Return of the Don

SRK-starrer Don 2 to be made with Priyanka Chopra, Arjun Rampal and Boman Irani

Excel Entertainment had put Shah Rukh Khan starrer Don 2 on the back burner because Amitabh Bachchan might soon be part of the sequel to his yesteryear classic Don, to be produced by Nadeem Irani and Nasir Irani, sons of the producer of 1975 Don. SRK's recent shoulder injury had made matters worse. But now everything is sorted out and Excel Entertainment is going ahead with Don 2.

According to our source, Farhan Akhtar will direct the film starring all the four actors who were in Don - Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Arjun Rampal and Boman Irani. On the other hand, the Iranis have made no headway as yet in their plans to make the sequel with Bachchan.
While Shah Rukh, Arjun and Boman had given their consent to Excel Entertainment a long time ago, Priyanka was signed a few days before she went to the US to shoot for Ashutosh Gowariker's What's Your Rashee?

Our source from Bollywood says, "Authorities at Excel Entertainment were not too sure if they should go with Priyanka, but lately Priyanka has become a big name after delivering back-to-back hits - Fashion and Dostana and winning the best actress award recently. The decision confirming Priyanka's presence in Don 2 was taken only recently."

A source close to Excel Entertainment told Mumbai Mirror, "Don had done rather well with Shah Rukh. Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar (partners in Excel) were very keen that they make the sequel. Things were not falling in place initially, but now everything is sorted out."

Sidhwani confirmed the story and said, "We start shooting Don 2 in January 2010. The entire film will be shot in Berlin and Ireland. Now that we know that Vijay is dead and Shah Rukh is just Don in the film, the remaining part of the story is going to be very interesting."

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I don't want to hurt anyone: Shah Rukh Khan

An interview of Shah Rukh Khan with CNN-IBN on issue of the title of Shah Rukh Khan's film Billu Barber.

The title of Shah Rukh Khan's Billu Barber has upset the salon and hairdressers union. Now with no option left before the release, King Khan has decided to take off the word 'barber' from its publicity posters.

CNN-IBN: It's too late to change the title of the film Billu Barber, but Shah Rukh you're doing everything to not upset anyone?

Shah Rukh Khan: I had a discussion with the association of hair dressers and salons in Maharashtra. And I've pokes to the associations in other cities on the phone. I don't think we were wrong in ever using the word 'barber' and that is what be stand by. But they have their own take on that. The film has been made with a good feeling. So, I'd rather not hurt anyone, because it's not going to affect my film.

CNN-IBN: So what will be your next step since the prints are out and the posters have been put up?

Shah Rukh Khan: We will put a piece of paper on the word 'barber' on the posters and hoardings which belong to the production which is Red Chillies, wherever it can be done. It's a little expensive to try and change the posters which we couldn't have done.

CNN-IBN: The censor cleared your film, so didn't you try to negotiate with these associations? Did you try to make them understand that the term 'barber' isn't a derogatory one?

Shah Rukh Khan: If they understood that they wouldn't have had an issue with it. In this case I was very clear that there is no legality involved and I would just like to make sure that people aren't unhappy. I think I'm also a little mellow since I'm going for my surgery, so I don't want to hurt anyone.

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Movie Review : Dev D

Film: Dev D (drama)
Cast: Abhay Deol, Mahi Gill, Kalki Koechlin
Direction: Anurag Kashyap
Duration: 2 hours 52 minutes
Rating: ****

THANK God for the mavericks, the non-conformists, the infidels, the les enfant terribles. They make things happen when kitsch becomes king; when creativity crumbles; when formula pervades, fungus-like. Imagine a world without rule breakers. And then imagine, like Anurag Kashyap: unbridled, unbounded, ungrounded....

Indeed, Dev D is one such flight of fancy from the filmmaker that definitely defies all conventions and demolishes all moulds. Not only does it rewrite the technique of the artistic medium, with its unusual cinematography, dizzy editing, non-linear plot narration, turn-of-the-century dialogues and breathtakingly bizarre audio track (music: Amit Trivedi, lyrics: Amitabh Bhattacharya), it completely revises the ancient text which has already made its mark in its various avtars , the latest being the high-pitched rendition of the self-destructive hero by Shah Rukh Khan in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas.

Kashyap has always been a contrarian filmmaker, consciously steering away from traditional Bollywood with films like Black Friday, Paanch, No Smoking. However, while his earlier films were an innovative search for his groove and rhythm, Dev D is like that heady cocktail which has the vodka pitched perfectly with the tang. (Incidentally, Dev D likes his vodka with thumbs up, washed down in unlimited portions, morning, noon and night!) Set against the rich rural backdrop of Punjab and Paharganj (Delhi), the film traces the self-destructive sojourn of a young, contemporary hero who mirrors the existential angst of the proverbial outsider, made legendary in the writings of Satre, Camus, Kafka, Kerouac and the ballads of Kurt Cobain.

But Dev D (Abhay Deol), unlike Devdas, isn't a blast from the past. In his rootlessness, his lack of purpose and his complete disconnect with the real (read traditional) world, he reflects the mindset of the archetypal new millennium 20-something who doesn't know how to blend tradition with modernity, permissiveness with orthodoxy, Oxford with Bhatinda. And so, he asks his childhood sweetheart, Paro (Mahi Gill) to send him her nude photographs through e-mail, yet can't handle the quandary about her virginity and pronounced sexuality. In a fit of aggrieved machismo, he spurns her wild sexual adventurism which sees her cycling to the neighbouring fields at the break of dawn with a mattress meticulously rolled up on the carrier for a clandestine tryst with him. (Ever seen the bharatiya naari do this in Indian cinema? Bravo, brave new Bollywood!) Little does he realise that Paro isn't mere putty in his hand and is unwilling to subject herself to any kind of ‘emotional atyachar', in the name of love.

Having given vent to her anger and pain, she simply moves on while the already disconnected Dev becomes even more dysfunctional with his alcohol and drug addiction. He moves to a seedy hotel in Paharganj and ends up after a drunken stupour in young Chanda's (Kalki Koechlin) pink and purple boudoir. Once again, Kashyap reinterprets the self-sacrificing courtesan, Chandramukhi in completely post-modern terms. Here, she is Lenny, the schoolgirl who ends up as the sex worker, Chanda, after being disowned by family and friends because she featured in a lewd MMS, that sent the whole nation in a lustful tizzy. `And they call me a slut!' exclaims the feisty escort who attends college by day and plays Florence Nightingale in shorts by night.

The relationship between Dev and Chanda begins with hate, scorn and derision with the decadent Dev unleashing his chauvinism and me-centrism on the hooker. But when the haze of cocaine lifts, the heartburn begins, once again. After having stooped to unimaginable lows, our hero dreams of a second chance. Will he get it or is Devdas destined to waste away forever? The last we saw him was at a non-descript momo joint in the seedy by-lanes of Paharganj, waiting for nirvana. Of course, he's all by himself, since proud little Paro's moved on and survivor Chanda's too strong to play doormat, willing to give up her slutty ways, for love alone.

Dev D is indeed a coming-of-age film, not merely for the protagonist, Devender Singh Dhillon, but it is a brilliant breakthrough for Bollywood too. It really doesn't matter whether the film ends up as a box office scorcher. What matters is the fact that for the discerning viewer, Dev D is a tryst with milestone cinema, reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann's Shakespeare-shaken-and-stirred in Romeo and Juliet. Kashyap, however, gets even more adventurous and adds a progressive flourish to both the plot and the characters which are played to perfection by the three lead players. If Mahi and Kalki are riveting new finds, assured of a long innings in cinema, then Abhay Deol adds a whole new meaning to the term `Unconventional Hero'. Manorama Six Feet Under, Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye were just teasers. Dev D is the class act from the Deol who cleverly flew over the cuckoo's nest. Don't miss this film which completely reinvents the musical love story, with zany numbers like ‘emosanal atyachar', ‘saali khushi', ‘nayan tarse' and the rest. More importantly, it might just go down in history as one of the most radical Indian films, at least in its delineation of male and female sexuality.

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She's ready for action

Asin saves a little boy from being run over

Asin jumped from her car to save a child on one of the busiest road in Andheri. A source said,"Asin was in her car near Infinity Mall, Andheri, when she saw a little boy standing right in the middle the road. The poor boy seemed lost and looked complately puzzled with all the cars whizzing by. So much so that he didn't notice a car rushing towards him.

Asin simply ran out of her car, jumped across the barrier, lifted the child and in the process, lost her balance and fell with a thud. The child fell on Asin and was saved. Asin, however suffered severe bruises on her arm and wrist. She did not feel any pain at that moment but was shocked to find swollen hands on the following day. Her arms were wrapped in bandages for several days and Asin had to wear full sleeve costumes for her photo shoots."

Asin confirmed but refused to divulge any other details, she said, " this is somthing personal, I don't want to talk about it."

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Movie Review : Luck By Chance

Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Konkona Sen Sharma, Dimple Kapadia, Isha Sharwani, Rishi Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Hrithik Roshan
Writer-Director: Zoya Akhtar
Rating: ****

It is easy to fall in love with every performance in this intimate yet generic insider's look at the workings of the entertainment industry.

But the one that I carried home with me was Sheeba Chadha. A marvel of subtle writing, Sheeba plays a podgy, cunning but simple-hearted producer's sister-in-law whose husband (Aly Khan) is carrying on with a struggling starlet right under her naïve eyes.

One not-so-pleasant afternoon, Sheeba barges into her husband's van and sees a red-nosed bleary-eyed Konkona Sen Sharma (who has just been told she doesn't get a role she has been waiting all her career for). Sheeba senses what's going on. But she quickly digresses her mind from her husband's extra-marital affair.

The industry is filled with such deliberately desensitised people who function within the fickle and frighteningly flamboyant film industry with gut-wrenching self-delusion.

"Luck By Chance" -- a truly out-of-the-box outstanding work of subtle, sly, satirical and whispering art -- is filled with people whom you're bound to have met in the fetid corridors of Bollywood or the Hindi film industry, as the star-mother Dimple Kapadia insists on calling it.

Never before has the film industry been perceived with such intuitively internalised abundance. A subtle splendour galvanised by performances that range from the credible to the incredible takes the narrative to pinnacles of expressiveness.

The performances help to ignite the characters into states of subtle yet vivid shades. The ambitious mother-daughter (Dimple-Isha Sharwani) pair, the strugglers, wannabes and losers...oh yes, every character in "Luck By Chance" possesses a luminously lived-in quality, bringing to the surface feelings, thoughts and images that are normally not brought out on screen.

Every player -- parodic, poignant and pitched perfectly -- makes savage fun of the very foibles that they probably practice with masterful manipulative hands in real life.

Zoya Akhtar gets into the star space without a moment's aggression in her storytelling. The moments that define the relationships are built stealthily. This is a world that every person in the Mumbai film industry (for Dimple's sake, let's not call it Bollywood!) knows first-hand.

The debutante director occupies that space with unostentatious spirit, nurturing interludes between characters (the two strugglers Farhan Akhtar-Konkona, producer-wife Rishi Kapoor-Juhi Chawla, ideologically separated co-actors Farhan-Arjun Mathur) with the cautious care of a mother who wants to bring up her child with the right values without drawing attention to her nurturing acumen.

This is a work of tender, subtle care with moments whose immense value strikes you after the wonderfully conversational dialogues (Javed Akhtar at his expressive best) have had their say.

At heart, "Luck By Chance" is a story of one man's plunge into the morass of compromise as he heads towards his dreams. Farhan gets what can only called another chance to do the histrionic dance. As he goes from wide-eyed wannabe to a morally devalued creature, the narrative charts his course with savage humour.

Farhan's scenes with the nakedly adulatory star daughter(Isha playing dumb dead-on) are designed as a blend of satirical erotica and ideological annihilation. Farhan gets it right.

This is a work that oozes outstanding acting talent from every nook and corner. Whether it's Aly as a on-the-move producer or Arjun as a struggling actor who would rather struggle in theatre than compromise, every character plays a person you've met if you've ever been a part of the Mumbai film industry.

Super stand-out performances by Rishi, Dimple, Sheeba, Hrithik Roshan(as a superstar on the skids) and of course, Konkona, whose best performance this is.

On the deficit side, (yes even a film of such high order must face the music) the narrative with its inbuilt jokes and references is too much a Bollywood insider's job, largely inaccessible to the common man who wouldn't know the name of Ranbir Kapoor's secretary and couldn't care less.

On most levels, "Luck By Chance" stands tall and luminous, portraying the world of arclights with a synthesis of style, sympathy and substance that is the opposite of the synthetic way the world of showbiz is generally portrayed in cinema.

What stays with you are moments like the one where the struggling hero approaches the once glamorous star mother at a party and wins her over... a moment that builds up into a muffled explosion of ambitious scheming achieved at a place where the sound of broken hearts is inaudible.

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Dev D - a punk and grunge version of 'Devdas'

Nine cinematic versions of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's immortal love story Devdas have been released since the first silent film in 1928. Now Anurag Kashyap is ready with the 10th version, titled Dev D releasing on Friday - a fresh, contemporary take on the romance that breaks all its typecasts.

"I scripted the film on the basis of news headlines on the Gen-X because I wanted to take the angle of today's youth in the film," Kashyap said over phone from Mumbai.

Produced by UTV Bindaas, the film has Abhay Deol in the title role. Newcomers Mahi Gill and Kalki Koechlin play the female leads.

While the previous adaptations were set in Kolkata and the protagonist was shown as a zamindar's son, Kashyap's film is set in rural Punjab and also explores the dingy, morbid and dark underbelly of Delhi. For a change, the protagonist Dev (Abhay) is a rich industrialist's son.

Dev, who was sent to London, returns to his hometown and his childhood sweetheart Paro (Mahi) after 12 years. But his life is turned upside down when he finds out that Paro is married off to someone else.

While Paro picks up the thread of her life and moves on with grit and dignity, Dev, soaked in self-pity, drowns himself in darkness and hopelessness.

While mourning his lost love, Dev comes across a prostitute called Chanda (Kalki) who lives life on the edge. After a disastrous MMS scandal, she is disowned by her family and is forced into isolation.

Kashyap captures the sensibilities, conflict, aggression and recklessness of youth today through these characters.

The music of the film can already be heard in discotheques and cars in cities. Its 18 tracks include Rajasthani, Punjabi and Awadhi folk numbers.

Abhay is very confident about the film.

"Devdas has been made before, but this one has a very new, fresh and out of the box approach. Nobody had ever thought of making Devdas in this contemporary way," said Abhay.

"Dev D adopts an unusual and contemporary approach and I think that is exactly what will work for the film because it will be like a revelation to the people. It's always good to turn a stereotype image and experiment with it," he added.

While the 1955 version by Bimal Roy and the last remake in 2002 by Sanjay Leela Bhansali won audiences' hearts, what is to be seen is whether Kashyap's modern version of the twisted Bengali romance manages to strike a chord with film buffs.

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