Desi Galaxy

Raakhi Sawant is going to host a show on television and her first guest would be none other than Aamir Khan. I am quite surprised, Aamir Khan is famous for staying away from interviews and media. Talking to Rediff Aamir told that Rakhi Sawant wrote him a letter requesting him to appear on her show’s first episode. “It touched my heart” said Aamir, “I have seen her many times on television and I like her spirit”.

Now this is an amazing and surprisingly new step forward for Rakhi Sawant. She is always under estimated just because she is straight forward, bindas and illiterate. But there should be no doubt left in any mind that she is really talented. She has proved herself in various reality shows where judges and masses lauded her performances. Rakhi Sawant is probably the only item girl ever invited to Koffee with Karan, her talent was recognized by Director/Producer Rakesh Roshan who casted her for an item song in his movie Krazy 4. Now she is going to host her own reality show on Zoom TV.

While talking to Karan on Koffee with Karan Rakhi admitted that she thinks Mallika Sherawat is sexier than her. Rakhi’s outfits for her new show are designed by Ashley Rebello who has designed Mallika Sherawat’s outfits. According to Rebello, Rakhi asked him to design her outfits like those of Mallika Sherawat. The show is going to be aired on July 14. It is said that Rakhi’s been trained by Zoom’s team to improve her English and to make her appear presentable but yet very sexy.

Here is a video clip of Aamir Khan and Rakhi Sawant.

Well you guys have already read Aamir Khan’s official blog. Honestly I am a bit jealous of Aamir. While we guys work so hard on our blogs to make them popular, these movie stars can beat us by just calling names to their colleagues. A friend of mine says that if you want more comments and link backs to your blog all you need to do is to provoke a controversy, start some controversial debate, make your voice stronger and be passionate about your ideas. I never paid attention to my friend’s advise but now he is telling me that Aamir followed his advise and now look at Aamir Khan’s blog. Thousands of comments on a single post! Here is how Aamir did it.

Aamir Khan wrote a post titled “Settlers Of Panchgani” where he mentioned that he bought a house that came with a dog which is named after Shahrukh Khan. He writes:

Shahrukh is licking my feet and I am feeding him biscuits every now and then. What more can I ask for?

Now, before you jump to any conclusions let me add that Shahrukh is the name of our dog. And before you jump to any further conclusions let me add that I had nothing to do with naming him.

The post was mentioned on almost every news channel in India. Almost every newspaper wrote about this post. Even the king of Bollywood Shahrukh Khan talked about this blog post. I can’t even imagine the traffic this single post would have generated for Aamir Khan’s blog. There are 9697 comments on this post, and I am sure that the technical team at Aamir Khan’s office must have deleted thousands of comments.

Aamir Khan is a popular super star of Hindi film industry. The fame he got is not the fame of his blogging capabilities. He is still famous as a movie actor/ director/ producer not as a blogger. However, I think he has a good sense of humor. His writing skills are not bad either. But his blog lacks interactivity, I think he should understand that blogs are not about comments and posts. He needs to upload videos, photos, and he should link back to websites he found interesting. He is already immensely popular all over the world and he is famous for working hard to achieve the perfection in his work. So he must improve on his blogging skills and since he is the pioneer celebrity blogger, he should try to set an example for other celebrities that are thinking about following his steps.

Recently Shahrukh Khan introduced his cricket team Kolkatta Knight Riders for the Indian Premier League. Even though it was a cricketing event but with the presence of so many Bollywood personalities made it look like a filmi event. It had the entertainment value that could be compared to the release of some new music album or the Mahorat of some new project.

There were players of his cricket team like Sauvra Ganguly, Ishant Sharma, Akash Chopra and

Murali Karthik. Also present at the occasion was Gauri Khan, Sanjay Kapoor, Jai Mehta and Juhi Chawla. Shahrukh Khan presented his team’s anthem ‘Korbo Lorbo Jeetro Be’ composed by Vishal-Shekhar. To add more entertainment value and press coverage for the event Shahrukh Khan also made comments about Aamir Khan.

Recently, Aamir threw a direct question to Shahrukh Khan to explain who is the real number one right now. Aamir is flying in heavenly skies since the blockbuster “Tare Zameen per” which he directed and played a small role in it. Shahrukh was asked by journalists to say something about this and he said:

Aamir is a dear friend and if he says that I’m second to him then it’s a great compliment to him….oops that was a genuine slip of tongue (amidst peals of laughter)…I mean it’s a great compliment to me. We are complete opposites. He is an intelligent, intellectual person, I’m more physical. I do things. He thinks them out. I know his jokes, he knows mine. He is 100% No. 1…I just said Kkkk Kiran…he really loves Kkkkk Kiran

My wife has warned me if I say anything about Aamir she’ll beat me up. She is an Aamir Khan fan.

There’s Aamir, then there’s me and then there’s Chengez Khan I guess…that keeps changing….I’m proud of having learnt a lot from Aamir. One of my biggest desires in life is to do a film with Aamir and learn a lot from him. We should not belittle the importance of Aamir Khan by comparing with someone like me. He is a standalone, one of the nicest gentleman and actor in the country.

Shahrukh is quite right about the two stars doing a movie together. Aamir Khan should really think about doing a movie where he can hire Shahrukh Khan. Or may be Aamir is just a bit afraid that Shahrukh would take away all the glory and credit for such a movie. Just like Aamir Khan did in Raj Kumar Santoshi’s cult classic ‘Andaz Apna Apna’ where he completely overshadowed Salman Khan with his superior acting skills.

Film makers in Bollywood love to cast rivals together. In 1949, Director Mehboob presented Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor together in the movie Andaz. Both actors were the top heroes of the industry at that time and the movie created the ‘who is the best’ kind of hype. The film was recieved well by the audiences. But considering Mehboob’s casting options at that time I don’t think that this casting scenario was entirely designed to took advantage of the rivalry. In fact Mehboob didn’t have much choice. he needed a triangle and Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Nargis were the best actors to do the job.

In 1982 Amitabh was the acclaimed angry young man and he was then signed up to face Dilip Kumar in the movie Shakti. Even though Dilip Kumar was playing the role of his father but fans and media expected the movie like it is a contest between two giants. And it was, Shakti was a story of a broken relationship between a father and his son. There were intense dialogs, emotionally charged scenes, tears and lots of drama just to make sure that audience get what they wanted from the movie. Shakti wasn’t major blockbuster but Dilip Kumar won filmfare for his role in the movie. This was the last time Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan appeared together in a movie.

In 1991, Rajkumar Santoshi signed Aamir Khan and Salman Khan together for his movie Andaz Apna Apna. Santoshi made a right decission with a hillarious script and wonderful timing. At that time Aamir and Salman were the heartbeat of the youth and the movie created much pre-release press hype. Unfortunately, it took Santoshi three years to complete the movie. By that time the media and the fans lost interest in discussing who is best. Movie didn’t perform well at the box office. But it has its own cult following and is one of the best comedy movies ever (My own opinion).

Even the Shahrukh-Amitabh setting has been tried before. They have worked together in Aditya Chopra’s Mohabbatein (2000) and Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001). Both movies did well at the box office. So it seems like Shahrukh Amitabh rivalry is profitable for film-makers.

Shahrukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan are once again going to appear together in the movie ‘Bhootnaath’. This came out when we have already consumed an over-dose of news about the growing tensions and rivalry between the two stars. The rivalry sparked by media is now going to help with the promotion of the new movie.

While looking at the Mohabbatein page on Wikipedia I found this interesting bit:

On January 9th 2007’s episode of The Colbert Report, during the “We the Mediator” segment. Stephen Colbert mentions the New Year’s feud between Khan and Bachchan. By botching the names of the other stars who arrived at Bachchan’s party, he decided to judge the winner by viewing clips from Mohabbatein (he pronounced as “Mohabah-tee-yahn”)and from Khan’s dancing to Bachachan’s angry look clips, the undisputed winner was Khan. Stephen Colbert described Khan as “Dilip Kumar” to Bachchan’s “Raj Kapoor.”

History repeats itself and Bollywood loves repetition.

Some days back, I talked about a post on Ramesh Jain’s blog. According to Ramesh, Vidhu Vinod Chopra told the audience at the UCLA Campus that he rewards people based on the success of the movie, rather than contracting them. He claimed that this results in allowing him to make movies at reasonable cost. And there are good actors who are willing to work under that model.

Who wouldn’t like to work under that model? Professionals, artists and every day workforce would love to work this way the problem is with the investors, enterprenuers and the big shots. They don’t want to share the monetory success.

Shabana Ansari at DNA has a story about this kind of entrepreneurship. She reports that the actor Rajnikanth is the highest paid actor in India. Rajnikanth has recieved Rs 16 crore as fixed payment for his acting and Rs 9 crore in revenue share.

Reportedly more and more Bollywood actors are following the trend started by the Tamil actor. Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Hrithik Roshan they all now want share in the success of the movies.

But why only limit this model to the actors? Why not include the music composers, choreographers, lyricists, writers, technicians, spot boys, and the chai walas who wander around the studios?

May be it sounds stupid, but this kind of revenue sharing strategy would make artists put their best into a product. This model not only encourages but it also assures the artists that they would get paid for their talent, the producers and distributors would’nt be the only ones enjoying the benefits of money coming along with the success.

And why limit this model of entrepreneurship to Bollywood only? I think it should be widely adapted and professionals should insist on revenue/ profit sharing.

Tags: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur, Business, Corporate, Rajnikanth

Rani Mukherjee is celeberating her 29th birthday today. On this occassion, I came across two articles (one on now running, the other on Zee news)about the actress. Both question how this so ordinary girl has become the queen of Bollywood. The articles tell you that she is talented. But let me tell you a little more, she is not only talented on screen, she is also very talented in public relations. She has very close friendships with Karan Johar, Aamir Khan, Sanjay leela Bhansali, Shahrukh Khan, Yash Chopra and his sons. She is even dating Aditya Chopra these days. I just love her, she is chrasmatic and she knows how to act. Anyone who thinks that her husky voice is annoying is wrong, actually her voice is very sexy.

What I like most about her is that she is sincere to her work. She doesn’t do over exposing like some other actresses. I don’t remember she kissed any one on screen other than Kamal Hasan for Hey Ram. I don’t know if she avoids kissing scenes or what but its strange specially when every actress including Aishwarya Rai is ready to do such scenes to grab audience attention. She has a taste for fashion and she has Manish Malhotra, the popular designer on her list of close friends. Manish’s creations make her appear as an ordinary girl who is living her fantasies. She is just like Babli. Happy Birthday Babli.

I was really very excited about Fanaa. It has Aamir Khan and Kajol, directed by Kunal Kohli and produced by Aditya Chopra. What else a bollywood lover can ask for? The movie turns out to be a below average flick. The story line was old and left me thinking that why Kunal Kohli, Aamir Khan, Aditya Chopra were so excited about this story? It is not like that no body has ever told this story in bollywood before. There are several movies about terrorists trying to break India into peices and then falling in love with a charming Indian guy or girl. So there was nothing new in this story.

Script, well to be honest it sounded like the dialogues were written for the soul purpose of using the word fanaa and explaining the sufi term. They had to do it because story itself was very unrealistic and director was not talented enough to deliever the massage by narrating a story, he needed couplets. dialogues were fictional and it felt like we are reading some novel or something word by word. Film is a different media and things that sound great on paper do not always look great on the screen.

Set and costumes were awfully boring. Rishi Kapoor’s character looked a lot like his role in Hum Tum. Tabu’s dialogue delivery was terrible. The movie is a must watch for Aamir and Kajol fans but I don’t think that anyone would like to see it twice, it is that boring.

Related:
Fanaa - Movie Preview
Fanaa - Music Review

Tags: bollywood, aamir khan, kajol

Have you checked out the soundtrack of Fanaa? Is this amazing or what? My goodness I can not believe I am hearing some quality music from bollywood after a long time. Music of Fanaa is composed by Jatin Lalit and the lyrics have been penned down by Prasoon Joshi. It has seven tracks each one of them is unique and brilliant. Fanaa is a Sufi term which means Destroyed in Love, since Sufism in Indian sub-continent has a lot to do with Qawwali so there is a qawali which makes and tries to explain the term Fanaa. It is one of the most blood boiling qawalis Indian Cinema has ever produced. To further emphasize the term destroyed in love there is an instrumental theme titled ‘Destroyed in Love’ and a remixed track ‘Fanaa for you’ by Dj Aqeel. Aamir Khan and Kajol provided there voices for two songs; ‘Mere Haath Mein’ and ‘Chanda Chamke’.

Songs of Fanaa can be listened and downloaded in MP3 and Real format here. Complete lyrics of all songs in Fanaa in Hindi along with English translation are available here.

Related:
Fanaa - Movie Preview
Fanaa - Movie Review

Tags: bollywood, aamir khan, kajol, fanaa, music