OUT OF WORK- Ghajini Villian

Pradeep Rawat, the man who played the main villain in Bollywood’s biggest money spinner ever ‘Ghajini’ is finding difficulty in getting plum roles post the film’s release. Well, its because of his striking resemblance with Vipin Sharma, the man who played Darsheel Safary’s dad in ‘Taare Zameen Par’. In a light hearted conversation with Vipin, he made a mention of their similar looks confusing people not just from outside the industry but even within the industry.
Laughs Vipin, "I had never met Pradeep earlier but through some common friends, I finally met him about a week ago. Imagine seeing someone in flesh and blood who just comes across as your mirror image. Of course he has a heavier built than me but still our faces do resemble a lot. He is an amazing guy and we both got along so well right away."
Vipin immediately sounded Pradeep about the compliments that were coming his way instead post the blockbuster success of ‘Ghajini’.
"Soon after the release of ‘Ghajini’, I started getting emails and messages stating that I did a great job. The moment I realized that it was Pradeep (who had played the part of Deva in ‘Lagaan’) with whom they were mistaking me, I cracked up laughing. I browsed through his other images on the internet and it seemed almost surreal see two people being so similar."
On hearing this anecdote, Pradeep too started to laugh. "He said in jest that no wonder he was not getting any calls for roles in films because everyone was instead busy complimenting Vipin."
However, Vipin’s isn’t an isolated case. When ‘Taare Zameen Par’, his first Hindi film, had released a year back, people were busy congratulating Pradeep.
"Call it poetic justice but we both seem to be reveling in each other’s glory", winks Vipin, "It started happening after the release of ‘Taare Zameen Par’. I would meet people who said that they liked me in ‘Lagaan’ also. When I said that I wasn’t in that film, many thought that I was joking. Some didn’t believe me at all and others were plain confused as they struggled to remember that where had they seen me elsewhere."
Incidentally Aamir Khan too plays a common element to both the actors. While Vipin made his Bollywood debut with ‘Taare Zameen Par’ (and since then has worked in ‘Jannat’, ‘1920' and ‘Lamhaa’ - which is currently being shot), Pradeep has been an almost regular with the actor with films like ‘Sarfarosh’, ‘Lagaan’ and ‘Ghajini’. Incidentally, these have been Pradeep’s last three Bollywood films as well and he is yet to sign a new film.

BIG B praises Ranbir Kapoor

If Amitabh Bachchan showers accolades on someone then it is a great credit and fortunately Ranbir Kapoor is the luckiest one who has walked away with all the praises from Big B. Amitabh is a great admirer of Ranbir and he is happy to see him growing day by day.

'He (Ranbir Kapoor) has shaped up so well in his career so far and with such ease and rapidity. Cannot imagine he was assisting Sanjay Leela Bhansali as an AD (assistant director) on 'Black',' Amitabh posted on his blog www.bigb.bigadda.com.

'He and Sonam Kapoor were assistants on the set together. And now look at them. Big stars in their own right. Feels so wonderful to watch how this generation grows and accomplishes itself,' he added.

It’s a wonderful feeling to have personalities like Amitabh Bachchan as fan, isn’t Ranbir.

SRK doesnt like a pat on the back

Now that he has got a shoulder surgery done, superstar Shah Rukh Khan doesn’t like it when someone pats on his back. Recently, when actress Deepika Padukone tried to catch up with the actor to find out about his health post surgery, SRK’s wife reportedly messaged her saying that he doesn’t like to get a pat on his back now.

Deepika said, “I did get a message from Gauri saying he was in a lot of pain and wasn’t in the state to meet anyone. He doesn’t like a pat on the back. He’s a fighter and a go-getter and an operation is just another day in his life.”

Honeymoon trip cancelled-Amrita Arora

Amrita and Shakeel cancelled their honeymoon trip to Mexico due to excessive drug violence in the country. Mexico was the choice of Amrita but unfortunately she had to drop her plan on looking at the unsafe scenario of the country. Western beauty and spicy cuisine fascinated Amrita to choose Mexico.

A source close to Amrita says, "Amu and Shakeel had planned a 15-day honeymoon. They were to leave on March 14, go to New York and head to Mexico from there. However, due to escalating drug violence in the last week, their plans stand cancelled. Amrita has been to most European cities, so she wanted to either go to Mexico or Hawaii places she's never been to before."

Their families have been debarring them from going to Mexico. "Finally yesterday, both Shakeel and Amu decided they would fly to New York and then go to Hawaii or some other place rather than risk their lives going to Mexico."

After shooting for Pantaloon campaign, the duo will head to New York. Marriage has not put a full stop on Amrita’s career. After enjoying honeymoon, she will shoot for Sajid Nadiadwala's Kambakht Ishq and Season's Greetings.

PRIYANKA gets SMOOCHY

The latest dope is that the sexy damsel, Priyanka Chopra, has done a kissing scene in Vishal Bhardwaj’s ‘Kaminey’, in which she plays a Maharashtrian mulgi.

A unit hand informs us that though Shahid Kapur and Priyanka Chopra have great on-screen chemistry, Priyanka wasn’t happy when director Vishal Bhardwaj informed her about the kissing scene. But since that scene forms an important part of the film, director Bhardwaj got Priyanka’s nod.

It can be recalled that Priyanka refused to kiss beau Harman in his debut movie ‘Love Story 2050’. Later, her kissing scene with Arjan Bajwa for Madhur Bhandarkar’s ‘Fashion’ got Harman furious. But we are sure Priyanka’s lip lock with Shahid in Kaminey will not have Harman fuming any more… after all the two have split gracefully and have gone their own separate ways.

So after her swimsuit show in ‘Dostana’, Piggy Chops makes the headlines once again with yet another smoldering bold act!

INTERNATIONAL FEVER

Still as far as Duggu is concerned, it’s understandable since he’s quite the emperor ( especially after the many acting awards for ‘Jodhaa Akbar’) here.
After the Slumdog success and huge international coverage, every second Bollywood actor has been aiming to go international.
And Hrithik Roshan seems to be one of them. However he maintains that he’s not really courting international success as such.


And he was also just selected by Forbes among the half a dozen Bollywood actors who have a name in Hollywood. Though his favorite female co-star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan beat him to it, he’s happy about it.

He says he was delighted and surprised when he was recognized on the streets in the US while shooting for ‘Kites’.

He’s said in an interview, "That was a change. It makes me feel good to see our films are crossing borders. At a bank in the US when you’re withdrawing money you are delighted to realize that the person on other end of the counter knows who you are. Or salesgirls at shops…they recognize you and go, ‘Are you…? And when you tell them, they go, ‘Wow’ …yeah it feels good."

He’s added, "I haven’t set any goals for myself as such. I just want to keep evolving as an actor and a person. That’s the only mission in my career. If Kites takes me international, I’ll be happy."

Interestingly Hrithik’s Spanish speaking co-star Barbara Mori has gone unrecognized in Mumbai, while attending fashion shows and walking the Fashion Street.

Well, it shows she’s not a big star. We wonder if with a co-star like that, ‘Kites’ will do it internationally for Hrithik or not! Let’s wait and watch.

Katrina Left Out..?

One surprise miss though was actress Katrina Kaif! What was even more surprising was the fact that none of her fellow actors seemed to miss her at all. Missing her was one thing but not mentioning her was a bit of a stretch.The star casts of the film ‘Blue’ held a press conference to unveil the movie. The whole cast including Australian pop diva Kylie Minogue were present.Seems like even Akki forgot his luck charm!

Khans come together

The biggest stars of Hindi films who haven't been able to see eye-to-eye are brought
under the same roof for the first time after their ugly spat during Katrina Kaif’s last birthday.The event was Amrita Arora’s sangeet ceremony.But to everyone’s surprise, they behaved like two strangers. Neither did they exchange pleasantaries nor did they look at each other.

No one actually expected Shahrukh Khan and Gauri at the sangeet as it was reported earlier that they would not attend any wedding function of Amrita. But when the duo stepped in at midnight, they raised many eyebrows.

Though Salman and Shahrukh were at the same place, they avoided any sort of interaction. SRK was busy with his pals and Salman in his own world. They did not exchange greetings.

"Shah Rukh left after half an hour, while Gauri stayed back with her pals Kaajal Anand, Bhavna Pandey and Seema Khan," said the eyewitness.

According to a source, "Salman was to attend only Amu's wedding, as he was shooting in Jaipur. But Malaika persuaded him to stay back for the sangeet”.

Their activities showed that the hostility between them hasn't died down yet. At the middle of the party, Salman left in an auto rickshaw while Katrina stayed back.

Slumdog's success story!

Slumdog Millionaire is much more than a breakout film with $150 million (and counting) in box-office earnings and eight Academy Awards: Interestingly, given the heart-rending poverty central to its plot, its success happens to coincide with the growth of U.S. tent cities -- a phenomenon that reveals not only deep undercurrents of material instability among middle-class Americans, but also points towards a future where slums may become a prominent feature of contemporary American life.

Since the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and the onset of a full-blown economic crisis in October 2008, the number of unemployed, homeless, and hungry in the U.S. is expanding quickly (witness the dramatic rise in demand for food banks and shelter spaces), while more and more tent cities are sprouting up nationwide. Just last month, journalist Lisa Ling, special correspondent for the Oprah Winfrey Show, unveiled a recent feature story for Oprah called "Inside a Tent City."

Ling traveled to her birthplace, Sacramento, California, to document tent cities that have taken root because of the economic crisis. Now, in Sacramento, according to her piece, approximately 1,200 people, some formerly of the middle class, are living in makeshift conditions.

The enthusiastic embrace of Slumdog Millionaire may actually signify a sober recognition that growing inequality has become a permanent, unchangeable facet of U.S. society over the past 30 years. Among youth, the elderly and those with a fragile grip on a middle-class status, this recognition may include, with greater urgency, the possibility of homelessness and the precarious psychology that comes with it.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Paris-based think tank, in the two decades between 1985 and 2005, the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. -- and the rich and the middle classes -- is rising along with poverty.

New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis writes: "Slumdog Millionaire...proves to be one of the most upbeat stories about living in hell imaginable."

Could it be that because a large swathe of Americans has traveled the world during the past three decades, they feel increased empathy towards the impoverished? Yes. Could it also be that, during that same 30 years, U.S. income distribution has begun to resemble that of a developing country, with our exposure to poverty elsewhere inuring us to eroding living standards at home? Hmmm.

In Rolling Stone magazine, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman writes "[U.S.] pretax incomes are now as unequally distributed as they were in the 1920s -- wiping out virtually all of the gains made by the middle class during the Great Compression."

(Economic historians refer to "the Great Compression" as the period between the late 1930s and mid-1940s when U.S. income inequality decreased.)

"These days," Krugman continues, "to find societies as unequal as the United States you have to look beyond the advanced world, to Latin America." (Okay, so Latin America isn't Mumbai, but in places it's not that far off.)

I believe that there's a barely suppressed awareness among Americans that things could get worse, horribly worse, in the state of the economic union: If so, the U.S. theatrical success of Slumdog Millionaire may revolve around its audience's sixth sense that the American Dream is verging on collapse.

With consumers overwhelmed by debt, weakened financial institutions, barriers to continued borrowing -- and, most tellingly, inadequate health insurance coverage -- falling off the cliff from relative middle-class comfort into abject poverty, chronic ill-health, or both, requires less bad luck than at any time since the Great Depression.

So, if the economic recession turns into another depression -- and the gap between the rich and the poor (and the rich and the middle classes) continues to expand -- take note: We may all be witnessing the birth of the "Century of the American Slumdog."