Biggest Hits of 2010

The year is coming to an end and so is my assignment of 36 blogs. Don't worry, I'll continue with blogging regularly. However, to end this assignment, my friend gave me a nice idea. He suggested that I should do a photo-blog giving a tribute to the best films produced this year.

So, here's a treat to all Bollywood fans. Lets take a sneak-peak at the biggest hits of 2010. Enjoy!

Women in the media

In the 21^st century, we like to believe that a woman can do everything a man can do and can even do it better.

My journalism class has 20 students out of which only five are male. Imagine my surprise when statistics showed to me that the number of male journalists is significantly higher than female journalists.

I don’t only mean in developing countries where women don’t have the same opportunities as men or have laws that restrict them from doing certain things. It’s an all over the world phenomenon. The Global media monitoring(GMM) report of 2010 that spans over a 110 countries, studying the media situation says that there is a higher number of women studying to be journalists but much less actually make it into work.

About 62 % percent of all journalists are male while only 38 % percent are female. We like to argue that women and men are equal but these statistics prove otherwise.

The reasons are many.

One is the glass ceiling that refers to an invisible barrier that prevents women and other minorities from climbing to the highest rung of corporate hierarchy.This is demotivating as from the beginning a woman knows that no matter how hard she works this will be a barrier to her success.

Another is it’s difficult for a staunch feminist to get ahead in the male dominated media industry. If you have to succeed you have to become “one of the boys” or a stereotypical definition of a woman.Women are clearly still not seen as an important part of the world. According to GMM report ,“24% of the people heard or read about in print, radio and television news are female. In contrast, 76% of the people in the news are male.”

Considering half the world’s population is female there is definitely something wrong with this statistic. Even when they are in the news they’re celebrities, victims or both. Women may go hoarse screaming out that equality exists but these hard facts tell us otherwise.

My professor, Mr. Amitav Sinha Roy gave us a viable albeit difficult solution. He said to all of us female students, “don’t get mad, get even.” Watch out world, it maybe a small start but 15 of us girls are ready to tackle this media industry and soon.

The return of the Khan-Daan

Generally by Sunday evenings, I start looking at my watch realizing that it’s the day for airing of another 'Koffe with Karan' episode. I love the way the new show is panning out ,with great pair of actors and actresses  coming together ,show after show. From the Bachchan clan to Saifeena to the much awaited Shahid-Priyanka, its quite a delight to watch, especially with the usual punch of Karan Johar’s witty humour.

But one thing that kept my mind questioning continuously was when was our very own King Khan due to make an appearance, considering he has been a lucky charm & sort of a brand ambassador of the show since its inception. So, when I finally read this news on a Bollywood blog ( My Bible) that not only is Shah Rukh Khan coming on the show but has a whole episode dedicated only to him, I was overjoyed.

Now news like this may seem a bit, well ‘extra special treatment’ to some people but I shall give logical reason to explain this phenomenon.

-Shah Rukh khan was the show’s 1^st guest.

-He has appeared a record of four times on the show with Kajol, Amitabh Bachchan, Rani Mukherjee, Hrithik Roshan, Gauri Khan etc.

-He is the only guest who has actually turned the tables and asked rapid fire questions to karan himself.

-He has appeared in every Karan Johar movie till date.

….and this list keeps going on. So to all the skeptics out there, he is Karan’s family after all, be it a best friend, brother or anything else, I don’t know! But one thing is for certain that I will immensely look forward to this show as Shah Rukh Khan along with any guest or alone is bound to steal the show and provide us (or rather me) an entertaining and fun ending to a much awaited weekend.

And the Catfight continues...

Last night I was reading my favorite blog which is also an avid provider of my weekly Bollywood gossip, when I read quite an interesting event in progress.

The cold war between the United States and the then USSR might be over (or that is what we know), but the origin of this concept has given a far new meaning to our Bollywood actresses. So, here’s the tale of another such mindless clash. Apparently the sheer rivalry between Lara Dutta and Priyanka Chopra exists from a long time (since their 1^st movie!) which I’m guessing most of the Indian audiences know ,especially those who follow the dramatic lives of our stars, but it so seems that a very remarkable turning has taken place. As both the actresses will share the screen presence in the upcoming sequel of Don, they will also end up sharing more time off-screen together.

 Now the issue here involves one certain Tennis player who has found a new fan base among these beautiful stars. Lara Dutta, who is happily in a relationship with Mahesh Bhupathi might just find this a bit daunting that her arch nemesis Priyanka is a very huge fan of Mahesh and is all excited to meet him in person.This surely is just a non-factual speculation as both the actors are tight-lipped about their liking towards each other and meet cordially in public eye, but we can just hope that everything stays fine in the land of our leading ladies.

Surprisingly, even in my early memories of Bollywood, there have been immense instances of two actresses going head to head such as Kareena against Priyanka, Kareena & Priety, Bipasha & Amisha …and the list goes on. A most recent example will be when Karan Johar in the show ‘Koffee with karan’ showed some old clips of Kareena Kapoor and other actresses displaying their affection for each other.

This makes me strongly feel that all such incidents simply dilute the brand these actors cultivate of themselves and rather than bickering over non-sensical matters, they should uplift, shape and mould their careers towards a brighter future. And yes, being an actress does lead to such egoistic clashes but ultimately the stars that come out of it and stay above it will surely succeed.  

Welcome back Madhuri !

She was hailed as The Dancing Queen in addition to being one of the most prominent actresses of Bollywood for decades. Her comeback film ‘Aaja Nachle’ may not have fared well at the box office but got the actress critical acclaim, both from Indian and international audiences. Some of her dance numbers are  popular to this day ('Ek Do Teen’ from Tezaab, ‘Dhak Dhak’ from Beta, ‘Chane Ke Khet Mein’ from Anjaam and‘Kay Sera Sera’ from Pukar). 

No prizes for guessing who am I talking about. Yes, it is our very own Madhuri Dixit and this time she is ready to set the small screen on fire. The pretty actress will be seen  judging a television reality show along with Malaika Arora Khan and choreographer Remo D'Souza,called Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, 5.

While flipping through the Television channels yesterday, I saw the trailer of the show and it left me speechless. The show for sure seems grand ,what with the contestants of previous 4 seasons performing and also introducing the contestants of this season. Also, with the kind of judges that the channel has managed to rope in, the magnitude of the performances and of the show itslef  is definitely going to be huge. Getting Madhuri to judge the show has  just added cherry on the icing.

 Madhuri was one of the first celebrities to be approached with the offer and immediately accepted it since she thought it was a good way to connect with her fans, being the excellent dancer she is. However, this isn't Madhuri's first encounter with small screen. The actress hosted a reality TV show  based on the concept of matchmaking, called ‘Kahin Na Kahin Koi Hai’ in 2002. However, the concept of a reality show was still new and unexpected at that time, as a result of which the show was taken off air.

So, for all Madhuri fans, who couldn't get enough of her in Aaja Nachle and who are as crazy about her million dollar smile as I am, here's a golden oppurtunity to get up,close and personal with the actress. The show will start airing from second week of January. I 'll be waiting with bated breath to see my favourite actress in action . What about you?

Its time for the Rajini Trophy!

Yesterday night I came across this blog which gave me perhaps the most incredibly fantastic information of this year. It stated that hopefully in the near mortal future, we shall witness two of the biggest stars in India come together on the same stage. It further added that all this will happen in front of our very eyes, which just begged me to ask the question- Who and what is this?So (drumroll!) the two actors are none other than Rajinikant & Salman Khan and the place is a cricket stadium. Yes, its true, we shall be seeing the Asian super star playing head on, against the original cool dude of bollywood Salman Khan in a cricket match.

If the blogger has to be believed, Sohail Khan is the main brain behind this event and is organizing an entire tournament with one side being all bollywood actors, proudly calling themselves ‘Mumbai Heroes’ against Rajinikant’s team of south Indian stars.  This is being done in collaboration with the CCL (Celebrity Cricket league) and the matches will be mostly held in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

In my view ,there have been a lot of such matches and games organized in the past such as a football match organized between actors in the late 90’s when Shah Rukh Khan showcased his exemplary football skills to the celebrity cricket match between Hrithik Roshan and Kapil Dev’s team in the beginning of the millennium, but still if everything goes as planned this match may just over shadow them all, proving to be a sheer entertainment and delight to watch. Who knows, this match might just up the TRP’s of many IPL matches.

So finally with this quite factual information in place, this blog wouldn’t be complete without some jaw dropping-ly funny Rajinikant jokes. So here goes-

1)      -Rajinikant is ready to bowl his first delivery and the bails fall on their own.

2)      -While fielding, Rajinikant doesn’t dive to get the ball, the ball dives to get Rajinikant.

3)      - And lastly, 10 runs are needed on the final ball, when Rajinikant hits it with sheer force leading to the ball breaking in two pieces, one going for a six and the other for a four.

Its a mob mentality !

It’s not the first time in Bollywood that we see an inception of a new trend in movies which continues over a large span of time finally giving way to another trend. One such latest trend has been the occurrence of con movies on the silver screen.

It’s quite  marvelous to see the fascination Indian audiences have for this genre. From the days of ‘Hera Pheri’, ‘Bluffmaster’, ‘Bunty aur Babli’, ‘Oye lucky lucky oye’ etc, audiences love our conmen with the heart of gold. And with the staggering box office success of last years ‘Kaminey’, ‘Ishqiya’ to the recent ‘Badmaash company’, all revolving around conmen, we can easily state that the con is on in bollywood. This has also  led to the further production of many movies on this theme such as ‘No problem’, ‘Tees maar khan’, Yamla pagla deewana’ , all coming out later this year.

In the movie, ‘Tees maar khan’ we shall see Akshay kumar portraying a modern day conman who steals from the rich and but does give to the poor. When asked about the role, the director Farah khan responded that the role is hugely inspired from the English folklore hero Robin Hood. Therefore, our conman in the movie,for a change, is called half Robin Hood . We shall also see another such movie with yesteryear legend Dharmender and his two sons Sunny deol & Bobby deol coming together for the con movie, 'Yamla Pagla Deewana’ , slated to be released in January next year.

Several con movies have been made over the years, some have achieved great success and some have not, so is just the genre which makes the movie or is the other way round? Well that remains a debatable issue and as far as other factors are involved our film audiences are the best critics. As for the trend, the eternal question is, let’s see till when it lasts!