When it comes to roles, it seems like the junior Bachchan has taken some ‘serious’ cues from the senior Bachchan. Amitabh portrayed the ‘angry young man’ image in most of his flicks and now it’s Abhishek redefining the ‘no-nonsense’ youth of today. We have seen many actresses play magic with their eyes, but here we have an actor, who says it all when he says nothing at all.

Here is one actor who speaks with his eyes. Just one look at him will unveil the gamut of thoughts racing through his mind, his concerns, his reservations, his fears. He appears as if he is analyzing and calculating to carve out a master plan. No wonder then that directors find him apt for playing intense roles and roles that portray a thinking actor. Here’s looking at Abhi’s most intense characters.

Rowdy fella

Playing a criminal goon from Uttar Pradesh in Yuva, Abhishek very convincingly got into the shoes of the typical Bihari bunda and floored one and all with his super performance. In a movie that had the likes of Ajay Devgan and Viveik Oberoi, Abhishek left a mark as Lallan Singh.

He very well depicted the bindaas attitude of the yuva generation and made people look up and notice him for his acting abilities. Mani Ratnam brought the best out of Abhishek Bachchan. Yuva was undoubtedly one defining moment in Abhi’s acting career.

Taking charge
Sarkar was talked about for presenting the Bachchan’s as father-son for the first time ever. Abhishek plays Shankar who returns from the US after completing his education and finds his father become a victim of a dirty political game. Here, Abhishek portrays a wise youth who knows his strengths and weaknesses.

As Shankar, Abhi comes across the youth of today who knows opportunity when he sees it and knows how and when to play his cards. He takes over the responsibilities in his father’s absence and we have a new Sarkar in the making.

Set to conquer

A young man from a humble background dreaming to make it big one day, to be rich and famous! This defined Abhi’s character in Guru. His demeanor was confidence personified and he believed in writing his own destiny.

The scenes where he comes face to face with the Contractors and during the time where he has to address the grumbling and unhappy shareholders of his company show Abhi handling the situation with utmost sagacity. Abhishek’s ruthlessly ambitious character was intense to the core and was counted amongst one of his best performances ever.

Power and People

Abhishek has tried his hands at comedy. Bunty Aur Babli and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom to name a few, but it is the intense roles, playing characters that are in power, that bring out the best out of him. The recent Sarkar Raj is one such example.

While Sarkar showed Abhi sharing responsibilities with ‘Sarkar’, Sarkar Raj saw him taking over the reigns and become the new ‘Sarkar’. This time around, Abhishek represented a youth who is trying to find his way out of the political maze. He tries hard and applies the ‘eye for an eye’ mantra for all those who come in his way, but at last succumbs to the filthy game.

Super Hero

Now with all those power packed performances that Abhi is known for, he is set to go a step ahead and play a super hero in his forthcoming flick Drona.

In the ‘good and evil clash’ contemporary fantasy fable, Abhishek will play the role of a guy who undergoes a journey and comes out a changed individual, who now has a task in hand of saving the world.

Strangely, the reel Abhishek who appears as serious on screen is poles apart from the real Abhishek. People close to the junior Bachchan swear by his witty sense of humour. And the actor, known to pull off intense roles with brilliance, turns into a naughty prankster everytime he gets on the set.

Kismat Konnection falls under the league of those feel-good NRI love stories having a customary Indian narration in some foreign location. The kinds where every person the hero even randomly stumbles upon speaks to him in Hindi. The kinds where the hero is still named as Raj Malhotra. Where’s the story you ask? Left to chance… fate, destiny, luck or Kismat as you may call it.
Raj Malhotra (Shahid Kapoor) is the university topper but somehow luck isn’t favouring him. Five years post graduation he is still jobless and waiting for his first assignment as an architect. Kismet connects as he comes across Priya (Vidya Balan) who happens to be his lucky charm. In her presence even the impossible turns achievable for Raj. Raj desperately seeks her company in all his endeavours from employment to affection.

Just when you start liking the breezy premise, the director decides to add (rotten) meat to the story by adding a hackneyed love triangle to stretch the screenplay by a few more clichéd scenes. Priya is already engaged with another guy but we are familiar with the fact that the heroine will ultimately end up with the hero. And since the third angle just happens to be some side-hero, he’s also given a bad conduct certificate of two-timing to make his exit easier.

On a parallel note Raj gets the contract to design a shopping mall which incidentally happens to be on the same land where Priya supports a community center. Surprisingly the film derives the plot on the same grounds of the old age home premise in Lagey Raho Munnabhai and more shockingly Vidya Balan ends up playing the same character as in the earlier film. Either director Aziz Mirza should have derived from some other source or if the inspiration was so compelling, he should have cast some other actress. This is déjà vu on the face.

Finally Raj wins both, Priya and the project by delivering a sentimental speech in the climax where he talks about everything from global warming to US superpower but for the practicality of the project. Was there a cross connection here? And the film opts for such a convenient conclusion that you wonder if there was any problem at the first place.

Kismat Konnection starts on a promising note but soon resorts to conventional formula. The second half drags with Raj’s repeated attempts to win the construction contract. The love triangle is clearly off-track and is simply enforced to manipulate that mandatory sangeet song sequence to appease the family and NRI audiences. Thankfully the script steers away from sermonizing on bhartiya sanskriti et al, an avid tendency with such genres. On the upside Binod Pradhan’s cinematography is eye-pleasing and Pritam’s music is soothing to the ears.

This time around Shahid Kapoor displays a hangover of… no not Shah Rukh but Amitabh Bachchan in the initial reels and also does a complete take on his extended Namak Halaal dialogue. Nevertheless he soon comes to his usual self and gives a sincere performance. And those Ahmed Khan choreographed gyrations can never go wrong. As against the notion, Vidya Balan carries a graceful charm and is natural as ever. Om Puri is effective in his imposing character with a Punjabi accent. Vishal Malhotra repeats his friendly act for the nth time. Age has caught up with Juhi Chawla and it shows onscreen.

Concisely the film only connects with the viewer intermittently and a lot has been left to Kismat.

No buddhaas for Mallika!

Love her or hate her but you can’t ignore her. Reportedly, none of the mentors of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa wanted to interact with Mallika Sherawat when she was invited as a guest on the show for the promotion of her new film Ugly Aur Pagli.
A unit member from the sets of the show said, “None of the mentors – Himesh Reshammiya, Pritam, Shankar and Aadesh Srivastava – wanted to sit
with Mallika. They couldn’t ask her to sit next to Asha Bhosle who is the mahaguru in the show. Eventually, they had to make the feisty actress sit with the participants. While all the mentors chose to behave formally with her, Himesh Reshammiya passed a lot of comments against the actress.”
But Mallika Sherawat being her in-your-face self, walked to the sets and the first thing she told Himesh was, ‘Should I expose you in front of the people?’
According to our source, Himesh looked nervous and was silent for some time after Mallika’s comment. The two have worked together in the song Mehbooba in Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag. But Himesh eventually took revenge by stopping a participant of his gharana from singing one of Mallika Sherawat’s songs.
The insider said, “But Sukhvinder refused to listen to Himesh and sang the song. Sukhvinder also told Mallika, ‘My parents were against my singing Bheege Honth Tere. Now, after meeting you I know why they did not want me to sing the song.’ Mallika burst out laughing.”
According to the insider, Mallika had also given hair bands to some participants, which she has used in the film. Some of the participants were even made to wear the hair accessory but whenever they went to sing on the stage, Asha Bhosle told them, ‘Hair band nikaal ke gao’.
While the insider from the show said that the mentors had a problem with Mallika, our source from the channel had another story to tell. “Mallika had called the channel and informed them well in advance that she won’t be sitting with the mentors and said that she was not keen on sitting with the ‘buddhaas’.” To add to the entertainment, Mallika even carried a horn to the sets. “In fact, she came with a horn and asked where she could sit. Then she herself said that she would sit with the audience,” adds the source. According to the channel source, Mallika had a lot of fun on the sets and kept teasing the contestants.

Snaps:

Even before it’s finished filming, Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion has been in the news time and again. The film, which has Kangna Ranaut and Priyanka Chopra in key roles, is apparently an expose on the fashion industry, and is in the news again. This time for a role offered to someone from the fash frat itself – choreographer Achla Sachdev – which was accepted, and it has raised the hackles of the fash frat, who see her as not doing the “right thing”.

Now that Abbas Tyrewala’s Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na, has given audience characters that they’d like to carry home, the film is being touted as a hit.

The result is predictable. Its film-makers are reportedly already thinking of a sequel to this bubblegum romance.

Says Imran Khan, the hero of the film, “We used to joke about it on the sets all the time and even decided to name the sequel Jaane 2… If my director Abbas wants to do a sequel we could, but it would depend entirely on the script. Take the case of the American serial Friends, it was very interesting when it began, but it dragged on for 10 years. Abbas used every cliché connected with romantic films and turned it into something exciting.”

Meanwhile, director Abbas Tyrewala fights shy of revealing any immediate plans for a sequel.

He says, “I can barely keep myself focused on one idea for the length of a film. For me the story I would enjoy telling comes first. It would then be fascinating enough to explore how their lives turned out. At the moment, I would like to make an adult romantic comedy where the disasters that occur in the lives of the characters are closer to the ones in real lives. Jaane Tu… is the most naïve film I have ever written and that I’ll make.”

The characters of Jaane Tu… could grow up, right?

Despite of the failure of Tashan at the box office, Kareena and Saif managed to be a much talked about topic in town. The audience enjoyed watching the real life couple on- screen and appreciated the duo whole heartedly.
As good news for all Saifeena fans, they would be seen together romancing yet again on screen in a few films in the near future. Reportedly, they are already working in Sriram Raghavan’s Agent Vinod and an untitled film for Rensil D’Silva, the latest addition to this list being the film they have signed for the production house Shree Ashtavinayak Cinevision Ltd., which will go on floors sometime in 2009. Looks like, the very much in love couple doesn’t want to miss any opportunity of being together.

With only two hits in six months, Bollywood loses Rs 1.5 bn

Mumbai, July 3: Wedding bells may not be that far away for actors Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor as the two are contemplating marriage sooner than the three-four-year target they had set earlier.

“Oh yes, much sooner. In fact, people may be hearing an announcement from us very soon. If I had my way, I’d marry her today right here in London where she’s joined me,” Saif told IANS over phone.

“Yes, I’m ready to make it legal any time. In any case, aren’t we supposed to have gone through a secret Muslim marriage?” he says sarcastically about certain media reports.

Saif was married to Amrita Singh and after 13 years of marriage and two children, the couple separated in 2004. After he divorced Amrita, he dated Italian model Rosa Catalano, but broke up with her in 2007.

The romance between Saif and Kareena took off on the sets of “Tashan”. And Saif has never sounded so fiercely committed.

“If I’m sounding that way, it’s because that’s how I feel. With due respects to all the other relationships in life, after my marriage to Amrita and my two kids, this is the most important relationship I’ve had.”

Saif can barely contain his anxiety and eagerness to do the right thing.

“Of course, I’m anxious. You must understand this is the most important part of my life… so much so that at times I find even my career taking a backseat to my relationship. I’ve to guard against that. I must quickly learn to separate the professional from the personal.”

Saif admits it would take his children Sarah and Ibrahim a while to get used to the changes in their dad’s life.

“I’m not going to pretend that my children, Kareena and I have become one big family. They’re intelligent kids with a mind of their own. Sarah is in fact 13 and a lady herself. It would be quite a while before they are fully comfortable with the change in my life.

“They haven’t spent that much time with Kareena to know her as well as I do. But the good thing is everyone close to me realises that this relationship is for keeps, that I’ve never been more serious. Now it’s entirely up to me and Kareena to take the relationship to the next level.”

Saif is upset with reports that he has lately been crowding his ladylove with his attentions.

“Of course, I want to be with her as much as I can. My regret is we can’t be together more often. We are uncannily similar people and I’ve only now begun to understand why I need to be with her constantly. She complements me, as I hope I complement her. So of course, I try to be where she is.”

He dislikes people intruding into his personal life and says: “I understand people want to put our relationship under a microscope. They want to know about our relationship. But there’s only so much that they can know or perceive. What Kareena and I feel for each other, only the two of us know.”