Desi Galaxy

With ‘My Name is Khan’, Karan Johar is trying to break free from his usual romantic comedies to step into more serious film-making. Scheduled to be released in February 2010, My Name is Khan is the story of Rizwan Khan who is detained by the U.S. authorities after 9/11/. Rizwan Khan (played by Shahrukh Khan) is a patient of Autism. It is an uncommon disease and one of the characteristics of this disease include difficulties with social interactions. The signs of Shahrukh Khan’s disease are considered by authorities as suspicious behavior.

My Name is Khan is the most anticipated movie since Devdas in 2002. Karan Johar is very careful about not leaking much of the plot details. Film’s cast and crew are also very careful when talking about the movie. Shahrukh Khan has expressed many times that ‘My Name is Khan’ is a different kind of a movie. According to Shahrukh ‘My name is Khan’ is not about terrorism. It is about relationship of an individual with the State, with a religion and with a disease. What I didn’t like about My Name is Khan’s speculated plot is that the main character Rizwan Khan attempts to meet President Barack Obama to clear his name. I can imagine that the typical Hindi movie Formula mind of Karan Johar preparing an emotional and irrational rhetoric for that moment. Karan please don’t do that, let this one be a different movie.

So there will be the usual Karan Johar style of melodrama in the movie. This movie is also highly anticipated because it brings back one of the most loved on-screen couple in Hindi Cinema, Kajol and Shahrukh. Kajol plays the role of Shahrukh Khan’s love interest Mandira Khan, a Hindu Single mom living in San Francisco.

My name is Khan’s music is composed by Shankar Ehsaan Loy. Who has worked with Karan Johar before and has also worked in projects produced by Karan Johar’s company Dharma Productions. The music release date is still unknown but we can be sure that its gonna be an instant hit. Despite the storyline of the movie the soundtrack would consist of songs for all moods. There will be Bhangra pop, a romantic tune, one theme song in sad and happy versions.

Shahrukh Khan and Aamir Khan working together in a movie? Well yes, there is a very good chance that we will soon be able to see the greatest Hindi movie stars of our times together on the screen in Danny Boyle’s upcoming movie. Entertainment media is being informed by reliable sources that Aamir Khan has already signed and Shahrukh Khan is seriously considering the role offered to him. As you all Know that the role played by Anil Kapoor in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was first offered to Shahrukh Khan but at that time Shahrukh Khan was busy with ‘Rab ne Bana Di Jodi’ and ‘My name is Khan’.

Shahrukh Khan hasn’t had any major movie release since ‘Rab ne Bana di Jodi’. His next major release would be ‘My name is Khan’ which is still on the sets and is expected to be released next year. But you know Shahrukh, he is not just an actor. In his own words he is an entertainer whose job is to entertain people and make money from it. So he is making money other ways. He appears in advertisements of countless products, has a cricket team of his own, he is also trying to mentor a team in Dance Premier League. At the age of 43 he is more energetic that teenagers, a true workaholic and an Indian icon that Newsweek ranked as one of the 50 most powerful people in the world.

We hope that Shahrukh Khan agrees to work in Danny Boyle’s movie. It will be like a dream come true for the audiences of the Hindi Cinema who has waited so long for this great moment. Not only it would be great fun to see this movie starring two greatest actors, it will be also a historical moment in the history of Hindi Cinema.

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.

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.

Everywhere anywhere, Salman Khan vs Shahrukh Khan’s rivalry is all over the Bollywood. Only a few people know that Aamir and SRK have an undeclared fight between them. Remember Farha Khan’s Om Shanti Om in which SRK stole the show and while also providing tremendous career growth to Deepika Padukone. Well, the trend has been adapted by our cute little Aamir. Having the film focus on him in terms of acting, story even songs! He has stolen the whole show and yet giving tremendous career growth to the south Indian actress Asin.

Of course how can we forget the six pack, we all can see the competition and Aamir really won that one flawless. One thing which no one realizes is that the competition between these two Khans is from the start. Yes, competition is healthy but we are talking about a personalized competition and it clearly shows when we see Aamir claiming in an interview that King Khan was “scared” to work with him.

“Fight! how can I dare to fight with Shahrukh. He is a very good friend and I have a lot of respect and love for him”. Aamir told the media while promoting Ghajini in Delhi and when he was asked about his views over SRK’s claim over the biggest screen star, Aamir took an indirect dig at the actor by saying, “People who are No 1. don’t state the obvious. For me Amitabh Bachchan is No 1. Does he ever claim about it. Does Lata Mangeshkar claim about it? Superstars don’t need to say anything about their status.”

From the very start SRK and Aamir have never shared screen space and even now. It is heard that they will make an appearance in Zoya Akhtar’s directorial debut ‘Luck by chance’ and guess what? SRK and Aamir will show up individually. This clearly shows that neither of them want eachothers A** to be bigger than theirs.

When Aamir threw the challenge to SRK by claiming that he is no. 1 Shah Rukh did not dare say a word against him. Instead he went on to say, “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”. Of course Aamir truly did himself with physical stuff so boo to SRK.

It is also true that Aamir named his dog Shahrukh. People think that Aamir admires Shahrukh so much that he named his dog after him but little do they know that what the real reason behind that is After a thrashing up from SRK’s fans Aamir apologized and said that he did not mean to offend but he thought that it would be a compliment for SRK (sure it was ).

We want to see a lot, we want our heroes to do our dream projects, but the audience does not always get what they desire. It is every hindi movie lover’s desire to watch Aamir Khan the Mr. Perfectionist and Shahrukh Khan together in a movie. In a love triangle, a romantic comedy, or some historical epic. Whatever the theme is audience want to see them together in a movie, and just imagine the market worth of the movie. It would be definitely a very huge investment and producers would get back atleast half of their money even before the release of the movie.

Shahrukh Khan is all set to his “Temptation Reloaded” in Germany. Shahrukh khan is desperate to make the tour a hit and is extra guarded as the Bachans “Unforgettable Tour” ended up receiving a mixed response by the audience. Hence SRK is not in mood to take chances, other stars who are expected to join this tour are Priyanka, Arjun Rrampal, Rani Mukherjee and some undisclosed names. Lets see who would be in King Khan Clan this time.

Are two khans ready to work together?

The news made the hype that Shahrukh khan has called upon Aamir Khan to join him during the show, as he has not been able to secure in any other big name for the show other than himself (if he would not have a recent fight with Salman Khan). But Kiddy khan has declined the rumors that indicated him to be a part of SRK’s much anticipated world tour “Temptations Reloaded”. Aamir also denied being the part of the sequel to Raj Kumar Santoshi’s hit Andaz Apna Apna.

For Shahrukh Khan fans here is a round up of what Shahrukh is up to:
Shahrukh Khan will be playing Dr. Jones in the Hindi rip off of famous hollywood Indiana Jones series. He will be playing the role of an archeologist in search of a lost treasure.

Shahrukh Khan will start his world tour Temptation Reloaded 2008 in October. The tour will begin from Berlin, Germany. Desipite the war between Salman and Shahrukh Khan, Salman’s girlfriend “>Katrina Kaif will be taking part in the tour.

For all those Shahrukh Khan fans who were thinking about buying the actor’s biography. Here is the link to the book on Amazon:
Shahrukh Khan Still Reading Khan.

Shahrukh Khan is always in the news and he should be after all he is the King of Bollywood. But it seems like not every one is happy with the King Khan. Recently he had a fight with Salman Khan on Salman Khan’s girlfriend Katrina Kaif’s birthday party. Apparantely some people say that it started when Shahrukh Khan commented about Salman Khan’s relation with Aishawarya Rai who dumped Salman Khan and married Abhishek Bachchan. Both stars kept quite about the incident for a few weeks but now Salman Khan has talked to the media about the incident and admitted that he had a spat with Shahrukh Khan that night. He said that Shahrukh and I are two very different individuals and we could never be friends.

On the other hand Shahrukh Khan’s production house red chillies has lost the case where legendary Indian actor Manoj Kumar filed a suit in Mumbai session court asking for the deletion of the scenes where his patriotism is spoofed in the movie Om Shanti Om.

Shahrukh Khan’s house “Mannat” which always remained in the news for its real estate value, historical significanc, ideal sea facing location and numerous complains filed by several social organizations, political activists and government authorities. Recently another social activist Simpreet Singh filed a petition against the construction Shahrukh Khan’s house, Mannat.

Rediff News asked their readers if they think that Shahrukh Khan is the most unpopular star in bollywood?