Desi Galaxy

When I heard that Amitabh is going to do another movie with a young heroine (love interest), I thought that movie would be just like Nishabd (worthless). But, I was wrong. Cheeni Kum is a light romantic comedy with beautiful music composed by Ilayaraja. Director Balkrishan is debuting into Hindi movie with this movie and it also marks the come back of Ilayaraja.

Story of Cheeni Kum

The plot of Cheeni Kum is simple. Buddhadev Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan) is a 64 year old chef who works at a resturant in Lodon and lives with his 85 year old mother. He never married a woman and never fell in love until he meets Nina Verma (Tabu). Nina and Buddhadev fall in love. Now Buddhadev comes to Delhi to ask Nina’s father for her daughter’s hand to marry. Omprakash Verma (Paresh Rawal) is an idealistic follower of Gandhi and 6 years younger than Buddhadev. It is Buddhadev’s job to make Verma change his mind about the age boundaries and allow Buddhadev to marry his daughter.

Review

Three critically accalaimed actors in the lead roles and a light romantic comedy with beautiful music, how could this go wrong. In fact it is quite a good recipe for a good bollywood movie. But it could go wrong if you have an unexperienced director like Mr. Balkrishnan. Paresh Rawal is nearly wasted in the movie. He has no comic lines and the director failed to shed more light on his character. I mean being Gandhian could be hillariously funny in this age if you know how to do it. Remember how Munna Bhai did it in Lage Raho Munna Bhai?

But then who claimed that the movie would be a non-stop laughter package? It is cheeni kum so the humor is light and sweet. Some good emotional scenes that are going to touch you and beautiful Tabu. I would say that the movie is worth watching, utleast once. You get to see some great acting and a story line thats quite mature. Forgive the new director if he fails to tell the story correctly. But if you are going to tell the story to your friends, then I am sure you can do better than Balkrishnan.

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.

Based on a previous post on Desi Galaxy, we ask our readers to vote and tell us what they think about Bachchan’s not inviting Muslims to attend Abhishek’s wedding?

In the previous poll we asked:

Do you think Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are going to get married?

We recieved a total of 125 votes

49 out of 125 think that Salman and Katrina are really in love.
29 out of 125 voted that they are more interested in Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan wedding.
28 out of 125 thought that it is none of their business to spend time thinking about whether or not Salman and Katrina will get married.
19 out of 125 think that it is just a publicity stunt.

It has been rumored that Bachchans did not invite a single Muslim colleague or friend to attend the wedding of Abhishek Bachchan. Well they also didn’t invite a whole lot of Hindu, Sikh, Christians but surprisingly there is not even a single Muslim celebrity or politician who attended the Big Bollywood wedding. May be it is just a coincidence but what I have read about the religious activities of the Bachchans and Aishwarya Rai to remove some superstitious astrological curse, makes me believe that they are a religious family. May be they feared that a Muslim attending their pious spiritual Hindu wedding would cause them some astrological harm or would make this marriage unlucky. Or some other stupid super mythological beliefs.

We have read that, Shahrukh Khan was not invited. This guy has worked in many movies with Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan. Hrithik Roshan and Rakesh Roshan were not invited. Because Hrithik’s wife is Muslim. It is rumored that the Bachchans specifically asked Mumbai police not to send any Muslim police officer to provide them security. Private security guards hired by the Bachchans were all Hindus.

Well of course it is none of anyone’s business to discuss the religious beliefs of the Bachchans. I wish that these rumors are not true. But unfortunately it seems like no matter how secular and modern India has become, no matter how people of different religions work closely, there is an integration but when the time comes to show just how integrated different Indian cultures are people prefer to remain secluded in their own religious nutshells.

[This post is part of Babe of the Month Series. Desi Galaxy's Babe of the month for March 2007 is Aishwarya Rai.]

We have seen Madhuri Dixit, Sri Devi and several other bollywood actresses disappearing from the screen after getting married. But Aishwarya Rai has no plans to quit industry after getting married to Abhishek Bachchan. She is already busy in shooting of movies that are going to release after the wedding. She is playing the role of Jodha in the upcoming movie ‘Jodha Akbar‘ which is already most talked about movie in the industry at this moment. She also has some projects that would start after her getting married to Abhishek Bachchan.

A close source to Aishwarya told IANS, “She goes into all these assignments as soon as she completes ‘Jodha-Akbar’. There’s absolutely no reason to think she’d quit working after marriage. Everyone in the two families is very supportive of Aishwarya’s career. And that includes Jaya Bachchan.”

In the past we have seen Bollywood film-makers trying to earn some cash by presenting the real life couples in the movies. Like the classic Yash Chopra movie ‘Silsila‘. At that time there were rumors in media about the affair between Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha. Amitabh Bachchan married Jaya Bhaduri before the filming of this movie but director earned some cold hard cash by making a movie on a real life love triangle.

This time these film makers might try to cast Salman Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan together in a movie. But since Aishwarya Rai has already denied working with Salman Khan, we can assume that they would sign up either Hrithik Roshan or John Abraham to play the role of Salman Khan in a movie which will be slightly based on Aishwarya’s real life love affair. Bachchan’s are one of the most powerful families in the industry and it seems like they are a little conservative as well. But I feel that they are basically professional actors and if such a film is offered to Aishwarya and Abhishek without Salman Khan being a part of the package they won’t hesitate to work in it. Audiences are surely going to love such a movie.

[This post is part of Babe of the Month Series. Desi Galaxy's Babe of the month for March 2007 is Aishwarya Rai, and this post is part of the series of posts on Aishwarya Rai's Biography]

Being in the same Industry Aishwarya Knew Abhishek already. We don’t know when the two came closer and when the affair started. They first appeared together in the song ‘Kajra ra’ for the movie Bunty aur Babli, Aishwarya had an special appearance in this song. Ash, Abhishek and Amitabh beautifully choreographed by Saroj Khan has made the song itself a classic. At that time Ash and Abhishek were also working together for J.P. Dutta’s film Umrao Jaan. It is generally believed that working together in this movie brought them closer. They started dating each other. However, it is really surprising that media was unable to catch the two of them together. A few pictures of Aishwarya and Abhishek spending sometime somewhere might have earned a fortune to any film journalist. Still they were unable to produce any photographic evidence of the relationship between two.

Aishwarya and Abhishek never publicly accepted or denied the rumors that they were dating. But there were rumors that the two of them are in love and Abhishek calls Aishwarya on her mobile phone every hour. The media was right about all this and it all came open when Aishwarya’s Mother spoke about how Aishwarya’s astrological signs mis-match with Abhishek. On 14 January 2007, Aishwarya and Abhishek officially announced their engagement.

The two actors appeared in several movies together, in Umrao Jaan Aishwarya Rai was directed by J. P. Dutta who introduced Abhishek to bollywood viewers. Later Abhishek was directed by Mani Ratnam in ‘Guru’, Mani Ratnam introduced Aishwarya in his movie “Iruvar”. They appeared in Dhoom 2, though this time not as a pair.

The astrological hurdles in Aishwarya’s marriage to Abhishek has produced lots of criticism all over. Aishwarya Rai along with her family and the Bachchan family took part in several religious ceremonies in different Temples around India. She married trees to remove the bad affects Mars from her horoscope. A petition was filed in Patna high court demanding the Bachchan and Rai families to publicly apologize for this act.

Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek are getting married this month (March 2007). Their marriage event is expected to be one of the most prestigious weddings in the Indian history.

[This post is part of Babe of the Month Series. Desi Galaxy's Babe of the month for March 2007 is Aishwarya Rai]

The Telegraph India reported on February 26 that the venue of Aishwarya Abhishek wedding is Grand Hyatt, Mumbai. The guest list includes, Ambanis, Amar Singh and Bollywood fraternity. Neeta Lulla and Anna Singh are working on Aishwarya’s wedding trousseau, Sharbari Datta is doing Abhishek’s Kurtas and Shawls.

There is contradiction between the Observer’s report and The Telegraph’s fact check. It is also reported that the venue is actually Jaipur India Rajasthan and the date is 19th March but this news is not officially confirmed by either Bachchans or Rais.

We still haven’t got a date. The two of them are so busy, we haven’t been able to sit down and work it out. Amitabh told while talking to IANS. “Now Abhishek’s schedule for ‘Drona’ is postponed so I’m hoping we’ll be able to sit down and work out a date. But Aishwarya is in Karjat shooting and Jaya has gone off to parliament. Everyone is impatient. So are Aishwarya and Abhishek. Let’s see. I think far too much is being made of this affair. It’s just another wedding.”

During the recent Award marathons, we have seen that the Bachchan family has already whole heartedly accepted Aishwarya Rai as a part of their family. During the Stardust Awards when Aishwarya came on stage to recieve her award from her soon to be father in law Amitabh Bachchan, she took wrapped her Sari around the shoulder, like typical Indian daughter in law and touched Amitabh’s feet for blessings.

“The day Abhishek announced Aishwarya was the girl he was going to marry, she became a part of our family. I look on Aishwarya as a daughter” said Amitabh Bachchan while talking to IANS.

[This post is part of Babe of the Month Series. Desi Galaxy's Babe of the month for March 2007 is Aishwarya Rai]

The Observer has reported that the wedding of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan would be the greatest wedding in the Indian history.

This will be a 10 day long event, expected to take place with in a month. More than 5000 people are on the guest list. Venues are a private estate outside Mumbai and a Palace in Rajasthan India. The Observer quotes Bollywood columnist Amita Ghosh:

‘For Indians across the world this wedding will be as big as Charles and Diana’s was for the British,’ said Bollywood gossip columnist Amita Ghosh. ‘The question people are asking here right now is: why all the fuss about Liz Hurley? Perhaps this is why the media here have turned against Liz, nobody really knows who she is. Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan are our real stars and their wedding is the only one that counts.’

She added: ‘This wedding is a fantasy come true for many Indians. We are talking about the biggest and most star-studded guest list in Bollywood history. The couple have a hit film out in which they star as husband and wife, but this is only the start. A marriage of two such mega brands from Bollywood will result in a $100m payday for both couples from spin-offs.’

The Observer also reports that the bad signs on Aishwarya’s horoscope are calm now and astrological charts now report that the marriage would be a truely blessed one. We have talked earlier here on Desi Galaxy about Astrology and bollywood, and Aishwarya Rai marrying Trees.