistic talent. There is a natural synergy which creates something special."

Planned to open in September, the school will be based in Ealing, west London, now home to a huge south Asian population but with historic roots in the British film industry.

Actor Prepares already has branches in Mumbai, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad.

After London, other schools are planned in the South African city of Durban, and in Sydney.

"I would like to see this UK and Europe school become the springboard to launch similar schools around the world," said Kher.

The London school aims to allow Bollywood actors and directors to pass on their skills. Stars such as Boman Irani, Tabu, Urmila Matondkar and filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt are to be involved in teaching.

Initially three three-month courses are planned per year, training up to 60 students annually.

Britain already has close ties with the Bollywood film industry: last year it hosted the International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFAs) in Sheffield, designed to promote its films abroad.

Kher said the school will be open to all races.

"There are Britishers who want to act in Bollywood films as well," he told The Times newspaper Thursday, while underlining that it will also not only be about Bollywood.

"Of course, the Bollywood section of the course will be prominent but it won't be the only thing we teach. There is a film tradition section, where we will show them great films from world cinema. Acting is becoming universal."

Bollywood superstar Abhishek Bachchan, who has been taught by Kher, said: "After talking with Mr Kher, I truly understood what the requirements were to be actors.

"But only after training under him, I felt equipped to be able to fulfil the requirement," he added.

Kher said he hopes the new academy will help improve the quality of performances in Bollywood films, with the help of young actors who have a wider experience of Western acting.

"The standard of acting in Indian films was mediocre generally but in the last few years audiences have become much more educated towards cinema because of the onslaught of satellite channels" showing Western films in India, he said.

"I am trying to kill off a certain style of cliched Bollywood acting. It's already dying, so it is the right time to do this international school," he told the newspaper.

atie Holmes and Victoria Beckham fall out over a tattoo

2008-03-07T04:33:00.000-08:00

Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham’s friendship is on the rocks — after Katie allegedly made a rude comment about the former Spice Girls’ new tattoo, it has been claimed.

Beckham - who got a the phrase “De Integro” - meaning “afresh” inked on her arm - urged Katie to do the same - but Katie wasn’t interested - and branded the work “trashy”.

Victoria - who got the tattoo, her fifth, to mark her start in the U.S, was “pretty shocked and upset” when the Mad Money star mocked her new body art, says a source close to the 33-year-old wife of David Beckham.

Former ‘Dawson’s Creek’ star Katie - married to ‘Top Gun’ star Tom Cruise - recently spoke about her relationships with her gal pals, saying: “It’s so cool when you see women working together, being friends.

“I like having girlfriends. I went to an all-girls academy for high school and I still have friends from back then. There wasn’t any backstabbing.

“We helped each other get through school, get through the proms, find dates, make the dress.”

“You find out your girlfriend is having a baby or getting married and you want to be there for her. That’s powerful. That’s what we as women do for the world.”

Holmes wants another child with Cruise

2008-03-07T04:32:00.000-08:00

Thursday, March 6, 2008: (Los Angeles):

Katie Holmes, wife of superstar Tom Cruise, appeared on the cover of InStyle magazine and said she wants to have another child with him.

Reports quoted her as saying, "I'd love to. But I'm in no particular rush."

Speaking of Cruise and how she fell in love with him, she added, "It happened in an instant. When you fall in love, it's like time stops. I try every day to make him know how much I love him."

Galvez Heads to Hollywood

2008-03-07T04:29:00.000-08:00

I spent my entire adult life preparing for a career to help others rehabilitate from catastrophic diagnoses. After almost 2 years working as a physical therapist, I received shocking news that I was the recipient of a catastrophic diagnosis. In September 2005, I was diagnosed with a meningioma, brain tumor. I became someone I’ve spent years preparing to help. My eyes have been opened to a world of challenges a brain tumor patient and his loved ones must face everyday. Like all brain tumor and brain cancer patients I was innocently thrust into a very intimidating world I initially knew very little about. Since I have a background as a physical therapist I thought I knew what I would be up against, but there were many challenges I did not expect. I am still facing physical challenges, but my cognition and determination are 100% if not stronger. I’ve always been a pretty stubborn guy and I’ve always liked to do things on my own. When I got home from the hospital everyone wanted to wait on me hand and foot! While most people would indulge in this, I quickly got annoyed by it. I found it very demeaning. I eventually learned to politely decline assistance, but early in my recovery this would infuriate me. One of the toughest things I have to deal with is the fact that I know what I need to do to progress, but I still can’t do some of those things quite yet. I’m getting a very REAL lesson on perseverance. The most eye opening challenge that I have to deal with is the feeling of isolation. I have many friends easily accessible via email/facebook/myspace/instant messaging/phone calls, but I do not know very many people that truly understand the struggles of a brain tumor survivor that have undergone similar experiences. As a young guy, most of the survivors I have met were women my mother’s age. I have enjoyed meeting them, but there is only so much you can talk with them about.

My search for other young survivors similar to me, lead me to Ken Baker and Head to Hollywood. I was really excited to finally find someone similar to me that understood what I was dealing with! Ken mentioned that he was one of the directors of Head to Hollywood and he would like to invite me to come up to Hollywood for their inaugural comedy night. Without hesitation, I agreed. He said that there would be other young survivors there, so I was more excited to meet them than a photo-op with a celebrity. My first dilemma was: who do I take as my complimentary guest? I decided to take my mom because she has been the most popular recipient of my “witty” attitude and she would enjoy the “Hollywood experience” the most out of all my loved ones. She deserved it. My second dilemma was: how am I going to get up there? There is no way I would want my mother driving in LA traffic. We could take the train to LA from San Diego. My third dilemma was: where are we going to stay in LA? Head To Hollywood set us up in a fancy hotel room right next to the comedy club on the famous Sunset strip in Hollywood with a nice view of Sunset Boulevard. Before the event I finally got to meet some young brain tumor survivors face to face. We hit it off right away. Again, I was the youngest one there, but at least we were in the same decade! Most of my online buddies I have yet to meet face to face. The polite, “Choir boy Eric” went into hiding and the mischievous, “Naughty Galvez” came out to play! Two of my new brain tumor buddies helped me walk into the venue without the walker. I told them that I had only done this once in public, but I’d like to try it again. Those guys stepped up without asking any questions… pretty cool. It was like having big brothers looking out for you. Later that night they helped me walk all the way back to the hotel room without the walker! I can’t believe I had only known them 5 minutes! It was such a small gesture, but it meant the world to me.

On the red carpet we were addressing questions for an interview, but I felt very comfortable around these guys and felt like I had known them for quite some time. It made me smile seeing people wear the “Tumors Suck!” stickers I brought to the event. I thought the comedy show was great! Chelsea Handler and friends were hilarious! They did make quite a few awkward situations for me though. I was stuck sitting between my mom and my friend’s dad so I transformed back into “Choir boy Eric”. Let’s say there were a few jokes that evening that weren’t of the family variety. I had to sip my coke and try not to laugh too loud during those awkward situations. I’m very glad the lights were dark in the crowd because I was squirming like the bottom two on American Idol. I still had a lot of fun though. The evening was packed full of memories that will last a life time. Head to Hollywood definitely provided me with an escape and helped me find what I was looking for. I am still continuing to make physical improvements and am excited to see where my next stop in life takes me.

Hrithik Roshan: The new emperor of Bollywood

2008-03-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

Hrithik Roshan is one Bollywood actor who could play any role with amazing conviction and assurance. His latest class act as emperor Akbar in Jodhaa Akbar is another feather in his feather-festooned crown. He truly has become the Bollywood king.

IN ALL the clamour made about the banning of the Hindi period romance Jodhaa Akbar by the Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh governments, the subsequent lifting of the ban by the MP High Court, the protests staged by a motley group in Maharashtra against the movie, and about the box-office collections that the movie has raked in worldwide (about Rs 74 crore worldwide within just ten days of its release), one gets a feeling that something is not being given the attention that it richly deserves. It is the emergence of Hrithik Roshan as the new emperor of Bollywood.

Reams of pages have been written about the ‘Badshahs’ and ‘Shahenshahs’ of Bollywood. But if there is someone who is a worthy contender to the title Shahenshah, it has to be Roshan. There are reasons.

A great actor is one who can get into the skin of any character that he is asked to portray and live the character on the screen. Though every actor worth his salt tries to do just this, very few succeed in their efforts. And that too, portraying a historical character on the screen is not something that comes easily to everyone.

A comparison is in order here. Amitabh Bachchan is a great actor and can carry any role on his experienced shoulders. However, he belongs to an older generation and it would be unfair to compare him with the younger lot.

Then there is Shahrukh Khan, or the King Khan, as he would like to be known, who considers himself the uncrowned Shahenshah of Bollywood. However, SRK has his limitations. He is a star, no doubt. But his inventory of acting skills is limited to a few roles that he is comfortable with: an obsessed lover or a happy-go-lucky romantic hero – roles in which SRK can be himself and not the character. Whenever, he has tried a different role, he, as an actor, has always fallen flat. The movie Asoka sank without a trace, because we got to see Khan on the screen and not Emperor Asoka. Nor could he do full justice to the role of an NRI in the Ashutosh Gowarikar movie Swades. In Swades and Chak De India, all that Khan did was cutting out being SRK. In other words, for once (or twice), he resisted playing SRK on the screen, which certainly made his portrayal of these two characters a bit different from the rest of his roles, which were invariably all about Khan being or playing himself.

That leaves us only with Aamir Khan, who is undoubtedly one of the finest actors of the land. Aamir certainly interprets his roles in his own unique way and becomes the characters that he portrays. However, he has studiously avoided playing action roles in what is popularly known as the ‘masala’ genre.

Roshan, on the other hand, has excelled in all sorts of roles. Starting from his first movie Kaho Na Pyar Hai (KNPH) to the latest Jodhaa Akbar, he has essayed roles that are as diverse and wide as the gamut of emotions and acting skills that he is capable of exhibiting. Just take a look at the range of roles that he has played in movies like KNPH, Fiza, Mission Kashmir, Yaadein, Koi Mil Gaya, Lakshya, Krrish, Dhoom-2, and Jodhaa Akbar, and you will understand what I mean.

Be it any role - a romantic hero Rohit/Raj in KNPH, where he made his stunning debut and caught the imagination of the nation, or a convincing portrayal of a terrorist in Fiza, or a mind-blowing interpretation of a growth retarded man-child in Koi Mil Gaya, or a fantastic Indian superman avatar in Krrish, or a dazzling depiction of the mysterious Mr A in Dhoom-2, or a regal rendering of the role of a majestic and conscientious emperor in Jodhaa Akbar - Roshan has displayed an amazing repertoire of histrionics and breathed life into his on-screen personas so much so that you get to see the reel characters and not Roshan, the actor.

No wonder that Dilip Kumar, the legendary actor who played the role of Akbar’s son, Salim, in the magnum opus Mughal-e-Azam, has reportedly said, “After watching Hrithik play Akbar I was reminded of my film Mughal-e-Azam and the role of Salim that I essayed. Besides, he plays any role to such perfection that he metamorphoses from being Hrithik playing a role to the actual character in the film going about as himself.”

Katie Holmes Not Pregnant

2008-03-03T21:12:00.000-08:00

Katie Holmes has denied a US magazine report that alleges the actress is pregnant with her second child to husband Tom Cruise.

OK! magazine's latest US edition has Holmes on the front cover with the headline 'Is Katie Pregnant?' and quotes an 'eyewitness' as saying, "She has that special glow that only pregnant women have. I would say there is a strong possibility that she's pregnant."

Holmes' representative has denied the 29-year-old is expecting a sibling for the couple's daughter Suri telling Usmagazine.com, "She's not pregnant."

Tom Cruise wants Mark Ronson to DJ at Suri’s birthday party

2008-03-03T21:09:00.000-08:00

Tom Cruise and wife Katie Holmes have asked top British music producer Mark Ronson to DJ at their daughter, Suri’s second birthday party.

Suri turns two on April 18 — and the Hollywood couple are planning a huge bash to mark the occasion.

They reckon Grammy and BRIT Award winner Mark — who has worked with the likes of Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and Robbie Williams — is just the man to spin some tunes.

32-year-old Mark — who made his name as a DJ on the New York club scene in 1993 — was the official DJ when Tom, 45, married Katie, 29, in Bracciano, Italy, on November 18, 2006 and impressed the groom with a re-worked version of the Top Gun theme.

Bollywood unhappy about no sops in Budget

2008-03-03T21:07:00.000-08:00

India's multi-million dollar Bollywood movie industry is not upbeat about the budget as the film fraternity feels the government has not offered anything special for it.

Sudhir Mishra: It is insulting that the film industry doesn't even deserve attention. It just goes on to show how much influence the representatives of the film industry exert in the political arena.

Hema Malini: It's a populist budget with an eye on the coming elections. The finance minister has given individual tax relief to the middle class and waiving of loans for small farmers is a good move. But the burden of Rs 50,000 per farmer is huge. I hope we don't feel its weight in the next budget.

Manoj Bajpai: I'm happy as a farmer's son and disappointed as a member of the film fraternity because everybody has ignored the entertainment slab.

Vashu Bhagnani: The budget is good for farmers who are the pillars of the nation. They should've taken the film industry more seriously. We entertain the whole nation. We need a tax holiday for five years.

Vikram Bhatt: I'm still reading the salient features of the budget. But it seems progressive and aims to encourage the private sector. The reduction in the tax percentage is also good news.

Mahesh Bhatt: I'm happy to see the farmers getting a huge relief. A warm hug to the finance minister for bringing the farmer to the centre stage and giving him what he deserved for a long time.

Anant Mahadevan: The waiver of loans for farmers may set a dangerous precedent. Will farmers expect this each time there are elections and load themselves with debts? Also the reduction in prices of small cars could flood the roads with them. More chaos! This is a please-all-for-sometime budget.

Pavan Malhotra: There's nothing new to the budget and the tax reductions are nothing to rejoice about. It's no surprise that the price of cigarettes have gone up, or that farmers have been offered relief. We've had such populist budgets before, even during Indira Gandhi's regime. I'd say this is a budget of short-term benefits.

Bhavna Talwar: The budget is populist, election-oriented yet visionary. I think we should ensure that the loan waiver percolates down to the desired constituents, the marginal farmer. The middle class should see hope in the extra tax relief of Rs 50,000.

Vipul Shah: It is a very populist budget. It looks like elections will happen by year-end. But there has been no relief for cinema, so I'm disappointed.

Jennifer Lopez Receives Baby K-Tan, Pillows, Clothes for Twins

2008-03-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

Gifts for Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s twins have been pouring in from friends and family. Among the many gifts is matching pink and blue baby carriers from Baby K’tan. The carries have the twins’ names embroidered on them.

“Jennifer is also getting carriers with the names etched on them by Baby K’tan,” says a source. Baby K’tan confirmed reports saying they were “purchased from us as gifts for both J.Lo and Marc.”

Lopez has not publiclly announced the name of the twins but sources say she named her son Max and daughter Emme.

“The twins already got a ton of embroidered pillows with their names on them,” the insider adds.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have allegedly purchased the babies a large fish tank as they wanted their gift to be unique. The couple are also reportedly set to host a $200,000 bash to celebrate the birth of the twins.

Bollywood’s Miss Twinkle Toes

2008-02-28T08:31:00.000-08:00

Those never ending legs are toiling hard. The music system is doing its job. The choreographer, who happens to be the artist’s mother is busy doing her job. Porcelain beauty Isha Sharvani doesn’t get a minute to sit. She is rehearsing for a stage show in Ahmedabad. Beaded with sweat, the dancer flashes a radiant smile that lights up her face.

Enough to encourage us to begin the interview without much ado. “This will be your first performance in Ahmedabad, what does it feel like,” we ask. “Yes,” she answers and switches on to Gujarati immediately. The graceful actor-dancer, whose family gave her the name Isha Sharvani does not believe in carrying her father’s or mother’s name. She respects her parents’ belief in individuality. Daughter of Daksha Sheth, an acclaimed dancer and Dev Issro, an Australian percussionist Isha has learnt Kathak, Chau, Kalaripayattu and Mallakhamb from her mom.

After a Bollywood debut in Subhash Ghai’s Kisna , Isha got more talked about after her flexible tango with dream boat Hrithik Roshan in a commercial. Was that experience of sharing centrestage with Hrithik unnerving? “Well, Hrithik is just awesome as a dancer and I think it’s for the audience to say, if I could match my steps with him,” she avers.

And when she was not putting on her ghungroos for concerts and shows, Isha wrapped up Ajay Devgan’s U Me aur Hum. Does she feel the need to learn more as an actor? “I think we never stop learning. Having said that, even in dancing I don’t have just one inspiration. I go across the world and there is so much to learn.”

How does it feel to be a part of a film industry, which can instantly accept or reject anyone? Isha has big expectations from her forthcoming projects. The actor feels that acting has made her a more emotional performer. “I really admire Nicole Kidman who can sing, dance and act. I think I can be called a dancing actor.”

A firm believer in hard work, Isha feels destiny is about the choices you make and making those choices happen for you. Single, fancy-free and footloose right now, does she prefer it this way? The answer is spontaneous, “Yes, I am enjoying being single but I don’t know if I am fancy free and footloose because right now my legs need to stretch after those rehearsals,” she laughs.

Bollywood star Dutt seeks marriage annulment

2008-02-28T08:28:00.000-08:00

PANAJI, India (AFP) — Bollywood superstar Sanjay Dutt and his longtime girlfriend who wed earlier this month have asked authorities to annul their marriage for technical reasons, a court official said Thursday.

Dutt, on bail for illegal weapons possession, tied the knot with former starlet Manyata Dilnawaz Shaikh in a secret ceremony at a Goan beach resort and a few days later held a traditional Hindu wedding in Mumbai.

But their nuptials immediately ran into problems, with a man claiming to be Manyata's husband saying the pair had never been divorced and that they had a two-year-old son staying with the starlet's mother, according to media reports.

Neither Dutt, who has been married twice before, nor Manyata, had filed proof of their divorces before holding the marriage ceremony in the former Portuguese colony, contravening local laws, the official told AFP.

"Sanjay Dutt and Manyata on Wednesday filed a joint declaration... stating they do not desire to solemnise their marriage under the Portuguese civil code, 1867," said the official, quoting from an affidavit filed by the couple.

He said the couple cited technical reasons for their request to the court.

It was not immediately known whether the pair would seek to remarry.

The bride was also alleged to have forged residence documents to marry in Goa.

Dutt, 48, sentenced to six years in prison, was released on bail in November pending an appeal against his weapons conviction to India's Supreme Court.

When he was released from custody, Dutt had served nearly three months of a sentence handed down for buying weapons from the plotters of the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people.

The "Black Friday" bombings were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly 1993 Hindu-Muslim clashes.

Dutt said he bought the guns to protect his family from Hindu zealots who wanted to wreak revenge for his father's help to Muslim victims of the riots.

The star best known as "Deadly Dutt" for his macho image and portrayal of gangsters and anti-hero roles can remain out of jail until the outcome of his appeal to the Supreme Court. No date has been set for the appeal hearing.

The star has a grown-up daughter by his first wife, also an actress.

Dutt's first wife died of cancer while his second marriage, to a model, ended in divorce.

Despite the guilty verdict in the Mumbai blasts, Dutt -- who recently won huge acclaim for playing a mobster with a heart of gold -- has retained public support and sympathy as a man dogged by a troubled past.

Shah Rukh: Filmfare for his kids!

2008-02-28T05:12:00.000-08:00

SRK was all smiling as he won the Black Lady for his performance in Chak

De India.

When we caught up with the Badshah Khan, post his win, he shared with us a little secret: You know both my kids brought home a gold from school today. They did well in Taekwondo. And I wanted to take home an award too, just for them.

So there are three celebrations at home tonight. That’s ‘chweet’ alright! But it looks like the Khan children prefer going the Akshay Kumar way.

Never mind the light and camera, but ‘action’ seems to be on-going in the Mannat home that night!

Sushmita Sen gets a space for her office

2008-02-28T05:11:00.000-08:00

Bollywood diva Sushmita Sen is a busy bee these days. She is devoting all her time in the pre-production of her first production Jhansi ki Rani. She has purchased a huge office space for her production house Tantra Entertainment. According to an insider, Sushmita has been longing for an office space for quite sometime. At last, she found a suitable office space in Palatial building on the 21st road in Bandra.

The total area of the flat which she has bought is somewhere around 2,250 sq ft and Sush was quite content with her purchase. The location and space of the office is quite suitable for her. The area of the flat can be compared to a bungalow. It’s a three bedroom house and has proper wooden flooring and ceiling-to-floor windows. Sush has purchased the flat few months back and she has just now started her work in this new office.

The flat costs Sush about 5.6 crore. Jhansi Ki Rani is Sushmita’s first in-house production and she is quite excited about it. She is playing the role of Jhansi. She had approached Shahrukh to do a cameo in her film but SRK has turned down her offer. Hope Sush will prove her potential as a director and producer in Jhansi Ki Rani.

Cruise and Holmes to host party for Lopez twins

2008-02-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

Tom Cruise and KatieTom Cruise and Katie Holmes are set to throw a lavish $200,000 ‘welcome to the world’ party for Jennifer Lopez’s newborn fraternal twins.

The generous couple are good friends with Jennifer and her husband Marc Anthony, and are said to be delighted for the pair.

One source said: ‘Tom and Katie are thrilled for Jennifer and Marc and have offered to throw a party for the twins next month.’

The party, which is expected to include John Travolta, Eva Longoria and the Beckhams on the guest list, will be blue and pink-themed, in line with her baby boy and girl arrivals.

The source adds: ‘Katie has even organised for children’s entertainers to go along and is setting up a special Playstation games room for them.’

Meanwhile, David and Victoria Beckham have reportedly been getting advice from Tom Cruise about adoption.

The couple - who already have three sons, Brooklyn, eight, Romeo, five, and three-year-old Cruz - are keen to have a daughter and are reportedly considering adopting.?

Tom has two adopted children, a daughter Isabella, 15, and 13-year-old son Connor, with ex-wife Nicole Kidman.

Katie Holmes to Throw Jennifer Lopez Baby Party

2008-02-28T04:14:00.000-08:00

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise are reportedly planning to throw Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony a party to celebrate the birth of their twins.

According to reports, the couple has arranged a $200,000 pink and blue themed bash. The guest list includes John Travolta, Eva Longoria and David and Victoria Beckham.

Meanwhile, Holmes is rumored to be pregnant with her second child. She and Cruise already have a 2-year-old daughter named Suri.

Hollywood's biggest losers

2008-02-28T03:56:00.000-08:00

Jennifer Lopez sniffs grapefruit oil, Cindy Crawford sips vinegar, Sharon Stone stockpiles the humble prune and Owen Wilson never misses his daily double dose of asparagus and parsley.

The diet secrets of America's A-list celebrities have been winkled out of their doctors, nutritionists and trainers and put under the microscope by two authors.

In The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets, published last month, Cindy Pearlman and Kym Douglas expose the absurd lengths the stars go to maintain their sylph-like figures - and reveal the secrets that might be worth the rest of us giving a try.

"The truth is that diets don't work," says Pearlman, who writes for the New York Times and has co-authored books with a slew of big names, including Martha Stewart and Olivia Newton-John.

"We interviewed A-list stars and their trainers and nutritionists because celebs have no choice but to stay in shape - it's their job. We wanted to find the supermodels who eat real food, and not just a diet of cigarettes and Diet Coke."

Pearlman and Douglas admit that in the course of their research they picked up dieting tips that they have since incorporated into their own lifestyles.

"I'll never forget the day a Hollywood diet guru revealed that my habit of eating a large bag of popcorn every time I went to the cinema was equivalent, calorie-wise, to eating several Big Macs," says Douglas, who now takes her own air-popped corn to the cinema.

"I've also adopted a tip from Richard Giorla, nutritionist for Carmen Electra and Jennifer Lopez, to carry around a vial of grapefruit oil,' she says.

"He says that the oil lets out an aroma that affects your liver enzymes, which activates the nerves that cause fats to be broken down and burnt off. We spoke to doctors who backed that up but, from my point of view, I can only say that it noticeably and definitely reduces my appetite."

Pearlman has picked up a few diet tricks of her own from the stars. "Asparagus, parsley and dried prunes are a staple in many celebrities' cupboards - and now my own - because of their ability to repress hunger and reduce bloating. I've also started following the lead of Heidi Klum and Cindy Crawford by taking a few sips of vinegar before going to dinner because the vinegar kills your hunger pangs. I have to admit the kilos have dropped off me since I picked up these tips."

Klum also claims putting Epsom Salts in her bath water helps reduce bloating.

John Cusack, meanwhile, stays away from everything white, including flour, sugar and wheat and, more conventionally perhaps, Oprah Winfrey swears by Wulong Slimming Tea for weight loss and a healthy lifestyle.

Some of the tales in Pearlman and Douglas's book detail bizarre behaviour by celebrities seemingly driven to near-distraction by their diets.

"I can't name her, but there is a young starlet who goes into Jerry's Deli in Beverly Hills every week and orders their famous three-storey chocolate cake," says Pearlman. "She looks at it for half an hour, then she drinks some water and leaves."

Leslie Maltz, fitness trainer to Uma Thurman, admits exhibiting some curious behaviour of her own in restaurants.

"When the waiter puts bread on the table, I immediately - and without hesitation or thought - dump my entire glass of water on it,' she says.

"But even I have my limits. The most outlandish diet I discovered one of my celebrity clients following required her to drink a mixture of chilli pepper, lemon juice and maple syrup all day long for two weeks. I persuaded her to abandon that diet immediately; it made me ill just to think of it."

Jackie Keller, a nutritionist who counts Angelina Jolie and Susan Sarandon among her clients, abhors such behaviour.

"I try to educate my clients to make food their friend,' she says.

"Most of us think of food as an enemy that makes us fat. Successful dieters change that mindset and befriend favourable foods."

Katie Holmes talks about Tom, Suri and that Tom guy a bit more

2008-02-27T01:47:00.001-08:00

“He's just amazing. He's kind, generous, smart, he's Tom Cruise!”

Baaa! Baaa! Stepford, one of your wives is missing.

Katie Holmes has given an interview to the Daily Mail to which you can pretty much use a join the dots attitude for getting the answers.

Who would she like to be stuck in a lift with? Tom and Suri! What was her childhood dream? To marry Tom Cruise! How many fingers am I holding up? Er, three maybe but more likely it's Tom Cruise!

When she doesn’t talk about Tom and the family and gets on to her own career she’s actually incredibly sweet. Check out this spiel on getting Dawson:

“I landed the part in Dawson's Creek when I was 18. I had just graduated from high school and I was soon earning a lot of money.

“I did what every other 18-year-old girl from my town would do, which was I bought a pair of jeans and a great sweater which wasn't on sale.

“I thought: "Wow. I better not buy anything for a really long time. I don't want to let it go to my head." “I was beginning to get recognised on the street and it was at that time I realised my life had changed. I still have the sweater.”

Awwww! Is that a tear in my eye, or have I been throwing sand in my face again? Check out more of Katie being normal, on the marathon and Tom’s crazy fans, after the jump.

On her biggest challenge: Finishing the New York Marathon. It was amazing! Turning the corner when you're about to reach mile 20 you feel like you've been running for days. The guy in front of me told his friend, "Don't worry. Six more!" I'm thinking, "Six more? That's like an hour on a good day!"

On losing her temper: “I threw a lot of tantrums when I was little and secretly I'd like to throw a tantrum sometimes. That would be empowering, but I have a little girl who likes to do that, too.”

On strange experiences with Tom’s fans: “As you can imagine, there have been many being married to Tom. I was in Boston for my little nephew's baptism and this girl interrupted the ceremony to ask for my autograph. I thought: ‘Great, here I am in church and in trouble again! The priest is going to be mad at me.’ That was weird."

Never mind Katie, at least you have great hair. That bob's got to count towards something, right?

Tom Cruise gets a bit of advice from George Clooney

2008-02-27T01:45:00.000-08:00

George Clooney has given Tom Cruise a few tips.

According to Digital Spy, Tom Cruise has become less popular because of his Church of Scientology rants and marriage to Katie Holmes.

George Clooney thinks that Tom Cruise can make himself more popular by learning to mock himself.

George told Time: "Before they could kill me on Batman & Robin, I said: 'It's a bad film, and I'm the worst thing in it.' You try to defend an indefensible position, you'll look like a schmuck.

"The guys I dig don't do that. Look at Winston Churchill. He said: 'These are our shortcomings. Now let's get past it.'"

George added: "I talked to him (Cruise) the other day, and he's a good egg. There's nothing self-serving about what he's saying. He has to turn it into a way to make fun of himself."

Shahrukh says no to Sushmita

2008-02-27T00:13:00.001-08:00

King Khan usually does not show his back to anyone who approaches him for doing any cameo. But this time the case is exceptional, gossip mill churn that he has turned down an offer from his Main Hoon Na lady Sushmita Sen. Apparently, Sush had requested SRK to do an item number in her upcoming home production but Shahrukh straightway rejected her.

Actually, it was Sushmita who was first to let down Shahrukh’s offer. SRK had once requested Sush to jive with him in his multi starred song “Deewangi” in Om Shanti Om. But she snubs the offer due to dates problem. And now, Shahrukh has given her a similar sort of reply to her request.

Shahrukh has done cameos in many films. His item number in Kaal and Heyy Babyy was a super hit and now he is going to tap his feet with Rakhi Sawant and Hrithik Roshan in Rakesh Roshan’s Krrazy 4. Shahrukh’s little appearance in a film proves to be a miracle. His magic is capable of dragging audience to the theatre. But poor Sushmita who is working hard for her first home production Jhansi Ki Rani seems to have lost her chance of having SRK’s item number in her film.

SHAH RUKH, KAREENA HAILED BEST ACTORS

2008-02-27T00:11:00.000-08:00

click for larger view

Shah Rukh, Kareena, Aamir Khan, Imtiaz Ali, Tabu, Darsheel Safary, Konkona Sensharma, Irrfan Khan, AR Rahman, Shreya Ghoshal, Shaan, Rishi Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone... were the lucky ones who took the lovely black lady - the Filmfare trophy home. While Deepika Padukone is nominated for two awards. The first one is already in her kitty. No surprises for guessing who won the FairOne Fresh Face of the Year Looking regal in a black off-shoulder Gauri and Nainika gown, the leggy beauty was unperturbed with all the attention coming her way. Deepika confesses, "Its hardly any attention" When we probed her for more, Deepika continues, "I am looking for more. It always feels nice to see people recognizing you on the streets. And my head is planted firmly on the ground because of the upbringing that I have got". She reveals, "Tonight I will party with my family."

Shah Rukh Khan won the Filmfare Best Actor in a leading role (male) Award leaving behind his co-nominees - Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan and Shahid Kapur. Having achieved two nominations this year (Chak De and Om Shanti Om). SRK stated, " We're not here to win awards. I only like to entertain, and when I make someone smile I feel happy." The Best Actor Award in a leading role (Female) went to Jab We Met 's bubbly Geet, Kareena Kapoor, who today sang the geet of success. The girl looked lovely in her off white sari and orange blouse. She thanked director Imtiaz Ali, producers and significantly her co-star Shahid Kapoor. Interestingly, none other than beau Saif, whom she thanked for presenting her with the award and making her night special, presented the Best Actor award to her! Gossip mills were working overtime by insisting that Sonam Kapoor did not want to see her co-actor of Saawariya, Ranvir Kapoor being dazzled by her competitor Deepika Padukone, so she decided to sit at home. Nominated for best actor in a leading role, Shahid Kapoor surprised us by not turning up.

This is possible that he didn't relish his ex-love interest Kareena's new choice - Saif Ali Khan as one of the Master of Ceremonies. The 53rd Fair One Filmfare Awards held within the premises of Yashraj Studios goes down in history as yet another one to be remembered. The Bachchans, Rani, Salman, Hrithik and Katrina missed it, but the Preity, Shah Rukh, Priyanka, Bipasha, John, Saif, Kareena and Akshay ensured that the event shone nice and bright. Ably hosted by the sober Vidya Balan and Karan Johar, the crazy but intelligent co-hosts Shah Rukh and Saif were the 'dudes of the evening'. Though Himesh Reshammiya crooned in his popular nasal voice, Akshay impressed with his dance histrionics. Performances of Neil Nitin Mukesh, Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor and Vivek Oberoi were worth watching.

Pakistan set to lift its ban on Bollywood

2008-02-26T07:53:00.000-08:00

Madras, India --- Cinema is a powerful weapon, though it is often called soft power. Men like Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Germany's Adolf Hitler understood the awesome might of movies.

Mussolini established the world's first film festival at Venice in 1932 primarily to promote Italian cinema and that of his allies. Reni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" was an eerie documentary that endorsed what would become Hitler's notions of mass murder. She was the golden girl of German cinema, and Hitler's pet.

In India, cinema has never been used for an evil purpose, but politicians, especially in southern India, started their lives in the tinsel world. Often as scriptwriters, directors and even actors, they liberally used the medium to publicize and propagate their political ideals and views. They were highly successful, for the visually enriching movies they created touched the heart of the ordinary citizen. Cinema in India still continues to be a strong weapon for swaying people.

Admittedly, films do play a very positive role in our world if we forget and ignore what men like Hitler and Mussolini did with cinema. Movies are great binders. They build bridges among races, peoples and countries, helping one to understand and sympathize with another's point of view. Cinema creates a sense of identity and affinity, and this cannot be truer than in the case of India and Pakistan, two Asian neighbors who have been at war over Kashmir for decades.

The people of Pakistan love Indian cinema, with its color, music, grand costumes and breathtaking locales.

Indian films spread sheer joy. Popularly described as Bollywood, Indian cinema has enslaved hearts for decades with its melodrama. The primarily Hindi-language movies that grew out of Bombay, often called "Magic City," have traveled from Russia to Africa and from Canada to New Zealand, spreading thrills and enjoyment through its beautiful characters and make-believe moods.

Indian pictures are a hit even in China, despite a yawning gap in the two cultures. Travelers to China tell me that cab drivers have started to hum popular Indian songs. In Beijing, in Shanghai and elsewhere, cassettes of Indian celluloid works are to be found aplenty, sought after by expatriates and locals alike.

However, big-screen Bollywood could never cross over to Pakistan. This is sad because Bollywood originated in the Pakistani city of Lahore, where a vibrant film industry thrived before the Indian subcontinent was partitioned in 1947. Hordes of movie men came to Bombay to set up what became Bollywood.

Bereft of talent, Lahore's Lollywood could never become a Bollywood, but Pakistan is all set to lift a 43-year-old ban on Indian cinema. Pakistan's parliamentary committee on culture has just recommended that the ban be lifted, and Cabinet approval is to follow soon.

"We have devised a mechanism for allowing the import of Indian pictures for a period of one year, after which the arrangements can be reviewed," said Sen. Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry, who heads the committee.

The ban was imposed in 1965 when the two South Asian neighbors went to war over Kashmir, a region both claim as their own. However, nothing could stop the march of Bollywood; its movies were smuggled into Pakistan, and huge amounts of pirated VCDs and DVDs were sold in clandestine operations. But once the ban goes, Pakistanis will be able to watch the latest masala on the big screen from Bombay in about week after it opens in India.

Bollywood is sure to give a fresh leash on life to the moribund Pakistan film industry. Today the country has fewer than 300 screens, compared to about 1,500 in the early 1970s. Indian cinema may not only help revive cinemas, but also provide much-needed inspiration to Lollywood, listless and languishing for years.

The question is will Pakistan's ultra-radical clergy allow the entry of Bollywood with its see-through rain-drenched body-hugging saris that ravishing Indian stars wear to titillate the male fantasy?

Preity And Shahrukh at the IPL Player Auction

2008-02-22T04:09:00.000-08:00

The Indian Premier League Player Auction garnered a lot of publicity not only because India is a cricket-obsessed nation but also because of the presence of Bollywood stars like Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta.

In Wednesday’s auction for players, SRK bagged Shoaib Akhthar for $425,000 (Rs 1.7 crore), Ricky Ponting for $400,000 (Rs 1.6 crore) and Chris Gayle for $800,000 (Rs 3.2 crore).Preity claimed Mahela Jayawardene for $475,000 (Rs 1.9 crore), S Sreesanth for $ 625,000 (Rs 2.5 crore) and Brett Lee for $900,000 (Rs 3.6 crore)

It was, in the words of Shahrukh Khan, ‘the beginning of an attempt to spark a sports culture in India’.“I keep reading at times that this is a money-making preposition, which hopefully it will be,” Khan, who owns the Kolkata team, told a packed media conference after the end of the auction.

Shahrukh Khan sizzling item song pics from Krazzy 4 Movie

2008-02-22T04:05:00.001-08:00

After a splendid association with films like Koyla and Karan Arjun, king Khan aka SRK is back with Rakesh Roshan for his forthcoming production, ‘Krazzy 4′, directed by debutante Jaideep Sen in a sizzling item number!!!

With music by Rajesh Roshan, Krazzy 4 stars Arshad warsi, Irrfan Khan, Suresh Menon, Juhi Chawla And Rajpal Yadav and is set for release on April 11, 2008

Sanjay Dutt to host reality show on Sony

2008-02-22T04:02:00.000-08:00

Its the small screen that is attracting all the Bollywood stars and not to be left far behind in Sanjay Dutt. He will soon be hosting a reality show on Sony Television. Sanjay has been offered a huge sum of money and is considering taking up the show. The producers are banking on the immense popularity that Sanjay has created since starring in the Munnabhai series.

This will make Sanjay the third biggest star after Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan to host a show on Indian television. This is not the the first time that Sanjay is thinking about a reality show on the small screen. He had signed a show Mission Ek Crore with Sahara One but the show never took off for unknown reasons.

Sources close to Sanjay confirmed that the star is very excited about the concept of the show, something which has never been tried before. The show will have top star from Bollywood as well as the television competing against each other in a series of tasks.

Shahrukh, Gauri, Preity and Ness come together for cricket

2008-02-22T04:01:00.000-08:00

Film stars, industrialist, businessman, cricketers and personalities from various arena assembled on the same day during the IPL auction. February 20 was a memorable day in the history of Indian cricket as cricketers were purchased at a high price. The cricketers of the world stood on the bidding platform and industrialist as well as businessmen acquired them at whopping prices. In Mumbai, the media and people got to witness a fusion of Bollywood stars and industrialists. Shahrukh Khan with his wife Gauri, Ness Wadia with partner Preity Zinta, Kingfisher owner Vijay Malaya were all present at the occasion.

Preity’s team will be headed by Yuvraj Singh and Coach Tom Moody. She is very excited with her Mohali team members. As the bidding process was going on she hugged her beau Ness on acquiring every right candidate. Shahrukh’s team will be headed by Saurav Ganguly and they too were very satisfied with their Kolkata team. Both the teams will now be looking forward to the match which will start on April 20.

Soon after the auction, Preity, Ness, Shahrukh, Vijaya Mallya attended a press conference and they expressed their views regarding the bidding. Everyone is very excited and pleased with their team. They are all looking forward to a great sporting event. Good luck to the new phase of cricket in India!

Shahrukh to fulfill son Aryan’s dream, will play Superman

2008-02-22T03:46:00.000-08:00

Shahrukh Khan’s son Aryan is a superhero flick lover. He always wants his father to star in a feature film where he will get to see him doing some unimaginable stunts and action. So, to fulfill his son’s dream Shahrukh will very soon shed off his lover boy image and play the role of Superman.

In this flick, SRK will be seen donning a cape and flying across the sky at super-speed. Another important protagonist will be a 12 year old boy. The hunt is going for the lucky charm that will get to share screen space with SRK. The film will be produced by Red Chillies Entertainment and will be directed by Anubhav Sinha. Since, the film will include different types of computer graphics; it will be an expensive offering from the Red Chillies Entertainment.

Shahrukh is working very closely with Anubhav Sinha on the dream project of his son. Anubhav is also very excited as he will get to work with King Khan for the first time. This supernatural film is surely going to be matter of great interest among the children. Both Shahrukh and Anubhav have decided to incorporate all those things that appeal to children. The shooting of the film will start very soon and it is expected to hit the floors before the end of 2008.

Katie Holmes enjoys her night away from Tom Cruise

2008-02-22T03:41:00.000-08:00

Katie Holmes loved spending time with Paula Wagner on Tuesday night. Tom Cruise was not at the event.

She went to the costume Designers Guild Awards in Los Angeles and presented Paula Wagner with her Swarovski President's Award.

Katie told the audience: "My husband has given me many gifts and amongst them is the treasure of calling Paula my friend."

She said Paula was "a creative force of this town" and "an inspiration to all."

Paula was clearly touched by Katie's words. In her acceptance speech she described Katie as: "a beautiful actress who has impeccable style and taste...the dream actress for a costume designer to work with."

Katie looked stunning in a gun metal gown with crystals around the neck line.

Lawyer's steady hand guided Hollywood writers deal

2008-02-22T03:39:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter, ESQ.) - Lawyers get blamed for a lot of Hollywood's ills: hyper-litigiousness, protracted deal negotiations and risk-averse studios.

Yet it shouldn't go unnoticed that when the Writers Guild of America strike brought the industry to a standstill for 100 days, two of the town's top talent attorneys played productive roles in making things right.

You never saw Alan Wertheimer in post-strike celebrations last week alongside WGA brass and executives like News Corp. president Peter Chernin and Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger. But Wertheimer's steady hand -- like that of Ken Ziffren, who stepped in to help the Directors Guild of America close its speedy deal with the studios -- helped the negotiators get past the personal squabbles.

"Alan is a very careful negotiator," says WGA general counsel Tony Segall who, with guild brass, decided to bring Wertheimer aboard in the strike's final days as talks got serious. "Also, he was a familiar face for the executives. He's been around awhile and those relationships were key in the final stretch."

Wertheimer, an avid softball player, honed those relationships playing hardball for more than 25 years for A-list writers like Eric Roth, Callie Khouri, Frank Darabont and producer J.J. Abrams.

Those deals, and Wertheimer's representation of several WGA board members (including Oscar-winning "Rain Man" scribe Ron Bass, a former lawyer who practiced at Wertheimer's firm 20 years ago before becoming a client), made him a natural fit for a role similar to Ziffren's in the 1988 strike: deal closer. The small handful of senior industry attorneys who command gravitas in the thorniest negotiations are the sober statesmen of the business, the detached insiders who, even though they advocate fiercely for clients, have dealt fairly with CEOs like Chernin and Iger on enough deals to have earned their respect.

When the call came from the WGA, Wertheimer had already sacrificed much of his holiday season negotiating an interim agreement allowing client David Letterman's Worldwide Pants company to produce fresh episodes of his talk show. He was eager to sit down with both sides, get beyond the personalities involved and help get a deal done before the strike wiped out the TV season and the Oscars.

"Everyone in the room wanted to make a deal, but we needed to put the past behind us and focus on solutions that the membership would ultimately approve," Wertheimer says.

Those compromises took root at two key meetings. The first, a casual, seven-person lunch at Wertheimer's Brentwood house after his wife agreed to move her book club, produced a deal for WGA jurisdiction over Internet shows. At a second powwow at the Luxe Hotel in Bel Air, the parties agreed for the first time on a royalty structure for digital delivery, and Wertheimer advised his clients to take the deal while it was still on the table.

Of course, Wertheimer credits the leadership on both sides for reaching a deal. The leaders should credit Wertheimer as well.

Can the Oscars raise a smile?

2008-02-22T03:38:00.000-08:00

Despite strikes, cancellations and controversy, the 80th Academy Awards aim to bring back the glitz, says Andrew Gumbel

Somewhere in the bowels of Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, a team of writers has spent the past few days frantically brainstorming for jokes and one-liners to give at least the appearance of jovial normality to this year's Academy Awards.

In any normal year, one not dominated by a writers' strike that came very close to overshadowing, if not actually sabotaging, the Oscars altogether, the team that writes the banter for the master of ceremonies – this year, the cult-status satirist and spoof newscaster Jon Stewart – would have five or six weeks from the time the nominations are announced until the big night.

Given the predictability of so many of the nominations, they could in fact have had even longer to try to be funny – even over distinctly unfunny frontrunner movies such as No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers' bleak Sophoclean tragedy about the inevitability of violence in modern America, or There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's portrait of a rapacious pioneering oil baron symbolising all the greed, amorality and, yes, violence, of modern capitalism.

This year, they're having to think quickly. As negotiations to end the strike were nearing their end, the producer of the Oscars show, Gil Cates, warned that he would need at least two weeks to get all the material ready. The return-to-work order came only on Wednesday of last week, giving Stewart and his team eight working days to come up with the concepts, do whatever funny footage edits or original video shooting they want to do, and have it all wrapped up and ready to go at 5pm on Sunday.

Stewart, though, is a pro. The Daily Show, his successful spoof newscast, has become very adept at taking items from that day's news, spinning comic sketches in the form of two-day interviews with a Daily Show "correspondent", and digging up footage to make fun of the politicians or news journalists who happen to have made idiots of themselves that day.

The Oscars are a little different, because Stewart has been hired not to lampoon the prestige output of the entertainment industry, only to take some of the serious edge off the furious studio campaigns on behalf of their nominated titles.

This year's Oscars are different all over again, because those campaigns have been muted by the strike. Until about five minutes ago, nobody was taking a serious look at the merits of, say, the cinematography on No Country for Old Men and on The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (both, incidentally, the work of the same director of photography, Roger Deakins).

Most years, the papers and television networks would have trotted out their annual canard that a Best Picture Oscar is worth as much as an extra $100m at the box office. (It's not true, by the way, on which more in a moment.) This year, though, the dollar figure everyone is focusing on is the $130m that the Academy Awards are estimated to be worth to the local Los Angeles economy.

Some of that money won't be generated this year because of a handful of high-profile cancellations – none more high-profile than the Vanity Fair after-party, usually the most reliable concentration of celebrity pounds per square inch on the planet but simply not happening this year. Most of it, though, has been spared. Not a big deal for your average movie star, but absolutely crucial to the legions of limo drivers, make-up artists, hair-stylists, dressmakers, caterers and – naturally – red-carpet weavers, for whom Oscars week is the equivalent of an end-of-year bonus for the average corporate stooge.

Let's not exaggerate: the strike never was about the Oscars, and its effect on the Academy Awards, one way or the other, was never more than tangential. The forecaster who came up with the $130m figure – Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation – also estimates that the strike, overall, has cost the entertainment industry and the rest of the economy about $1.5bn. At a time when the US is on the brink of a recession, that's a huge drain on the system.

Still, those tangential effects on the Oscars are not uninteresting. The usual studio approach is to see awards season as a magnificent promotional opportunity for worthy films that might not necessarily be box-office champions. (This year's crop of Best Picture nominees are no exception to the rule – only one, the feelgood teen pregnancy comedy Juno, has generated more than $100m at the box office to date.)

In fact, the key, from a marketing point of view, is not winning an Oscar so much as getting nominated. In a normal year, any box-office boost from the awards has usually been exhausted by the time the winner is announced. This year, though, the strike made that kind of marketing very difficult. Many of the chat shows where nominated actors, writers and directors would ordinarily do their rounds went dark because their own writing staff were out on the picket lines.

The films that have arguably suffered the most – or, rather, lost the most opportunities – are the ones that were least visible in the first place: films such as Away from Her, the independent Canadian movie starring Julie Christie as a woman whose ostensibly happy marriage comes under unexpected scrutiny when she lapses into senile dementia. Since Away from Her cost only $2.5m to make, it has been profitable. But one wonders if it might not have found a much wider audience in a year when Christie and the film's writer-director, Sarah Polley, snagged nominations, for acting and adapted screenplay respectively.

Some of Christie's friends suspect that she might not win the Best Actress Oscar, for which she is hotly touted – because the film has been little seen, and because her closest apparent rival, Marion Cotillard, is being promoted by the grand wizard of Hollywood awards alchemy, the redoubtable Harvey Weinstein. Cotillard, who does a knockout job playing Edith Piaf in the French biopic La Vie en Rose, beat Christie to the punch at the Bafta awards earlier this month, so there is certainly room for some doubt.

The bookmakers' money, though, is still very much with Christie, and with a pretty solid line-up of other winners. No Country for Old Men will probably win Best Picture, Best Director(s), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem). Daniel Day-Lewis is the hot favourite for best actor, as that oil baron in There Will Be Blood. Diablo Cody, the stripper turned screenwriter of Juno, is odds-on for Best Original Screenplay. All that leaves little room for argument, except perhaps over the worthiest recipient of the Best Original Score Oscar, and, of course, over the most unjustly overlooked non-nominees. (Fans of Sean Penn's Into the Wild, and the Romanian movie Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, both roundly snubbed, have probably been shouting the loudest, and with the most justification.)

That said, the Oscars usually provides a surprise or two, and we can only hope Stewart and his team come up with a memorable laugh or two, even about those grim Best Picture nominees. "The thing is," he told The New York Times this week, "they're not all about psychopathic killers. Only about 80 per cent of them."

The Oscars ceremony takes place on Sunday

Hollywood degree course launched

2008-02-22T03:36:00.000-08:00

Watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster might seem like a fun night out but for students at the University of Nottingham, a trip to the cinema will soon be an essential part of their work towards a master's degree in "Hollywood studies".

The students will look at the influence of Hollywood movies in shaping public opinion as well as providing mass entertainment. They will also study Hollywood's industrial practices and the origins of some of the great studios.

Dr Paul Grainge, deputy director of the Institute of Film and Television Studies – which is based at the university's School of American and Canadian studies – said that entertainment in the US was big business. "The Star Wars franchise alone earned more than the GDP of most African states. Hollywood is, in this way, central to our cultural and economic life."

Modules include one on film and film-making, one on blockbusters and a third on Hollywood's influence in the US and abroad.

The MA can be taken full-time over one year from this October or part-time over two years.

Tax fraud lawyer 'wanted Hollywood lifestyle'

2008-02-22T03:34:00.000-08:00

A former lawyer who stole more then $185 million from the Australian Tax Office by lodging false tax returns was today jailed for seven years.

County Court Judge Michael McInerney described the fraud as "stunning" in its extent.

"I have never while on the bench been confronted with a scheme of such dimension," he said.

"This was a sustained attack upon the revenue of this country."

Peter Ambrosy, 57, of Malvern East, pleaded guilty to three counts of defrauding the Commonwealth over a three-year period between 1997 and 1999.

Judge McInerney said Ambrosy was part of a scam that encouraged investors to put their money into a variety of companies. If the companies ran at a loss the investor could claim the money back from the tax office.

The companies included an infomercial production company and a compilation CD business, which never ran to profit.

He said Ambrosy was addicted to the high-flying and glamorous lifestyle subsidised by the scheme.

"The only rational explanation. . . was a desire to obtain financial gain and enjoy the glamorous life that such large financial enterprises offered to him by way of travel and mixing with various "glitterati", in places such as Hollywood," Judge McInerny said.

"The dimension of each of these crimes is large, with the amount of revenue of which the Taxation Department was defrauded in each instance being in the multiple millions."

Ambrosy's wife and daughter were in court for the sentencing and were visibly upset at the length of his jail term.

Judge McInerney said that general deterrence was a key factor when sentencing "white collar criminals" and said that while Ambrosy was a good candidate for rehabilitation, he must serve a non-parole period of five years.

Shoaib Akhtar meets Shah Rukh

2008-02-18T23:32:00.000-08:00

Mumbai: Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar, who is on a brief visit to the city, met Bollwood star Shah Rukh Khan at the latter's residence on Monday night.

It is not known why Akhtar met Khan, who owns the Calcutta franchise of the forthcoming Indian Premier league.

The players' auctions for the eight franchises of the IPL is scheduled to be held here on February 20 and Akhtar is among those who is in the list of players to go under the hammer.

Akhtar had also met Shah Rukh at Lucknow when he had come with the Pakistan cricket team during its visit to India late last year.

Saif wants only Kareena

2008-02-18T23:31:00.000-08:00

Saif wants Kareena ardently in all his films. At the same time, he does not want to leave aside the decision of his producer and director. He has left the decision of casting Kareena opposite him in the hand of his producer. In his untitled venture, Saif wish to team up with his lady-love only if his business partner Dinesh Vijen agrees. He feels that his director and producer had a better knowledge of films and star-cast and he does not want to intervene on their decision.

Saif has two back to back releases this year. Abaas-Mustan’s Race and Yash Raj films’ Tashan with Kareena Kapoor. It is rumored that love brewed between the two during the shooting of Tashan and today they moved around like an inseparable souls. Shahid was Kareena’s longtime boyfriend and she took very little time to throw him out of her life. It is also heard that Bebo called Saif by Saiffu in love. Both of them are having a gala time with each other.

After J.P. Dutta's LOC, the two love-birds will be again seen together in Yash Raj Films' Tashan. Kareena’s Jab We Met with ex lover Shahid was a hit, now we will get to see how much applause her film Tashan with her present lover Saif will able to gather.

Aishwarya to reveal Salman’s secret

2008-02-18T23:29:00.000-08:00

Gorgeous Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is all set to unfold many untold and unheard happenings of her life. She is going to write a book on her life story with the help of her mother Vrinda. Her book would reveal many unknown facts of her life. The book will also speak about secrets of her relationship with Salman Khan.

Few years ago, the news of Salman Khan making Aishwarya’s life nothing less than hell had flashed in various media. Salman was once in love with Ash but their relationship did not worked out. Her name was also linked with actor Vivek Oberoi. Vivek once declared that Ash is his love partner but their alliance has also turned out to be void.

Aishwarya finally tie the knot with Big B son’s Abhishek Bachchan. Though the pace of her career was slow in the beginning but soon she caught the train of success. Today she is the most demanding actress of Bollywood and has also good number of Hollywood films in her kitty. Her international project has also done good business. Like her films, her book is also assumed to be a big hit. So, hold your breathe because Ash is going to disclose many unknown facts. No doubt that once her untitled book is available in the market, it will be a bestseller.

Hrithik Roshan is thankful to Shahrukh

2008-02-18T23:26:00.000-08:00

“I am thankful to Shahrukh Khan. By accepting to do an item number for my father’s film, he had showed his respect towards him” said the stylish and dynamic actor Hrithik Roshan as Shahrukh accepted to do an item number for Krazzy 4, Rakesh Roshan’s next big venture. He wants SRK to do an item number for his film and SRK had accepted full heartedly. On his acceptance, Hrithik and Mr. Roshan thanked him.

Rakesh Roshan usually cast his son Hrithik in the lead roles. But this time it is something exceptional. In Krazzy 4 he had stored an item number for Hrithik. Arshad Warsi, Irrfan Khan, Dia Mirza, Rajpal Yadav, Suresh Menon, Rajat Kapoor, Zakir Hussain, Juhi Chawla are the main star-cast of the film. SRK had already done an item number in Kaal and Heyy Baby and he is now looking forward to a new item number.

The most interesting fact is that in the item song Shahrukh will team up with the sexy gal, Rakhi Sawant. Superhero Hrithik Roshan's track will serve as a promotional video where he will introduce the four male protagonists of the film. Needles to say that the presence of two superstars will add up to the glamour and expectation of the film. Rakesh Roshan had created a lavish set for this thrilling item number. The movie is slated to release on April 2008 and it is the one of the most awaited film among the cine-goers.

I never went away from television: SRK

2008-02-18T06:35:00.000-08:00

NEW DELHI: As the host of the third edition of the popular game show 'Kaun Banega Crorepati', Shah Rukh Khan brought a youthful effervescence to the programme.

As he embarks on yet another new innings on television as host of the innovatiove game show, 'Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hain'.The game show will have adults vying with sharp-minded kids in terms of their ability to answer school grade level questions, Shahrukh Khan seems as excited as he seemed when he made his foray on the small screens two decades ago with the serial 'Fauji'.

''I don't think it would be right for one to call 'KBC3' or 'Kya Aap Panchvi Pass Se Tez Hain' as my comeback to television. I never went away from television in the first place. Infact, I am coming on television for the 11th time since I did the serial 'Fauji' years ago. In any case, my endeavour is always to entertain people be it on TV, stage show or films,'' Shah Rukh Khan said.

Talking during his visit to the Capital to promote his new TV show, the 'King Khan', whose television roles in serials like 'Fauji' upstaged him into limelight, paving the way for a career in films, said it was to television that he owed his success as an actor.

'' Whatever I have become or achieved today has been largely because of television. As a movie actor, I became what I have become, thanks to television. I owe my life to television and stage and, of course movies now,'' Shah Rukh said.

Shah Rukh said the evolution of television over the years had been outstanding. In this sense, calling television the small screen was a misnomer.

''I feel the term 'small screen' used to describe TV today is misleading. Over the last few decades, there has been an amazing change in television whether it be in terms of quality, technology, eyeballs, business or the level of news coverage. Infact, TV's evolution over the years has been absolutely outstanding and amazing,'' the King Khan said.

Noting that TV had taken a great turnover over the last two decades, Shah Rukh said, ''few years ago when I used to go for press conferences, there used to be just five to six TV cameras and not much technology was available. Now you have television booming events like this directly accessible all over the country through their OB vans. This huge amount of change is a welcome one.''

Shah Rukh said the last few years had witnessed people like Siddharth Basu, who conceptualised shows like 'Kaun Banega Crorepati', 'Jhalak Dikhla Ja' and 'Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez hain', come up with some of the most innovative programmes which made for greater audience participation on these TV shows. In this context, he said the new show to be aired soon on Star Plus, would involve a lot of interaction from children, who today formed a crucial audience for television.

A television game show based on the international Mark Burnett format 'Are you smarter than a Fifth Grader', where grade school level questions are put to adults from all walks of life. The game show will witness Shahrukh Khan act as a teacher of class five sprightly kids where adult contestants will be posed ten questions from grade level one to five, the right answers to which would entitle them to a mammoth prize money of Rs 5 crore.

The adults will be offered three lifelines wherein they will have the option to take the help of the kids for the answer of the questions. In case, the contestants fail to answer all the ten questions, they will be allowed to quit the show with the prize money won by them but only after saying that 'I am not smarter than a fifth Grader'.

The essence of the show is the humour generated out of the inability of adults to answer primary level questions and the pressure experienced by them in their effort to keep their reputations intact in a class of kids from class one to five.

''Class one to five kids can take part in the show. They will be my students who will help the 'new adult student' grapple with questions from first to fifth standard. In this sense, there will be lot of interaction with children during the show. The idea is to interact with the families through our interaction with children,'' Shah Rukh said.

To be part of the show, the children would have to have a certain level of awareness, he expressed hoped that the knowledge level of the kids on the show would encourage other children to make
efforts to develop general awareness which could enable them to appear on the TV show.

''It was the educational aspect attached to the show that had my excited about it. I am sure that watching the show, children of my son's age would also want to come on the show which in turn will generate in them a curiosity to increase their general awareness,'' he said.The King Khan said that as an entertainer, his endeavour was to cater first and foremost to children.

''Whatever entertainment I have given all these years whether on TV, stage or films, my attempt has primarily been to entertain children, who I think are the audience with the shortest attention span. This year, I have resolved to do something for children. Doing this show is part of that resolve,''he said.

Besides, the game show, Shahrukh also plans to make a film for children.

''My teacher Barry John had told me that only if you keep in mind interests, likes or dislikes of children in doing your roles will you be a good actor. So, I would love to do many things for kids. This year I have resolved to do a lot for kids. One of them would be a film that we also can produce.I have this great desire to make a film for children. However, the budgets and the story are something that are still being worked out,'' Shahrukh said.

Among his forthcoming ventures, Shahrukh said he was working on two films to be made by his production house, Red Chillies entertainment. One of them would be an animation film. Then, there is Ravi Chopra's 'Bhootnath', where he features in a brief role.

''I did 'Bhootnath' because the director of the film Vivek Sharma is a close friend,'' the actor said. Then, there is a item song by Shahrukh in Rakesh Roshan's Filmkraft productions' 'Krrazy4'.

Also on the anvil is Aditya Chopra's 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi', shooting for which will begins in May. Hunt is on currently for a new girl to play the female lead in the film opposite Shahrukh.

How to Share Your Faith Using Tom Cruise's Scientology Rant

2008-02-17T02:29:00.000-08:00

Somehow the Mission Impossible music playing in the background seems fitting.

Have you caught the buzz circulating on the internet about Tom Cruise's leaked Scientology rant? Cruise was caught on film rambling on at length about his Scientology beliefs. Just trying to follow the logic in his rant on the merits of Scientology seems like an impossible mission.

Reportedly, the Church of Scientology did not want the video surfacing on the internet and has heavy-handedly moved in with the lawyer brigade to try and restrict the video's availability. This legal maneuvering by the Scientologists was seen by some as a 'restriction of free speech.' The result: the launch of the internet wars raging between the Church of Scientology and a loose affiliation of illegal hackers trying to bring down the Scientologists' website and initiating a variety of other internet sabotage, including 'Google bombing.' Now the FBI's involved, computers have been seized...and who knows how this is going to play out in the end...

But what is the Church of Scientology about? What do Scientology's followers believe? Let's zero in briefly on two key teachings - God and salvation and compare Scientology with what the Bible has to say.

God:

Scientology draws its view of God from science fiction and eastern mysticism and teaches there are multiple gods, while denying the deity of Christ. In contrast, the Bible teaches there is one eternal God revealed in three persons, as explained in these verses:

• There is one who is called the Father and is identified as being God. ’Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,' declares the LORD (Jeremiah 9:23-24).

• There is one who is called Jesus and is identified as being God. "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Col. 2:9).

• There is one who is called the Holy Spirit and is identified as being God. "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever - the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16-17).

Salvation:

Scientologists believe personal salvation comes through freeing oneself from the cycle of birth and death associated with reincarnation. This Scientology process of breaking this birth/death cycle is called 'auditing,' where memories and subconscious thoughts that block positive energy are removed. Auditing can be a lengthy and expensive process. In contrast, the Bible teaches that salvation is through Jesus Christ.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).

So take the opportunity to use the buzz around the Tom Cruise Scientology video circulating on the web to talk with your friends about spiritual things. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Ask your friends if they've heard any of the news stories about the recently released Tom Cruise's Scientology video rant? Ask them if they're interested in spiritual things.

• Find out if your friends understand much about the basic beliefs of the Church of Scientology. Take the opportunity to share how the teachings of the Bible differ from the teachings of Scientology in the key areas of who God is and what Jesus had to say about salvation.

• Ask your friends what they think happens when you die. Do they believe in reincarnation like Scientologists do? Share what you believe based on Hebrews 9:27-29:

• "Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him."

• Talk about how you become a Christian. Share what difference your relationship with Jesus has made in your life since you've become one of his followers.

Celebrities' religious beliefs, no matter how strange or convoluted, can be a springboard for spiritual conversations about the true message of God's grace and forgiveness as revealed in the Bible. Step up and take the opportunity to turn the conversation toward Jesus and share what He's done in your life.

________________________________________________________________

Jane Dratz works for Dare 2 Share Ministries in Arvada, Colo., a ministry committed to energizing and equipping teens to know, live, share and own their faith in Jesus. For more information on Dare 2 Share Ministries, please visit www.dare2share.org.send feed backs to jzmemon@gmail.com

Scientology’s Star

2008-02-17T02:26:00.000-08:00

The celebrity biographer Andrew Morton never met a grudge he couldn’t get behind. He has aired the grievances of Diana, Princess of Wales, against the British royal family, and of Monica Lewinsky against Kenneth Starr. Now he champions the indignation of mostly anonymous former Scientologists in this brutal biography of the controversial religion’s most famous advocate, Tom Cruise.

However shady Scientology may be, Morton’s language in “Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography” is extreme. He and his sources compare the church and its leadership to fascists, the Roman Empire, storm troopers, Machiavelli, Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” Napoleon, Stalinists and North Korea. He also repeatedly invokes Nazism, and quotes without censure the German Protestant Church’s comparison of Cruise to Joseph Goebbels.

Even if everything Morton says about Scientologists were true — that they make certain members have abortions, that they run around with Uzis and boxes of cash, that they threaten recruiters with torture if they don’t land celebrities — it doesn’t out-corrupt, say, the early Mormon Church as depicted in Fawn Brodie’s “No Man Knows My History.” And unlike “Tom Cruise,” that book managed to make its subject, Joseph Smith, seem three-dimensional even as it eviscerated his faith.

Morton says Cruise has been called Scientology’s “savior” and apparently holds him accountable for the religion’s airbrushed image, as well as for deaths that supposedly occur when people take to heart warnings about the evils of prescription medication, like the one he issued in his famous “Today” show rant. Morton even indulges the disappointment of former classmates from Glen Ridge, N.J., that Cruise didn’t further their careers or buy one a Mercedes.

The pre-cult chapters, for which Morton did much legwork, do not make the star appear sympathetic. Cruise comes across as cold and intensely ambitious. Morton suggests he “learned the art of disguise from his relationship with his father,” which seems to have been a nightmare. If the portrayal of Cruise in these early pages were an appealing one, Morton’s condemnation of Scientology as soul-destroying might carry more weight.

There are also tiny errors that make a reader suspicious of Morton’s rigor, as when he presents Cruise’s notorious joke about eating his future child’s placenta as a sober statement of fact, or when he identifies the ’80s new-wave group Bow Wow Wow as a “hip-hop band.”

Morton provides a bibliography but no footnotes; many attributed quotations lack sources. He retells some of the tabloids’ craziest stories (Cruise sending Jennifer Garner a live tiger, for one), then discredits or qualifies them. The effect is very much like dropping a bombshell during a court hearing, then telling the members of the jury to disregard what they’ve just heard.

One thing Morton seems sure of: Cruise is not gay. The author points to many ex-girlfriends, including Rebecca De Mornay and Cher, and quotes some of them on the actor’s virility. “He’s a very sexual person,” Melissa Gilbert affirms. “He gave me butterflies in my tummy.” Employing a dated logical fallacy, Morton uses Cruise’s evident homophobia (he couldn’t stomach even “La Cage aux Folles”) to further prove his heterosexuality.

Nor is Cruise impotent, Morton suggests, describing two miscarriages suffered by Nicole Kidman. Per his M.O., Morton repeats and then denies the rumor that Cruise’s daughter Suri was in fact fathered by L. Ron Hubbard’s frozen sperm. He then cruelly suggests that Katie Holmes still might have wondered if she were carrying the Devil’s spawn, à la “Rosemary’s Baby.” At such moments, “Tom Cruise” feels about as reliable as the tabloids and yet, astonishingly, somehow meaner.

Ada Calhoun is the editor in chief of Babble.com, a blogger for AOL News and a frequent contributor to the Book Review.

He's a seen-it-all movie pioneer

2008-01-07T02:09:00.000-08:00

NATWARLAL Vagh is the only surviving member of group that began Fiji's movie theatre business.

According to Mr Vagh, the Damodar Brothers, partners in the country's dominant Village Cinemas, entered the industry in 1960s when he was already there.

"They are my cousins and we are partners of (Lautoka's) Village Four Cinemas," he said.

The two overseas partners are Sky City in New Zealand and Roadshow in Australia.

"I am a local director of the cinema," he said.

As such, movies are part of his daily routine.

Mr Vagh watches all the new movies Hindi and English.

"I go and watch movies nearly every day," he said.

So if you can't get him at home or at the office or if he is not out for an engagement, you can definitely catch him at the movies. "That's my pastime and I enjoy it."

Mr Vagh's involvement in the theatre business began in 1955.

"Apart from my normal job, I was the agent for Hindi movies," he said.

That's why he seen it all when it comes to the local movie business.

As Mr Vagh recollects, to the 1950s, only Hindi movies were shown in Lautoka cinemas.

"At that time, the Globe Theatre was at the corner where Ramesh Investment is, opposite MH," he said.

By 1960, he and the Damodar Brothers joined hands and leased the new Globe Theatre for 25 years and showed both English and Hindi movies.

But back then, locals had to wait six months after a movie was released in Bollywood or Hollywood before they could watch it here.

"It will first come to Suva, Nausori, Rakiraki, Tavua, Ba and then Lautoka," he said.

Tare zameen par!!!

2008-01-04T03:19:00.000-08:00

Aamir Khan’s directorial debut Taare Zameen Par has been appreciated by one and all and no wonder Aamir is on top of the world. The good times continue for this wonderful actor – director as news comes that his film has now been declared tax-free in Mumbai for a period of six months. The film, currently running in its second week, had earlier got a tax- exemption in the capital and now this surely comes as even more good news for all those associated with the film. Here’s wishing that the film continues its victory march, even in the weeks to come.

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2008-01-04T03:09:00.000-08:00

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India's set-top action plan

2008-01-04T03:07:00.001-08:00

With a population of more than one billion, India is almost a world unto itself. It's certainly a market unlike any other on the planet, whether a business is trying to sell microchips or mini-vans.

As the country develops, it is tempting to see it becoming like a typical Western nation, full of shopping malls and flyovers, but this simply won't happen. India is rich with its own cultures and traditions laid down over thousands of years, and most Indians are convinced the country should and will develop its own unique character as it becomes a global economic superpower.

The journey won't be easy. About 80 per cent of India's population is poor, living on the equivalent of a few Kiwi dollars a day. A whole set of economic and social structures has emerged to support these people, and this is responsible in large part for India's unique character.

Indian commerce, for example, is dominated by small shops averaging less than 15 square metres, as well as even smaller street booths. Both sell everything the owners can find a market for, whether it's food or mobile phones. One booth near Bombay University even sells home loans. Because the shops are everywhere, it's easy for the city's poor and middle classes to find cheap products close by. Shopping malls are starting to change this, but most Indians have stuck to their local shops.

India's great mass of poverty means the country won't be following the West's technological path lock-step either. The bulk of its population want cheap solutions to their problems, not expensive Western gadgets.

India is becoming increasingly connected to the Internet, but desktop computers are not playing much of a role, since only the middle and upper classes can afford them. Laptops are common among the educated classes, but mobiles and TVs – both relatively cheap – will form the backbone of India online.

This was brought home recently with news that Microsoft is teaming up with Reliance Communications to launch an IPTV service, which will stream TV, the Web, telephone and other content over the Internet to customers' homes. The content is not streamed to a PC but to a set-top box.

Mobiles are another cheap substitute for a home PC. India has about 250 million mobile customers and adds about seven million new mobile subscribers a month on its GSM and CDMA networks. The networks are 2.5G but Indians can use them to transfer money between individuals or book air travel. They pay between between 3 and 15 rupees each time they do (roughly NZ10c to 50c).

The cheapest mobiles sell for about NZ$40, though they're often free with plans, and most Indians pay about 1 rupee (3c) a minute of talk time if they're calling someone on the same network.

India can offer technology this cheaply because of economies of scale. With so many users, mobile telcos need only to make a small profit off each one to earn huge sums of money.

Original content is not something Western countries usually associate with India, beyond Bollywood movies, which rarely make it to the West anyway. The country has a booming animation market, but it's mainly animating the creations of companies in other markets at much lower cost. Most cartoons on Indian screens feature Western characters, even if they're being created down the road.

But this too is starting to change, as a new generation of Indian entrepreneurs emerges keen to tell Indian stories, both to the Indian domestic market and to the world. A recent big hit on India TV screens was the Krishna series of made-for-TV animated movies, based on Hindu myths.

The best- rating movie scored 30 million viewers when it aired, and the cartoons are doing well in Europe too, according to Rajiv Chilakalapudi, founder of Green Gold Animation, which produced the series.

He was enthusiastic about the prospects of India's creative industries, saying the country had many good tales to tell, including Green Gold's latest, an all-original effort called Chhota Bheem. "If it's a strong story it'll sell," he said.

With such a huge domestic market, what is a success in India will increasingly influence what succeeds in New Zealand. As the 21st century moves on, it looks to have an increasingly Indian flavour, and it might be only a matter of time before Kiwis are ordering an Indian-made Kingfisher beer along with their takeaway curries.

Movie named after Bhojpuri actor

2008-01-04T03:05:00.000-08:00

When God closes one door he opens another. This was what happened to actor Ravi Kishan, who after a string of not-so-successful films in Bollywood, shifted to Bhojpuri films.

This man who did his graduation from Banaras University, has been acting since the age of 12. Today, after 16-17 years, he has a film made in his name Ravi Kishen, which had a bumper opening and is doing well.

About his films and the future in Bhojpuri films, Kishen added, "Life moves on. I came to Mumbai in 1990 to try my luck in Hindi films. I have done movies like Army, which starred Shah Rukh Khan and Sridevi, Kudrat with Urmila Matondkar and Akshay Khanna, Udhar Ki Zindagi with Kajol and Jeetendra, Tere Naam with Salman Khan and Bhumika Chawla and the latest Phir Hera Pheri with Sunil Shetty and Akshay Kumar.

"My Hindi films were not doing well, so I shifted to Bhojpuri films," he said.

The 35-year-old actor said, he had done five films with Dharmendra and four-five films with Mithun Chakravorty. To sum it all, he has done 25 Hindi films and 20 Bhojpuri films. His persistence paid off and 98 per cent of his Bhojpuri films turned out to be silver and golden hits.

Some of his hits in Bhojpuri films include Saiya Hamar, Ganga Jaisan Mai Hamar, Kab Hoi Gauna Hamar, Kab Hoi Milanva Hamar, Kanyadaan, Raja Bhojpuria, Panditji Bataiye Byah Kab Hoi, Dulha Milan Dildaar, Dulha Aisan Chahi, Mai Baap, Uthai Le Ghoongta Chand Dekh Le and lot more.

Out of all his films, two of them with Nagma had been super hit and nine more are in the release.

His forthcoming projects include Ganga by Deepak Savant, starring Big B, Nagma and Hema Malini, where he is playing as 'hair dresser' of Big B. Then, there is a film produced by thespian Dilip Kumar and his wife Saira Banu called Ab To Banja Sajanwa Hamar and another film where Bollywood choreographer Saroj Khan makes her directorial debut called Dil Deewana Tohar Hua.

All three films are ready for release and another film by Bollywood action director Tinnu Verma is in the production stage.

"I do everything right from marketing to publicity of my films. Nothing should go wrong," he said, adding, in future, he plans to have his own production house.

Commenting on the latest trend where successful Hindi films have been dubbed into Bhojpuri, Ravi said, "This trend will not last. Since the Bhojpuri audience will not accept an outsider. They will identify with a hero who is from their own soil."

Commenting on the future of Bhojpuri films Ravi said, "It is going to be as huge as Tamil and Telegu cinema. There are 27 crore Bhojpuri speaking people in India alone. And many more in other 54 countries like Mauritius, Fiji and Holland. We have our own website called www.Bhojpuria.Com, where one can get any information on Bhojpuri cinema and the award ceremonies."

In January, Bhojpuri awards were held at the Goregaon Sports Complex, where Ravi Kishen won the best actor award for Panditji Bateye Byaah Kab Hoi and Nagma won the best actress award for Dulha Milat Dildaar

Top 5 Filmi Surprises of 2007

2008-01-04T03:02:00.000-08:00

2007 may well be one of the most unpredictable years for the Indian film industry, Bollywood. Movies that everyone thought would surely be blockbusters didn't fair so well at box office and movies that had no expectations what-so-ever from them became the reigning names at the box office. BollySpice now brings you our top 5 film surprises. Movies that came to the cinemas, which you saw and which conquered all others at the box-office.

5. Dus Kahanaiyaan

Mulitiple storylines haven't been a success in a long time. RGV's Darna Mana Hai and Darna Zaroori Hai didn't fair too well and failed to impress a large portion of the audience thus something similar was expected of Dus Kahaniyaan. However the movie surprises audiences greatly! Some of the finest short stories were incorporated in this film and audiences saw director Sanjay Gupta in a new light as well as Meghna Gulzar. Both directors delivered some of the finest short stories that could well be much better than many whole three hour movies released in 2007. With the exemption of two or three stories, Dus Kahaniyaan was a highly enlightening experience that gave audiences something deep and meaningful to watch. A complete delightful surprise!

4. Namastey London

When the promotion of Vipul Shah's Namastey London began audiences just saw it as another happy-go-lucky comedy starring Akshay Kumar however upon release audiences were stunned by the deep content and high meaning of the film. Not only did the movie explore the mindset of second generation migrants but also the patriotism that lies somewhere in every Indian. Katrina Kaif came into the light as an actress who was above the normal mediocre feminine roles. The actresses surprised all with a completely natural performance. What seemed to be another comedy that would make you giggle till your belly ached turned out to be so much more and taught young and old valuable lessons of life! Kudos to Vipul Shah for delivering this pleasant surprise!

3. Mera Pehla Pehla Pyar

Robbie Grewal's Samay went unnoticed at the box office due to its non-commercial appeal however Mera Pehla Pehla Pyar certainly made one hell of a debut. If you still haven't gotten around to seeing this movie you're missing out. Critics raved about it. Audiences adored the storyline and the title track became a youth anthem. Ruslaan Mumtaz came into the limelight as the new comparison to Shahid Kapoor and Hazel finally got recognition above her television advertisements and music videos. And who would have thought all this would have been achieved from such a simple and pleasant movie. The success of MP3 simply shows that audiences await such surprises once in a while when they're not overloaded with movies of complicated and challenging themes and subjects! A much needed pleasant surprise by Robbie Grewal.

2. Johnny Gadaar

Ek Hasina Thi may have been a revelation of Saif's versatility however the movie didn't receive too many compliments for its actual storyline. Director Sriram Raghavan finally got all that he missed with Johnny Gadaar. Once again we find a no-name cast and a very “hatke” storyline on this list. Johnny Gadaar was a pleasant surprise and a refreshing release. The story was fresh and the screenplay was beautifully penned. Newcomer Neil Nitin Mukesh made a flawless debut and not only got into the limelight with the critics but also with the ladies! Such unconventional title, movie and cast weren't expected to create such an intelligent movie. Johnny Gadaar is without a doubt one of the most pleasant surprises of the year.

1. Jab We Met

It's a surprise in itself that one of the best movies of this year was not expected to be so outstanding by many. Those who didn't witness the magic of Imtiaz Ali's story telling in Socha Na Tha were utterly surprised when a movie that was expected to be just another love story turned out to be one of the best of its time! Jab We Met was the perfect opportunity for Kareena Kapoor to remind us all that she is indeed amongst the finest actresses of Indian Cinema and it was also the perfect opportunity for Shahid Kapoor to prove that he can be much more than just a college-love-boy. In today's era when movies only work when they tackle a challenging subject it is an utter surprise to meet a maker who dares to do something simple in a grand way! No one thought that such a normal storyline could be displayed in such a magical way . When looking back no one will ever guess that such a masterpiece was not expected to be one!

EDITORIAL: Movie-day at the schools? Why?

2008-01-03T05:39:00.000-08:00

Are schools enabling today's reading-averse generation?

THE SHOWING OF R-rated movies in the Beloit School District prompted the school board to prohibit the practice, presumably over material that might be considered inappropriate by some students and parents.

In turn, that prohibition sparked objections from some teachers that the school board was micro-managing their classrooms. The chairman of the high school's social studies department said, “I think probably our greatest disappointment was there was no dialogue with any of us from the board when they started to discuss this.”

Meanwhile, some students circulated a petition in opposition to the board policy.

THE SCHOOLS can still show G- and PG-rated movies and, as board policy committee chair Pam Charles stated, “With a little imagination the teacher can come up with movies not rated R.”

Probably so.

But this question occurs to us: Why show Hollywood movies at all?

An argument could be made if the movies were being shown in a film class for study as an art form. But, otherwise, what's the point?

Even when the movies deal with historical subject matter, Hollywood usually takes so many liberties the true history is lost. It's make-believe. Entertainment. Just sound and fury.

Academically, even the most historically-oriented films rarely stand up to factual review.

BESIDES, WE WOULD lay odds many parents have heard a recurring theme from their children. When it's “movie day,” that's basically a day off. For the pupils. For the teachers. Sure, there may be follow-up discussions, but for most of the kids it's a pretty easy way to coast.

Kids like watching movies. And when the kids like it, there's usually a reason.

Mind you, we're not saying audio-visual aids in the classroom are all bad. We're just questioning Hollywood-ized make-believe, the same things people go to video stores to rent.

There are fine documentaries and the kind of material found on, for example, the History Channel or the National Geographic channel. These, too, can be entertaining. More importantly, though, they are real and not the hyped-up Hollywood version of the facts.

Some documentaries may be even more raw than Hollywood films, and would require good judgment. Still, if students are to be exposed to difficult facts, isn't it better if they are real facts?

AT THE RISK of seeming self-serving - we are in the reading business, after all - we also would hope the schools try to avoid further enabling this reading-challenged generation. Just because some students' lives are dominated by television, video games and computer screens is no excuse for educators failing to insist these kids grasp the wonders of learning through the printed word.

Educators know that, at best, students receive a thin layer of knowledge at school. The real objective of education is to create the spark of learning in a child. Deep knowledge comes from further study and reading. Youngsters may learn that Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and bought the Louisiana Territory from France as the nation's third president. But to know Jefferson, and understand the philosophical underpinnings he helped build into America's story, students must read. One of the most important goals of education should be to create life-long reading habits for students.

Do Hollywood movies fit in that plan? Let's say, we are not convinced.

Taare Zameen Par get Best position in 2007

2008-01-03T05:19:00.000-08:00

We’ve never had 26 films worth talking about in a single year in a very long time. 2007 has yielded a rich harvest for Hindi cinema. While rating them, not only the primary function of Indian cinema - that it has to entertain a diverse audience - is taken into account but also factors such as intention of the filmmaker, originality, repeat viewing and fatigue, quality of writing, inventiveness of story-telling, devices employed, scale of production and star appeal.

No.1 Chak De India

The girls are amazing. Because Jaideep Sahni has written a script that combines girlpower, women’s liberation and the importance of team-spirit in a convincing underdog drama with authentic sporting action, gorgeously shot. Near flawless but for the predictability associated with the sports genre.

No.2 Taare Zameen Par
Films are where reality meets fantasy and no other film in a long while has walked these two worlds at the same time, often blurring the lines associated with the distinctively different genres while also tripling as an effective social commentary. No Indian film has ever captured childhood like this before

No.3 Om Shanti Om

Has there been a more irreverent film in the history of Indian cinema? One that does not take anything, including itself, seriously while paying tribute to an era of implausible plots, melodrama and revenge themes. Just by sheer quantity of laughs and goofs and quality of style and choreogcinema raphy, Om Shanti Om, despite the silly twist in the tale towards the climax, is a colourful musical that celebrates cinema.

No.4 Jab We Met

This is Dilwale Dulhaniya’s sequel in spirit. If Dilwale tried to define Indian-ness by procuring parental consent for love, Jab We Met goes deeper into the heartland of the country and tries to understand relationships in the context of a highly self-centric India where love blurs right and wrong.

No.5 Johnny Gaddaar

Here comes a quality suspense caper after ages. What’s more, it’s slick and stylish. It’s a rollercoaster of a mind-game. Never has a tribute film been this exciting with all the cheeky referencing. Not only is it unpredictable, it also has a brilliant ensemble cast. Also, because it has Dharam Paaji show us what a fantastic actor he is even today.

The Others

No.6 Namastey London – A surprisingly endearing Katrina-Akshay romantic comedy

No.7 Bheja Fry – But for Vinay Pathak’s brilliance, a shameless rip-off

No.8 Partner – Govinda-Salman work their magic in this remake of Hitch

No. 9 Dhamaal - is a Bollywood film directed by Indra Kumar and starring Sanjay Dutt, Riteish Deshmukh, Aashish Chaudhary, Arshad Warsi and Javed Jaffrey.

No.10 Salaam-e-Ishq – This mushy overdose worked for Valentine’s Day

No.11 Apne – This boxing drama has Dharam Paaji’s heart

No.12 Saawariya – Strictly for world-class cinematography and some of the music

No.13 Dil Dosti Etc – A daring gutsy anti-thesis to Dil Chahta Hai

No.14 Aaja Nachle – For Madhuri Dixit alone.

No.15 Ek Chalis Ki Last Local – A rare whacky neo-noir comedy

No.16 Life in a Metro – A ‘Closer’-like candid look at relationships

No.17 Loins of Punjab – Have you ever laughed more this year?

No.18 Honeymoon Travels – A refreshing, modern look at marriage

No.19 Cheeni Kum – But for the climax, this offbeat romance ought to rank higher.

No.20 Apna Aasman – Promising debut conveniently resolved.

No.21 Manorama – If this weren’t a remake, this mystery would rank higher.

No.22 Khoya Khoya Chand – Soha’s miscast in this time machine to the 1960s

No.23 Black Friday – Though authentic, loses pace structured like the book

No.24 Water – Talk of bad casting and location ruining a great script

No.25 Dharm – Pankaj Kapoor, you are God!

No.26 Eklavya – The cinematography is sheer poetry

Commentary: Is war against Amitabh Bachchan starting to take the congress down?

2008-01-03T05:17:00.000-08:00

The Congress party will not like to admit it. However something is happening to the party of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohandas Gandhi.

The party of Uttar Pradesh's Jawaharlal Nehru and Gujrat's Mahatma Gandhi is repeatedly getting run out of Uttar Pradesh and Gujrat. And badly so. That is particularly embarassing since congress leadership walks around with the name 'Gandhi'. Their claim to Gandhi name and righteousness came due to Gujrat and Gujrat itself has asked Sonia and crew to take a hike.

In fact, when one looks around the Indian mainland core: Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarkhand, Himachal, Jharkhand, Gujrat, and Karnataka all have congress trailing Narendra Modi's BJP now. That would have been unimaginable sometime back. But it is their reality now. Congress-UPA have lost most of the elections they tried contesting in over the past several months. In the last Gujrat and Himachal Pradesh elections, it tried to test its pull with 'Chak De Congress' as its rallying cry, referring to the movie propping up Shahrukh Khan, almost universally hailed in the media and believed by some to be new congress mascot. The result however was that Congress got wiped out from both; blown away in Gujrat as well as thrown out of Himachal.

There have been many reasons given as to why congress is faring so poorly all of a sudden: quotas, treaties, price control, anti-incumbency etc. All may be legitimate but one big one may indeed have to do with Bombay. When it comes time for real power, it is not Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, or Salman Khan who congress needed, it was Amitabh Bachchan.

Instead, foolishly, congress has been trying to undermine Amitabh Bachchan over the last 2-3 years and more importantly, may have gone through an ideological shift. That's starting to prove costly now. Its ideology and its decision to go to war against Amitabh is a 1-2 punch that's starting to cost the congress across India and could eventually even bring its government to its knees.


Ram Balram: Affadavit against Lord Ram and targetting Amitabh Bachchan has only proved Narendra Modi's point about the congress party and the media and is indirectly helping Modi-ization of the country at large

Congress's mistake is that in trying to manipulate the muslim votes, it has forgotten that the dominant pillar that allowed it to exist in the first place, is the secular Hindu. More than just a Friday to Friday film star, Amitabh Bachchan is viewed as a pan-India icon of secular Hindus around the country. He is perhaps only man in the country (apart from the temporary cricketer who may be hot or cold) who bridges the north-south, east-west, rural-urban, new and old India divide. He can resonate with the activists of Bengal, with the coalmine workers of Jharkhand as well as stand up with the westerners with Cambridge degrees. And much as the congress and its minions in the media make light of the temple visits to Tirupati for example, it connects with the people of India implicitly. They can sense that Bachchans represent Hindustan core a lot more closely than some artificial clan who may have merely stolen the Gandhi name from the Gujrati Mohandas Gandhi but don't really have anything to do with him, his satyagrah, nor stand for any of his real values (he died uttering 'Hey Ram' for example, and they filed an affadavit against Ram); that they are instead trying to drive a pseudo-secular agenda upon India.

So the Congress's problem is that too many Hindus (previously secular ones included) are starting to see it not as secular but as the Islamist party of India with media including NDTV, Hindustan Times, Mid-Day and much of Bollywood essentially doing its bidding against Modi and the BJP. In fact leading upto the elections, far from being impartial, these channels and newspapers seemed to be practically leading the drumrolls against BJP, making the Hindus suspicious and ultimately more punitive. The media and Bollywood filmmakers and actors in particular have been lucky so far that apart from the odd Shiv Sena rallies, they and their anti-Hindutva platform really haven't been taken to task or come in the line of fire the way they could in more blatant ways.

The center-right Hindus already had been suspicious of Congress-UPA. Modi and crew have always claimed that Congress-UPA stands for anti-Hindutva in the guise of secularism. Thus by filing affadavits on Lord Ram earlier this year, they only confirmed what Modi was saying all along, and increased the resolve and the intensity of the antipathy against the UPA. Then by repeatedly targetting the Bachchans, symbolic of the secular Hindus, they may have turned this into their waterloo. All the IT notices, all the threats, all the fake land cases on Amitabh Bachchan (including random packets sent for now Aishwarya Bachchan) don't go unnoticed. The public sooner or later caught on to what was going on and once they started to, it started energizing the force of Hindutva, and congress started losing even the secular, liberal Hindus in significant numbers. And that may have been in part its undoing.

In many ways congress is lucky that Bachchan is not with BJP and the party that's latching onto him has been Amar Singh's leftist Samajwadi Party, which is insignificant outside Uttar Pradesh. BJP is not in power in the key state of UP as it does not have a clear, charismatic face to rally the Hindus behind its industrial, nationalized Hindutva platform there. But had Amitabh Bachchan entered the fray and become the face of BJP; considering that he hails from the symbolic land of Ayodhya itself, the rivals would have been in much bigger trouble than they already are. As it is, BJP seems capable of routing the congress even without him.

But the bottom line is that Congress party, already in the bullseye of the center-right, and which depends so much on secular Hindus, could not go against Amitabh Bachchan without paying the price. And it is starting to see that now.

Pirates favour TV shows over movies

2008-01-02T08:32:00.000-08:00

The number of illegal downloads of TV shows in 2007 reflected a much higher demand for programmes such as Heroes and Top Gear over box office movies, according to popular weblog TorrentFreak which reports on peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent. A report on behalf of the Motion Picture Association estimated that major Hollywood movie studios lost US$6.1bn through piracy in 2005 alone, with 38pc of this attributed specifically to internet piracy.

While piracy seems to have a devastating effect on the movie industry it appears to play a different role for producers of some television shows.

Website allourtv.com last year reported that one anonymous studio employee purposely leaked an episode of Pushing Daisies by uploading it onto a peer-to-peer file sharing network to drum up excitement prior to broadcast.

TorrentFreak said that while there were over 2.4m ‘torrents’ or channels made available for the TV show Heroes, the number of actual downloads would be much higher considering one file can have several torrents.

While Heroes was the top pirated TV show of the year, Top Gear came in at number 2 with 1.2m torrents followed by Battlestar Galactica and Lost.

BBC’s iPlayer, a service which went live on 25 December and which allows UK viewers to download the channel’s programming for a period of 30 days before it expires, is a move by the company to provide easily accessible programming over the net and combat piracy.

According to the BBC website, Auntie hopes that “providing high quality programmes over the internet legally, easily and at no cost will discourage illegal downloading.”

“We use streaming and DRM software to prevent illegal copying and distribution of BBC programmes to protect the rights of the people who make and appear in them,” it states.

Transformers was the top illegally downloaded movie with over 569,000 torrents or download streams, followed by US comedy Knocked Up. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End made it into the top 10 pirated movies also, but I’m not sure if Captain Jack Sparrow would approve of only making number 4 in the list.

I wear clogs recommended by Antonio Banderas

2008-01-02T08:30:00.000-08:00

The actress Olivia Williams may buy the costumes from her films, but she insists on sensible shoes

Olivia Haigh Williams studied English at Cambridge, then drama at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Now 39, she has toured with the RSC, was the lead in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998) and starred as Bruce Willis’s wife in the 1999 blockbuster The Sixth Sense. Since then she has appeared in several British films, including Lucky Break (2001) and The Heart of Me (2002), for which she won the British Independent Film Award for Best Actress. Most recently, she was Dr Moira MacTaggart in the 2006 film X-Men: The Last Stand. She is married to the American stage actor and playwright Rhashan Stone, has two young daughters and lives in North London.

If your body is jammed into a corset for 16 hours a day, it does change shape. You start putting on weight around the edges – your shoulders get fatter – but you end up with a tiny waist. You are not necessarily thinner, it’s just that the fat has travelled elsewhere.

I don’t hate my body, because it functions amazingly and does all sorts of things – including making babies and doing yoga. My job requires me to be embarrassingly unselfconscious, so I just can’t hate my body. If I want it to look its best and not to frighten people, I don’t show my knees. If I had fabulous knees I’d wear skirts up to my a**e every day.

Looks matter a lot if you want to be the glamorous lead in Hollywood movies. It’s a huge thing if you walk into an audition room and the producers and director can see you being that character. When I go to an audition I think carefully about being a blank canvas onto which they can impose their preconceptions.

I first heard about the Power of Hands charity when I was working with its founder, the costume designer Andrea Galer, on the BBC television drama Miss Austen Regrets. I was admiring the beautiful lace that she used, and the story just spilt out of her. Sri Lankan women who all were horribly affected by the tsunami make the lace. The charity ensures that this skill, and these women, can survive. It offers fair trade and proper payment for their work.

Speaking to her triggered a series of conscience-stricken thoughts in me. Women and clothes are so profoundly related but, very often, the women who wear the clothes never really think of the women who made them.

I would love to say that I always wear elegant shoes, but I love my Dansko orthopaedic clogs. Antonio Banderas recommended them. He swears by them for improving your back. Unfortunately, my husband hates the clogs so much that he hides them from me.

Do I enjoy being made-up? It depends on who’s doing it. It can be a very pleasurable experience or it can be like going to the dentist. It’s a loss of control, and provokes a sense of panic. Imagine that for two hours every morning at 5am. It’s not like on your wedding day, when people make a fuss of you – you are merely a vehicle for them to work on.

The only film I worked on that has influenced passing fashion trends was Rushmore. The director, Wes Anderson, has the most amazing eye. The costumes I wore were not particularly extraordinary, but the look of the film meant that in its wake a slice of society dressed in the same way. It was a study of eccentricity that became cool.

More often than not, I buy the clothes at the end of a movie. It can actually be quite embarrassing because these pieces often become my favourite items. A year later, when I’m doing the press for the movie, I’ll put on my favourite jacket, then find myself sitting in front of a large screen that is showing extracts from the movie and I’ll be wearing the same clothes as my character. It looks as though I’ve come in costume.

There was a dreadful occasion at the RSC when I had to die of a broken heart at the end of play. The dress I was wearing was made of white silk and had hand-painted flowers sewn all over it. There was talk of me writhing around in a pool of blood, but the costume designer just said no. She said I had to die standing up. It was the most bizarre acting requirement. People said that it was an incredible way to die – so statuesque!

Stars In Goa For New Year

2007-12-31T23:50:00.000-08:00

After a year of hard work its time for our stars to relax and enjoy the New Year and where better to kick start the year then Goa?

Before leaving for Goa on Sunday Karan Johar told us why Goa was a favourite destination; “I'm heading to Goa as most of my close friends are going to be there. Shahrukh and his family are already there. Actually, most places seem to be fun when you have friends with you. I definitely like the energy of the place and you can do your own thing.”

Shahrukh is said to be more of a homely person and likes to spend his holiday indoors, spending time with friends over board games and food. A close source claims that “Shahrukh has board games for all occasions. He has packed a few for our stay at Goa.”

Also holidaying in Goa are the likes of Arjun Rampal, Pooja Bedi and Ekta Kapoor.

Happy Holidaying!

Hollywood's new song and dance over musicals

2007-12-31T23:48:00.000-08:00

It took a while for the studio behind "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" to face the music.

In the first trailer for the new film, stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter did nothing but talk, while they do little but sing in the actual movie. Executives clearly feared that they'd scare away young audiences by admitting that the musical is, in fact, a musical.

But after a while, they decided to let the Broadway-derived movie speak – or sing – for itself and stopped hiding the songs from the trailers. "Everyone was feeling that if it's going to work, it will work because of its uniqueness," says Walter Parkes, one of its producers.

It was a good gamble. In its first weekend of release in just 1,249 theaters, "Sweeney Todd" garnered an impressive $9.4 million at the North American box office and became the latest in a string of successful musicals.

After four decades of near-obsolescence, the genre may finally be ready to return to Hollywood's mainstream. Consider: 2006's "Dreamgirls" and this year's "Hairspray" were hits, as is the quasi-musical "Enchanted." On the art-film circuit, three smaller movies gained strong reviews in 2007: "Once" (a romance between musicians in Ireland), "Across the Universe" (The Beatles, reinterpreted), and "Colma: The Musical" (a story about growing up in the "city that always sleeps," a real-life California town full of cemeteries).

And now, Disney is working on a big-screen production of "High School Musical," a hit TV franchise that's become a nursery for teen heartthrobs.

"There is definitely a trend [for Hollywood] to look at movie musicals again," despite recent flops like "Rent" and "Phantom of the Opera," says Thomas Hischak, professor of theater at State University of New York at Cortland.

The reason, as always, is money, he says. The award-gobbling "Chicago" made more than $170 million at the box office back in 2002, inspiring Hollywood's usual rush to copy any profitable trend. The Broadway play turned film "opened more doors than any musical in the past 20 years," he says.

Musicals, of course, were once much more than a footnote in Hollywood, even if their quality didn't always measure up.

"Years ago, Pauline Kael wrote that we want to like musicals, but if you actually go back and look at them, the idea of musicals ends up being better than a lot of musicals themselves," says Richard Barrios, author of "A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film." "It's easy to be nostalgic about some of them, but there aren't that many that are really all that good."

Awed by the gritty filmmaking of the 1960s and 1970s, younger audiences began to share Ms. Kael's skepticism about old-school musicals. Beyond a few exceptions such as the hit "Grease" and the expensive disaster "Annie," song-and-soft-shoe productions stopped traveling from Great White Way to silver screen.

Nowadays, musicals are on the rebound, getting modern makeovers courtesy of music-video-influenced quick cuts ("Moulin Rouge"), advanced animation technology ("Enchanted" and "Sweeney Todd"), and affordable film cameras for amateurs ("Colma: The Musical" reportedly only cost $15,000).

Musicals such as "Once," meanwhile, tinker just a bit with the classic blueprint, managing to seem both modern and timeless. The critical favorite finds charm and beauty in the intimacy of two musicians falling in love – of a sort – through song.

"There's something about music and image that provides a kind of experience for the audience that can't be replicated elsewhere," says Mr. Parkes. "There's just something about the way film musicals make you feel."

Few more years of Earl, says Jason

2007-12-31T23:46:00.001-08:00

Despite becoming an increasing presence in Hollywood with movies like Alvin And The Chipmunks, Jason Lee reckons there's still a few more years of hit US TV series My Name Is Earl left in him.

"There will be an ending of course, maybe in a few more years, but not yet," he says. "We're making better TV in some ways than we are movies."

However, due to the Hollywood writers' strike continuing, Jason is left twiddling his thumbs until the strike ends and he can get back to work.

"I'm just waiting to get back on Earl - I don't really have anything lined up," he says.

"I can't really afford to run away for three months and do a film, at the risk of the strike ending and them calling me back. So unfortunately I'm unemployed and just kind of waiting for the strike to end."

Luckily he's got a few things to keep him occupied.

"I'm moving into a new house and hanging out with my son," he says. "It's a nice little break, but with each day that passes, I'm not making money from work. But I want the writers to get what they feel they deserve."

Few more years of Earl, says Jason

2007-12-31T23:46:00.000-08:00

Hollywood cant seem to kill off the Alien films

2007-12-31T23:43:00.000-08:00

IT WAS a stylish upgrade of the space monster from the B movies of the50s, a murderous creature that obliterated the sci-fi optimism established by Star Trek and Star Wars.

Numerous versions of the relentless, otherworldly killer from the Alien movie series have burst forth over the last 28 years. The most recent product of this creative hive arrived in theaters Christmas Day with the R-rated Aliens vs. Predator — Requiem.

Among the assorted incarnations of the creature from the Alien universe:

-1979: With the tagline In space, no one can hear you scream, Alien, the Ridley Scott-directed sci-fi scarefest, premiered. The movie lands somewhere between 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

-1982: Atari 2600 console features the first Alien video game. Like the film series, the alien presence in video games in later years evolves to include an arcade version of the Aliens film and a Game Boy version of Alien 3.

-1986: Terminator director James Cameron reworks the franchise in Aliens, an adrenaline-saturated movie sequel that broke new ground with Sigourney Weavers character Ripley reimagined as an interstellar female Rambo.

-1988: Dark Horse Comics publishes its Aliens title, which places survivors of the 1986 movie on a mission to destroy the creatures home world.

-1989: The Aliens vs. Predator comic, also published by Dark Horse, puts a group of interplanetary ranchers in a battle between the hissing monsters and deadlyextraterrestrial hunters introduced in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Predator.

-1990: In the film Predator 2, an alien skull is on display as a hunting trophy in the title characters ship.

-1992: After losing everyone she cares about, Ripley shaves her head and teams up with convicts in a monastic penal colony to fight one of the killer parasitoids in the claustrophobic Alien 3 film.

-1997: Ripley, resurrected through a cloning process two centuries after the previous film was set, is joined by space pirates as they attempt to stop the genetically engineered creatures from getting to Earth in the movie Alien: Resurrection.

-2004: In the film AVP: Alien vs. Predator, a group of researchers investigating an archaeological site in Antarctica are caught between the master hunters from the Predator movies and a fresh crop of aliens.

-2007: Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem brings the fight to middle America when a Predator ship unintentionally releases its slimy cargo on humanity when it crashes in small-town Colorado.

Reach Mark de la Vina at mdelavina@mercurynews.com or 408—920-5914.

....... Numerous versions of the relentless, otherworldly killer from the Alien" series have burst forth over the last 28 years.

Hollywood Gets Preachy, On and Off Screen

2007-12-31T23:41:00.001-08:00

Religion is often the backdrop for many Hollywood movies, and these days, with crime on the rise in Tinseltown, most actors need atonement more than their Screen Actors Guild dental benefits.

Modern day matinee idols, sports icons, tabloid celebs and opinion gurus are greeted and treated as if they were here on earth as guests of the almighty, and their ubiquitous appearances onscreen were messages from the divine. In fact, they are just highly paid overexposed mortals in need of some divine intervention for one sin or another.

(Side note — my friends and I always laugh at the fact that, when I have a chance encounter with people, their first exclamation is "Oh, my God!," when clearly, I am not — just human.)

Many thespians have had the honorable opportunity to play God as the omnipresent, chic man, usually in a white suit, with a subtle, guiding opinion — the way the film industry has stylishly chosen to portray him, however chauvinistic it may be.

The late George Burns was the voice of the king of the universe in "Oh, God!" Morgan Freeman portrayed the almighty in "Bruce Almighty" and its sequel, "Evan Almighty." James Caviezel incited demonstrations playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," the religious biopic blockbuster that broke records and headlines.

However, Hollywood is historically and notoriously known to be heavily run by its Jewish population, and therefore, Jewish-themed or -inspired films are often industry insider favorites — "Schindler's List," "Cabaret" and "Life Is Beautiful," to name a few.

I wonder if the people making these films expect an EZ Pass lane to the heavens for delivering God's message by any means necessary. Today, more and more religions are represented by the Hollywood community, and celebrities often are very public about their affiliations, donations and inspirations.

When Tina Turner finally broke free from her abusive and controlling svengali husband, Ike Turner, she found a new beginning through Buddhism, which helped with her monumental comeback in the '80s. Though Shirley McClaine has never done a film version of her books, in the '80s and '90s she was groundbreaking in her use of her fame to spread her new age philosophies, though she was often the brunt of airy-fairy jokes.

Roger Marshutz, 78; Hollywood photographer

2007-12-31T23:40:00.000-08:00

Roger Marshutz, a photographer whose images of a young Elvis Presley reaching out to his fans, Marilyn Monroe at the height of her fame and other celebrity shots appeared in fan magazines, on posters and in movie publicity kits during the 1950s and '60s, has died. He was 78.

Marshutz died Dec. 15 at his home in Los Angeles of pancreatic cancer, his wife, Nancy, said.

Marshutz began working as a Hollywood photographer in the mid-1950s, taking pictures of the most famous actors of the day, including Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn and Paul Newman. At times, he was hired by movie studios to photograph actors for news kits promoting their latest movies. He also worked on assignment for Photoplay and other popular picture magazines.

One of his best known images shows Presley at an outdoor concert in Tupelo, Miss., in 1956, singing to a crowd and reaching for the hands closest to the stage. The photograph first appeared in Photoplay.

On another assignment for Photoplay in 1956, Marshutz photographed Monroe, wearing a black slip dress and long, sparkling earrings, her star power showing. By then she had appeared in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and "The Seven Year Itch," two of her most popular films.

Marshutz's photograph of actor Anthony Perkins shows the actor in shadows, riding a bicycle. It was taken in 1957, three years before Perkins played his most famous role as the shadowy Norman Bates in "Psycho."

On a typical day as a Hollywood photographer, "I'd go to somebody's house, like Natalie Wood's or Kim Novak's and spend an afternoon," Marshutz recalled in a 2003 interview with Los Angeles magazine. Other days he worked on a movie lot, snapping pictures of a film in production.

He got started as a photographer in the early 1950s during the Korean War. He served in the Army and was stationed in Pusan, working for the Army Pictorial Service. He documented U.S. military outreach services to the local community, and in his spare time, he wandered the city streets taking pictures of street vendors, shoeshine boys, schoolchildren and others. Some of the images were displayed in "Reconfiguring Korea," a 2006 exhibit at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.

Along with his work as a Hollywood photographer through the 1960s, Marshutz worked as a commercial photographer for retailers, airline companies and other clients. He also took photos on his own of former gang members and homeless people as well as scenes in nature. He exhibited his work at several local galleries.

Marshutz was born in Los Angeles on Oct. 17, 1929. He attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo but did not graduate and later studied photography at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

He was married three times. Along with his wife, Nancy, he is survived by two sons, one daughter, four stepchildren and several grandchildren.

Contributions in his name can be made to the Patty Boshell Pancreatic Cancer Foundation, 102 NE 2nd St., Suite 280, Boca Raton, FL 33432.

Madonna movie to premiere in Berlin

2007-12-31T23:37:00.000-08:00

The first film directed by pop icon Madonna is to have its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival from February 7-17, organisers announced today.

Filth And Wisdom, a romantic musical comedy reportedly based on the star's own experiences, is Britain's entry in the festival's Panorama section, but will not be in line for an award in the main competition.

It is not clear if Madonna, 49, will put in an appearance in Berlin, but directors usually show up for the premieres of their movies.

The lead role is played by Eugene Huetz, whose Gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello accompanied Madonna during a concert in London this year. Other actors include Stephen Graham and Richard E. Grant.

Madonna, who is married to British director Guy Ritchie, does not appear in the film. Her last major role was in the musical Evita.

Around 50 works are entered in the Berlinale's Panorama section, among them efforts by Canadian underground star Bruce LaBruce and Taiwanese female director Zero Chou.

Hollywood headed for banner year at box office

2007-12-31T23:35:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood is poised to end the year with a record $9.7 billion in domestic movie receipts, up 4 percent from 2006, but the gain will be fueled largely by higher ticket prices, box office tracking service Media By Numbers said on Thursday.

A handful of holiday season hits, led by Will Smith's sci-fi thriller "I Am Legend," propelled the movie business out of its autumn slump and set the stage for 2007's theatrical film revenues to surpass the 2004 benchmark of $9.45 billion.

Through Christmas Day, total U.S.-Canadian ticket sales stood at about $9.3 billion, already matching the year-end tally for 2006, when revenues grew by 3.8 percent.

But analysts said much of the increase was a function of ticket price inflation that offset a lack of growth in film attendance. Media by Numbers said ticket prices were up about 4 percent from last year.

Movie admissions are expected to remain nearly flat for the year, with Media By Numbers projecting a scant 0.17 percent increase over 2006 to 1.42 billion tickets sold. That would still be down considerably from the high-water attendance mark of 1.6 billion admissions in 2002.

Admissions were especially hard hit this year during a string of post-summer movies with somber themes, like "Michael Clayton" and war-related dramas "In the Valley of Elah" and "Rendition." The films were praised by critics but left audiences cold.

"I Am Legend," grossing more than $150 million since its record December opening two weeks ago, helped reinvigorate the market, along with "Alvin and the Chipmunks" and last weekend's top film, the Nicolas Cage adventure sequel "National Treasure: Book of Secrets."

WILL SMITH AND CHIPMUNKS TO THE RESCUE

"Those movies really turned things around, giving us a nice boost at the very end of the year," said analyst Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers.

All three movies are emblematic of the kind of escapist fare that was most successful this year -- adventures and fantasy themes, family films and comedy, he said.

Sequels, too, were a big part of the equation, especially the trio of "threequel" blockbusters that launched a record $4 billion-plus summer season in May -- superhero tale "Spider-Man 3," computer-animated storybook satire "Shrek the Third" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End."

Each grossed well over $100 million in its debut weekend, an unparalleled cluster of smash openings that provided momentum for a string of summer hits that followed, including "Transformers," "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," "The Simpsons Movie" and "The Bourne Ultimatum."

Brandon Gray, president of online movie publication Box Office Mojo, was less enthusiastic about sequels and the overall health of the industry.

He said only one sequel this year, "The Bourne Ultimatum," exceeded its franchise predecessor at the domestic box office. He added a greater number of wide-release films this year, a record 189 playing in 600 theaters or more, helped account for this year's revenue gains.

The year started off with first-quarter hits like geriatric biker comedy "Wild Hogs," the Will Ferrell ice-skating spoof "Blades of Glory," the warrior epic "300" and the comic thriller "Disturbia."

(Editing by Arthur Spiegelman and Peter Cooney)

Registry locks up fan fave, home movie

2007-12-31T23:31:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON -- By Stephen Clark's account, 2007 had been a pretty bad year for his favorite film.

Universal decided to shutter the "Back to the Future" rides at its theme parks, and it looked as if the movie was fading like Marty McFly's relatives in his photograph. Traffic was still good at Clark's Web site BTTF.com, but the Athens. Ala., resident felt it needed a boost.

He received one Thursday when Librarian of Congress James Billington picked the 1985 hit as one of the 25 selected this year for inclusion in the National Film Registry.

"Just this year they closed the 'BTTF' rides at the theme parks," he said. "I thought this would be really great to cap off what had been a pretty bad year for 'BTTF.' "

The selection was due in no small part to Clark's effort and some goading from an archivist at the library known to Clark only by the Web nom de plume Frisbee the Cat. Oh yeah, and a "guy" at The Hollywood Reporter.

"I read an article in The Hollywood Reporter about 'Caddyshack,' " he told that guy -- me -- in an interview. "The guy wanted to get that in the film list. I thought, 'So that's how it works.' "

Clark took the advice and posted a message on his Web site. That very day, the messages started coming in.

"It's a very good film, and there was a very large write-in campaign," said Steve Leggett, staff director of the National Film Preservation Board.

Clark also was aided by Liz Stanley, a Library of Congress archivist and "BTTF" fan who knew that public input weighs heavily in what gets in. So, she made sure that "BTTF's" superfan knew about it.

"I got it into my head that 'BTTF' needed to be in the National Registry," Stanley said. "I'd discovered the site and used it as a reference work. I wrote to him."

Frisbee the Cat, by the way, is Stanley.

While a write-in campaign helped put an enduring hit on this year's list, a movie that is the antithesis of the big-budget production perhaps best signifies why the federal government should care about film preservation.

"Our Day" is a 1938 film about a day in the life of the Kelly family. The 12-minute home movie shot by Wallace Kelly depicts his family as they go about their lives in Lebanon, Ky. The cast was made up of his mother, wife, brother and pet terrier. "Our Day" also contains exceptional images of small-town Southern life, ones that counter the stereotype of impoverished people eking out a living after the Depression.

"What really caught everyone's eye was how well it was made," said Dwight Swanson, an archival consultant and board member at the Center for Home Movies. "Most home movies are tedious to watch. It just looked beautiful."

Like a Hollywood movie, "Our Day" is successful because it was made by a talented individual.

"He did what a Hollywood director would have done at that time," Swanson said.

Swanson saw the film at the Center for Home Movies' annual Home Movie Night. The center and the Kelly family have agreed to have the 16mm film blown up to 35mm. Swanson hopes that they can get Kelly's entire collection preserved in the center's archive and then kept at the Library of Congress.

"To me it's interesting because it shows my parents when they were young," Martha Kelly told The Hollywood Reporter. "But the people who didn't know my family all love it for the 1938 minutia. Grandmother cooks on an electric stove, but there's a coal stove in the background that she just can't bear to get rid of."

Martha says her father may have lived in small-town America, but he wasn't a rube. He studied art, loved New York City and took a stab at being a book illustrator until the 1929 stock market crash and a heart attack brought him back home to central Kentucky to help publish the Lebanon Enterprise.

"He was trying to be an artsy-fartsy person in the middle of Kentucky," Martha said. "It was lonely."

In addition to his newspaper work, he became a professional photographer.

"I'm not saying he was a filmmaker, but he went at it in a sophisticated way," Martha said. "He'd walk two miles to get just the right shot of the car coming down the road. No mountain was too high, no rock was too precarious to balance on to get the right shot."

Films like "Our Day" are often the ones that are at the greatest risk. The major studios now make an effort to preserve their films as they continue to make money. Home movies, however, get stuffed in a box and put in a closet if they're lucky.

In many ways, though, home movies might have greater interest to future generations than documentaries or fictional efforts because they show people more as they actually were, Swanson said.

"The way they depict themselves and show their lives is more direct and honest than what Hollywood was doing at the time," he said.

"Tom, Tom the Piper's Son" is a preservation double whammy. Ken Jacobs' landmark avant-garde film uses an old paper-print film as its source material.

Until Aug. 24, 1912, there was no provision in the law allowing for the copyrighting of film. Movie makers submitted paper prints allowing them to get copyrighted as photographs until the law was changed.

Jacobs used a 1905 paper print from the Library of Congress of a cinema short of the fairy-tale song to explore the parameters of film art. A "structuralist film" masterpiece, Jacobs uses techniques ranging from slow and studied examinations of individual paper print images to probing experiments in manipulation of motion and light.

The structuralist film theory emphasizes how a movie conveys meaning through the use of codes and conventions much like a language is used to construct meaning in communication. Jacobs took this on as he made his film between 1969-71 as he ripped apart the five-minute short and reconstructed it into a 115-minute film.

"I try to get people to wake up to what's going on," Jacobs told The Hollywood Reporter. "Every image is so loaded. It's a point of view whether you want to have it or not."

In an e-mail, Jacobs said the selection was a pleasant surprise.

"Imagine, a story about the theft of a small pig getting this sort of spotlight!" he wrote.

While "Tom, Tom" was filmed by Billy Bitzer, who was director D.W. Griffiths' favorite cameraman, Jacobs said it looked as if someone just filmed a play.

"If, as a kid, you've been to a three-ring circus and don't know where to rest your eyes, this is a 20-ring circus," he said. "It's just an barrage of turmoil."

From that barrage, Jacobs takes every explosion and deconstructs it and then does it again, but he never anticipated making something that other people might want to watch and learn from.

"I was teaching at St. John's University, and it had this thing called a budget. It allowed me to rent things and do things," he said. "I was really obsessed. Doing something that excited me. I expected it to go out and get lost. This is a breathtaking surprise."

Bipasha Basu to make debut in Bengali cinema

2007-12-31T23:15:00.000-08:00

Kolkata, Dec 27: After making it big in Bollywood, the Bengal beauty Bipasha Basu has found a place in Tollywood in West Bengal.

Bipasha's maiden movie will be directed by much sought after director Rituporna Gosh.

Titled 'Saab Choritro Kalpanik' (All characters fictitious) will feature Bengali matinee idol Prasanjit Chatterjee, who is a tad shorter than Bipasha.

Giving a media briefing about the movie here recently, Gosh said Bengal's cultural heritage plays a key role in the film.

"It is a film about Bengali culture. I think that would be more broad and general description, where all Tagore, Jeevan Anand, Joy and the entire Bengal cultural heritage plays a key role," said Gosh.

Instead of using songs, Rituparno has been experimenting with poetry. It is said that as many as 20 poems are used in the movie. Eminent poet Jay Goswami has written most of the poems being used in the movie.

Immensely successful both as an item number girl and an actress, Bipasha has been conspicuous by her absence from Bengali celluloid.

In 'Saab Choritro Kalpanik', Bipasha is playing the role of Pransejit's wife. The hero is a poet and poetry plays a big part in the film. The story is about a Bengali girl living outside the state returning home to her roots.

"I know the level of intensity that was required out of this particular girl. Because firstly she is much more mature than me and in terms of age she is much older than me. So to understand that relationship with a man and to understand the relationship with the lost roots, there is lot of imagination of this girl that goes into the film," said Bipasha.

The deal for the movie was done quite some time ago but given Rituporna's manner of working he kept Bipasha's maiden Bengali film venture under wraps till recently.

Apart from 'Saab Choritro Kalpanik', Bipasha will be playing a role in Raj Kumar Santoshi's 'Ashoka' in Bollywood. The film will be based on the life of the great ancient Indian King Ashoka. She will also playing a part in Sir Ben Kingsley's film, Taj Mahal.

Bipasha first film was 'Ajnabi' directed by Abbas Mastan. After that she established herself in Bollywood and came out with flying colours.

She never looked back after 'Ajnabi'. Other movies like 'Raaz', 'Jism', andNo Entry', to name a few followed with relative ease.

Her acting talent was on show in 'Corporate' directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, where she played the role of rising corporate executive. Her acting put her firmly in place.

Taare Zameen Par: A movie for the Oscars

2007-12-31T23:13:00.000-08:00

AS I walked out of the theatre I realised there was something weighing me down. Was it just the weight of the bag that I was carrying? Or was it the emotions that had engulfed me and refrained from leaving me even as the end credits rolled on.

Aamir perfectionist Khan, the director has well and truly arrived. He has made a cinematic masterpiece in the form of Taare Zameen Par. The year 2007 had been a disastrous for Bollywood but as they say, the best is reserved for the last. Taare Zameen Par has very sensitively portrayed an issue like dyslexia, without being didactic or preachy. I hate people thinking of it as a problem or a disease, as the movie sets out to prove it is a mere characteristic and not a shortcoming.

The nine year old brilliant Darsheel Safary (a complete natural) is beyond doubt the star of the film. It is his sheer innocence on screen that captures our heart. The dyslexic child has immense problems in differentiating between numbers and letters and struggles with the 3 R’s, but when it comes to drawing or painting he shows tremendous creativity. His family is unable to understand his problems, which lead to inevitable comparisons between him and his brother, who is a topper in his class. Under the belief that only strict disciplinary action is the way out, the child is sent to a boarding school. But this happens to hamper his growth even further, as his only passion (painting) takes a backseat until he meets his temporary art teacher Ram Nikumbh (Aamir Khan), who perhaps has the perfect cure for his problem.

This movie has scenes, which are bound to last with you for days. The Solomon Islands example illustrates to all parents and teachers what the right way of dealing with children is. In the scene, Aamir explains to Darsheel’s father as to what taking care of children is all about, is bound to move you to tears or the one in which Darsheel’s mother goes through his flicker book, is sure to make you cry. The climax of the film has Darsheel winning the art competition - an achievement reminiscent of Aamir Khan’s cycle race win in ‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander’ and by no means less in magnitude.

The movie uses animation not to create comic effects but to dive into the wild imagination of the child. You will not find unnecessary animation here that was prevalent in other films that released this year (Cash and Ta Ra Rum Pum). The sequence in which Darsheel uses Earth and Pluto to multiply 3 by 9 is sure to tickle your funny bone. The simplistic nature of the film is what appeals to you. The daily schedule of the mother is very realistically portrayed in the song Jame raho. The relationship between the teacher (Aamir) and Darsheel has been shown very elegantly also. Other splendid performances include the mother and father of Darsheel, who have acted brilliantly. Without them the movie would not have been possible.

The credit for the success of the film goes to its script. The writer and visionary, Amol Gupte has created a wonderful story. But Aamir Khan has emerged as a highly sensible director, not making his entry into the film till the interval because the script didn’t demand it. Soulful music by Shankar Ehsaan Loy is an asset to the film and the wonderful lyrics offered by Prasoon Joshi blend perfectly with the story.

It is sad that Aamir Khan doesn’t attend film award ceremonies because here was a film, which he would surely receive an award for. If our committee that sends movies to the Oscars is sane enough, I’m sure this movie will be our official entry for the Oscars. Amongst all the stars that descend on our planet in this movie, the one that outshines all others is the real hero of the film Darsheel. A wonderful actor, who has portrayed the role of a dyslexic child to perfection, his eyes and his face emote more than most of our young actors in Bollywood do. Don’t be surprised, if Darsheel would pip Shahrukh Khan as the best actor of the year. He deserves to. But then again, children never get nominated for such categories in our film industry. He’ll just take home the Best Child Actor award.

You rarely see a movie that has a social message attached to it, but yet turns out to be a commercial success. It is by far the best film of the year. It tackles dyslexia, our education system and parenting, all of them in a very sensitive way. It doesn’t stop there, even when the end credits roll on there is a message against child labour conveyed through the video. This is a movie about Aamir - the director and Darsheel - the actor. When you go for the movie, get ready to shed some tears, not because it is a sad film but because it is highly overwhelming.

Hrithik knows what he wants: Rakesh Roshan

2007-12-31T22:58:00.000-08:00

He is in no mood to bask in the glory of the success of Krrish, which is among the highest-grossing movies at the box office this year. Now, he wants to focus on something unique.

“That’s where the challenge of a director lies,” says director Rakesh Roshan, when we catch up with him for a chat.

There have been reports of Krrish 2 in the media. Is that accurate? “No, nothing of that sort. I need my own time to think of an idea and then work on it. It is quite an uphill task,” says the maker of films like Khudgarz, Khoon Bhari Maang, Karan Arjun and Koi Mil Gaya, who was in town for an event.

Two hits in a row. Has that added to his responsibility as a filmmaker? “Responsibility is always there. It’s been there since my first film. That should be the key to your functioning. I believe in not letting success go to my head and moving on,” says Roshan, adding that one has to constantly take note of what the audience wants, which is why, “I give a lot of time to myself”. Son Hrithik Roshan is back with a bang with Krrish. With Dhoom 2 slated to release next week, expectations are piling up.

“I haven’t seen Dhoom 2 but to me Hrithik has had the same level of commitment and sincerity as he used to when he was my assistant director. I have never advised him on anything. He is sensible and knows what he wants,” says Roshan.

But like a proud father Roshan is delighted that his son is signing the Rs 25 crore deal with Adlabs, making him the highest priced actor in Bollywood. “It’s not a question of money. It is a question of producers actually acknowledging his calibre as an actor and giving him his due and honouring his remuneration.”

Roshan is positive when it comes to assessing the current scenario in the film industry.

“I think Bollywood is passing through a great phase compared to last year. There has been a huge improvement in terms of content, most of the films have done well, almost all the producers have got their films released, so there is reason enough to smile,” winds up Roshan before saying good night.

‘Big-hearted, innovative & always tried new things’

2007-12-31T22:57:00.001-08:00

GP Sippy’s reputation as the maker of Sholay (1975) is enough to earn him a position in any listing of eminent Indian filmmakers. But there were other successful and critically-acclaimed movies to his banner’s credit like Andaz (1971), Saagar (1985) and Brahmachari (1968).

Though Brahmachari propelled his GP Sippy Productions into the league of the then reputed filmmaking banners, it was also during the making of Brahmachari that Sippy contemplated bidding adieu to filmmaking and concentrate on his hotel business. He ran into frequent bottlenecks in the making of the Shammi Kapoor-starrer that eventually got him the best film Filmfare.

Ups and downs dogged the career of this indomitable scion of a rich Sindhi family like the success of Sholay being followed by the colossal multi-starrer dream gone astray in Shaan (1980). Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1995) was perhaps the last significant film from the Sippy banner that won him production credits before the forgettable Hamesha (1997).

Sippy, 93, who was suffering from age-related ailments for the past few months, died on Tuesday night and was cremated on Wednesday.

Sippy (1915-2007) started with carpet-selling business and moved on to construction—many even call him the pioneer of introducing flat system in Mumbai—before being bitten by the filmmaking bug in the 1950s.

Launching the GP Sippy Productions with the Dev Anand-starrer Sazaa (1951), Sippy switched over to direction with Marine Drive (1955) starring Ajit, Bina Rai and KN Singh. As producer-director he enjoyed a sustaining run through the fifties with films like Adil-e-Jahangir (1955, Pradeep Kumar, Meena Kumari and Durga Khote) followed by Shrimati 420 (1956, Johny Walker, Meena), Bhai Bahen (1959, Daisy Irani, Kanwaljeet) and Mr India (1961, Johny Walker, Om Prakash) with modest star casts.

The banner’s first tryst with big stars and box office success came in the sixties with Mere Sanam (1965, Asha Parekh, Biswajeet), Brahmachari (1968), Bandhan (1969, Rajesh Khanna, Mumtaz) and Andaz (1971), all of which had GP Sippy limited to the producing brief. Andaz also marked the debut of son Ramesh Sippy as a director with GP Sippy Productions. The success of the “different” film revolving around a widow and a widower brought together by their respective kids encouraged the producer-director duo to opt for a bigger gamble with Seeta Aur Geeta (1972). At a time when hero-oriented films ruled the box-office it was considered harakiri to do a film with a new female actress in a double role with the heroes Sanjeev Kumar and Dharmendra reduced to supporting props. But the film’s success not only set on roll Hema Malini’s rule on top through the 1970s as Bollywood’s longest reigning leading star actress, but also gave the industry one of its most successful and experimentative father-son producer-director jodi making some of the most memorable films of Bollywood, topped by Sholay in 1975.

Though the duo’s box-office touch went missing in subsequent partnerships like Shaanand Saagar, the elder Sippy continued to be an inspiration to the third generation filmmakers from the family like Rohan Sippy at home and the film industry at large as chairman of the Film and TV Producers Guild of India four times through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Shammi Kapoor, who worked with him in films like Andaz and Bharmachari, said, “His contribution to the film industry is fabulous. He made the biggest blockbuster Sholay and gave the film industry a brilliant director in Ramesh Sippy. He was big-hearted, innovative and always tried new things. I knew him before he became a film producer. In the ’60s, I would visit his Marine Drive house with my late wife Geeta. He was a great pal of mine. We would go for races together. He was very fond of dog races held in London. He was a great man.”

Dev Anand, who acted in Sippy’s first film Sazaa, which was directed by Fali Mistry, said, “He was the leader of the movie industry. We will miss him.”

Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par - a masterpiece

2007-12-31T22:51:00.000-08:00

THE DIRECTORIAL debut of Aamir Khan has sent waves around Bollywood providing an answer to ‘can actors be good directors?’Well they truly can, this is what Aamir has proved, setting an example for the whole industry with Taare Zameen Par. The movie has not only received high critical appreciation, it is also one of the best movies of 2007, an otherwise not a very successful year for Bollywood.

Known for doing films once a year, Aamir has shown why does he do so by going deep into the subject of the script and then coming out with award winning movies. Aamir has brilliantly portrayed the mysterious, magical child who suffers from dyslexia.

The movie has beautifully shown the inner world of the curious child, whose world is beyond books. It also brings out how insensitive parents can get their children become involved in the rat race to be among the top rankers in this world, where competition is the norm and regimentation the principle.

But Taare Zameen Par is so vast and meaningful in its script that the film not only depicts the life of a single child but takes all those children into its ambit who struggle in this world to survive and who want to explore but their curiosity is killed because of the same old theoretical way to teach children. One cannot judge that Aamir is better as an actor or as a director.

The story is straightforward and instantaneously gels with each grown-up person and kid in the theatre. Even as the high point is unsurprising and plays closely on your sentiment, but what pushes the film is its very plain, and sensitive storyline and the acting. The script is not traditional, which has some bad characters. It is the depiction of Ishaan (Darsheel), who trapezes between problems of dyslexia and his wonderful world of imagination. And holding it all together is Aamir Khan, who delivers a spell bounding performance as a teacher.

Despite all the praises, the movie does get repetitive in the second half where the scripts needs a bit of taut editing, the trauma of the lonely child seems a shade too prolonged and the treatment simplistic but the overall mesmerising effect nullifies the so called negatives of the film, because of which the film never stops tugging at our heartstrings.

With movies like these, Bollywood has a taken a giant leap and has proved to make meaningful cinema, which is so widely appreciated by all. I strongly recommend compulsory screening of this movie for all students, teachers and parents.

Taare Zameen Par adds to Christmas sparkle at BO

2007-12-31T22:47:00.000-08:00

NEW DELHI: Four days after the release of Taare Zameen Par, actor, co-producer and director Aamir Khan is a happy man. His maiden directorial venture has received a “dream response” from his fans. Despite an initial tiff between exhibitors and distributors on revenue sharing, both Taare Zameen Par (TZP) and Welcome have managed to rake in the moolah, turning the yuletide extended weekend into a premiere season, as important as Diwali for Bollywood.

TZP, which opened with 425 prints pan-India, has raked in Rs 15 crore at the domestic box office in the first three days. PVR Pictures’ first co-production is expected to touch an estimated Rs 20-21 crore by Tuesday-end in revenues. TZP’s co-producer & director Aamir Khan told ET: “The movie has received a great response. I got a standing ovation from fans. It has appealed to all age groups — from 15-45 years, parents to kids — and it is being watched repeatedly. I agree the movie has been marketed well and it was a good week for the release. But I think if the content is bad, marketing alone cannot save any movie. TZP’s storyline has been received well by all.”

He added that an estimated Rs 3 crore was spent on marketing the movie in the domestic circuit. “We got a good response overseas with the US market. The movie is being appreciated and the collections are good,” Mr Khan said. Talking about future targets for his company, Aamir Khan Productions (AKPL), he said: “AKPL would target a variety of relevant scripts — some more mainstream, others less so. But I would strive to make movies that have good scripts and are economically viable for everyone involved with them. This is something which I have learnt in the past 20 years of my career.”

AKPL has lined up projects with partners like PVR Pictures and UTV in the near future. Mr Khan will be next seen in the role of a producer in another PVR co-production Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na where he is launching his nephew Imran Khan.

His next as an actor will be the Hindi remake of Tamil film Ghajini. “I don’t know when will I next direct a movie; it depends on the kind of scripts I get,” he added. Aamir Khan, however, denied that he is consciously moving towards non-commercial cinema. “It is not a conscious decision. My last movie Fanaa was a commercial film. In fact my next (Ghajini remake) would be an action flick. So, it all depends on the kind of scripts I get and like.”

Once more, with intensity

2007-12-31T22:44:00.000-08:00

Madhuri Dixit’s Aaja Nachle deserves a relook. It celebrated a double drama. One is of the small town in touch with its fantasies, and the other of middle age refusing to return to the Middle Ages

Bollywood has a special understanding of fantasy and reality. In it, cinema and reality don’t separate themselves, they merge osmotically into each other. The recognition of this is caught best in the names of heroes in movies. They often use their own first names, like Vinod, Amit or Akshay. It is an acknowledgement that in a cinematic society, cinema as myth and society as reality blur in social life.

When Madhuri Dixit’s Aaja Nachle was released, reviewers failed to understand this grammar. The story is about a dancer who comes back to her little town to revive a dance troupe as a tribute to her guru. We are simultaneously watching the story of a major film star returning to the movies after several years. She is older now, her face may not carry the youth and freshness of the earlier years. The second drama asks whether the fans will accept this older woman. The two stories in fact become parallel scripts, double lenses through which the audience watches the movie.

The reviewers, of course, lambasted both stories, contending that both the film and the drama of Madhuri’s return were failures. The most generous eked out a couple of stars. What I would like to argue is that not only were the reviews bad, but that they were failures of the cinematic imagination that drives India.

Let me rephrase the script sociologically. In India, today, two events have a dramatic quality as social facts. One is the growth of the small town as the agent of globalisation, and the second is the explosion of the body and its fragmentation. The body as a floating signifier includes the body of the beauty contest, the body as organ, the sexual body of the new generation and the bonded body of tradition, all seeking to define the body politic.

Aaja Nachle is a movie that understands these scripts brilliantly. It is a story of an Indian dancer, who returns to her small town. She seeks to recreate the legend of Laila-Majnu as a contemporary play. The Laila-Majnu of the play merge with the fantasies and romances of a small town. The developers are planning a large mall and therefore the theatre has to come down. The play captures small town fantasies, doubts, failures and the need to dream again and again. Small towns contain large dreams and little neighbourhoods enact big fantasies.

All Madhuri has for her musical are some out of shape enthusiasts. She teaches them the power of aerobics. Aerobics is not just the American response to Yoga, it is an attempt to defreeze the Indian body, which, at the most, is capable of a few gyrations it calls ‘bhangra’, at marriages and birthdays. The movie is virtually asking us to recover the body, renounce middle-age fat, old age, debility, and the sloth and pulp of the middle class. Dance is a therapy to a new self and the dance offered is a democratic space accessible to all classes.

The focus is not just on the cinematic events, but on Madhuri’s return as well. In a cinematic sense, Amitabh Bachchan achieved the first step in Baghban and later went on to demonstrate that being 60 does not call for the imagination of withered spirituality, but is a moment for renewed physicality and sexuality.

But Amitabh as a perennial star is still a gendered performance. He underlines possibilities available to the retired man, as professional manager, doctor or banker. Bollywood movies are harsh to actresses beyond a certain age. They are condemned to playing mothers, mothers-in-law, greying crones. Our society is harsh on women whose eyes acquire crow-lines, or creases.

Madhuri’s return is an answer to that drama. The face is older, more tired, but alive in a different way. It has a maturity of another kind, of a woman who has made mistakes but still feels confident enough to go on, who sees her art as freedom and freedom as an art, who is aware of her sexuality and not ready to let age stereotypes annex it. There is a power to her dance, a flexibility to her body, even if it is not the suppleness of youth.

The beauty of Madhuri’s return was something M.F. Husain was ready to understand and celebrate. But not our reviewers, not wishing to yield to that sense of liberation she was evoking. They trashed the script, the narrative, the direction, but they did not see the double drama that the movie celebrates. One is of the small town in touch with its fantasies and the other of middle-age refusing to return to the middle ages. This message codes both Madhuri the actor and the real life star.

Bollywood has the courage to open these questions which our social sciences do not. Our marketing men think life begins at 20 and ends at 30. But a bit of sociology would teach them that beyond the much-touted change of youth, is the quieter, harder sociological drama of middle and old age, which has a different nuance and intensity. Aaja Nachle is an intimation to that possibility. Let us not drown it in its reviewers’ stereotypes.

Popcorn entertainment!

2007-12-31T22:39:00.000-08:00

Almost every other Bollywood flick that released this year and proved to be a hit was termed ‘pure time pass’.

‘IF you have nothing else to do over the weekend and want to enjoy some no-brainer entertainment, this movie is for you,’ the critics said time and again this year. Even those promoting the films said audiences would have to leave their brains at home to enjoy these films.

"People are living such stressful lives, they don’t want to go into a cinema hall and take on more tension," says actor Shreyas Talpade. "No doubt, films like Chak De! India and Shootout at Lokhandwala are lauded, but at the end of the day, the audience wants to come out feeling good," he says.

And a no-brainer appeals to the masses, says actor Kirron Kher. "It’s like mass-produced clothes that are not of great quality but sell. The masses don’t have an acquired taste. Today’s multiplex audience is looking for full-on entertainment," she says.

When we say no-brainers, we’re not just talking about comedies. While there are films like Partner, Dhamaal, Bheja Fry and Satyavan Savitri from down south, other entertainers that fit the bill are Ta Ra Rum Pum, Honeymoon Travels, Jaaneman, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, Om Shanti Om and the most-talked about Rajinikant-starrer, Sivaji.

"Comedy, action, thriller or tragedy... if a film can entertain, it is sure to do well," says actor Sajid Khan, who turned director with Heyy Babyy. "A no-brainer doesn’t mean no work has gone into putting the film together. Even pure entertainers need to be classy. You can’t take the audience for granted," he says.
Stand-up comedian and theatre person Rubi Chakravarti also objects to people associating no-brainers with comedies. "You have to be rather smart to enjoy comedy. Unfortunately, filmmakers think they can get away with some comic situations, repeat overused SMS jokes and make fun of certain segments of society and cover it up with a no-brainer tag," she says.

"There was a time when we had relief characters who had nothing to do with the story, but just make an appearance every now and then and introduce comedy. Today, the film is full of comedy, with a few serious moments in between," says Shreyas. But depressing endings are out, he says. "Of course, even in a so-called no-brainer, people look for novelty. That’s why films like OSO and Bheja Fry did well," Shreyas adds.
So where does that leave filmmakers who want to experiment with their storylines?

"If producers make niche movies within controlled budgets, they’ll get their money back. The primary thing about films is that the audience needs to instantly connect with the story. Once the connection is made, they’ll think on their own," Kirron says. Even at that, it should be an honest effort on the part of the director to tell a story simply, she says. "No great designs and hidden messages work. Khoya Khoya Chand was wonderfully directed, but I felt some of the actors didn’t fit the role. Better casting would have done wonders for the film," adds Kirron.

And entertaining the masses is quite a challenge, says Sajid. "It’s more difficult to impress people and make them laugh," he says. Rubi adds, "Besides, why make a good movie and apologise for it by calling it a no-brainer? It’s the self-indulgent directors who should apologise," she says.
Says Sajid, "I would never tell my audience to leave their brains at home and come to watch my movie. I would ask them to carry an extra set of brains instead."

Yesteryear stars return to Bollywood

2007-12-31T22:35:00.000-08:00

There’s a comeback of sorts happening in recent times. Have you noticed it? Well, look around and you’ll see how yesteryears’ stars — Dharmendra, Vinod Khanna, Jeetendra, Feroz Khan — are all back in the limelight.

Garam Dharam, at 72, can give any of the younger men a run for their money. For quite a few years in between, Dharmendra was away from the limelight. But he’s back, not only making appearances at events, but also being choosy about the films he does. “I’m always excited to face the camera,” says the veteran star, who has four films in his kitty. “I still feel like the newcomer who caught the Frontier Mail to come to Bombay and become an actor,” he smiles.

Vinod Khanna, who recently took up Smriti Iraani’s TV show where he plays the central character, has some interesting film roles on hand as well. He calls this phase his “fourth innings” and is as excited about returning to filmdom as he was at the beginning of his career.
Unlike in Hollywood, where 60-plus actors like Michael Doughlas or Bruce Willis continue to go strong, in India barring Amitabh Bachchan, most top actors faded into oblivion. But now there’s hope with the multiplex culture setting in.

Trade analyst Taran Adarsh believes that with film-makers willing to experiment with different kinds of scripts, there’s plenty of scope for these stars. “Times have changed and there are scripts with powerful and interesting roles for different age groups. Just because they have aged doesn’t mean the magic is gone,” says Taran.

Another example is the flamboyant Feroz Khan, who was also a little low-key past year or two. Khan’s now back in a multi-starrer with an
interesting role. Apparently at the beginning of the film shoot, Khan got quite a welcome from his co-stars Nana Patekar and Anil Kapoor. They
surprised him by booking the grand suite in a five-star hotel in Dubai for him.

Jumping Jack Jeetendra, who kept a low-profile the past few years, returned on the scene this year as a judge in the reality dance show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa II. Each time he danced on the show, the audiences were thrilled. He also regaled viewers with his down-to-earth demeanour. “Once, he was talking of how he’d struggled from being an extra in films to reaching stardom. That was really sweet,” says Nandini Jha, a fan of the actor.

Actor-filmmaker Manoj Kumar too suddenly was in the limelight recently when he protested against a scene in Shah Rukh Khan’s film Om Shanti Om. The original Bharat is set to make a few movies now.

Good to see the return of the veterans. Guess it’s time now for Kakaji aka yesteryear’s superstar Rajesh Khanna to rear his head up, too. Wow! We just heard he too is set to act in a TV show.

Bollywood: Parrot Of Our Souls

2007-12-31T22:30:00.000-08:00

ACRITIC ONCE said that one must assume that all Hindi films, unless stated otherwise, are set in Mumbai. In 2007, we have no Hindi movies left, only Bollywood, a gaping monster eating everything including its own past. We have left Mumbai and visited a lot of small-towns this year, but the small town we have visited the most this year is Bollywood. In a year when nostalgia was rife, Hindi cinema’s greatest hit Sholay underwent a makeover repulsive even to those who are fascinated by the badness of B-grade films. All the spoofs we have watched and performed in our living rooms, all the filmi gossip we ever heard and told, all came together in one interminable sitting called Om Shanti Om. Even the superb noir film Johnny Gaddar could not avoid paying homage to Bollywood.

While watching Om Shanti Om was like being forced by a garrulous friend to look at a pile of family albums, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom was like a sexy, amusing layabout, making you bemoan its wasted potential. Treacly with Bollywood references (Bobby Deol and Abhishek Bachchan riding a motorcycle-sidecar combo, looking like gorillas on tricycles with, of course, Yeh Dosti playing in the background) and happily zany visuals (an exploding wax Superman, Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed floating by at the Paris Ritz), the movie flopped like almost all of this year’s Yash Raj movies. Despite its chumminess, Om Shanti Om (and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom) kept us outside its oddly closed and uninviting world. Frequently, the self-referencing and nostalgia (especially the Bachchan self-referencing) became a dizzying mess that rivalled the radio scripts that get hopelessly mixed-up in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.

In a year full of confident debuts, Navdeep Singh stands out with his stylish and funny noir film, Manorama Six Feet Under. The suspended PWD engineer-turned-sleuth Satyaveer Randhawa (Abhay Deol)knows the long-waisted beauty in a ghagra choli who appears in the summer haze is a mirage. No woman from his Rajasthani smalltown, Lakhot, looks like the mirrorwork-and-bandhini goddesses of 90s Bollywood or even Aaja Nachle’s Shamli or Laaga Chunari Mein Daag’s Varanasi. Manorama Six Feet Under’s Lakhot does not have dancing troops of ‘colourful characters’ in ethnic costumes. For much of the movie, Singh keeps Randhawa’s wife Nimmi (sexy Gul Panag) in a pantheon of nighties topped by a sweater and a duppatta. Goldfish tanks are the most recurring image in this film, where everyone seems trapped and suffocated. Very different from the exuberant North Indian small-towns of Imtiaz Ali’s Jab We Met, through which we are summarily dragged by Geet Dhillon (Kareena Kapoor).

As we squeeze chin-deep into our metros, do we dare look back fearlessly at villages and small towns we have left behind, as Singh has? Or are we afraid of turning into pillars of salt? Is there any doubt that we think of our small towns as ‘back there’, where we don’t want to be? When Anurag Basu made Life in a Metro, he had one of his characters, Shruti, voice some of this discomfort. Like Shruti, we lie awake at night knowing that our cherished production of global citizenship can fall apart because of one Embarrassing Wedding Guest. Shruti is appalled at the idea of marrying Monty, a charmer who does not hide his Lucknow (or was it Meerut?) roots. So obvious are their differences to Shruti that she is appalled when Monty offers to set her up with a friend from back home. When she tells Monty that she wants a husband “who likes to travel, who reads, and who has a sense of humour”, multiplex audiences must have winced. We’re young enough for our pretensions to still embarrass us.

If we think of small towns as repositories of our authentic selves, parrots in which we have hidden our souls, then Aaja Nachle was a close-reading nightmare. Like many other small towns of cinema, Shamli likes starch and order and was scandalised when Diya Srivastav eloped with a gora. When she returns to Shamli, she finds that the ‘moral’ order is now enforced by the saffron brigade and villainish Muslim mall-builders. Madhuri Dixit in Aaja Nachle is not a drag version of Swades’ radical Shah Rukh. She cynically manipulates the leader of the saffron brigade. She lets Mrs Chojar (Sushmita Mukherjee) be thwarted in her passionate desire to be on stage. Mohan Sharma, the once-jilted cafe owner, is supportive, but Diya never reconsiders him as an object of romance. Instead, we are offered the possibility that the pizza-baking young politician will hook up with Diya in New York, to where she returns.

Is Bollywood’s current fascination for small-towns a sign that we are preparing to put our real small-towns in museums? Kamal Swaroop’s witty film Om-dar-ba-dar set in an imaginary small town in Rajasthan was made in 1988. Until very recently, the film was like a cinephile’s Loch Ness monster: beloved and rarely sighted. Om-dar-ba-dar is exactly the movie to dust off and fall in love with now.

This has also been a good year to decide which critic’s opinions you want to bank on in the decades to come. If, for instance, your neighbourhood reviewer said OSO was hilarious and you sat stonyfaced before jokes that have been done to death by a decade of MTV and Channel V, it is time to go looking for a new oracle. If your critic was also not canny enough to hedge her bets about superhit Aap Ka Suroor — The Moviee, tell her that what was good enough for the Beatles is good enough for Himesh Reshamiyya. Like Bharat Bhushan of Bheja Fry, the small-town viewer is confident enough to do his thing and make it work. The biggest hits of the year have been far from sophisticated: Partner, Dhamaal, Heyy Babyy, Dhol and Bhool Bhulaiyya. There is a similiar satisfaction (of just deserts, not cinematic standards) when the campless Akshay Kumar is applauded for his success in 2007. He has been the star of two of these comedies, as well as another huge hit, Namastey London. Namastey London was the NRI movie Shaad Ali Sehgal spoofed in Jhoom Barabar Jhoom but Sehgal’s Bunties and Bablies were not amused by his mocking their tastes for “ek chutki sindhoor” in Bathinda or Southall.

THIS IS the year that we had a film about a traffic signal, two movies about children with learning disabilities (Tare Zameen Par and Apna Aasman), a reasonably good May-December romance (Cheeni Kum) and a women’s hockey team. Tall, short, sexy, plain, butch, femme, we cheered for all the stick-wielding darlings, especially when they fulfilled our deepest desires by beating up loutish Delhi men. One happy effect of small cinema is that this has been a great year for character actors, people who look too much like us for us to hang our unreasonable fantasies on. Even really small character actors. Eight-year-old Darsheel Zafar shared top billing with Aamir Khan and wrung hardened hearts in Taare Zameen Par. We had Sushmita Mukherjee and Piyush Mishra return to the screen. We have had our heart’s fill of the astonishing Vinay Pathak. We can forgive him Bheja Fry.

Progressive social commentators like to fondly imagine or perhaps hope that cinema audiences are like savants who will tilt cinema in favour of the right and just. Hence it is appropriate that all the unfashionable movies were hits, and right that bloated Yash Raj productions (unless they featured sporty underdogs) and overly pretty Bhansali movies, failed. Commentators are carefully trying to find reasons for why Embarrassing Wedding Guests like Aap Ka Suroor should be treated well.

In all this the people who took the hit are filmmakers making uncharming cinema. Even Anurag Kashyap’s well-wishers would have probably preferred him to rest on the laurels of the perfectly constructed Black Friday. Instead Kashyap sent our reigning male sex symbol into a fabulous hell, located somewhere between Ghatkopar and Siberia. Fingers are cut, people are gassed, suicides are silly, wives morph into sexy secretaries and K (John Abraham) keeps emerging in his bathtub. Audiences fed on froth hated the grotesque furnishing of Kashyap’s imagination and foreign critics largely missed the jokes (Kashyap calls an abridged version of the non-smoker’s charter, a Rajagopalachari). In a world where Sudhir Mishra’s Khoya Khoya Chand, a sweet romance set in the 1950s, is being called very “complicated and layered”, what chance does Kashyap’s unabashedly surreal No Smoking have?

Kashyap is certainly a man we hope does not dwindle into bitterness. Around him there currently exists an energy of new filmmakers, new viewers and even new critics. Did they come first or did Kashyap? Does it matter while we await next year’s bounty? Perhaps it does because in the last two years we, the ever-greedy viewers, have imperceptibly raised our bar for Bollywood. And the only thing to do is raise them higher.

Director Jason Reitman and Writer Diablo Cody Talk About 'Juno'

2007-12-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

Juno director Jason Reitman and first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody seem to go together like hand and glove. While they don’t complete each other’s sentences, they do share the same sensibility when it comes to films, character development and dialogue. They also share the same sort of sense of humor when it comes to discussing their critically acclaimed movie.

Accepting a compliment from a journalist during the film’s Los Angeles press day, Diablo Cody blurted out, “Thank you very much. I'm like allergic to cheese in many ways so I try not to be too cheesy in my responses, but the fact of the matter is it really has been a very… What are you laughing at?”

“Allergic to cheese,” replied Reitman. “I'm lactose intolerant,” clarified Cody. “That's even better. That was a polish right there, ladies and gentleman.”

Dairy product issues aside, the combination of Reitman and Cody works despite the fact they come from two vastly different backgrounds. Cody is a former stripper and highly read blogger who made her screenwriting debut with Juno. Reitman comes from a showbiz family (his dad is producer/director Ivan Reitman) and grew up around the film industry.

However, Reitman’s about as un-Hollywood as it gets. In fact, Cody thinks she’s more likely to be considered ‘Hollywood’ than Reitman. “Don't you find that interesting that this guy has like the quintessential Hollywood pedigree, the quintessential Hollywood kid, and you would never know it? In fact, I have always said if you had to gauge it simply on like douchebaggery, if someone had to guess who grew up in Hollywood, they would totally say me. They'd totally say you were the down to earth nice guy from Chicago,” said Cody, pointing to Reitman.

“I'm not Hollywood. I've got nothing to do with Hollywood,” confirmed Reitman before adding, “That's true. They'd look at you and go, ‘You're the one who grew up in Hollywood.’ …I think at first glance they'd probably think you were the one who grew up in Hollywood.”

“I think they would too. It speaks highly of you and denigrates me, but I'm always willing to do that,” replied Cody.

Stripping and blogging is an unlikely pathway to screenwriting, but it’s worked for Cody who comes off as candid and witty as her characters in Juno. “It's been such an incredible experience for me because I had never written a screenplay before and I was never really even published as a writer up until a few years ago,” said Cody about her strange entry into films. “Then suddenly things just started to happen for me kind of serendipitously and I was discovered, as lame as that sounds. I was very lucky because I never imagined that I would be in this world. Just to put it this way, I got married three years ago and that was just three years ago and I took my honeymoon in LA because I thought it was an exotic place I'd never get to see. Now I live here and have a premiere tonight. It's very mind boggling.”

Speaking of the planned Hollywood premiere of Juno, Cody recalled her first experience on a red carpet at a major movie premiere. “Remember we went to the - you don't like this story because you think it makes you sound like a douche, but it actually was a nice story. When we went to that premiere in the springtime and you were like, ‘This is going to be us when Juno comes out.’ I'd never been to a premiere before so it was very exciting. It was Disturbia [which Ivan Reitman executive produced] and I was so excited. It really got me excited. Then I finally had a concrete image in my head of what the Juno premiere is going to be like.”

“My dad has enormous premieres. Disturbia was at the Mann Chinese. That's not exactly a tiny joint. I think it's respectable but yeah, this is certainly a highlight of my life,” admitted Reitman.

Cody was never pregnant as a teen but the character of Juno MacGuff (played by Ellen Page) is, in many ways, autobiographical. “I relate to that character on a really deep personal level,” explained Cody. “Although I do think that the character evolved significantly when Ellen Page entered the picture. Even though she is very different from Juno, there is just a lot of her soul in that character. I feel almost like I can't completely take credit for Juno anymore.”

Central to the film is an unplanned teen pregnancy. “I actually see the movie as completely apolitical,” said director Reitman of the film’s tone and approach to the subject matter. “It has a unique perspective of coming from a writer who grew up in a very kind of Juno MacGuff-like house and a director who grew up in a very Loring-like house [the Lorings are the couple who hope to adopt Juno’s baby]. Because of that, there's kind of an air of non-judgment around all of the characters. One of the things I loved about it is that it was open-minded. Like Thank You For Smoking the novel, it took on an issue that is normally considered tricky and had a very frank attitude about it, and just spoke about it openly without being condescending and never really got into the politics. You never really see politics in any of the choices, any of the conversations, any of the moves. That's probably why I liked it.”

Reitman isn’t deliberately seeking out touchy subject matter for his films. “The material I'm drawn to, I like stuff that's unusual. I like unusual perspectives on things and I generally get frustrated with political correctness. Movies, books, stories that are afraid to just talk about things, so when I hear the voices, like the voice of Juno, when she calls for an abortion and says, ‘I'd like to procure a hasty abortion,’ I immediately fall in love with this girl.”

“That's why I think our collaboration went so well,” added Cody. “I can't imagine either of us working with somebody who's that politically correct. It would be disastrous.”

Juno Articles

Film's big year could have been even bigger

2007-12-30T10:25:00.000-08:00

Despite a fall movie season that had audiences and studios about ready to throw in the towel, ticket sales will top last year's pace, analysts predict.

With less than a week left on the calendar, ticket sales should eclipse $9.35 billion, up about 4.5% from last year, industry tracker Media By Numbers reports. It marks the second straight year of increased sales, though it probably will fall below 2004's $9.41 billion.

When adjusted for the rising cost of ticket prices (which averaged $6.58 a ticket this year), attendance is about even with last year, up just 0.5%.

Not bad, but 2007 hardly fulfilled the promise of summer, which raked in a record $4 billion.

"I thought we would do $10 billion for the first time," says Media By Numbers' Paul Dergarabedian. "And overall, I think studios have to be happy that revenues are up. But the fall, while providing some high-quality movies, didn't do much for the bottom line."

That could be because Hollywood got political and depressing. Despite boasting big-name actors, movies such as Rendition, Lions for Lambs and Reservation Road proved to be clunkers that nearly stopped Hollywood's box-office momentum. "Fall was flat," says Adam Fogelson, head of marketing and distribution for Universal Pictures. "It's hard to tell a year and a half in advance what audiences are going to want. There were a lot of serious movies this fall, when people wanted to be simply entertained."

The holidays came brimming with hits including Will Smith's I Am Legend and Nicolas Cage's National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Even Alvin and the Chipmunks will bring in more than $100 million.

"Heavy movies are fine, but, especially around this time of the year, people want to go out together as a family," says Chuck Viane, distribution chief for Disney, which released National Treasure. "They're getting that again, which is why I think we're finishing big."

Sales also got a boost from more product. According to Box Office Mojo, a record 619 films were released this year.

So what flourished and what flopped?

The hits:

•Threequels. They weren't much of a hit with critics, but the third installments of Spider-Man, Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean together hauled in $966 million domestically and another $1.6 billion overseas. That got the summer season off to its record start.

And one of the threequels, TheBourne Ultimatum, managed to please reviewers and audiences alike. It made $227 million.

•Cartoons. They didn't have the oomph they once had, but animated films remain a favorite of family moviegoers. Two cracked the top 10: Ratatouille and The Simpsons Movie, which combined for $389 million. Even Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie, which got mixed reviews, mustered $123 million.

•Judd Apatow. The champion of the slacker produced two hits in Knocked Up ($149 million) and Superbad ($121 million). The only misstep came last weekend, when his biopic send-up Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story opened to a dismal $4.1 million.

•Digital filmmaking.300, the music-video-style epic shot entirely in front of a green screen, was the surprise of the year with $211 million. The computer-generated robots from Transformers morphed into $319 million. And Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer raked in $132 million — thanks primarily to the hip, digitally rendered surfer, who is getting his own movie.

The misses:

•The indie hit: Where was this year's Little Miss Sunshine? Juno may yet claim that mantle, though it's still in limited release. Movies that were expected to be the year's sleeper must-sees —The Darjeeling Limited, Waitress, Eastern Promises — managed to turn profits but failed to crack the mainstream.

•Gore. Once a bulletproof genre, gory horror and torture films were no match for suspense this year. Hostel Part II, The Hitcher and Captivity each took in less than $17 million — poor even for the genre's low production costs.

•Political films. Look at the lowest-grossing movies of the year, and they are littered with stories with something political to say. Blame the films' quality, dark tones or Hollywood's liberal leanings, but In the Valley of Elah, Rendition and Lions for Lambs all had big names behind them — and little else.

"No one is going to complain when you can make more money than you did the year before," Dergarabedian says. "But when you start the way you did this summer, there's going to be a lot of thought about what might have been."

Pyramid Saimira turns celluloid machine

2007-12-30T10:23:00.000-08:00

Chennai-based firm to become the world’s biggest producer of movies by FY09

MUMBAI: Pyramid Saimira Theatre Ltd (PSTL), which plans to make some 40 movies in five languages by 2009 fiscal, is on its way to becoming the biggest producer of movies, globally.

Currently, it is in talks with three studios for producing Hollywood movies. P S Saminathan, MD, PSTL, said: “We are in talks with three studios for producing hardcore Hollywood films for the audiences there. Till now we were only getting offers for cross-over movies which we were not interested in.”

PSTL, which got listed last year on the stock market, is the holding company of Pyramid Saimira Production (PSPL) and Pyramid Saimira Entertainment (PSEL).

While PSPL produces films and TV content, Singapore-based PSEL, a 100% unit of PSTL, is a content agglomeration unit. It buys films and distributes them abroad catering to Asian audiences there and also buys Hollywood films and distributes them in the Asia-Pacific region.

After establishing its subsidiaries in Malaysia and Singapore and acquiring US-based Fun Asia, the company is now close to buying a theatre company in the UK.

And to fund this speedy growth, PSPL will be getting listed on the stock market by February 2008-end. By diluting around 12% of the equity, the company plans to raise Rs 150 crore.

PSEL expects to have 2000 screens by fiscal 2010. Currently, the largest theatre chain in Asia with 45 multiplexes and 750 screens. Along with this, 60 food courts will also come up across India. The first one has opened in Faridabad and one in every 45 days will now come up. Apart from the cost of acquiring land, which has already been bought in most places, the courts would need an investment of Rs 1.25 lakh each.

Analysts Avani Pramod and Nitin A Khandkar from Keynote Capitals Research said in their December 12, 2007 report on PSTL: “The company’s well-experienced and aggressive management and unique business model are its major strengths. PSTL’s innovative business model involves benefit of scale, increased negotiation power with producers, distributors and theatre owners and scalability.”

The report also said over the past few years, PSTL has ramped up aggressively, adding on an average, one screen, 650 seats and unlimited footfalls every day.

Choreographer Michael Kidd Dies

2007-12-30T10:22:00.000-08:00

Michael Kidd (1997 file photo)

Award-winning choreographer Michael Kidd has died at his home in Los Angeles.

A family member says Kidd was 92-years-old, and died of cancer Sunday night.

The choreographer was best known for producing exuberant dance numbers for Broadway shows such as Guys and Dolls and Can-Can. He also worked on movies, including the 1954 film, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

During his long career, Kidd won five Tony Awards for his theater work. He also earned a special Academy Award in 1997 in recognition of his choreography for movies.

Strike, dull fall spoil Hollywood's year

2007-12-30T10:18:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES -- There should be plenty of money and holiday cheer for everyone in town as Hollywood edged near the $10 billion mark at the domestic box office for the first time.

So why couldn't producers and writers play nice together, and why have so few of Hollywood's year-end quality films caught on with audiences?

The big achievement for the year -- record revenue -- was offset by uncertainty as the Writers Guild of America went on strike over scribes' desire to get in on the ground-floor of whatever revenue might result from Internet programming.

Meantime, the town's prolonged period of backslapping -- otherwise known as Academy Awards season -- arrived in rare circumstances, with a critical favorite or two such as the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men," but no clear front-runners emerging in any categories -- and many acclaimed Oscar wannabes landing in theaters with a yawn from apathetic audiences.

The box office was a roller-coaster all year, with revenues up, then down, then up, then down again. The key lesson from a lackluster fall: Serious films with important social messages are all well and good, but there's no beating a head-to-head between Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe or a cartoon princess getting the boot from her magic kingdom.

"Many of the dramas that have come out are terrific movies, but I just think that sometimes people, especially coming into the holidays, they just want escapism or feel-good movies," said Barry Josephson, producer of "Enchanted," starring Amy Adams as an animated princess forced to make her way in real-world Manhattan.

Disney's "Enchanted" -- along with Universal's hit crime saga "American Gangster," starring Washington and Crowe -- were among the few bright spots amid a sleepy fall that followed a monster summer.

Pure escapism was the rule last summer as Sony's "Spider-Man 3," Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," DreamWorks-Paramount's "Shrek the Third" and "Transformers" all topped $300 million domestically, with the Warner Bros. sequel "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" just missing that level.

Padded by other summer hits including "The Bourne Ultimatum," "Ratatouille," "The Simpsons Movie," "Knocked Up," "Rush Hour 3," "Hairpsray" and "Superbad," 2007's domestic returns should finish at a record of about $9.6 billion, up 2 percent from the previous year, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers.

That surpasses the previous high of $9.45 billion set in 2004. Yet because of rising admission prices, the number of movie tickets sold should come in at about 1.4 billion, down 2 percent from 2006 and well shy of modern Hollywood's record of 1.6 billion in 2002.

The writers strike idled some TV shows from the start, and while the big-screen effect initially was minimal because of the long lead time for movies, shooting on a few films was postponed.

It was the first time writers walked off the job in 19 years, with the guild taking a hard stand to ensure members are compensated if the Internet becomes a lucrative means to distribute programming.

"I really hope people figure it out soon, but I think this is real," said Akiva Goldsman, who won an Academy Award with his screenplay for Ron Howard's "A Beautiful Mind" and now has seen another collaboration with Howard, "The Da Vinci Code" prequel "Angels & Demons," delayed indefinitely because of the strike.

Unlike many years, when one or two studios might dominate while others are stuck with flops and underachievers, every major distributor had its share of hits. There were solid successes in every genre, even horror, which had been written off early in the year after "Hostel II" and "Captivity" flopped, ending a long string of torture-tale hits.

"They said horror movies are dead," said Bob Weinstein, co-founder of the Weinstein Co., which scored with the supernatural tale "1408" and a new take on "Halloween." "If they're good, people will come, and if they're different. If you keep making the same movie again and again, that gets tiresome."

Fans welcomed the news that familiar friends would be returning with next year's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and an 11th "Star Trek" flick, this one drafting a young cast to play Capt. James Kirk, Vulcan scientist Spock and the other characters from the original 1960s series.

Harrison Ford reunited with director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas on the fourth "Indiana Jones" film, though Sean Connery declined to come out of retirement to play Indy's dad again.

The original Kirk, William Shatner, was baffled that he wasn't signed up for J.J. Abrams' "Trek" movie, considering pal Leonard Nimoy will be reprising his role as the older Spock. Shatner's Kirk did die at the end of film No. 7, "Star Trek: Generations," but Shatner noted that "they've got DNA from a dinosaur a hundred million years old," so the filmmakers could have figured out a way to resurrect his character.

Fall brought the usual crush of prestige films jockeying for awards attention. With the shorter awards season that began a few years back, when the Oscars moved from late March to late February, more studios jammed contenders into early fall this time rather than waiting for the annual December scramble to get films into theaters.

That may have undermined the box-office prospects as too many dour dramas rolled into theaters all at once in September and October.

"We've seen a lot of product trying to get into the marketplace, as well, which didn't really bode well for anyone," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony. "Sometimes, you're fragmented to the point where no one quite gets what they want."

Pitt puts his movie career on hold to help Big Easy

2007-12-30T10:15:00.000-08:00

The actor says he has put his Hollywood career on hold, with no film projects under way, while doing all he can to help the city recover from Hurricane Katrina's destruction in August 2005.

The slow recovery has attracted many celebrities, among them Sean Penn, Denis Leary, Kirstie Alley, Ellen DeGeneres and New Orleans native musicians Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis.

Few stand out as much as Pitt. He and Angelina Jolie bought a home in the French Quarter. He has pledged more than $5 million to Make It Right, the project he's backing to rebuild 150 homes in the Lower 9th Ward, one of the city's most impoverished areas. On Saturday he and Jolie made an appearance to promote the Children's Health Fund's finding that 46,000 to 64,000 children remain displaced since the hurricane.

Katrina was especially devastating in the Lower 9th. Less than 10 percent of its population has returned. Make It Right calls for construction of its first house to start by summer. Pitt has pledged to match up to $5 million in contributions. So far, more than $3.5 million has been raised.

Pitt, 43, was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Missouri, but is no stranger to New Orleans. He filmed two movies here -- ''Interview With a Vampire'' in the 1990s and ''The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'' in 2006 and early 2007. ''Button'' is due out next year.

Pitt said Make It Right and another project he launched last year with Global Green USA will help fill the need for affordable housing while also rebuilding ''smarter'' with energy-saving, environmentally friendly materials.

Both projects have attracted national supporters, including Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Pitt said he hopes the city's recovery will be a focal issue of the 2008 campaign.

''I don't want it to be used so much as a whipping boy for past mistakes, but as a real proving ground for policies set forth, meaning education, health reform,'' he said. ''If it's going to work, it'll work here, and this place certainly needs it.''

Gear up for CHAK DE YAARA

2007-12-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

The nation is set to witness the ‘S’ effect as Sachin, Sohaib & Shah Rukh come together in ‘CHAK DE YAARA’ on Sunday, Dec 30th, 10 p.m. only on STAR PLUS

On this New Year’s Eve STAR Plus is all set to entertain and enthrall its audience with a very special evening. For the first time on India television, STAR has brought together the awesome threesome – ‘master blaster’ of cricket – Sachin Tendulkar, Pakistani ‘tufan express’ – Sohaib Akhtar and ‘Bollywood badshah’ – Shah Rukh Khan on CHAK DE YAARA. Further, the show will bring together cricketers of India and Pakistan, who will dance and sing together all through the evening. The starry night will not only showcase Bollywood glamour queens like Kareena Kapoor, Koena Mitra and Diya Mirza but it will be a union of sorts between the two nations.

The king of fun & laughter, Sajid Khan along with Vidya Malvade, the captain of India’s women hockey team in ‘Chak De India’ will host the spectacular evening. Both the skippers MS Dhoni and Sohaib Mallik along with their teams comprising of Saurav, Sreesanth, Yuvraj, Gambhir, Shewag, Irfan and others will perform a unique Bollywood act on stage. Sreesanth will challenge SRK with his impeccable moves, Bhajji will be forced to mimic Shahrukh and even propose Dia Mirza. The ‘King Khan’ will make Yuvi repeat hit dialogues of ‘Devdas’ in Punjabi while Dhoni will perform the ‘Don’ number with SRK. The star studded show will set the temperatures rising in the cold winter evening as Bollywood’s sizzling sirens Kareena, Dia and Koena shake a leg with Shahrukh Khan on numerous foot-tapping numbers. In addition to that, there will be sweltering performances by the popular choreographers Ganesh Hegde and Neeti Mohan.

This New Year’s Eve, will turn out to be one of the most cherished moments of the year with CHAK DE YAARA, which is not only an effort to entertain the viewers but it is an initiative to bring the two nations together on a platform where fun, laughter & love prevails.

Deepika Padukone will not star opposite Hrithik Roshan

2007-12-30T09:57:00.000-08:00

Deepika Padukone who has made her debut in Om Shanti Om opposite Shahrukh Khan was being considered for a role opposite Hrithik Roshan in a film to be directed by Anurag Basu. However the actress will not be a part of the film as she does not fit the role. Rakesh Roshan who is producing the film confirms this saying "We may work with Deepika for some other film."

Deepika made a commendable debut in Om Shanti Om and after working with Shahrukh, she was no doubt looking forward to work opposite another big star, Hrithik Roshan. The buzz was on that Rakesh Roshan was considering Deepika for a role opposite Hrithik, either in Krrish 2 or another film to be produced by him. But now according to sources, Deepika has been dropped as she does not fit the role. The film was to be directed by Anurag Basu and he says "We are yet scouting for the female lead. Deepika didn't fit the role as it is quite a complex character." However the Roshans hope to work with Deepika some time in the future.

However now the Roshans are trying to cast a non-Indian for the role of the female lead as it involves someone who is well versed with salsa dancing and they have already auditioned a few girls. Hrithik was extremely keen to work with director Anurag Basu and has wanted to do a film with him for some time now. The film will be a romantic-action thriller and shooting is supposed to begin in March 2008. Hrithik Roshan, who has just completed his epic film Jodha Akbar, will also be seen performing a lot of salsa. Hrithik is currently in Singapore recuperating after his prolonged knee injury . And after taking a short break, he hopes to return in the New Year with a big bang. Jodha Akbar is slated for a January 2008 release.

Great Collection Of Bollywood Movie Wallpapers

2007-12-30T09:51:00.001-08:00

Movie is a medium of Entertainment. In the World, two industries are so popular nowadays. First hollywood and second one is bollywood Industry. Bollywood Industry is one of the largest film producers in the world, producing more than 1,000 films a year, with an audience of 3.6 billion people. Bollywood films are watched in South Asian countries, United States, United America Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal.

We love to see bollywood movie and we love bollywood actor and actress. Thats why every day many people come to join bollywood Industry. Amitabh Bachchan, Sharukh Khan, Salmaan Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Hrithik Roshan, Aiswarya Rai, Prinka Chopra, Preety Zinta, Amisha patel etc are famous in world. Amitabh bachan and sharukh khan fans are all over the world. Mostly people like to see their Movie. Amitabh Bachan has appeared in over 150 films, Abhimaan (1973) Zanjeer(1973) Mard(1985), Andha Kanoon(1983), Aakhri Raasta(1986), Khuda Gawah(1992), Bunty Aur Babli(2005) are greatest hit movie of Amitabh Bachchan. If we talking about second popular star of the year, I think thats shahrukh Khan. His latest movie Om shanti om domestic box office collections would be around Rs 35 crore in the first week. So now, you can think how much a Bollywood industry is popular in World.

In 2007, We see many new faces like Sonam Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukune are coming in bollywood industry and they are also popular by his/her first movie. Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor first movie is Saawariya, Deepika Padukone come with Sharukh khan in om shanti om and that was great hit. Om shanti om is greatest movie of this year. This movie has broken all the records in bollywood.

Mostly Young Generation likes to collect bollywood actor and actress wallpapers. I am also one of these. I have collect many actor and actress images in my personal blog. If you want to see please go picturesmychoice.blogspot.com. I hope you like it. I have collect bollywood wallpapers, bollywood Actress Pictures, Latest movies Photos Gallery, Actor Images, Beautiful images of children and Nature and Hindi Film Wallpapers.

Rakhi Sawant frustrated with Star Channel

2007-12-30T09:46:00.000-08:00

Aamir Ali and Sanjeeda Sheikh are the two winners of Nach Baliye 3. Salmaan Khan announced the winners. But it seems Rakhi Sawant is not happy with the results, rather she could not face the situation and imagine?? She didn't even collect her runner's up prize! She was very much upset.
But I feel how is it so that she always comes in controversy??? She says that they were cheated and all these things were alrady fixed. What an over acting this girl does!!!! She also says that she knew about this earlier, then why did she continued without any argument??? When the results were declared, then only she started doing this nautanki.
Seriously!!! She is a great nautankibaaz!!! She does all these things so that she gets more fame and name. But she doesn't know that she ruining her career by doing such silly things.
Anyways, all the reality shows are fake and their results, scripts, statements are already decided. Rakhi being a part of Bollywood she is supposed to know all these things. If this case was for some common man who is not aware of all these rubbish things regarding the reality shows then it is OK. But for Rakhi this is a very very common thing. Then also she took part in that and now what is the use of telling al this foolish things to media??
Media is also for some intention but they will also waste their time doing this nonsense kind of things by taking Rakhi Sawant's interviews and trying to get sympathy from people for Rakhi Sawant.

HC hears PIL against Shahrukh bungalow

2007-12-23T04:01:00.000-08:00

Mumbai, Dec 20: The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) today told the Bombay High Court that there has been no deletion of the proposed road, bordering actor Shahrukh Khan's bungalow at Bandra waterfront here, from its plan.

Shahrukh had built a six-storey building behind his bungalow 'Mannat'. A PIL filed by city-based NGO, Bhrashtachar Nirmulan Sanghatana, has alleged that it encroaches on the proposed road in the development plan.

The road, as per the development plan, should be 9.15 metres wide, but the petitioners' lawyer Shakuntala Joshi said it has shrunk to six metres.

To facilitate this, changes were made in the plan without following proper procedure, she alleged.

The MCGM, in its affidavit, said there was a proposal to delete the 'roadline' and added that though it has been approved by the department concerned, the corporation has not given its sanction as yet.

The affidavit states the "roadline is still existing and is not deleted." Outside the court Joshi said the affidavit runs contrary to the situation on the ground. "Earlier, affidavit filed by Gauri Khan, Shahrukh's wife, too states that roadline has been changed. We will point out the contradiction at the next hearing," she said.

A division bench of Chief Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice J P Deodhar adjourned the hearing till January 10. (Agencies)

Want Shahrukh as a guest? Pay Rs 10 mn

2007-12-23T03:59:00.000-08:00

New Delhi, Dec 20: Want your favourite celebrity to shake hands with guests, dance or sing at your wedding? All you need to do is to burn a hole in the pocket - that is, to shell out anything up to Rs 10 million (Rs 1 crore).

Shah Rukh Khan may not agree to do a jig, but he might happily be a guest for Rs 10 million. Bollywood actors and item girls like Celina Jaitley, Malaika Arora Khan, Dia Mirza, Isha Koppikar and Rakhi Sawant charge nearly Rs 1 million each to perform.

Koena Mitra, Shefali Zariwala, Priti Jhangiyani, Payal Rohtagi, Neha Kakkar, Sanobar and Mandira Bedi charge between Rs 500,000-Rs 700,000 to perform at marriage ceremonies.

The schedule includes two high-voltage dance performances of eight-and-a-half minutes each.

'It was unheard of even a decade ago. But today it's different because people have more money. Weddings are no longer rituals for them,' Rahul Nagpal, senior manager (entertainment) of event management firm Touchwood Entertainment, told reporters.

'It is a chance to stand out among others by calling in Bollywood stars. But a lot depends on the availability of the star,' he added.

Singer Sonu Nigam charges Rs 3 million and Shaan's tag is nearly Rs 2.5 million. While Kailash Kher charges Rs 1.5 million, Daler Mehendi is ready to entertain guests for Rs 120,000, Sukhbir charges Rs 800,000, Mika Rs 500,000, and Harbhajan Mann Rs 400,000. They are in great demand at Punjabi weddings.

Praneeta, operations head of wedding planner Luxury Weddings, said: 'Apart from making weddings distinctive, people also want to reflect their personality by inviting actors to their weddings.'

Fifty percent of her firm's clients demand celebrities at their weddings every year. The demand also depends on the region a customer belongs to.

'The demand is more in north Indian cities like Delhi, Chandigarh and Ludhiana. Simply because these cities are away from tinsel town, stars are more sought-after. They also have more purchasing power,' said Praneeta.

The mood of the wedding - subtle or elaborate - also dictates which celebrity will grace the occasion.

'For subtle extravaganzas, ghazal singers like Jagjit Singh charge Rs 800,000, Talat Aziz charge Rs 400,000 and Peenaz Masani charges Rs 250,000 - for an hour's concert.

'Where there are more youngsters, rock bands like Sukhbir, Jaggi D, Veronica, Bombay Rockers, Jal, Junoon and Raeth charge over Rs 1 million for an hour's show,' she added.

The list also includes reality show celebrities, the 'Chak De! India' girls and Bhojpuri actors. They charge no less than Rs 500,000.

'Bangalore, Mumbai, Aurangabad and Jaipur are the other cities where celebrities are required for marriages,' Nagpal added. His company organises at least 10 star-studded marriages every season.

'It is difficult to convince cricketers. However, Kapil Dev and Yuvraj Singh come when event organisers request them personally,' Nagpal said. Other than paying for the appearance of celebrities, the client also has to pay for passage and the entourage of about 10-11 members.

'Clients pay around Rs 50,000 extra for pictures and video. Singers charge Rs 50,000 for singing live or else they just lip sync. Some celebrities request for special lights - dim or bright,' said Praneeta, who is upbeat about the future of this trend.

Tare Zamin Par...another Great movie from Aamir Khan

2007-12-23T03:56:00.000-08:00

It is Eid here today and Tare Zamin Par has been released in Dubai, , I went to Bur Dubai to meet my friend by passing through the cinema as I saw the poster of “Tare Zamin Par” and the big name Aamir Khan, I could not stop myself to buy ticket. I am just coming back after watching the show, I just want to say that Aamir Khan is absolutly unique. What a film was that. Full of emotions, comedy, nice music and most important its subject and message to the parents, teachers. The little master hero of the film Darsheel Safary (Ishaan Awasthy in Film) has acted very very well. The music is fantastic specially songs, Maa and tare zamin par. Thanks to Shankar Ehsan Loy. I’ve seen many wet eyes “ofcourse me too” during several emotional scenes. The story is great by Amole Gupte and I appreciate the courage of Aamir Khan for making this type of film in the age of masala films. I thanks to Aamir Khan for giving us this film.

Aamir Khan has always done this for publicity, cos he lacks acting skills : Amitabh Bachchan before Taare Zameen Par

2007-12-19T10:46:00.000-08:00

Amitabh Bachchan on taking criticism in his stride and why he skipped the Goa film fest.

It was a war of words between Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan throughout the week in the media. Here’s Amitabh Bachchan doing some more frankspeak with Subhash K Jha…

Aamir Khan continues to justify his severe comments on Black and in the same breath he calls you the biggest star that Indian cinema hasever seen. Comment.

Colin Farrell: Reason to Work Now

2007-12-19T06:12:00.000-08:00

rish actor Colin Farrell finally understands his career. He tells me he has a reason to go to work now. He gets it.

This is a far cry from the Farrell who burst onto the scene in Joel Schumacher’s 2000 feature, "Tigerland." Overnight, Farrell became a hard-drinking, partying, womanizing, walking tabloid headline.

Last year he had to skip being in Todd Haynes' "I’m Not There" to go to rehab. Heath Ledger took the role. Now, Farrell is about to open in three movies including Woody Allen’s "Cassandra’s Dream" in January.

Tuesday night at the Woody premiere, Farrell was drinking water and being sober, although still witty and with it as he reflected on his situation.

"I’ve been off for eight months. I’m ready to go back to work," he told me. Along with "Cassandra," he also has Gavin O’Connor’s "Pride and Glory" ready for release this winter. On Jan. 17, he’ll bring Martin McDonagh’s "In Bruges" to Sundance as the opening-night film. But all these were made before his life got out of hand.

What was it like, I wondered, when he first tasted fame?

"It was like this," he said, and waved a hand up close in my face. "I couldn’t see anything. Yeah. It was wild." And it stayed that way.

But he’s 31 now, and even though he’s never going to be tamed, Farrell seems to understand that the party is at least a little bit over. (We wouldn’t want him to be sitting at home, knitting, however.)

"I finally have a reason for all this," he told me. "I get what it is."

And so it seems. At Tuesday night’s "Cassandra" premiere, he was hugged by Joe Pantoliano and congratulated by Allen, writer Doug McGrath, director Julian Schnabel, Rosie Perez, Tom "Ed" Cavanagh, musicians Moby, Deborah Harry and Maxwell, among others. Women flocked around Farrell like geese who’d just found a loaf of Wonder Bread. But he came and went from the after-party at the Soho Grand with little fanfare — at least for now.

No Globes, No Oscars: Expect Picket Lines

Will Aamir Khan be ‘Over the Moon’..When his ‘Taare’ hits the ‘Zameen’..?

2007-12-19T05:16:00.000-08:00

So when the ‘Taare’ hits the ‘Zameen’ on Friday the 21st, Aamir Khan would be ‘over the moon’ because the outstanding feedback his movie is gaining before its release will definitely put his movie to stand strong in a dire competition with the ‘Welcome’s talent brigade.

Hold your horses, its time to watch Aamir, the Ace Khan, who may have been called fondly as ‘Kachhua’(tortoise)Khan by his favourite Producers, because he listens, thinks, convinces himself & take plenty of time to follow his intuitions, but now, he is all ready to prove and win the race as in the age old maxim of Rabbit and the Tortoise.

When Aamir Khan Productions launched TZP, everyone within the film industry assumed Aamir is somewhat looking forward to make a docu-drama kind of children movie, so nobody took keen interest on it, Amol Gupte was the Writer-Director of the movie, it was later amicably decided that Aamir Khan will call the shot as Director for the betterment of the project.

As I wrote in my earlier article about Aamir Khan’s courage to always swim against the tidal waves like his earlier home production ‘Lagaan’.I again would like to analyze his working style after ‘Fanaa’, where any other Star would have chosen to go for bigger than ‘Fanaa’ project, he selected TZP.

The Bollywood time table

2007-12-19T04:34:00.000-08:00

Quite a few actors have played teachers in the movies. Some of them have been nerdy teachers like Amitabh Bachchan in Chupke Chupke, and some have been quite fashionable like Sushmita Sen in Main Hoon Naa. And some of them have been very understanding, like Aamir Khan's character in Taare Zameen Par.

But we already know all that.

Do you know what it was that these 'teachers' taught in school? Did you know Aamir plays an art teacher in TZP?

We decided to look at the subjects taught in the school of Bollywood.

Dharmendra
Taught Botany in Chupke Chupke and Sanskrit in Dillagi

Dharmendra was impressive as the Botany professor in Chupke Chupke trying to teach his brother-in-law (Om Prakash) the importance of languages.

He repeated the teacher act in Dillagi where he woos fellow Chemistry teacher (Hema Malini) by teaching his students Kalidasa's love stories.

Amitabh, Shah Rukh to clash as Don

2007-12-19T04:24:00.001-08:00

It looks like the senior and junior Don, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, will battle it out at the box office.

While Farhan Akhtar prepares to plunge into a sequel to his 2006 hit Don - The Chase Begins Again, with Shah Rukh in the lead, the family of Nariman Irani, who made the original Don in 1978 with Amitabh Bachchan, is all set to do their own take on the film with the Big B again.

Speaking on the subject for the first time, the Big B told IANS: "Yes, they (Nariman Irani's family) met me some time back. I'm yet to hear the script."

However, Farhan seems to be completely in the dark regarding this parallel project.

"I've no idea of this. We've very close relations with the Irani family. We've been very clear with each other. When they gave us the rights for remaking Don they gave us the right to exploit the movie for the next three-four years. We had even told them we might be doing a sequel. And they were really cool about it.

"They didn't seem interested in going back and doing anything Don related. From the outset they've been straight with us. I don't think they'd just go around announcing another movie."

But with the Iranis having approached Amitabh, a clash of creative interest between the two Dons featuring the Big B and Shah Rukh seems inevitable.

Hollywood writers strike may deal devastating blow to awards shows

2007-12-18T22:05:00.000-08:00

The lingering strike of TV and movie writers in Hollywood may deal a devastating blow to the upcoming Golden Globes and Academy Awards shows, which have already seen a steady downtrend in viewer ship in recent years, event organizers and industry observers said Tuesday.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA), which launched the strike last month demanding for writers' share in the entertainment industry's online revenues, announced late Monday to deny waivers to the producers of the Golden Globes and the Oscars shows.

The decision means that the union will not allow its striking members to prepare material for next month's 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards and February's Oscars show.

Meanwhile, the union has also denied the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' routine request for permission to use clips from films and past Academy Awards shows during the 2008 ceremony.

"The Golden Globe Awards, which has a long and friendly relationship with the Writers Guild of America, is obviously disappointed that the WGA denied its request for a waiver," said the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Golden Globes' organizer, in a statement.

The writers union's tough stance essentially makes the high-gloss awards shows "struck productions," as organizers are now worried that the shows would be boycotted by Hollywood's A-list writers and the actors sympathetic to their cause.

The WGA's decision underscores the tensions between the guild and the major studios, which typically enjoy major promotional pushes from the telecasts. However, the union said Monday that it was too early to discuss picketing plans on the awards shows.

"We must do everything we can to bring our negotiations to a swift and fair conclusion for the benefit of the writers and all those who are being harmed by the companies' failure to engage in serious negotiations," WGA West President Patric Verrone wrote in a letter sent Monday night to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

He said the union decided that granting their requests would not help the guild's position in the 6-week-old strike.

The celebratory mood that usually accompanies the announcement of the annual Golden Globe nominations was tempered last week by the possibility of a WGA picket line that could keep some of Hollywood's biggest stars away from the event. Many A-list stars including Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington and Johnny Depp have expressed their sympathy for the writers.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association now said it would attempt to reach some type of agreement with the writers union on behalf of the Golden Globe Awards, which will recognize and honor outstanding achievements in both movies and television programming made before the strike.

"We are encouraged by the fact that the WGA has announced that it plans to negotiate agreements with independent production companies," the HFPA said in the statement.

The guild's negotiating committee last week said it was going to approach studios on an individual basis, a move meant to exploit the cracks between companies that have less to worry about if the strike continues and those that are having a tougher time than others.

The writers strike, starting from Nov. 5, has so far affected production on numerous films and shut down about 60 TV shows, leaving more than 10,000 people out of work.

Local officials estimated that the stoppage could cost the Los Angeles area's economy at least 1 billion U.S. dollars if it continues into next year. A similar strike in 1988 lasted for 22 weeks and cost the entertainment industry about 500 million dollars.

Abhishek Bachchan in Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par

2007-12-18T21:30:00.000-08:00

Taare Zameen Par is a story of a kid suffering from dyslexia. To create awareness about this disorder an example of Abhishek Bachchan is used in the film, who also suffered from this disorder. Aamir Khan took prior permission from the Bachchans to make this reference and use Abhishek’s name and picture as an example of success in spite of suffering from dyslexia at a young age.

Abhishek is among the crème de la crème of Bollywood today. The disorder did not stop him from creating a place for himself in the film industry and become a successful star. That’s the message Aamir gives to the kids in the film. Like Abhishek, many known personalities fall in this category, which include the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Winston Churchill, Keanu Reeves, Albert Einstein and Tom Cruise.

Taare Zameen Par is all set to release on December 21 and marks the directorial debut of Aamir Khan.

Hollywood Writers Reject Award Shows

2007-12-18T08:18:00.000-08:00

The union representing striking Hollywood writers has denied requests to allow their members to write for the Oscars — Hollywood's biggest, most glamorous showcase — and the Golden Globes.

The board of directors of the Writers Guild of America West rejected the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' request for an interim agreement for writing services, a person close to the guild said Monday. The person, who was not authorized to comment and spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to say when the decision had been made.

A call and an e-mail seeking comment from the academy were not immediately returned.

Meanwhile Monday, the guild released a letter rejecting the request from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which awards the Golden Globes. The letter said that granting a waiver "would not advance" the guild's ongoing battle with studios to negotiate a new contract.

In a statement, the Globe organization expressed measured unhappiness.

"The Golden Globe Awards, which has a long and friendly relationship with the Writers Guild of America, is obviously disappointed that the WGA denied its request for a waiver," the group said.

But it said it was "encouraged by the fact that the WGA has announced that it plans to negotiate agreements with independent production companies" and would attempt to reach a deal for the upcoming Globe ceremony.

A separate letter Monday to the academy denied the use of clips from movies and past awards programs that could be shown during the Oscars award show in February.

The producers of the two awards ceremonies had sought a waiver from the guild to allow writers to work on them.

Writers are in their seventh week of a costly strike.

Will Smith blockbuster smashes box-office competition

2007-12-18T08:11:00.000-08:00

Will Smith cemented his status as one of Hollywood's most bankable stars as new movie "I Am Legend" scored a blockbuster opening weekend at the North American box office, final figures showed Monday.

The post-apocalyptic thriller earned 77.2 million dollars in ticket sales, well ahead of family film "Alvin and the Chipmunks," which took a strong 44.3 million, according to figures from box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

"I Am Legend" is a fourth remake of Richard Matheson's 1954 science fiction novel and stars Smith as a New York scientist who is one of the world's last survivors of a virus that has transformed humans into blood-thirsty mutants. The movie's effects have received glowing reviews, notably a five million dollar scene shot on Brookyln Bridge that is reported to be the most expensive ever filmed in New York.

After topping last week's box office with 25.8 million dollars, "The Golden Compass," a fantasy film that had been expected to rake in blockbuster figures, fell to third place with 8.8 million dollars.

The reported 180-million-dollar film, starring Nicole Kidman and James Bond actor Daniel Craig, has been criticized by Christian groups as being anti-religious and has struggled at the box-office.

The Disney fairytale "Enchanted" dropped from second to fourth place with 5.5 million dollars, while the latest Coen brothers movie, "No Country for Old Men," rose one spot to fifth place with 2.8 million.

Three Christmas-themed movies took the next three spots: "The Perfect Holiday" with 2.3 million dollars, "This Christmas" with 2.26 million and "Fred Claus" with 2.22 million.

The World War II drama "Atonement" jumped six spots to ninth place with 1.8 million dollars after earning seven Golden Globe nominations on Thursday, making the film an Oscar contender.

Rounding up the top 12 films of weekend were "August Rush" with 1.8 million dollars, "Juno" with 1.4 million and "Beowulf" with 1.38 million.

Bollywood superstars Big B and SRK Bollywood superstars Big B and SRK better role models

2007-12-18T05:54:00.000-08:00

Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai serve as more influential role models for youngsters than any of the famous figures from history, a new study from the University of Leicester suggests.

The research in the University of Leicester Department of Media and Communication examines interest in celebrities and gossip about them. It was carried out by Charlotte De Backer who sought in her study to explain interest in celebrity culture.

She said: "Life is about learning, gaining experience and in that process we have a tendency to observe and mimic the actions of others. Ideally we mimic what makes others successful and avoid unsuccessful actions others have trialed (and paid for).

"In reality, humans seem to have the tendency to mimic the overall behaviour pattern of higher status or more successful others.

"This explains why celebrities act as role models for broad ranges of behaviour they display - good or bad."

De Backer also examined another theory for interest in celebrity, known as the Parasocial Hypothesis.

In this case, the bonds are parasocial or one-way because the celebrity reveals private information (often involuntary), and the audience members respond emotionally to this, but there is no feedback of the private life of the audience going to the celebrity (or hardly ever), and nor do celebrities display emotions towards their audience.

Her study of 800 respondents and over 100 interviews confirmed that younger participants showed greater interest in celebrity gossip, even if it was about celebrities who were a lot older than them and even when they did not know the celebrities. They showed greatest interest in internationally known celebrities, because they considered those as more prestigious.

De Backer study also found that older people were interested in celebrity gossip not because they wanted to learn about the celebrities, but because it helped them to form social networks with other people.

"We did find in the interviews that older people do not gossip about celebrities as much because they want to learn from them or feel befriended with them, but they use celebrity gossip to bond with real life friends and acquaintances.

"Living in scattered societies, we often don't know who to talk about with the many people we know, and celebrities can act as our mutual friends and acquaintances."

Her research was published in the journal Human Nature.

Bachchan popular but SRK is icon

2007-12-18T05:49:00.000-08:00

“Amitabh Bachchan is popular across the country, but Shah Rukh Khan is the most popular icon of India among the nation’s new generation,” Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, information and broadcasting minister, said in his official address at the inaugural of the 38th International Film Festival of India, in Goa’s Kala Academy on Friday evening.

The minister asserted full throttle that Shah Rukh had inspired young sports people with his portrayal of a coach in Chak De! India. He hoped that the actor would encourage young football players of India by attending their matches too.

Tamil actress Priyamani with Shah Rukh lit the IFFI’s traditional lamp. In his address, the actor was his characteristic witty self, alluding tongue in cheek to the recent controversy that he had been attending cricket matches to promote his film. Besides Shah Rukh, there was no presence of the Bollywood star brigade.

Marta Meszaros, the Hungarian director heading the festival’s competition jury, seemed bemused with the pandemonium of TV crews blocking her view of the stage.

Architect Charles Correa and filmmaker Joy Augustin were some of the Goa-kars present at the event. Mario Miranda was represented by cut-outs of his much-loved cartoons.

Chief Minister Digambar Kamat announced that from now on Goa would be the permanent venue of IFFI. Goa is hosting the country’s premier film event for the fourth time in a row. Protests were raised by some delegates from the back rows, but that did not obstruct the flow of the evening’s rat-a-tat volley announcements.

There has been constant debate on whether IFFI should return to its traditional venue, the Siri Fort in New Delhi.

Dasmunsi confirmed the chief minister’s announcement, stating firmly, “Despite criticism from some quarters, there can be no better venue for IIFI than Goa.” He urged the chief minister to build a bigger convention hall to accommodate the swelling crowds.

Another unexpected flourish came from Dasmunsi. By the end of the year, the I&B Ministry will present Special Lifetime Achievement Awards to Dilip Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar.

Artistes from other film disciplines like cinematography and script writing are also being finalised. In effect, these honours will be in addition to the already bestowed Dadasaheb Phalke Awards.

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