All press is good press, the old adage goes. This does not apply to Paris Hilton.
The celebutante's every move, from her club-hopping to her jail stint to her search for a new best friend has proved fodder for the flashbulbs and celebrity press. But what has the incessant coverage garnered her? Eye rolls--and worse, audience disinterest.
This time Salman Khan is making an exception to his long time policy of not promoting his films. Taking active part in the promotion of his forthcoming ‘Yuvraaj’, Salman was first seen on the sets of ‘Sa Re Ga Ma’ with her lady love Katrina Kaif and now, he does it again on the Children’s Day.
The veteran actor made their day on 14th Nov 2008 at Globus, Bandra as he arrived to meet and greet the children at the promotional event of his forthcoming film “Yuvvraaj”. Chatting, laughing and performing for them, Salman looked every inch the true superstar.
Madhur Bhandarkar’s ambitious project ‘Fashion’ did pretty well at the box-office. The cast and crew of the movie along with many other sizzling Bollywood personalities celebrated the success of the film at the bash held at Vie Lounge, Juhu, Mumbai, last Friday Nite.
Madhur Bhandarkar along with Priyanka Chopra, Kangna Ranaut, Mugdha Godse, Arbaaz Khan, Arjan Bajwa etc were present at the party.
Chitrangada Singh made her start in Bollywood through serious cinema like ‘Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi and ‘Kal – Yesterday and Tomorrow’ but the gal is all set to change her image with her first commercial venture ‘Sorry Bhai’.
The film has been directed by Onir and is all set to release on 28th November. Chitrangda has recently shot for a promotional music video which comes with the title ‘Sorry Bhai’. The video has just been unveiled on the music channels. The number has soft dance moves associated with it, the number is a feel good light hearted banter between Sanjay, Sharman and Chitrangda. The film revolves around them with the storyline as Chitrangda all set to get married to Sanjay before she falls in love with his younger brother Sharman. In the song Sharman questions them and the duo tries to make peace with him and explain their point of view.
Though Gaurav Dayal has composed the entire soundtrack of SORRY BHAI, the title song sees Vivek Phillip chipping in as the guest composer. He also writes the lyrics along with Amitabh Varma for this song which is sung by K.K., Sunidhi Chauhan and Abhishek Nailwal.
Onir is all praises for Chitrangda and says, “This is a gift that we all have given to each other. The promotional music video has been shot in all white color and would feature in the movie during the end credits roll. The video features Chitrangda along with the entire principal cast of the movie comprising of Sanjay Suri, Sharman Joshi, Boman Irani and Shabana Azmi.”
The latest movies like Dostana and Fashion have again tickled the long subdued topic of homosexuality to the forefront and into the mainstream cinema.
Although every producer- director teams up to bring a ‘hat ke’ project, for long homosexuals have largely been supposed to be out of the orbit of the various formulas and incarnations that control the Bollywood box office.
Movies like Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Onir’s My Brother Nikhil that have made stirring efforts to break the orthodox depiction, but have been labelled as ‘parallel’ cinema. However, the current wave of films, like Fashion and Dostana, may be able to bring the much awaited acceptance to homosexuality.
Mahesh Dattani made a bold effort “Mango Souffle” to look at the gay community without prejudice and to de-marginalize homosexuality in our cinema. But the efforts went in vain as the film hardly got an audience worth citing.
With the release of Karan Johar’s Dostana where the Bollywood hunks and lead actors, Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham, pretend to be a couple in a bid to rent an apartment in Miami. Madhur Bhandarkar’s recent release, Fashion, in one of its sub-plots, has Harsh Chayya and Samir Soni play a homosexual fashion designer-couple thus indicating of the acceptance of the odd among the audience.
For many years, homosexual were essentially comic characters meant to lampoon men who, in every day jargon, aren’t “normal”. Like in- Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan in Kal Ho Naa Ho where Shah Rukh and Saif’s characters were mistaken to be gay by the latter’s housekeeper; Anupam Kher subsequently played in Rahul Rawail’s “Mast Kalander” and David Dhawan’s “Dulhan Hum Le Jayenge” and not to forget Sanjeev Kumar playing an effeminate character in A. Bhim Singh’s “Naya Din Nayee Raat”.
Now in Madhur Bhandarkar’s “Page 3″ for the first time a gay character is looked at without chauvinism and comes closest in Indian cinema to portraying a gay character with some air of sensitivity.
The director Madhur Bhandarkar comments: “All the characters you see in ‘Page 3′ is based on people I know. In our films, gay characters are used as props and gimmicks. In my film, Rehaan plays an identifiable character. We cannot reduce any community of people to tokens and emblems. We’ve to treat them as real.”
Homosexuality is still in the pothole of ‘minorityism’ and Hindi cinema has a long way off from pulling it out. The filmmakers can get honest about the matter on sc
