All the juicy gossip from the entertainment world Revisiting films on the big screen

All the juicy gossip from the entertainment world

Revisiting films on the big screen

Starting today, a chunk of Vidhu Vinod Chopra's films will be released theatrically as part of a retrospective, for those who want to experience his cinema on the big screen all over again. Films like Parinda, 1942 A Love Story, Pareenita, Kareeb, Mission Kashmir, Munnabhai MBBS, Lage Raho Munnabhai and 3 Idiots will be showcased. A source tells us that the production house will celebrate a retrospective of their films made in the last 30 years. "The movies will be screened nationally from today till April 4. But the interesting part is that several eminent film makers will moderate a creative discussion after every film is screened, in Juhu. It's an innovative step to encourage good cinema. Filmmakers like Sudhir Mishra, S Raghavan, Rohan Sippy, Imtiaz Ali, Balki and Ram Madhvani will be a part of this initiative," informs the source. Apparently, the production house had to restore some of the films visually as well as the sound because of the time lapse since they were first made. But they're very happy with the result.

Buzz is that actor Anil Kapoor apparently got into an argument with director Priyadarshan recently.

Anil’s panga with Priyan!

Buzz is that actor Anil Kapoor apparently got into an argument with director Priyadarshan recently. Though actors and directors having tiffs over creative differences is nothing new, what was surprising here is that the actor was fighting for pal, actor Ajay Devgn, who’s also starring in the film Tezz. “Anil, who usually never interferes with the director, felt that Ajay be given more screen space and told Priyan about it. Interestingly, Ajay himself was unaware of any such argument but was touched by Anil’s gesture when he learnt about it,” says the source. The industry’s buzzing with this incident, especially since actors are usually known to fight to increase their own footage, while editing out the screen space of the others. But though it’s not known whether the two relented or not, apparently they did make up soon after.

Cameron journeys to Earth’s depths

Cameron journeys to Earth’s depths

Hollywood icon filmmaker James Cameron has completed his journey to Earth’s deepest point. The Oscar-winning director of films like Titanic and Avatar used a specially designed submarine to dive nearly seven miles (11 kms) into the ocean. He spent time exploring and filming the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) Southwest of the Pacific island of Guam, according to members of the National Geographic expedition. Cameron returned to the surface of the Pacific Ocean on Monday morning local time. He spent a little more than three hours under-water after reaching a depth of 35,756 feet (10,898 meters) before he began his return to the surface, according to information provided by the expedition team. He had planned to spend up to six hours on the sea floor. A medical team was present when Cameron, 57, emerged from the sub, according to the expedition. The scale of the trench is hard to grasp — it’s 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon and more than a mile deeper than Mount Everest is tall. "It's really the first time that human eyes have had an opportunity to gaze upon what is a very alien landscape," said Terry Garcia, the National Geographic Society's executive VP for mission programs, via phone from Scotland. The film director has been an oceanography enthusiast since childhood and has made 72 deep-sea submersible dives.

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Responsibilities, renewal, and all that’s in-between

Responsibilities, renewal, and all that’s in-between

Today’s Gudi Padwa. And it stands for auspicious new beginnings, a time of renewal. Which might be very welcome, in the current climate, given the gloomy environment around, both at home (mixed reactions to the budget) and globally (Europe’s financial woes have got other countries edgy too). The weather’s not helping spread cheer either, now that summer’s sweltering has finally gripped us, late March. Traditionally, March has not exactly been a spread-the-cheer month, what with exams and year-ender finances to be looked into. It’s more a face-upto-grim-reality kinda’ month, where checks (or cheques!) and balances and a squaring upto responsibilities comes into play. T S Eliot’s iconic The Wasteland speaks of April being the cruellest month but it could well apply to March. Which is even more reason to welcome a time of renewal, possible cheer, in the festive calendar. The entertainment world is trying its best to do both — welcome a time of renewal (hopes resting on biggie Agent Vinod, the last of the big movies this quarter, which releases today, here, if not across the border) and square upto responsibilities — cricket season in April has ensured that much of big-ticket entertainment is pushed back, well into mid-year, to avert any possibility of a BO vs bat/ball face-off. The message is clear —We wouldn’t want to miss out on any manner of precious paisa especially in today’s austere times now, would we? Squaring upto responsibilities is also what was required in one of the most devastating movies I’ve seen in a while — the foreign language film A Separation, which also appeared on the Oscar roll-call for Best Foreign Language film this year, and won. You would use ‘devastating’ as a description whilst watching desperation come through in a real-time documentary or perhaps a war drama most times, but what is gripping about this Iranian film is its portrayal of everyday desperation. Thoreau wrote, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation’ and this movie manages somehow to eke out every minutiae in that truism. Operating on several levels — a man’s desperation in trying to care for his Alzheimer-stricken father on a daily basis whilst managing a job and child, a wife’s desperation at her being thwarted from a better life by circumstances, a poor family’s desperation at losing a child and frustration at class paradigms, as well as several subtexts inbetween — the film is a searing watch. Not to mention how Dreiser might be proud of the way people become puppets to situations that may not entirely be of their own making in this film (as in life). And to divert from that heaviness, Hollywood offering My Week with Marilyn, based on a real life incident, also shows some squaring upto responsibilities, as a London teen production assistant awakens to the ways of the real world after his brief, fairytale exposure to movie icon Marilyn Monroe. The rites-of-passage movie was also at the Oscars for the diminutive Michelle Williams’ performance, but who really held my attention, despite her blink-and-you-miss-it appearance was the luminous Julia Ormond, playing an aging, fragile Vivian Leigh. You might remember her from Legends of the Fall, the epic multistarrer that included Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt and Aidan Quinn.

Mumbai’s urban pulse booked

Mumbai’s urban pulse booked

Author Tapan Ghosh, an engineer by profession, captures the essence of Mumbai with his novel Faceless. The book that has a cover designed by illustrator Sudhir Shetty, shows a woman’s sketched face. The readers are open to interpreting the face as Raima’s, who is the soul of the book. The story is about Khush and Shom who have been friends since childhood. In their forties now, they love to swing to Latino beats in Mumbai’s nightclubs. Shom, the reticent one, is very different from the flamboyant Khush. Everything changes when Shom meets Raima. Their sensual yet spiritual love is separated by age, wealth and background. Shom throws caution to the wind and meets life head on, choosing honesty over hypocrisy. It’s a love story emerging in the contemporary world of wealth, lust and power. Raima, a victim of circumstance, is exposed to the world very early in life and as such she is tough and sharp. Faceless is the story of powerful yet pure love and passion that unfolds as the story of Shom and Raima does in Mumbai’s landscape. There is an autobiographical element in the book and the backdrop is SoBo or South Mumbai. The milieu captures the essence of today’s urban Mumbai.

Lavni fever on Pavitra Rishta

Lavni fever on Pavitra Rishta

Buzz is that there’s much celebration in store for the audience on today’s episode of Zee TV’s Pavitra Rishta, as the characters gear up to celebrate Gudi Padwa. According to sources, there will be a sequence where actors Mrinalini Tyagi and Asha Negi will be seen performing a Lavni. But while the sequence was canned without a hitch, a source reveals that it was not all hunky- dory initially, as the two actors were completely unacquainted with the traditional Maharashtrian dance style and found themselves in a fix. “It was Ankita (Lokhande) who suggested that they watch the song Apsara aali from the film Natrang, to grasp the finer nuances of the dance form and it helped too as the two then danced rather effortlessly,” says a source.

Actor Sonakshi Sinha’s secret wish

Sona’s secret wish

Actor Sonakshi Sinha is in desparate need of something and no, we’re not talking about movie roles. In fact, it is an overdose of work that has the Shotgun Jr all worked up. Ironic, isn’t it? In Sona’s own words, her schedule read somewhat like this till a couple of days back: She first shot for Son of Sardar on Monday, the next day she shot for Rowdy Rathore and a TV commercial. On Wednesday, she started shooting for the Dabangg sequel. The young actor expressed her plight on micro-blogging site Twitter and told her followers that she felt like a movie ninja, slicing through tight schedules all through the week. In fact, she was hopping, skipping and jumping from one set to another at such a pace that she wished the day had more than 24 hours. But a source close to the actor says that Sona is quite thankful for the amount of work she is saddled with of late. She apparently realises that it’s better to have your kitty full of projects than otherwise.

Vikram gets cold feet, Vivek steps in

Vikram gets cold feet, Vivek steps in

It’s a first for director Vikram Bhatt, when after writing a film he stepped back and didn’t go on to direct the film. His upcoming film Hate Story is apparently an erotic thriller which stars actors Nikhil Dwivedi and Paoli Dam. The film, which was originally supposed to be directed by Vikram was then given to Vivek Agnihotri of Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal fame.  Vivek says, “Vikram is an old friend and he asked me to meet him. That is when he told me the story of Hate Story and challenged me if I could do the film as it is, without any changes to the storyline. I read it and immediately accepted his challenge. It’s the first time that Vikram has asked another director to direct a story written by him.” The source says, “After writing the story, Vikram got a little worried that whether he would be able to do justice to the erotic scenes. So he thought about it for some time and then decided to give Vivek the opportunity.”