After six months of living in denial, Shilpa Shetty and UK-based NRI entrepreneur Raj Kundra have come out in the open with their relationship. “I’m not denying it’s him (Raj) but I hope when this comes out, it doesn’t frighten him off,” Shilpa said on the New Year’s eve. And, no, this isn’t her resolution to come clean on all controversies this year, but as Shilpa’s publicist Dale Bhagwagar said, “Things have changed. The relationship has blossomed and matured with time. They were friends before. Now they’re a couple.”
Raj is responsible for the launch of Shilpa’s perfume. He is also the force behind her musical stage shows. Raj, who finances and produces movies, had presented the Jimmy Sheirgill-Kay Kay Menon starrer Strangers which released a few weeks ago. But like Shilpa, when the news of their relationship broke six months ago, Raj had denied it, stating they were “just friends”.
Raj’s former wife Kavita had accused Shilpa of breaking her marriage by having an affair with Raj. But the other version is that Shilpa came to know Raj four months after his wife had parted with him. Now the couple is seriously dating and getting to know each other better. Shilpa brought in the New Year with her family and Raj in Las Vegas.
Loading ...2nd January 2008 | Shilpa Shetty
There’s a certain quietude about Priyanka Kothari these days, which makes you wonder what this screen siren is up to. After all, we are used to seeing this gal heat up the glam quotient of films with her oomph and dare-bare roles. Ask her about it and she says, “I am enjoying the journey called life and am feeling very happy.” Is this sense of inner happiness in any way related to her reverting to her original name from Nisha? She says, “Not really. Life was fantastic then and now as well. I just did what I wanted to. That’s the way I live life -on my own terms and I follow my own rules.” 
Guess what will be the grand comeback of the New Year? It’s none other than Dimple Kapadia who is making her comeback after a long hiatus. She was last seen in Farhan Akthar’s Dil Chahta Hai, before she went on a sabbatical. And now Dimple will be seen along with Mithun Chakraborty in a film called Pyaar Mein Kabhie and also in the pipeline is another film with Pooja Bhatt and Amrita Singh. Let’s hope we will get to see more of this talented actress in the coming days.
It’s been a year full of work, and also link-ups, for Vidya Balan. But on the whole, she’s happy that it’s the work that gets more copy than the link-ups. “I have just laughed at the rumours. I am glad that it is my work that is generating more interest these days. As far as spicing up my life is concerned, leave that to me. I guess it’s high time I spice up my life on my own,” she laughs. 
The latest is that Yash Raj Films, impressed by Shahid’s performance in Jab We Met, has recently signed Shahid for their next production. The film will be directed by Anurag Singh, a close associate of Aditya Chopra. The project will roll from March 2008. 
After days of endless speculation, the verdict’s finally out! We are talking about the name of Rohan Sippy’s forthcoming film with Akshay Kumar that will see the ‘Khiladi’ back in action. The film - being directed by Nikhil Advani and produced by Rohan, Nikhil and Mukesh Talreja to be presented by Warner Brothers - that was tentatively titled Made In China has now been named Chandni Chowk to China at the insistence of the actor. The film - touted to be the first Bollywood film to be shot in China - is kind of autobiographical, as it traces the superstar’s rise from Chandni Chowk to superstardom. A source reveals, “Rohan and Akshay were both keen on different names. At the end of it, both want it to work in the favour of the film and had even had a sort of SMS poll conducted amongst the crew and cast. And everyone found Chandni Chowk to China more unique as against Made in China.” The shooting for the film that stars Deepika Padukone opposite the action king, will kickstart early this month and will be shot extensively in China and back in Delhi. Well, as long as the audience makes it from their ‘homes to theatres’ for this one… we’re sure Rohan’s not complaining!
Now this is the story of the day. Guess what? Shah Rukh Khan has gone where no Hindi film actors have gone before. The trade reports coming in from Kerala have it that SRK’s Om Shanti Om has been doing roaring business in Kerala. In fact, it has done better business than their local films released during the same time. King Khan is a big hit down south too. Mind it!
Although Katrina Kaif and Salman’s Khan’s relationship in is trouble, Katrina is doing her best to make the relationship work again. There were speculations in the media that Katrina didn’t want to go to Salman’s farmhouse at Panvel for Salman’s birthday on December 27 this year. However, Katrina changed her mind at the last minute and reached Salman’s farmhouse on December 26, just a few minutes before midnight. 
Mallika Sherawat, who was very excited about working in Kundan Shah’s film Masquerade, walked out of the film. Touted as one of the most challenging projects of her career, she quit because she had irrevocable creative differences with the director. 
Looks like Ranbir Kapoor’s kitty is filling up fast. The actor has been roped in for Ravi Chopra’s next film to be directed by Rahul Dholakia (of Parzania fame). Currently, he is shooting for an untitled Yash Raj film starring Bipasha Basu, Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone and Minissha Lamba. 
Actor Lara Dutta has become hot and happening. More so after her films Jhoom Barabar Jhoom and Partner, next year she plans to jhoom a little more. Ask her about her New Year resolutions and she quickly says, “To work hard and to meditate harder, to progress professionally and spiritually.” Well, it seems she has solid plans for the year 2008.
Although Madhur Bhandarkar is currently shooting his next film Fashion, produced by UTV and Bhandarkar Entertainment, the inside khabar is that the National Award winning director has refused UTV’s upcoming project based on the controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin’s life. The film (untitled as yet) will star Tabu in the lead. 
Despite relatively tepid box office returns, this movie was still judged to be a success, and thus we can look forward to Piranha 3D part two, probably next year. For some reason, this made me wonder about the fate of the town in this movie. Surely they would be economically destroyed by this whole disaster. Or maybe not. Maybe they have a surprisingly robust economy and could handle the shock of decreased tourism. I think it actually could be pretty funny to set the sequel in the same town if they could come up with a ridiculous enough justification for it.I have to admit that I'm surprised at the amount of good press this movie is getting. I mean, it's essentially a remake of a 30 year old, low budget, exploitative rip-off of Jaws, and it attempts to do approximately nothing new with the premise, unless you count the addition of the typical 21st century mean streak that has emerged in most horror of this decade. Oh, and I guess the underwater ballet sequence is astounding in its gratuitous glory. It's a bad movie, but I had fun with it. 
The gimmick here is that Susy is blind, leading to several scenes where our villains attempt to exploit their ocular advantage. Unfortunately for them, they're not as smart as they think, and Susy pretty quickly figures out what's going on (or, at least, she realizes that things aren't as they appear). The film starts a bit slowly, but the tension mounts pretty evenly as the film proceeds, leading to a few standout sequences late in the film, including excellent use of darkness, sound, and an exceptional "boo!" sequence towards the end of the film that will probably shock you even though you were expecting it. *** Not positive what will be next, but coming up will definitely be a week of Silent Era Horror and some Ozploitation. 
Of course, that's not the only thing this film has going for it. Director Richard Franklin freely admits to his aping of Hitchcock's style, and while I don't think this film really approaches the hights of Hitchcock's best, it's well above the average horror film in terms of photography and framing. The characterizations are surprisingly well done and and the manifestations of Patrick's power ramp up in a well planned progression. I'm sure there are some people who would find the film slow and poorly paced, but I found myself engaged throughout the entire film and never got bored. All in all, it's an effective film and well worth a watch. *** Next of Kin (trailer)Razorback (trailer)Dark Forces (trailer)Thirst: I'm not entirely sure what to make of this film. A wealthy woman is kidnapped and informed that she comes from a long line of vampires. The kidnappers claim to be superior to the human race due to the fact that they drink blood. They "farm" humans for their blood, and they're attempting to condition our heroine to drink blood, and thus fulfill her family's destiny. Or something. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The centerpiece of the film is a half-hour long dream sequence, thrusting our heroine from one horror set-piece to another. Actually, I'm not sure if the entire film isn't a series of dream sequences. There's a certain unreliability to what we're watching, and added to the lack of coherent story, I don't think it works particularly well. There are a few standout sequences, such as the shower scene or the woman drowning in a vat of blood, but ultimately I'm not sure it was done in service of anything worthwhile. If you're a huge fan of cults or vampires, it might be worth a watch, but it didn't do too much fore me... **Wolf Creek (trailer)The Survivor (trailer)Rogue (trailer)Road Games: When I was in high school, I drove across the US with my brother and uncle. One of the interesting things about such trips is that you actually tend to see the same people over and over again. You might pass someone in the morning, stop for lunch, then pass the same car again later in the day. You might see the same folks at the camp site every night, and so on. Apparently this phenomenon is even more pronounced in Australia, where there are only a handful of roads that take you across the continent. Writer Everett De Roche and Director Richard Franklin, both big Hitchcock fans, looked at that phenomenon and somehow came up with the idea of creating a sorta moving Rear Window. Instead of setting it in an apartment complex, they set it on the road, which allowed them to show the same set of recurring characters over and over again while instilling a certain kinetic energy into the story. Of course, the film doesn't entirely live up to , but it's still a rather effective thriller. 
I think I knew I was in for a good movie here when I saw the first murder sequence. At first, I thought I was going to be seeing kinda standard slasher fare, but Franklin immediately defied those expectations with a gorgeously photographed and well orchestrated horror sequence. The film is nearly bloodless, but it almost doesn't feel like it. There are only a handful of attacks, and they tend to rely on implied violence rather than gory detail. When I was planning out this week's movies, I didn't realize that this film and Patrick were done by the same director, but I'm glad I've discovered Richard Franklin and look forward to perhaps seeing more of his work in the future... *** The one film I wanted to see but didn't get to here was Howling III: The Marsupials, which looks like an incredibly cheesy, low-budget blast. It's actually available on Netflix Watch Instantly, but I just ran out of time. In any case, I'm hoping enough other films will be available for another week of Ozploitation next year, as I really enjoyed these movies (I'm even glad I watched Thirst, even though it's not quite my thing)... 
Shining (fake trailer)The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V: The ShinningThe Shining (trailer)Cookers: Ultra-low budget tale of meth cookers and their paranoia as they use too much of their product and slowly go crazy in the abandoned hose they've chosen to hide-out in. I hated this movie. I think my biggest issue is that I really hate watching people on drugs just for the sake of doing so. If there's a larger purpose to the drug use or a coherent storyline, then it's usually fine, but in this movie, watching meth take its toll on three pretty unlikeable characters is just a torturous experience and I hated almost every second of it. There were occasional respites in the misery, such as when Merle (he wears a John Dear baseball cap and a hillbilly mustache, just in case you didn't understand that he's white trash) recounts an urban legend of a young girl who disappeared mysteriously and the ghost that supposedly abducted her, but even those aren't that great and the way the film attempts to tie that in with the rest of the "story" doesn't really work too well. The film looks like it was shot on a crappy, consumer-grade video camera from the mid-90s. Normally this wouldn't bother me, and to be honest, they did a reasonably good job with what they had... but given that I really fucking hated watching these characters tweaking out, it was just adding to the frustration. I know some folks find this movie entertaining, and I suppose if the concept of watching people tweaking out on meth sounds fun to you, give it a shot, but I really hate this movie. To me, the best part was watching what happens to the character of Hector. The problem was that it took 90 minutes to get there. I wanted it to happen approximately 87 minutes earlier. Not recommended! *Jack Chop (short)Just Take One (short)Vampire Chase (Robot Chicken)Dead Birds: Another low budget haunted house film, this one turned out, oh, about a million times better than Cookers. It actually takes place during the Civil War era, and it follows some bank robbers who take refuge in an abandoned plantation house after one of their heists (naturally, said heist had gone wrong and lots of people ended up dead). Of course, the house is haunted in the extreme and has no intention of letting the wayward robbers leave. It's an effective setup and it's executed really well. Despite the extreme nature of the characters, they are actually able to induce some empathy, thanks primarily to some excellent casting. Most horror these days tends to cast young and pretty teenagers, but the filmmakers here went for a more seasoned bunch, and the film is better for the choice. Henry Thomas plays the leader of the crew and does an admirable job. Patrick Fugit plays his injured brother, and manages to make a lot out of very little. Nicki Aycox and Isaiah Washington also do quite a good job, despite little in the way of screen time. But the real surprise were the two smallest characters, played by Michael Shannon and Mark Boone Junior (both of whom are guys you'd recognize from other stuff, but not necessarily know all that well - they are "that guy" actors). They're total mercenaries, ruthless and cold (Shannon gets to unleash some pretty unrestrained racist rants, even)... yet, you can't help but enjoy watching them. Ultimately, they get what's coming to them and then some, which is where this movie really surprises. It's very restrained and deliberately paced, and it has an almost Japanese flavor to it, though the setting is distinctly American. In this age of hackneyed remakes and sequels, this makes for a great, refreshing mixture, and while I'm sure some would crave more action, I thought it was pretty well balanced. While I'm sure this had a higher budget than Cookers, it was obviously still quite low, and yet this film looks really good. All of the practical effects are great and the film is photographed really well. 
The only real complaint from a visual perspective is the CGI, but that is used quite sparingly and it worked well enough for me The one thing I'm not entirely in love with is the ending. It's not terrible, but it feels like they kinda wrote themselves into a corner. There's no real satisfaction there, and that might have been the point, but there's still something a little off about the ending. Nevertheless, it's well worth the watch. ***Well, that covers what will unfortunately be the last week of full-time horror movie watching, but stay tuned on Wednesday for the typical Speed Round, feating short capsules of a whole slew of other stuff I've watched during the season. Not sure what I'll be posting on Halloween proper, but I plan to celebrate by rewatching Halloween (natch) and maybe checking out the new Walking Dead series... 
The defining characteristics of these stories are all familiar to fans of traditional pulp fiction. There's usually a whodunit murder/mystery element, combined with lurid sexual themes and often bloody violence. These films started appearing the in the early 1960s and ultimately lead into the slasher craze of the early 80s (may of the elements of the slasher are prefigured in Giallo films - more on this below). Psycho (trailer)Here's Your Problem... (Robot Chicken)Hardly Working: Slasher (short)Blood and Black Lace (1963): The origins of the modern slasher film are usually traced back to Hitchcock's Psycho. That film, of course, is not really a slasher, but it originates some of the common tropes of the sub-genre. Rumor has it that Italian director Mario Bava saw Hitchcock's film and was so inspired by the brilliantly staged death sequences that he vowed to make a movie with three times as many deaths. And thus was born the body-count movie. Even beyond that, this film prefigures the modern slasher more than any other of its contemporaries (until 1974's Black Christmas). Besides the body count, it also features a masked killer (and it's a surprisingly effective mask, perhaps because it's so simple and elegant), some POV shots, lots of young models, and well staged, violent deaths though means of elaborate or unusual weaponry (in particular, the three-pronged metal claw stolen off of a piece of armor). Of course, Bava is a much more talented filmmaker than much of the slasher-ilk that would follow, and this film features several exceptional set pieces, and not all of them are murder sequences either. 
The film takes place in an Italian modeling agency/fashion house. The first victim is almost immediately dispatched and later, one of the models finds the victim's diary and places it in her purse. Bava playfully dances around the scene, first executing a quick montage of paranoid onlookers, then orchestrating a long sequence where the bag never leaves the camera's gaze, but characters maneuver around the screen, attempting to get at the diary (which presumably holds some sort of clue about her murderer, and the assumption at this point is that it's someone at the fashion house that's responsible). 
30) With a tip of that hat to Glenn Kenny, think of a just-slightly-inadequate alternate title for a famous movie. (Examples from GK: Fan Fiction; Boudu Relieved From Cramping; The Mild Imprecation of the Cat People)