Bollywood News - Page 11

No Khan do: Khan Sisters is just rubbish, not trashy fun

Gauhar Khan has a derriere to die for like Kim Kardashian. But that’s where the similarity between Khan Sisters and Keeping up with the Kardashians begins and ends. Even trash needs class.

Mother knows best: Neetu speaks out on Ranbir Kapoor

A wild child who nearly drowned the maid. A mother's best friend who helped her through the roughest time in her marriage. Meet the Ranbir Kapoor you never knew.

The eternal oomph of Helen: A Canadian drag queen's fan letter

She's not a great actress, not even a great dancer. But Helen is a real star. That's why a Canadian drag queen is shimmying into that amazing 'baithe hain kya' costume.

Centrestage Festival: A week of theatre at the NCPA

Hope the festival, with its awkward mix of art and commerce, delivers another round of exemplary theatre through its 15 premiering plays starting today.

Love, sex and the dhoka of pushing the envelope in Bollywood

No sex please, we're Indian. That old saying has gone out of the window in Bollywood. Indian cinema is stripping down and getting to business. But does that mean it's all grown up now?

Mumbai neighbourhoods: That Bollywood street in Khar

Pankuj Parashar, acclaimed Bollywood director, reminisces about 14th road, Khar, Mumbai which has a unique Bollywood past, present and future, attached to it.

MAMI: The good, the bad and the plain annoying

The MAMI film festival has gotten bigger but it's hard to say it's gotten better. But good cinema addicts sweated out all the logistical problems to try and find some movie gems.

The Ten Best of the MAMI Fest

As another edition of Mumbai's premiere film festival gets underway on 13 October , here's a pick of 10 must-watch films.

The five archetypes of Bollywood dream girls

Since the sixties, the female stars have reliably played to certain archetypes. They were predictable, but also had a signature style. But many are now going quietly extinct.

Paris Hilton does Mumbai: Revenge of the brown sahibs, sorry, floozies

Cold-shouldered by the Bollywood elite, America's most famous skank discovered there's a new power equation between India and Hollywood celebrities. But in one unintended way, she also proved that we remain sad little wannabes, after all.

Satyadev Dubey: The enfant terrible of Indian Theatre

Shanta Gokhale's new book on Satyadev Dubey brings together essays, interviews and reviews by playwrights and theatre critics, and a selection from Dubey's own articles. The book will be launched in Mumbai in October.

Bollywood's botox bubble of denial

Enough with middle aged stars playing college kids. Enough with heroes who think as long as they have a six pack they can pull off a romance with a heroine, a generation younger. Middle age is just a number. Embrace it.

Bollywood's most over-rated

Not all stars are born equal but some should never have been stars. But they still hang on at the box office by some invisible thread. From the idols of yesteryears to the ones making waves today, who are Bollywood's most overrated stars?

The six worst Bollywood fashion horrors of all time

Remember Jumping Jeetu in his famous white shoes? Or what about the eternal gaon ki gori choli? Bollywood has many claims to global fame, but the most dubious is its fashion sense.

Sultan of sex: Remembering Jagmohan Mundhra

Jag Mundhra became famous in Hollywood for his lingerie-and-lust movies like Night Eyes and Sexual Malice. But then he decided to re-invent himself with a little help from the likes of Nandita Das and Aishwariya Rai.

What 'they' say about Indian cinema

A round-up of what eight celebrated international directors have to say about Indian cinema.

The death of wooing: Bollywood romeo, where art thou?

Gone are the days when ardent heroes wooed their true love with a song. We may still have serenading romeos on our streets, but they are almost extinct on the silver screen.

Khalid Mohamed’s Kennedy Bridge, a bridge to nowhere much

The play employs mixed media lavishly, but ends up being a self indulgent, halfway play.

The Tallest Man: The eternal relevance of Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray died almost 20 years ago, but even today his films have lost none of their spark or ability to touch human emotion. In a sense, his films can speak across generations and cultures.

Bollywood’s curse of the cerebral women

To have a cerebral woman hold sway in a filmi narrative is the final frontier.

How I met and fell in love with AR Rahman

An Irish American woman stumbles upon a half-forgotten Tamil song from a decade ago. And instantly it's flashback time — to a great romance and the utter heartbreak that followed. All with music by AR Rahman.

A Potter nerd's guide to Deathly Hallows Part II

Anxious about seeing your favourite wizard on his final cinematic outing? Here are seven things this Potter nerd loved and hated about the movie.

Why women can't have their own 'Buddy Film'

If a Bollywood script is centred around female-bonding, it almost necessarily means the absence of a male figure.

Drinking, driving and death: the moral divide

Bollywood blockbuster Shaitan and the Tamil film Eesan begin in almost identical fashion. However the way the two films proceed from that point denotes a vastly different moral ethos.

The 'sluts' of Hindi cinema – paying a price with their bodies

The streets might not be safe for women but are movie scripts any safer? As Slutwalk comes to Delhi next month, here’s a look at how Hindi films handle the sexual violation of women.

In praise of Naseeruddin Shah, the consummate actor

An intelligent, intuitive and highly skilled performer, Shah’s gift lies in making even peripheral parts memorable.

Bitten by the Tamil movie bug

There must be at least some folks in the Hindi movie industry watching the goings on down South and taking note, as there have been more and more influences trickling upwards toward Mumbai.

Hindustani music in bite-sized morsels

This weekend, Sunil Shanbag opens his new show at Prithvi Theatre. In Stories in a Song he isn’t quite plumbing the depths unraveling the cultural strands that make up the rich tapestry of Hindustani music. Instead he serves us bite-sized morsels through a montage of seven loosely interwoven theatrical set-pieces.

When Hindi films take on honour killing

Watching our films we could almost buy in on the idea that the term ʻhonour killingsʼ is just something coined by the British press to give a cultural context to plain old pre-meditated murder, fueled by hate and human frailty and not by notions of power, ego or feudal arrogance.

An entreaty to film celebs who tweet

For a while now, I’ve been itching to share some unsolicited advice in the form of suggested Dos and Don’ts for the famous filmi folk out there who are already on Twitter, or who are thinking of joining. Now is a good time.