~* Salman Khan-BG/ETT/TMOK{139/140}Big Boss 5 146 - Page 89

Haven't signed any film with Salman: Angela Johnson
IANS [ Sat, Sep 17, 2011 ]

• New Delhi, Sep 16 (IANS) She is yet to enter Bollywood, but Kingfisher calendar girl Angela Johnson is already grabbing headlines, whether it is about doing a film with Salman Khan or reports of her dating actor Ranbir Kapoor. She has denied the rumours.
  
  "There is no movie in pipeline with Salman Khan, but I would love to work with him in future. And as soon as I will sign any film you guys will know," Angela, who plans to make a career in Bollywood, told reporters at Blender's Pride Fashion Tour, Friday night.
  
  Rumours were abuzz that actor-producer Sohail Khan is keen to launch Angela in his home production titled "Sher Khan".
  
  Angela walked as the showstopper for designer Rocky S wearing a cream gown. The collection was intended to give a "red carpet look" for both men and women.
  
  Angela first came into limelight with her alleged romance with Bollywood heartthrob Ranbir.
  
  Asked about her relationship status, she said: "I don't want to comment on Ranbir because whatever is being said is just a rumour."

I'm a big fan of Salman Khan: Ali Zafar

[ Updated 18 Sep 2011, 14:44:09 ]

Mumbai, Sep 18: Bollywood star Salman Khan came to Katrina Kaif's rescue in London recently, when her cab driver lost his way to her hotel.Katrina had gone to London to attend the premiere of her film Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, but the cab that YRF people sent made her lose her temper.

Problems started for Katrina after she landed in London from Abu Dhabi where she had to attend a promotional event first.The half hour drive extended to one-and-half hours and she had still no idea how far she was from the hotel.

The driver of the car organised for her by Yash Raj Films turned out to be a novice who didn't know the roads well enough. After being driven around for an hour and a half, Katrina got so irritated that she called for a taxi service. And while waiting for the other cab to arrive, she also called Salman to apprise him of her situation. Salman was shooting for Kabir Khan's Ek Tha Tiger at that time.

Soon after the other taxi arrived, Katrina hauled her luggage and headed straight to a hotel in South Kensington, where Salman was staying, reveals our source. She requested Salman to organise a car for her with a chauffeur who knew the roads well.

When Katrina reached her hotel later, the representatives of YRF were profusely apologetic for the inconvenience caused to her.But Katrina had had enough and she was so upset that she didn't want to use any transport being arranged by YRF for her to get to the premiere venue.Unfortunately for Kat, the premiere of the film didn't go as expected.

Says a source: "Maybe it wasn't promoted very well, so naturally the movie's team was surprised that the crowd wasn't as huge as they had anticipated. Since they had reached late, they couldn't spend much time at the venue either because they had to catch a flight to Mumbai."

However, by the time she reached the airport, the check-in counters for her return flight had closed."Obviously, she wasn't too pleased with the way her day was going.," said the source, adding that fortunately for her, help came in the form of her co-actor Imran Khan.

Although he was returning by another airline, Imran helped Katrina secure a reservation on Oman Air, with a stop-over at Muscat.


Mumbai, Sept 17: A local magazine in Romania has linked Bollywood star Salman Khan there has linked Khan with a pretty Romanian TV news presenter.

While Salman Khan is busy shooting for his next film with Katrina Kaif in Dublin,a Romanian magazine has linked him up with a local TV news presenter named Iulia Vantur.

According to the report,Iulia met Salman last year when she came to India while on a holiday.

She met him through a producer friend. At that time, she was dating her long-time boyfriend Marius Moga.

However,she made another trip to India this year after breaking up with Moga. Salman helped her get over the break up and she stayed in touch with him after she returned to her country.

The magazine reveals that Iulia has now adopted an Indian lifestyle. So much so,that she even observes traditional festivals,visits temples and reads the scriptures.

Her sense of dressing has also changed, with her wearing the salwar-kameez and even saris.

Talking to the magazine,she admitted that meeting Salman was a turning point in her life and that the two are very much in touch via IM on their phones.

The TV presenter is now planning to make another visit to India after Salman returns from his overseas shoot


Mumbai, Sept 17: British Indian actress Hazel Keech, who made her Bollywood debut with blockbuster "Bodyguard", says Salman Khan never revealed that he was suffering from pain while shooting for the movie.

Salman left for the US before the film could hit the screens and underwent an eight-hour operation in Pittsburgh for a nerve problem that was causing exruciating pain in his head, jaws and cheeks.

"The operation went off well, but the pain is still there so he would be going for another operation. But even if he is in pain, he is never going to speak of it. He is such a brave person," Keech said in an interview.

Hazel flew down to Mumbai from London with stardust in her eyes, but gave up all hopes of making a career in acting in India. She was returning when she got the "Bodyguard" offer.

"I was not getting any work, so I was planning to go back to London. The day I was about to leave, I got a text message from Atul Agnihotri and he asked me to meet him. I met him, we spoke for over two-and-a-half-hours and then he selected me," said the 24-year-old, who has worked in Tamil film "Billa".

Salman, who she had met in London while he was shooting for "London Dreams", had passed on her number to Agnihotri who has co-produced the blockbuster with Reliance Entertainment.

Hazel started her career as an actor at a very tender age by doing small roles in Hollywood films. She worked in three editions of "Harry Potter".

"I am with the entertainment industry since the age of 12. I used to do small roles in Western films. When I was in school, I did 'Harry Potter'. Gradually, I started getting bigger roles. I worked in the second, third and fourth editions of 'Harry Potter'. I played one of the students," said Hazel.

Though she's a second lead in Salman-Kareena Kapoor starrer "Bodyguard", she is happy she could exhibit her acting skills.

"Technically, I was the second lead but the story is such that I am there in almost 80 percent of the film. It was such an important role," she said.

Born to a English father and an Indian mother, Hazel came to India five years ago and easily gelled with the culture here because as she says she grew up in a very traditional Indian home, courtesy her mother and grandmother.

"My mom is a Hindu and my nani (maternal grandmother) who stays with us there, is very traditional and wears sari every day, does pujas. So, eventually the culture at home was totally Indian. When I came to India, it's just a different country but the culture was same that I grew up in," she said.

She has only one regret -- her name was changed to Rose Dawn by the first modelling agency she had worked with.

"I am born as Hazel. Rose is not my name. When I came five years ago, the modelling agency I started with decided to change my name. They changed my name to Rose. I left that agency after a year. I never changed my name or spelling after that," said Hazel.

Asked if she would continue doing both western and Indian films, she said: "I am an actor. Wherever I'd get to do my craft, I'd be doing. I won't restrict myself to any one language or genre."

By, Hindustan Times

The massive success of Bodyguard has confirmed Salman Khan as a phenomenal star, surpassing even his record-breaking Dabangg. Academics and journalists have discussed Aamir Khan's extraordinary talent as a producer and marketer as well as his risk-taking selection of roles as an actor,
and Shah Rukh Khan's rockstar qualities, which could launch him internationally if he wasn't busy getting on with being so successful in India.

But we seem to have forgotten Salman, the third of the trio of Khans that were part of the shift from 'Hindi cinema' to 'Bollywood' in the 1990s and its rehabilitation among India's metropolitan elites.

It's commonplace to think that Hindi cinema belongs in the metro multiplex, in India or overseas, on the internet and DVD, and is part of a huge and powerful media network, recognised as the vanguard of India's soft power.

Parallel to this, it sometimes seems as if the old Hindi cinema of the lower classes and the working class male disappeared in the late 90s, as the industry scrambled to follow Yash Raj's 'glamorous realism' — a vision of modernising India — currently celebrating its 40th anniversary though tracing its roots back to a more middle class Hindi cinema of the 1930s.

Salman is here to remind us that another type of cinema hasn't gone away.

Govinda, whose brilliance as an entertainer, dancer and comedian shines in films that present us with what Ashis Nandy called "the slum's eye view of India" — depictions of the poor and their fantasies of the rich. Hugely popular, it is significant that his comeback film was the blockbuster, Partner (2007) co-starring Salman.

The movie presents us with the worldview that is less of the slum than of the lower stratum of the new middle classes, which are rising in small towns and metropolises.

Salman, whose stardom was inaugurated more than 20 years ago as Prem of the Barjatyas, has taken a wide range of roles from those in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Khamoshi and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam to the good guy in films such as BR Chopra's Baghban, took on a more fixed star persona as a comic hero, whereas his latest roles involve far more action — in the style of superstar Rajinikanth.

His more recent characters have memorable names such as Chulbul Pandey and Lovely Singh, perhaps chosen precisely to distinguish them from Salman Khan the star.

In his last few films, a new star persona has evolved, which is closely linked to Salman's off-screen image. His muscular, shaven physique is now adopted by all the stars, but remains central to the male working class ideal of the body. Salman is willing to parody his famed removal of his shirt to display his torso — an essential part of his screen image.

His roles as a lower class guy pick up his offscreen persona as a man of the people — Sallu and Salmanbhai to his fans — despite his famous family and considerable wealth.

He is not an international figure, the transnational Indian, who wears western designer gear and is as at home in London and NYC as he is in Bombay and Delhi. Salman dresses in an Indian style, with earrings, bracelet, bright clothes and patchwork designs. He lives in the same building as his parents where he grew up, and, though a Muslim, participates in the Ganpati festival.

He is seen as a local boy from Bandra, which itself has shifted its dominant image from a Catholic suburb, via Beverley Hills, to the boho media hub of today.

Salman's star persona embodies many of the values of the lower middle classes. After girlfriend troubles, the black buck hunting case, and the American Express Bakery incident, many thought that his image was tarnished forever.

However, Salman has virtues that are much admired by his fans, like his devotion to his family and his generosity towards his friends and people who work for him. He is known to pay medical bills, gift expensive watches and make other extravagant gestures.

He is not seen as an intellectual, less rational than emotional, who expresses himself in painting and is a child at heart, protected by his family.

Dabangg, a brilliant and hugely entertaining film set in small town UP, is a romance between a Brahmin policeman and a potter woman. It's a movie where the hero's widowed mother has remarried, family members steal each other's money and the drunken father of the heroine kills himself. It is a curiously unethical film with no admirable figure or sense of morality.

All these strange features are part of the film's experimenting with Bollywood's unique form to find a new way of regenerating itself. It's a film obsessed with textual reference from older Hindi films, not least its stars (Dimple, Vinod Khanna) and the ghostly presence of Shatrughan Sinha — through his daughter who even uses his catchphrase, 'Khamosh!' — as well as a host of international films (from Ghost, The Incredible Hulk to The Matrix), as well as to fiction (A Case Of Exploding Mangoes).

A series of set pieces of action and comedy is interspersed with catchy item songs as undeveloped characters wander in and out of the story.

There is only a brief escape from the dystopia of Laalgunj, whose institutions are all corrupt and useless, for a honeymoon to the UAE, where the couple fly falcons, dune bash, take the metro and the great romantic scene in the luxury suite cuts to a fluttering UAE flag.

Perhaps this is a nod to Salman's huge fanbase in the Gulf.

The success of Ready and Bodyguard shows that Salman's star persona and cult remain rock solid over the decades, however much the cinema and India have changed. It's just that the rest of us only noticed it when he came back with Dabangg.

(Rachel Dwyer is professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The views expressed by the author are personal)

By Hindustan Times

Mumbai, Sept. 15 -- The Hindi film industry seems to be on a roll at the moment. In the months following the fourth edition of cricket T20 tournament, Indian Premier League, most films have worked pretty well at the box office. More than a couple of films have made decent profits for the trade chain including distributors, exhibitors and producers.

Bodyguard's nationwide 15-day net figures are R 128 crore. Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, which released last weekend, had netted R 30 crore as of Monday night. So far this year, there have been at least 10 hits, thanks to the lead star cast in most cases, and tightly controlled budgets in exceptional cases.

Tradesmith Amod Mehra points out that although films like Murder 2 and Delhi Belly didn't cross the R 50 crore net mark in terms of returns, they've made enough money to be categorised as hits. "Most producers, exhibitors and distributors have reasons to rejoice because there are fewer films this year have proved to be absolute duds. Small ones made money because of their budgets. The biggies like Ready, Singham and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara worked, largely because of the cast and the way the stories were presented," he adds.

The earnings from any movie are usually divided into portions. For instance, if a movie makes R 200 crore, 45 per cent is paid as tax. The remaining is divided between distributors, exhibitors and at times, producers who claim a share in the overflow. Manoj Desai, of the popular G-7 single screen chain in Bandra, states that a lot of producers don't turn to the overflow because they earn enough through satellite and video rights. "I'm quite sure the Bodyguard producers are likely to claim a share in the overflow because of the way the movie is making bucks right now," he remarks.

Sanjay Ghai, a Delhi-based distributor at Mukta Arts, adds, "Mere Brother Ki Dulhan might make beyond R 60 crore net. The 'shraddh' period is likely to be grim but after that, we have little to worry about till February 2012."

Salman is the biggest star: John Abraham