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Posts tagged seema sinha
It’s not for Ghajini 2-Ashish Chaudhary
02 years ago
by Fenil Seta
in Bollywood News
Ashish Chaudhary was told to lose his muscles as he is playing a girl in his next film
Seema Sinha (BOMBAY TIMES; April 7, 2011) Ashish Chaudhary, who for about a year shed tears and sweat to acquire heavy muscles, now has to let it all go. A year ago, he’d become the butt of jokes among his inner circle of friends. Sohail Khan even asked him if he was Ghajini part 2, after seeing his beefed-up body. The actor who now returns to the big screen with Inder Kumar’s Double Dhamaal, says, “This kind of physicality is not required in the film. I play a girl in the second half. It is a funny film and it needed a certain body language. So, now I have to breakdown all my muscles.” The film also stars Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Shreyas Talpade and Mallika Sherawat. Ashish has been out of circulation since a personal tragedy (he lost his sister and brother-in-law in the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai) struck him. Subsequently, the family business of advertising crashed and the actor took some time off to ‘resurrect’ his life. “It was a testing period for me, I felt devastated. I wanted to spend time with the loved ones, my new born baby, and my family which is my priority. I knew that if I went away for two years, I was risking being forgotten. But I was prepared for that. I stopped interacting with people completely. I was not even available on the phone. I decided to spend time on my own.”
Grief-stricken Ashish had started drinking and he More >
Life in a chawl: Reel & Real
02 years ago
by Fenil Seta
in Bollywood News
Chawls have been themes for films and have inspired several creative people. Seema Sinha journeys into the psyche of community living
TIMES NEWS NETWORK (TIMES LIFE; February 6, 2011)
REMEMBER Basu Chatterjee’s Jaya Bhaduri-Anil Dhawan starrer Piya Ka Ghar (1972; picture on the right) in which the marriage-fixing priest creates a dreamscape in the imagination of young Malathy and her parents about the Mumbai chawl? He tells them: “The boy lives near the seashore, in a five-storey building; as kings and emperors have palaces, the people in Mumbai, the city of dreams, have chawls.”
And when the heroine of the film relocates to her screen husband’s house, in ‘Bharat Mahal’, she is shocked to find herself in a shanty room, divided two ways with the kitchen as her bedroom, and a common toilet. The efforts of the newlyweds to find privacy, intimacy and love in the obscure, noisy and cramped space form the film’s storyline.
Perhaps, people living in chawls in Mumbai do feel like kings and emperors with the common verandah, courtyard and street down below all to themselves, so what if they actually own a match-box size apartment! Check out what Nikhil Ghosalkar, a young architect living in Mumbai’s Urankarwadi chawl, Girgaum, has to say, “With the common passage, I actually feel as if I own a 27 bedroom flat! There is no uniqueness in a skyscraper whereas multipurpose space is the unique feature of community living. Chawls are our More >
I’ll lock up my next girlfriend!-Shahid Kapoor
03 years ago
by Fenil Seta
in Bollywood News
It’s a woman’s world, confesses Shahid Kapoor, as he talks to Seema Sinha about growing up with a single parent, rumours that surround him and learning to live like a star
TIMES LIFE (Times News Network; April 4, 2010)
SHAHID KAPOOR would like to re-work his family tree because he has just discovered that his lineage can be traced to the legendary poet Mirza Ghalib, albeit tenuously. Shahid’s great grandfather, the renowned novelist, journalist and director, Khwaja Ahmed Abbas was the grandson of Hali, the chief protégé of Ghalib. “So, should I now start writing and stop acting? Am I in the wrong profession?” he laughs non-stop. “Such is life, I never thought I would be an actor earlier on. Later on, I had those dreams which seemed very far away and today, I am living my dream. I am privileged,” says Shahid.
From a gawky 17-year-old teenager who was stopped from entering the studio where his first ad film was to be shot with Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Rani Mukherji more than a decade ago, to a confident actor of the dark thriller and double-act blockbuster Kaminey, Shahid has certainly come a long way. He recalls with a hearty laugh, “I was stopped at the gate as the security guard thought that I was star-struck and just wanted to see the shoot. And I kept pleading, ‘main model hoon mera ad shoot ho raha hai’ (I am a model, my ad is being shot) and finally had to call the assistant director outside to take me in.”
“Three years ago, I More >
They call me raunchy now!-Vidya Balan
03 years ago
by Fenil Seta
in Bollywood News
‘I am in a space of my own; I’ve got critical acclaim as well as commercial success…I qualify to be number one,’ says Vidya Balan in a freewheeling chat with Seema Sinha
TIMES NEWS NETWORK (TIMES LIFE; February 21, 2010)
SHE is the thinking man’s dream. Whether she plays the unwed mother, or locks lips with her co-star, or suggestively sucks a thumb, her dignity remains intact. And then a pretty face and a voluptuous figure do not hurt. Vidya Balan is on a roll.
With two back to back hits — Paa and Ishqiya — a lot of compliments are coming her way from the fraternity as well as the audience. “It feels good as I can sense a certain vindication in my father’s eyes. When I was being written about in not so polite terms, there were times when I lost heart and he would tell me ‘things will change’. ‘No one can take your performance away from you and no one can give you a performance. So if that is yours, just hold on to it and that will take you places’. These words of my family gave me strength when I was a little shaky,” says Vidya.
Learning from her past mistakes, Vidya has most certainly decided to stay away from candy floss cinema. Hailed as the next big thing when she made her debut in Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta followed by the cult Lage Raho Munnabhai, suddenly she was courting controversies for her career decisions and unflattering wardrobe. “Most definitely, I tried to be like other girls. There was a certain complacency setting in. My biggest dream of being in the More >
Katrina loves Priyanka and Vidya
03 years ago
by Fenil Seta
in Bollywood News
Katrina Kaif is the picture of diplomacy while talking about the Filmfare awards and her contemporaries
By Seema Sinha | TNN (February 18, 2010)
// // //
For once, diplomacy saw its defeat. Katrina Kaif surprised one and all when she chose Priyanka Chopra and Vidya Balan as the two actresses who deserved to get the Filmfare Best Actress award for 2009.
“If I had to choose, apart from myself, I would choose Priyanka or Vidya. ‘Kaminey’ is one of my favourite films. And I loved Vidya in ‘Paa’,” said the current toast of B-Town while announcing the 55th Idea Filmfare Awards 2009. “But why can’t I choose myself?” she added with a mischievous grin.
Besides Katrina, who has been nominated for ‘New York’, the other nominees include Deepika Padukone (‘Love Aaj Kal’) and Kareena Kapoor (’3 Idiots’ and ‘Kurbaan’). India’s oldest cinema awards which is often compared to the Oscars, is scheduled to be held on the 27th of February at the Yash Raj Studios, Mumbai.
Dressed in a figure-hugging brown knee-length dress, Katrina further said that she would be happier if her movies win the award. “Everybody wants to win. But I would want my movies to win,” she said. However, she added, “I am happy being nominated. I don’t want to go through that nail-biting experience of whether I am winning the award or not. As long as I am nominated, it is fine. And I am more than happy to be part of the event than winning any award. This is my second year at the Filmfare awards More >