Thursday, July 31, 2008

Katrina and Salman ready for split?

Mumbai - Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan’s split looks imminent. The beauty who was born in Hong Kong and brought up in Hawaii in true cosmopolitan way has reportedly decided not to work with her beau Salman Khan as well.

The two were dating for the last five years and there was talk of them getting married last year. But Katrina Kaif who is on an upswing or the last two years decided not to marry for the time being and concentrate more on her career instead.

And that seems to be the right decision. What happened during her birthday bash has horrified the beauty who has set her eyes to be the No. 1 in Bollywood. She is sure one of the best in the Indian film industry and one of the highest paid actresses in India.

Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan’s duel on Katrina Kaif’s 24th birthday party has again brought Salman Khan in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. He is known for his bad and temperamental behaviour for a long, long time.

But this time the way he tried to settle scores with the most respected Bollywood actor has once again presented him in a very bad image.

Salman Khan is almost nineteen years elder to twenty four year old Katrina Kaif. Salman is one of the successful stars of Bollywood who has given unforgettable film like, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Tere Naam, No Entry and Partner.

Salman Khan’s irresponsible behaviour during the party when he in an inebriated condition first verbally abused Shah Rukh Khan who had come after being repeatedly invited to the birthday bash and later provoking him in a useless verbal brawl.

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Courtesy: khabrein.info

Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif - perfect pair

Britain-born actress Katrina Kaif, who has carved a niche for herself in Bollywood with five hits in a row, will now be seen with Ranbir Kapoor in Prakash Jha's political thriller Rajneeti.

The director says they make a perfect pair. The political saga also stars Ajay Devgan and Manoj Bajpai. Katrina will play Ranbir's love interest.

"I needed an actress who would look convincing as an intelligent, modern and cultured girl of today. Katrina fitted the bill perfectly. She also looks perfectly matched with Ranbir. Not too many of the top leading ladies are compatible with Ranbir," said Jha.

"Katrina is versatile enough to look perfectly matched with Salman (Khan), Akshay (Kumar) and Ranbir. I also like her focussed attitude to her career. Now that she has proved herself successful, there's a hunger to prove herself in roles and projects that aren't considered Katrina's kingdom," the director said.

Katrina is sure making up for lost time and space with Ranbir.
After having had her track cut out of Yash Raj Film's Bachna Ae Haseeno, the duo first signed Rajkumar Santoshi's Ajab Prem Ki Gazab Kahani and now they are together in Rajneeti.

For both the actors, Jha's film is an experience very different from the kind of cinema they've done so far.

Jha, who has made gritty political dramas like GangaaJal and Apaharan, says Katrina's role wouldn't be a mere romantic foil to Ranbir.

"Not at all. She has very powerful dramatic moments in the plot. This role would require Katrina to put all her skills into the active mode."

The fact that Ranbir and Katrina share the same secretary has also expedited her entry into what promises to be a different, more gritty kind of cinema.

Rajneeti has an interesting array of star and actors.

Recently, Viveik Oberoi, who was to play one of the leads in this modern day rendering of Mahabharat set in a political dynasty akin to the Gandhis, opted out. Arjun Rampal has now replaced him.

"No one is making multi-starrers any more. I think Rajneeti will be the only one in the near future," said Jha.

Courtesy:
ndtvmovies.com

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

The “Mummy” franchise has always been the B-movie version of the “Indiana Jones” films, which themselves are B movies elevated by Steven Spielberg into an action-adventure colossus. So what does that make the “Mummy” films in the grand scheme of things? C movies?

The third installment, “Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” directed by Rob Cohen (“XXX,” “The Fast and the Furious”), is by far the weakest. In it the excitement-starved husband-and-wife exploring team, Rick and Evelyn O’Connell (Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello, who replaces Rachel Weisz), come out of retirement in 1946 to travel to Shanghai, where they are tricked into helping resurrect an evil 2,000-year-old emperor (Jet Li). The emperor’s schemes to become immortal all those years ago were foiled when a benign sorceress (Michelle Yeoh) laid a curse on him. While in Shanghai, Rick and Evelyn run into their mischievous college dropout son, Alex (the charmless Luke Ford).

When the curse is accidentally lifted, the emperor, joined by a rebel Chinese army, rushes to the Himalayas, where a dip in a pool in Shangri-La promises immortality. He already has supernatural powers and likes to turn himself into a three-headed dragon. Accompanying the O’Connells is Evelyn’s eccentric, wisecracking brother Jonathan (John Hannah), who during the flight to the mountains is vomited on by a yak.

The kindest thing to be said for this frantic, cluttered mess of cheesy computer-generated action-adventure clichés is that at least you can see how the estimated $175 million budget (according to the Internet Movie Database) was spent. We get an avalanche, an army of bow-and-arrow-wielding skeletons, a car chase that turns into a fireworks explosion, and a cadre of snowy yetis. In the movie’s futile drive to conjure visceral excitement, the action sequences are edited into an incoherent jumble that makes you feel trapped on a rickety airplane sitting in a pool of yak vomit.

“The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some strong language and mild violence.

THE MUMMY

Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Rob Cohen; written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar; director of photography, Simon Duggan; edited by Joel Negron and Kelly Matsumoto; music by Randy Edelman; production designer, Nigel Phelps; produced by Sean Daniel, James Jacks, Stephen Sommers and Bob Ducsay; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes.

WITH: Brendan Fraser (Rick O’Connell), Jet Li (Emperor), Maria Bello (Evelyn O’Connell), John Hannah (Jonathan Carnahan), Russell Wong (Ming Guo), Liam Cunningham (Maguire), Luke Ford (Alex O’Connell), Isabella Leong (Lin) and Michelle Yeoh (Zi Yuan).

Courtesy: movies.nytimes.com

'Swing Vote' - Hollywood Movie review

Swing Vote: Comedy-drama. Starring Kevin Costner, Madeline Carroll, Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern. (PG-13. 100 minutes. At Bay Area theaters. For complete movie listings and show times, and to buy tickets for select theaters, go to sfgate.com/movies.)

It's not easy to play a stupid guy. The temptations are everywhere - to wink at the audience as if to say, "I'm smart, actually" - or to try to make being stupid a form of adorable. Kevin Costner plays a good-natured idiot in "Swing Vote," a middle-aged man who has squandered what little potential he had in favor of life as a hard-drinking good-for-nothing, and he gives a remarkable performance.

It's not the kind of role that wins Oscars, because Academy Awards usually go to actors playing high-status roles, powerful souls, either good or evil. By contrast, Bud, the likable loser in "Swing Vote," is low status all the way, a man who can barely function socially, whose instincts are all wrong, whose impulses are either vulgar or diffident. Costner slips right into that mode of being, bringing to the characterization precision, observation and a heretofore unexploited flair for physical comedy.

If the advance advertising has communicated one thing about this movie, you already know that it's about an average fellow (actually, below average) whose single vote will determine the winner of the presidential election. The scenario is this: It all comes down to New Mexico's electoral votes, and the popular vote in New Mexico is tied. However, Bud's ballot was never tallied, and so he has the right to cast a written ballot - in effect, to choose the winner.

Political junkies are an obvious natural constituency for this movie, and they will be amused by the presentation of the candidates and their political ads. Kelsey Grammer is the Republican incumbent, a borderline idiot, and Dennis Hopper plays the Democratic challenger, the perfect image of the kind of liberal candidate that inevitably loses, two parts Mondale and one part Dukakis, with just a dash of Kucinich. When he goes skeet shooting with Bud, the recoil of the rifle sends him flying backward.

The campaign comes down to a crazy effort to court one man's vote, and so each candidate starts pandering - with the Republican posing as a pro-gay marriage environmentalist and the Democrat espousing anti-abortion, anti-immigration positions - in television ads that are the comic highlight of the picture.

However, anyone who approaches the movie with hopes of finding a serious elucidation of an intriguing political hypothetical will be disappointed. For example, until I realized it was not that kind of movie, I wanted to know who was ahead in the national popular vote (an important weight to throw in the balance in a deadlocked election). I also kept waiting for the candidates to get serious in discussing the issues with Bud. But, of course, such a story direction would have led to a dead end, a polemic for one side or the other.

The movie's real interest isn't in political issues so much as in presenting Bud as an archetype of a certain kind of American, living on the fringes, with little sense of the world around him. The script, by Jason Richman and director Joshua Michael Stern, is very good at showing us the thought patterns of a guy who really doesn't know how life works or how to comport himself outside his limited sphere. The scenes between Bud and the political honchos that come courting him are painfully accurate portrayals of someone whose social compulsion is to bring everything down to a comfortable level of clowning, even if it means being perceived as a buffoon. Costner has the internal workings of this guy down, and he's well matched by young Madeline Carroll, who plays his precocious, loving daughter, an adult's mind in a child's body.

The movie is a bit long. Sometimes the audience is ahead of the story, and the setup itself has some built-in challenges that no script could have overcome. But the mix of comedy and drama is winning; Costner couldn't be better, and the little girl is a find. The film is characterized by fine performances throughout, including that of Mare Winningham, who turns up in a single scene and brings to it a whole anguished life history.

Real-life political reporters and commentators, such as Chris Matthews and Campbell Brown, make appearances. Arianna Huffington has the agony of actually having to say, "Somewhere Franklin and Jefferson are smiling," as though either founder would have liked the prospect of an idiot choosing the president. Not likely. After all, it was Jefferson, the ultimate democrat among the founders, who said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will be." Jefferson would not be smiling on Bud. Bud was his worst nightmare.

Courtesy: sfgate.com

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Amitabh turns ghost in Bhoothnath

By: Joginder Tuteja, Glamsham

Promotion of Amitabh Bachchan's upcoming film Bhoothnath has begun. Amongst many other things, one piece of trivia floating around the film is that this would be for the first time ever that Big B would be seen as a ghost.

However, this is far from true!

If one looks at the films he has done very recently, it was only two years back when Big B had appeared as a ghost on screen. The man responsible for doing so was Ram Gopal Varma and the film was Darna Zaroori Hai. In one of the short stories of the film, which featured Riteish Deshmukh along with Amitabh Bachchan, the latter enacted the role of a professor who spooks his student.

In this chilling 15 minutes tale, Bachchan is shown to be scared of a mysterious figure in the house. Later, in the story's climax, it turns out that the spooky figure was none other than Bachchan himself, who actually was a ghost!

In addition, Amitabh Bachchan has earlier too appeared in flicks which have been based on super natural elements. His lesser-known film titled Hum Kaun Hai, which released in 2004 was based on Hollywood flick The Others, which was one of the most popular films belonging to horror/suspense genre. However, since there was zilch promotion of Hum Kaun Hai, it failed miserably at the box office.

AKS is another film, which comes to mind when one talks about Bachchan's involvement in supernatural flicks. Directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, it didn't succeed at the box office, as it was way ahead of its time. In the film, Manoj Bajpai's 'aatma' entered Bachchan's body and turned him into evil. So, as one can see, there are quite a few films with Bachchan appearing in supernatural/horror sagas!

However, in all fairness to Bhoothnath, the film is hardly spooky as it projects a lovable relationship between a kid and the 'bhooth' of an old man. To make matters funnier, this jolly 'bhooth' also appears suited-booted and sings and dances rap numbers with the kid.

Source : entertainment.oneindia.in

Aamir Khan invites Amitabh Bachchan to watch 'Taare Zameen Par'

It may sound unbelievable but Amitabh Bachchan has not yet seen Aamir Khan’s superhit film Taare Zameen Par .

The verbal duel that began between Aamir Khan and Big B over the former’s scathing remarks about Mr. Bachchan’s movie Black seems to be over. Aamir has long sought to make peace with the Big B and has even visited the superstar’s residence to offer his condolences when Teji Bachchan passed away.

Now, early this week, Aamir made a surprise visit to Mumbai’s Mehboob studios where Big B was shooting Sujoy Ghosh’s film Aladdin .

Aamir met Big B and invited him to a special screening of his film ‘Taare Zameen Par’.

Big B has accepted the invitation but has told Aamir that he will see the film with wife Jaya Bachchan , son Abhishek Bachchan and bahu Aishwarya Rai . And since all of them are out of Mumbai at present, Aamir would have to hold his screening on a day when they are all in town.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, at the premiere of Abbas Mastan’s movie Race in Mumbai, Aamir Khan unveiled his ‘Ghajini’ look. The actor hasn’t gone completely bald but has retained a very short, crew-cut hair style with scarred lines on his head.

Source : apunkachoice.com

Amitabh Bachchan discharges Raj Thackeray's outsider talk as 'random'

New Delhi: The Maharashtrian-outsider debate is all set to heat up once again. Speaking on the issue for the first time, Amitabh Bachchan has dismissed the allegation by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray that he had done more for Uttar Pradesh than for Mumbai.
In an interview to a national daily, Bachchan said, “This is a free country and everyone has the liberty of free speech. The law of the land is and its constitution supreme. Every Indian should be affected by that. Random charges are random. They do not deserve the kind of attention you wish me to give them."

Bachchan's comments come even as a group of north Indians in Mumbai allege they were beaten up by MNS activists on Saturday.

In a complaint filed at Mumbai’s Santa Cruz police station, the five men said the incident took place when they were on their way to bathe in the sea after taking part in Holi celebrations.

They claim they were rounded up by a group of 10-15 people, who beat them up on learning that they were from Bihar.

The victims claim the assailants were MNS workers, and were shouting party slogans while beating them up.

“They asked us where we are from and when we said Bihar, they said *#%&* and then they beat us with hockey sticks, lathis and sariyas,” one of the complainants, Surendra Jagdsih Jha said.

Police Inspector of the Santacruz police station Dattatreya Jadhav also confirmed that in the complaint it has been registered that “the accused were shouting slogans about MNS while beating the complainants.”

Migrants in Mumbai

Ironically, the latest Economic Survey reveals that the majority of migrants to urban Maharashtra, including Mumbai, do not come from north India.

According to the survey, only 32 per cent of migrants to urban Maharashtra are from other states, while around 42 per cent are from within Maharashtra.

Source : ibnlive.com