Wednesday Gossip!

Sad news today - Riteish Deshmukh's father has passed away. My thoughts and prayers go out to Riteish and his family.

* In a lot of ways, I think women have it better in Bollywood - at least the star wives, daughters, and sisters have it better. But sometimes change starts at the top. If Ekta Kapoor can run a mass-media empire, girls can dream about following in her footsteps.

Here's an New York Times discussion on women in HOLLYWOOD. It's frustrating.

* Ireland is psyched for Ek Tha Tiger.

* A list of some of the celebs appearing at India Day parades in the US.

* Sanjay Dutt admits to meeting Dawood Ibrahim... once.

* Vivek Oberoi is going to be father.

* An overblown profile of Sherlyn Chopra from the BBC tries to turn her into a hero instead of a desperate starlet willing to take off her clothes for media attention.

This is a story about ambition forged on the anvil of desperation. This is a story of a woman putting out on the social networking site, Twitter, naked photographs of herself frolicking in the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles and attracting a barrage of abuse in a country that sent into exile one of its greatest modern artists for depicting a Hindu goddess in the nude in one of his paintings.

Because MF Husain artistic statements and Sherlyn Chopra's cheesecake shots are the same thing.

* Mallika Sherawat to do play a sprinter in Sonu Sood's home production Lucky Unlucky.

* Vikram Bhatt talks horror.

Didn’t Bipasha Basu have reservations when her onscreen life in Raaz 3D was being compared to her real state?

I don’t think Bipasha is a bullshitter. She pretty much understands where her life is at. And she knows what is based on her and what is not. It’s just that when she signed Raaz, she had a couple of duds on her resume. If Players and Jodi Breakers did well, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

* JP Dutta is planning two sequels to Border.

* Raveena Tandon is doing a Malayalam film.

And... the teaser for the Yash Chopra's Greatest Hits Montage Starring Raj and/or Rahul.

All this really makes me think is a) Wow, I guess I don't really like most Yash Chopra films and b) romance on its own is a such a self-indulgent genre...