Desi Galaxy

Aishwarya Rai has her hands full with great movies to come. In this post we will tell you about Aishwarya Rai’s upcoming movies and why all her projects are so great. Apart from the list below remember that Aishwarya Rai will also appear in Ben Kingsley’s ‘Taj‘ in this movie Aishwarya plays the role of Mumtaz Mahal the great Mughal queen whose husband Shah Jahan made the Taj Mahal in her memory. You think this is going to be an exciting movie well have a look below and you will find out that she has more interesting movies to come. If atleast two of these movies go well on box office, then it is certain that 2010 will be Aishwarya Rai’s year and she could even beat her male colleagues in terms of box office value

Raavan
Aishwarya Rai joins Mani Ratnaam once again for the Tamil language film Raavana which is simultaneously being made in Hindi as well. The Hindi version has a slightly different cast. As I wrote in my previously post that if any one wants to cast someone from the Bachchan family they must cast atleast two of them. For example Abhishek Bachchan is doing Paa with his father Amitabh Bachchan. In Raavan you will see Aishwarya Rai Bachchan with Abhishek Bachchan. The music of Raavan is composed by academy award winning composer A. R. Rahman.

Action Replay
Action Replay is time travel movie set in 1950s. Directed by Vipul Shah, Action Replay’s cast includes Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai and Randhir Kapoor father of Karishma and Kareena Kapoor. There is a slight confusion about the movie’s plot as Warner Bros, issued a warning in the Indian Newspapers to claim that no one has rights to remake ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ in Hindi Language. Rumors are that the warning was targeted to Vipul Shah who when contacted said that his film is not based on the Curious Case of Benjamin Button and that it is actually based on a Marathi play. Whatever the case maybe, one thing is certain that Action Replay has an interesting concept.

Endhiran
Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai work together in the science fiction Tamily Language film Endhiran. It is said that the movie has the highest ever film budget in the history of Indian cinema. The film’s story is based on a Robot who falls in love with a woman. Set to be released in 2010, Endhiran will be Aishwarya Rai’s second Tamily movie in 2010.

Guzaarish
After the disastrous failure of Saawariya, director Sanjay Leela Bhansali once again signs Aishwarya Rai for his upcoming movie Guzarish. The cast of Guzarish includes Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan, music is composed by A. R. Rahman. There are Rumors that Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan will sing a song in their own voices for the movie. The story of Guzaarish will revolve around a married nurse (Aishwarya Rai) who looks after a papaplegic patient (Hrithik Roshan).

Hrithik Roshan has won Filmfare award for best actor 2008 for the movie Jodha Akbar. However, Aamir Khan’s fans are disappointed by jury’s decission. There was debate going on between Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan’s fans about who will win the award this year. But jury’s decission to pick up Hrithik Roshan has surprised many. I think that Hrithik deserved the award for his role as Akbar the great in Jodha Akbar, but even I am surprised. I didn’t thought that the judges will ignore the popular opinion and would instead pick up the better actor.

Aamir Khan’s performance in Ghajini is been lauded by critics and masses alike. I personally don’t think that it was an out standing performance. It was good but not amazingly well done. In fact when I saw Ghajini I was kind of surprised that how stereo typical Aamir acted in the movie. The stories of revenge, obsessive lovers and violence are nothing new to viewers. We have seen such roles before and even though Aamir peformed extremely good in his role still it was a story told many times before. Some people are also blaming Aamir’s attitude towards awards specially Filmfare. He once even sued Filmfare for using pictures for award ceremony promotions.

Shahrukh Khan’s Rab ne Bana di Jodi was a light romantic movie. King Khan surely knows how to charm the audiences but it was not the kind of role that people will never forget. It was good but not one of his best performances. He has previously acted much better than that for example in Paheli, Swades, Don, etc.

On the other hand Hrithik was playing a real person from the pages of history, Akbar The Great. This historic love epic provided him a great room and a much bigger canvas to perform. He had to work on his Urdu, to carry on the costumes, to be as impressive as people could imagine that Akbar was. It was a story that was never told before. Critics and masses were comparing his performance with that of Prithvi Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar in Mughal-e-Azam. He comes with his own memorable performance. From walking to sitting, from dialogue delivery to war scenes, he had to perform extremely great in every scene. I think he did justice to his character.

What is your opinion, please feel free to disagree. But I would love to hear what you think about Best Male Actor award for the 54th filmfare awards and who you think actually deserved the award.

Aishwarya Rai is going to play Sita (The Indian Goddess) in Mani Ratnam’s upcoming movie Ravana. Guess who is going to play Ram? No its not, Abhishek Bachchan. According to people on locations for the film, Aishwarya looked heavenly beautiful in a gorgeous Sari. It is reported that Aishwarya’s Sita makeover is designed by Sabyasachi Mukherjee.

This is great year of Sabyasachi Mukherjee. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is not the only one in the Bollywood who has ditched designers and went on with Sabyasachi’s creations. A. R. Rahman also ditched Rohit Bal and wore a Sabyasachi Sherwani during his live performance at the Oscars. Rahman’s wife Saira, also wore a Sabyasachi creation for the big night.

Hrithik Roshan chartered a special flight to Goa for his wife Sussane and two sons, Hrehaan and Hridaan to attend sister in-law Farah Ali Khan and her husband DJ Aqeel’s wedding anniversary. Farah Ali Khan who was disappointed that may be Hrithik and Sussane won’t be able to attend her anniversary, was delighted to hear the news of couple’s arrival. She said:

Hrithik is a Capricorn like me, and we are the kind of people who always keep our promises. So last minute when he said he couldn’t make it because of a shoot, I was very disappointed and let him know through an SMS. The next thing I know, at around 9.30pm after the ceremony, he lands up at the celebration. I was really happy, as then my entire family was there as were my pals

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.

If I were to write a review for this movie in just one word then it would be total krap. I know these are two words but I wanted to use ‘K’. I am so disappointed that I would very much like to end this review here. But I know you my dear readers want to listen more about this movie. It has a nice cast, had the publicity of having three item songs performed by Shahrukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Raakhi Sawant. And you have heard that it has a wicked plot and you were promised that it will be a fun movie that you can enjoy with your family. I watched this movie for all the same reasons and I am disappointed.

Story of Krazzy 4:
The plot of this movie revolves around four mental patients. Though they are having different mental problems but all four of them are treated by Dr. Sonali (Juhi Chawla). One day Dr. Sonali takes them out to run some errands. While they are at it, some bad guys kidnap Dr. Sonali. Now it is up to the krazzy 4 team to help Dr. Sonali, but since they are mentally ill no one believes them and they decide to rescue Dr. Sonali on their own.

Review:
This clever plot comes from 80’s Malyalam movie ‘Mukilla Rajyathu’. The plot is wicked and has plenty of room for comedy, emotion, twists, suspence and thrill. But unfortunately director Jaideep Sen fails miserably to give the proper treatment to the plot. With a cast of brilliant actors Irfan Khan, Arshan Warsi, Suresh Menon and Rajpal Yadav, the audience expected a brilliant movie. The actors did really well to fit in their role but the script and dialogues of the movie were so bad that there was literally no room to perform. The movie was full of old and poor jokes.

To spice up a badly treated movie the producers decided to add a few item songs to increase the box office appeal of the movie. Unfortunately the movie of Krazzy 4 is very disappointing, check out Megha Menon’s review of the Krazzy 4 music. It has the item songs filmed on Shahrukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Raakhi Sawant. The two item songs caused a controversy when music composer Ram Sampath alleged that the music of these two songs are copied from a Sony Ericsson advertisement, composed by him. The producer Rakesh Roshan reached an out-of-court settlement with the composer. These two songs were not even worth stealing.

Overall this movie was boring, disappointing and at some points very annoying too. Still I think that the actors performed quite well and people can atleast watch this movie for once and then they are free to hate this movie.

Cast and Credits:

Arshad Warsi Raja
Irrfan Khan Dr. Mukherjee
Juhi Chawla Dr Sonali
Rajpal Yadav Gangadhar
Suresh Menon Dabboo
Dia Mirza Shikha
Rajat Kapoor R K Sanyal
Zaakir Hussain Srivastav

Directed by Jaideep Sen
Produced by Rakesh Roshan and Sunaina Roshan
Written by Ashwani Dhir

Ohh poor Shahrukh. It seems like every one in Bollywood has suddenly started to feel that they are better than Shahrukh Khan. Long time ago Salman calimed to be better than him, recently Aamir made a comment about being a better actor than Shahrukh Khan and now reality TV’s drama queen and item girl Rakhi Sawant has claimed that her item number in Krazzy 4 is better than the item numbers of Shahrukh and Hrithik.

Rakhi Sawant said “I am very glad that my
dance will be compared with Shahrukh Khan and Hrithik’s. Shahrukh’s item song is totally Western while mine has all the Indian touches (latkas and jhatkas) which will surely be liked by our audience. I would say my dance is better than his since it is more colorful.” Poor Raakhi who is currently busy doing another reality tv show (Where at the end she is guaranteed to be dumped by the audience and judges) has struggled so hard but it seems like she will never go beyond the item numbers. However Rakhi claimed that Rakesh Roshan has promised the he will consider casting her for a suitable role in some upcoming project.

Hrithik Roshan has thanked every body who did Item songs for the his home production Krazzzy 4. In an interview he said:

I’m doing the song for my own home production. But Shah Rukh has gone out of his way to accommodate the project because he respects my dad. His gesture has touched all of us. It’s very kind of him. He doesn’t need to dance. It’s the best dance track I’ve ever performed. My uncle Rajesh Roshan has outdone himself. Vishal Dadlani, who has sung the number, has also been extremely gracious. He didn’t accept the cheque that my dad gave after the song. He did it for my dad and uncle. As a family, we Roshans are overwhelmed by the respect that has been shown by everyone associated with the item song.”

Jodhaa Akbar is story of a romance between a Mughal Emperor and a Rajput Princess. Set in sixteenth century this story begins with a marriage of alliance between two cultures for political gain with the king Bharmal giving his daughter’s hand to Mughal emperor Akbar. Akbar didn’t realize that by accepting the proposal, he is not only attempting to improve relations with Rajputs but also starting a journey of true love.

Historically speaking the marriage had a significant impact on the Indian sub continent. Akbar who became the King at a very young age, has had to fight many battles to gain the control over the empire, he extended his rule and made policies that helped two main cultures and religions come closer. Akbar’s attempt to bring cultural diversity inside the Mughal Palaces changed India forever. His policies affected the lives of millions. But how these policies affected him on a personal level is a subject of great interest in itself.

Ashutosh Gowarikar tries to explore this subject with this film. The story revolves around Jaluluddin Muhammed Akbar and Jodha. Akbar while busy gaining and maintaining the rule of his vast empire, had to win the heart of Jodha. Akbar fell in love with Jodha but then there were politics of cultures, religions and armies. He had to keep every one happy, including Jodha.

When a Hindi film viewer thinks of Akbar the great, the image of Prithvi Raj Kapoor comes to their mind. Prithvi Raj Kapoor played the role of Akbar in 1960’s classic Mughal-e-Azam. Definitely people are going to compare Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Jodha Akbar with K.Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam. Mughal-e-Azam is one of the most loved Indian movies ever. It was a difficult task for K.Asif to finish this movie in 60s. It took him almost 9 years to finish the movie. It was a lavish production with grand sets, hundreds of extras, costumes and jewelry. There is no doubt that Ashutosh would come up with something much more lavish and grand than the Mughal-e-Azam but would he able to shot it as impressively as k.Asif did? The stories of two movies are totally different from eachother but there are two common aspects firstly they are both stories of Mughals falling in love, secondly they both need extra ordinary sets, costumes and talent to portray the lifestyle of Mughal Emperor Akbar.

A. R. Rehman has composed music for Jodhaa Akbar and it is melodious but there is nothing so great about it. It is nice, very nice but it is not great. But then we can not say anything about the music yet as we haven’t seen how it fits with the theme of the movie. A. R. Rehman is very talented and I think if we are comparing Jodhaa Akbar with Mughal-e-Azam then A. R. Rehman is the closest to Naushad who composed the unforgetable music for Mughal-e-Azam.

Hrithik Roshan is playing the role of Akbar the great. Ashutosh made the perfect choice Hrithik fits in the costumes. He looks impressive, but then he will also have to prove his acting skills. This is the most challenging role Hrithik has ever done. It is a huge movie where he can prove himself eligible to compared with the likes of Prithvi Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar.

Aishwarya Rai, there is no doubt that she is one of the most talented actress currently available. She is beautiful and knows perfectly well how to portray the unforgettable beauty. Then again, she will have to act a lot better than she did in Devdas. Looking beautiful is not going to win her any more audience applause.

Expected to be released on 15 February, Jodhaa Akbar is the most anticipated movie this year. We can debate the impact of the movie on the Indian popular culture, we can compare it with Mughal-e-Azam. But there is no doubt that the most talented people of Hindi cinema has worked hard to make this movie and it is a must watch for all.

The world is watching Indian Kissing scandals closely. The world can understand that the public display of affection by kissing hurts Indian feelings. But we have news of complaints filed in Indian courts against the kissing scenes in the movies. Just a few days ago Aishwarya Rai was summoned by the court to explain an “obscene” kissing scene in the movie Dhoom 2.

Christian Science Monitor takes a good look at the Indian sensibilities and the controversy over the Gere-Shetty kissing. In India, a public kiss is not just a kiss is the title of the story. They interviewed people like shopkeepers, college girls and sociologists.

“Courts spend 20 years on rape cases, and here they’ve issued a warrant in weeks,” says Hardeep Singh, sitting behind the counter of his father’s shoe store.

Since Bollywood has taken the lead to break the kissing taboo so it is easily understood why the actors and actresses are becoming victim of public anger. But Bollywood refrains to take part in the debate openly as they have always tried to keep a distance from politically charged controversies. It is not good for their business, I guess. I liked what Dipankar Gupta said while explaining the Indian fury over the kissing scenes in the movies and real life.

“Two very different societies are colliding with each other,” says Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University here. “Because of the Western influence, the changes here are not a natural evolution.”…
….After all, this is the land of the “item girl” – that would-be Bollywood star whose dancing includes everything short of a pole and a wardrobe malfunction. Yet for all her overt sexuality, the temptress is acceptably Indian. The public kiss is not.