Saturday Gossip!

So, I finally saw Inception last night. In an odd bit of synchronicity, my sister received it from Netflix as I was putting it on my Netflix queue. (You would think we lived together or something... because we do.) I liked it well enough but it suffered from the problems that Chris Nolan films always suffer from: poor narrative construction; wafer thin characters (to the point that I couldn't remember anybody's names AND kept getting all the white guys mixed up); and a lack of women. His plotting and scene construction was - as always - excellent. Plus, how about that Tom Hardy, huh? Ammirite ladies?


でも地震後では東京を見ているのが病的です。

Now!! Bollywood!!

* ETA: Single Screen cinema owners are on strike in Mumbai!

* Where are the market research people when you need them? Somebody needs to stop the brigade of Bollywood types talking about how scripts are king now.

Now there is a need for good scripts because people have realised that films don't work only on stars. There is awareness, but that is not enough,' Kamlesh Pandey, who scripted Rang De Basanti and Delhi-6, told IANS on the phone.

Because Delhi 6 was not promoted on the basis of stars and was such a big hit? (I'm being sarcastic.) This fiction that "scripts" are somehow the new way to get a hit film is one of the Bollywood media myths that really drives me crazy. A good script is not the only thing that matters in a film and it never has been. Do you know what one of the top films of 2010 was? Golmaal 3.

* Ranveer Singh confirms the existence of the casting couch. Thanks, buddy.

Also, Ranveer has no desire to be a Hero.

"I hate this attitude of the industry that puts a male star into the centre of everything, and starts treating me as the God of Box Office and not as an actor. I am an actor. I want to read a role and get excited about how will I do it and the possibilities it offers to me as an actor."

Ranveer-bhai, you might want to set up a meeting with Aamir Khan to see if he will give you advice on how to be a Hero and an actor. Here's a tip from me, though, becoming a God of the Box Office will also give you freedom to make films with artistic control - like Aamir does. Remaining just an actor means you are at the mercy of the directors and producers and Karan Johars of the industry.

Just ask one of the greatest actors in Bollywood - Arshad Warsi - how much respect one gets for just being an actor.

* Find out more information on Rajini's Rana!

* Read a gleefully vicious review of Dongala Mutha!

RGV’s last Telugu film, Katha, Screenplay, Darshakatvam, Appalaraju, released about a month back, made audiences wince. Dongala Mutha gives us no respite. And the fact that he’s spending more time in Hyderabad is worrisome. Bollywood, please, please, take him back.

* Abhishek is smartly playing the modesty card in the run up to Game.

“You tell me. What’s the definition of a solo film? Is it one where there is one hero doing all the talking? Then how can you forget other great actors like Mithun Chakraborty and Madhavan in the film? It was the collective effort of everyone involved that made Guru a hit,” says Abhishek modestly.

* My boy Vijay Krishna Acharya speaks on his own flop - Tashan!

"Tashan was slightly tongue-in-cheek. Maybe if you try [being tongue-in-cheek] in a mainstream film, you have to prepare the audience for it. All I have to say about it is that it has attained a sort of cult status."

Truer words have never been spoken and I am a proud member of the Tashan cult!



Now, watch a cute "making-of" for one of the songs from F.A.L.T.U.!