Desi Galaxy

All our male actors and models who are in their 40s are nowdays dying to show us the ruins of the wonderful bodies of theirs. I agree that even the ruins of these bodies are hot, its just that it feels a bit awkward seeing them doing things in their desperate attempts to look younger. Just when we had to see (and what an ugly sight it was) Shahrukh Khan’s six pack abs, and Aamir Khan’s sexy new all buffed up and muscled body in Ghajini. We also saw Akshay Kumar appearing in Levi’s Jeans ads (pictures below). Does he looks better than Shahrukh and Aamir? Certainly he does. There is something very masculine about Akshay, something very wild and animalistic.

I have previously talked about Akshay Kumar’s new all waxed and hair free body. Our readers agreed that they liked Akshay Kumar’s hairy chest better. But unfortunately the advertisers do not agree with the masses. They wanted a hair free shaved Akshay Kumar and Akshay had to comply. After all at the end of the day this is how he earns his bread by cashing the popularity. So there we have Akshay Kumar’s new hot sexy pictures from Levis Jean’s Ad campaign, click to enlarge for a better look:

While my friend Addy is comparing Shahrukh Khan with Aamir Khan. I would like to spend sometime on comparing Shahrukh Khan with Akshay Kumar. You will find lots of people saying that Akshay has given many more hit movies than Shahrukh Khan during last few years. Unfortunately, these Akshay lovers are terribly wrong. Shahrukh Khan still rules the box office.

In 2007, Shahrukh Khan had two major releases. Chak de India and Om Shanti Om. Both did amazingly well on the box office. Shahrukh was praised for his role as “Kabir Khan” in Chak de India by critics. Critics didn’t like him much in Om Shanti Om but movie’s hype and better marketing techniques made it a blockbuster. 2007 was also the luckiest year in Akshay Kumar’s career. He had four hit movies back to back. Namastey London, Heyy Babyy, Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Welcome. What I don’t like about all these four movies is that Akshay never moved away from his Hera Pheri style. There was no change in his acting and character development was extremely poor. His character looked the same in all these four movies. There was no versatility and nothing new in his acting.

In 2008 two Akshay Kumar movies were released. Singh is King and Tashaan. Tashaan was a huge disappointment at box office. Singh is King did fairly well and it was the third highest grosser in Bollywood. However, Shahrukh Khan had only one movie as the major release in 2008. Rab ne Bana di Jodi which was the highest grosser movie of 2008. Akshay Kumar’s latest movie Chandni Chowk to China Town has caused distress to the film makers who has signed him at very high prices. Chandni Chowk to Chinatown went flat on box office and it seems like no one is yet ready to buy the rights for his upcoming movies. Rohini Bhandari at the Business of Cinema suggests that producers may need to re-evaluate Akshay Kumar’s upcoming movies.

If you take TV shows, advertising campaign and International tours to measure the market value and popularity of the stars then Shahrukh Khan clearly beats Akshay Kumar.

Honestly, I don’t really care about who is more popular. I love these kind of comparisons because I think such healthy rivalry improves the quality of Hindi Cinema. This race to be the no. 1. Bollywood star benefits the audiences. So I would say that we the audiences of Hindi movies should encourage such debates. By the way I dont think that Aamir, Shahrukh, Akshay or Salman could ever beat the charisma and stardom of Hrithik Roshan. Who is, in my opinion, the best male performer in Bollywood right now.

Bollywood has a tradition of following the trends. Once a movie with romantic theme becomes popular you would see every one making a romantic film. In recent years Hera Pheri sat a trend of comedy movies and got many more movies with similar themes including a sequel to Hera Pheri.

Sikh community has been ridiculed a lot in jokes and also in Hindi cinema as part of comic relief. But it was Akshay who decided to tribute to the simplicity of Sikh life style. So he did and became the king. So is it like another lucky charm for Bollywood machos or real big support to the neglected community. These days Sikhs are the new trend, and soon we will be seeing lots of movies with Sikh main characters in them.

Saif Ali Khan’s Home production picks Imtiaz Ali because he recently gave a big block buster “Jab we met” and Imtiaz decided to give Saif a new avatar of Sardarji; only in some flash back sequences. Saif is also pairing new sizzling Deepika Padukone in this film for the first time; so, all
demanding and desirable elements are captured in the film.

The Sikh Turban is becoming the hottest trend and people will soon watch Salman Khan playing a sardar in Samir Karnik’s multi starrer “Heroes” and would have been nice to watch the fairy-face hot actor Ranbir Kapoor who is also ready to play a sardar in Shimit Amit’s next flick.

In an interview Akshay mentioned about the backdrop of ‘Singh is King’ that how the project started. He read the line “singh is King” behind a rickshaw (a three wheeler) once and liked it and later on we can see how the whole idea emerged into the movie. Now the success of other movies following the Singh trend depends on how other work on their
ideas to emerge as a hit movie.

The much awaited film of the year 2008 “Singh is Kinng” hits the doors of box office and creating waves. The goers who are planning to watch the comedy flick just keep it in their minds that to watch such a comedy film one has to keep brains behind before fastening the seat belts. ”Singh is King” is full time Paisa Vasool and fun filled joy ride with all the ingredients. 

It is a story of two Sikh Characters Happy and Lucky, accidentally Happy becomes the king of crime in Australia, and now it is the duty of Happy from the Village in Punjab to bring back the innocent Lucky back from the world of crime. Did he succeed you would only know after watching the movie. 

Bollywood’s most demanding and hit couple Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif  paired in this Punjabi happy drama “Singh is King”. The elements which really made this film a hit were chemistry between Akki and Kat, Akshay as Lucky the village guy with his naiveness, falling in love with Kat who is studying criminology, and trying to rescue the innocence Happy. 

Akshay as usual performed very well, his character is little exaggerated but he did justice to his role. This is Katrina’s sixth continuous hit and she looked gorgeous and sexy in the film, Kat is improving day by day with each new film, Neha Dhopia is looking sexy in her outfits and she did a good job. Sono Sood also did well and now he is entering the “A” class film with short characters. Om Puri is excellent in his get up and dialogue delivery so as Kirron Kher.  

Pritam really did a good job in directing music, there are a variety of songs,  different numbers with different feelings. ‘Bhotni ke’ is really a funny number and succeeds to bring laughs on viewers faces, ‘Teri Oar’ is a melodious number with the flavor of romance in it, ‘Jee karda’ is upbeat, overall the music is good party scores and the tracks are DJs favorite in parties these days. The surprise is first time Aksay also sang in this film. 

Directed by  Anees Bazmi, a film overall very slick, the first half of the film is a lot of fun and very much entertaining with all the punches and timing for the comedy, and definitely with an interesting story line. Some scenes are hilarious like when Akki is chasing the hen or scenes between Akshay and Ompuri. Besides second half of a film is more drama with touch of emotions (very much desi Indian style) in it but it contrasts with first half, and with an abrupt ending. 

Just few more things which can not bring down the status of the film but Rranbir Shorey is badly used, Javed Jaffery’s item song was not needed, and even in the film Mr. Aazmi could use more of the same chemistry of Akshay and Ompuri in the second half of the film also to bring more punches and lightness for audience to laugh.  

Direction is good in first half but the second half was like the director was in hurry to complete the film.On the whole it’s a worth seeing film and for Akshay’s fans it is strongly recommended film.

Tashan is one of the most awaited films of 2008. Starring Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Anil Kapoor. This movie is directed by Vijay Krishna Acharya. Mr. Acharya, who wrote screenplay for the Dhoom and Dhoom 2, is debuting his career as a director with this movie. Produced by Aditya Chopra and Yash Chopra under the banner of Yash Raj Films. We don’t know much about the story and plot of Tashan yet. But rumors are that Kareena will be seen wearing a bikini in this movie, Akshay will be playing the main character as Bachchan Panday, and Anil Kapoor is playing the negative role as Bhaiya ji. Music and songs of Tashan are composed by Vishal Shekhar.

Check out Music Review of Tashan

Trailers and Songs of Tashan

Sajid Khan, the tv host show, turned actor, turned director comes up with his first full length movie. Hey baby is a story of three single Indian guys living in Sydney. The motto of their life is to have fun and sleep with new girls ever night. One day someone drops a baby at their door with a note that reads “Kameenay now take care of your baby”. None of them knows exactly who is the father of the baby so they decide to find out. This leads them to find out all the girls they slept with during last two years.

Akshay Kumar plays the role of Arush, with his trademark comic style. Akshay Kumar is fun and since the first sequel of Hera Pheri we have seen him many times doing similar roles and delivering his dialogues in the same style. Akshay needs to learn how to add variety to his comic style. Akshay is teamed up with Ritesh Deshmukh and Fardeen Khan. Well Ritesh Deshmukh is one hell of talented actor and fardeen is not all that bad at all. So the team necessary for a hilarious comedy was near to perfect. What went wrong then? Well, actually the plot of the movie had several loop holes. Not only the plot but the script wasn’t perfect too. However the actors tried to fill the gap with the best of their performances. But it was quite evident that the director didn’t knew what he was doing. Sajid Khan definitely wanted us to laugh and yes we did but at the same time he kept us waiting for some interesting aspects, twists or wicked surprises in the movie and it was really very annoying when no such thing came out during the whole length of the film.

The film also had many guest appearances. There were several popular hot bollywood actresses in one song and Shahrukh Khan appeared in one song of the movie. but their appearances were not adding up to the excitement level since we already knew that Shahrukh Khan has a guest appearance in the movie. The movie is fun to watch but you may not want to see it again. They music was not chart busting but some songs were nice, specially Mast Kalandar and Dholna were good numbers.

I saw this movie last night. Simply it is the worst of all movies I have seen this year. It is a story of Indian and Pakistani families living in Western countries and witnessing that the cultural differences are taking their children away from their roots. Katrina Kaif is British Born Confused Desi girl who thinks that she is more Briton than the British. Her parents, particularly her father wants her to realize that she belongs to a different culture with a slightly different set of ethics. She travels to India with her parents where they try to find her an eligible Indian guy. They visit Hyderabad, Bangalore, Agra to see the Taj Mahal and then they visit Punjab. There they force her to marry Akshay Kumar, who is a village farmer. Finding no way out she marries Akshay Kumar and brings him back to London. Once in London she refuses to accept the marriage. Now Akshay Kumar will have to win her heart before she marries the white guy in her life.

Katrina Kaif looked exceptionally beautiful throughout the movie. So did London, the director spent a great deal of time showing the monumental structures, popular tourist destinations and night life of London. The movie would have worked on me if the director had spend some time on making Akshay’s character a little stronger, improving the dialog delivery of Katrina and Upen and decreased the scenes where white men occupied the party.

Music was below average. The only person who acted well through out the movie was Rishi Kapoor and Javed Sheikh. Javed Sheikh is a Pakistani actor and he plays the role of Pervez, father of Imran Khan (Upen Patel). Upen Patel has absolutely no acting skills at all and I cared less about his acting as I have said earlier that if he is going to roam around shirtless and half naked then I am going to forgive him for his bad acting skills. But unfortunately Upen’s shirtless scenes and his delicious brown body didn’t work that well. The movie was centered around Katrina Kaif and she did her best to look beautiful. I wish she had worked a little more on improving her dialog delivery and acting skills. The movie was branded as a romantic comedy and I failed to find both elements. The romance didn’t occupy the movie and comedy, well someone should tell Akshay that his hera-pheri kind of acting is not going to work for all movies.

No matter what media talks about Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan’s relationship, both of them never publicly admitted that there is something more than just casual friendship between them. The media has followed Katrina and created news items like Katrina spends time with Salman’s family, or that Salman has helped her improve Hindi.

Salman doesn’t need anymore romantic publicity with all the controversies he has seen in last couple of years. He needs powerful roles more than any other thing. He has some big projects like Prabhu Deva’s Tamil movie Pokiri’s Hindi remake and a movie directed by Kunal Kohli and produced by Yashraj films. On the other hand, Katrina still needs a firm ground to establish herself as a major actoress. She needs lots of publicity, and thats why she gives the hints and clues to the media about her having some kind of an affair with Salman Khan. Like in this interview, when asked about her relationship with Salman Khan and that Ash and Abhishek are getting married, and there are talks about Salman planning to settle down. So, are there any plans? She replied:

(Laughs) You should ask Salman this. I have no clue, and, oh yes, tell me what he says.

Katrina is doing a movie, titled ‘Partner’ with Salman Khan. Directed by David Dhawan, Katrina is not paired with Salman Khan in the movie, instead she is paired with Govinda.

The most significant film she has is ‘Namaste London’ with Akshay Kumar. But movie recently got into trouble for a scene where Katrina is shown wearing a mini Skirt in a Dargah. The director has decided to shoot the scene again with Katrina all properly dressed up for a Dargah visit. Not only Katrina, Upen Patel also has high hopes with the movie. He plays a small role in the movie.

The projects Katrina has in her pocket reveal that she will be remain in news with speculations about Salman really marrying him. The Salman’s side of story, surprisingly Salman Khan who has a history of getting emotional about her girlfriends, a person about whom media has created an obsessive, dominant male kind of image. A guy who has beaten up girlfriends and media persons chasing his girlfriends, is not even vocal about his relationship with Katrina Kaif.