Beth Loves Bollywood

Michael and I have a new project. Sign up! Someone's going to have to get him out of here before he's completely corrupted by these loose American women. Looks like he can handle the paparazzi, though.

I don't know how many of you know Nick , but I can vouch that he's a very nice fella who sends funny text messages, among other virtues. We've been known to consult each other from different time zones while at our respective movie stores trying to figure out what to rent. He's in Mumbai for a few months, and you can read about his recent filmi adventures, first at a shoot and then at a sound studio .

Back in August, Bollywood Blog published this photo of Akshaye, looking bald. Then today I saw this one on the Times of India website . It appears somebody's been very naughty with Photoshop. (Side note: did you know Adobe has an official statement about how "Photoshop" isn't a verb and that I should have just said "It appears somebody's been very naughty enhancing an image using Adobe® Photoshop® software"? Isn't it a mark of market domination if your product is the standard vocabulary for whatever it is that you make/do - like Oreo and Kleenex?) By way of an update on yesterday's technical woes, below is a screenshot of my episode of Koffee with Karan playing on VLC (which, much to its credit, did play the file). The whole show looks like this and has no sound. It's especially hard to resist youtube when a legal product behaves like this. Update to post (July 29, 2007): just to be clear, I think the bald photo is the faked one. I&

I have never watched a single episode of Koffee with Karan - celebrity chat shows are just not my thing, nor is starting words with K when they're actually spelled with C - but I'm sure you can all understand why this week was the time to buck the trend. I went to a totally legal site and bought the episode - a bargain at $1.99 - hunky dory, yippee skippy, and not a single application that already exists on or that I can find to download for my dear Mrs. Peel, my trusty iBook G4, will play the @(*&)#$ wmv file. >@(*&amp;amp;)#$@<(*&!)#$@(*&)#$!!!! It has been a veeeery hard week and I was really looking forward to this as a treat. Sigh. Michael, Babsko, or any other Mac users, do you have any ideas? Quicktime, iTunes (I don't know if either of those is supposed to play wmv but I figured I'd try), Flip4Mac, and whatever version Windows Media Player is free for Macs do not work. I am ever so sad. (Speaking of which, how cool is this ? Michael,

The up side of the stereotype of Hindi movie plots is that you get a giddy whirl of variety, linked together if not by reason than at least by fun and a drive to entertain. The down side of the stereotype is that you can get drama, romance, comedy, social commentary, songs, orphans, and even violence coming at you from out of nowhere at full speed. Krantiveer isn't quite all the way into this latter category, but it's pretty close. It's just too, too much. Broad stereotypes of villains and heroes run amok (sometimes literally - watch the extras zooming back and forth in the big fire scene), violating mother India with their greed and selfishness, and I found the violence cartoony but somehow still emotionally (if not visually) harsh. This is the third movie I've seen in as many months that has rape in it; I've been told that's a fairly stock element of 80s and 90s action movies but I'm getting really sick of it (thought at least in here, unlike in Jigar , t

Could it be I haven't watched any movies since Dhoom 2 ? Nah! It's just that they've been NFDC movies, and I just haven't felt that my writing about them fit the spirit of what I tend to do here. (Long story short and labels aside, you know I already like big-hearted naach-gaana Hindi films [which I say with much love and respect and absolutely no dismissiveness], and I'm gradually learning about and really liking other Indian cinema too. I'm undecided about whether and how to integrate those movies into this site.) Recently I've seen Ek Ghar and Satyajit Ray's Ghare Baire ; you can watch them at Jaman and join in the discussion. What with those movies, book reviews, a new project with Michael (watch here for further details), and revisiting old favorites like Dil Chahta Hai and Kal Ho Na Ho 's "Pretty Woman," I'm woefully behind on some unwatched DVDs that are piling up. In the meantime, let's enjoy this fantastic - dare I say

Yesterday Anupama Chopra sat down with seven readers/writers to talk about her new book. Our questions and her answers are posted at filmiholic. Take a look! (And I'll be posting more thoughts on the book over the weekend.)

Turns out there's a very ardent fan of Mohnish Behl out there, and said fan has expressed concern that in Behl's 90+ movies there is no scene of him shirtless. I suggested that perhaps proximity to Salman would result in an outbreak, but apparently HAHK and HSSH don't yield results. Can anyone help?

Most sincerely. This is really nice.

From the Rang De Basanti premier in Mumbai way back when... Write in with 1) a caption (for example, "You can't pinch an inch" or, courtesy of Bollywood Fugly 's Pooja, "Lemme see your new iphone" [time warp necessary, of course]) 2) your best explanation of what's going on or 3) a statement of who in the photo you would most like to be and why. Thanks to Filmi Geek for the picture (and Bollyvista ) and to FG and the Bollywood Fugly gals for lively discussion over what in the world Kunal is up to.

There's a piece in the Deccan Herald about Akshaye and Saif's upcoming Abbas-Mustan movie Race that says Abbas says he cast them together because they've never starred together before. What about Dil Chahta Hai ? It's not as though that was just a tiny flop film that nobody saw. The article continues to talk about various pairings of stars and the importance of getting the right combination. I am, of course, geeked about the movie. Two great tastes that taste great together, say I. Let's hope Saif's all-around top-notch talent isn't wasted and Akshaye doesn't get all scowly and shouty.