Bhairavi Goswami Has Something to Say About Aishwarya Rai

Bheja Fry actress Bhairavi Goswami took to Twitter today with some strange (and if true, tragic) gossip.

"Nauseating 2 read superstars givg interviews abt wanting a girl baby whn she has gone 2 Bangkok to an IVF clinic which specializes in boy babies. Height of hypocrisy. They knw damn well its a boy, aftr all she has to produce a male heir at any cost - Typical UP mentality, no wonder that state has such high female foeticide."

She was clever enough at least not to specifically say who she was talking about but we all know she's referring to Aishwarya (Amitabh is from UP).


I'm of two minds on this.  Bhairavi hasn't offered any proof of her claim, and I'm sort of inclined to think it's a wild claim made up for media attention.  And yet...I don't find the idea of it either shocking or surprising.  After a weekend spent watching The Tudors (where Jonathan Rhys-Meyers spends 24 episodes in a row demanding a son and divorcing and beheading the women who aren't able to give him one) the idea of a woman (particularly one who lives in a still-patriarchal society) going to the ends of the earth (or in this case Thailand) to make sure the child she's carrying is a boy isn't out of the realm of possibility.


Fucking depressing, yes.  Medieval, yes.  Impossible?  No.


Whether it's true or not, there's one thing I know for sure:  Bhairavi Goswami is officially off the Bachchan Christmas card list.

Sweetly Simple

A non-Bollywood, non-India post, if you'll indulge me...

Nokia held a competition recently which challenged participants to make a film using only Nokia cell phones.  The winning film, by JW Griffiths, is called Splitscreen: A Love Story, and it's nothing short of remarkable.

The story line is simple and the editing is superb.  There's nothing incredibly original here, the wonder is in the way it's done.  It's a cute little project that shows that a film needn't be three hours long to pack a punch.

Please Oh Please Oh Please Let This Be True

Steven Baker over at Digital Spy is basically my favorite person in the world right now, because he brought me some fab news and I love him for it.*  Uday Chopra is finally going to stop torturing us with his attempts at acting!  (After Dhoom 3 that is, which...ugh...I can't even...ugh.)

*If I ever see Uday in another film after Dhoom 3 (aka Doomed 3) I'm going to withdraw my love and have you expelled from my kingdom.  For I'm Henry VIII I am I am, and I'm fickle like that.

Shake That Biscuit Baby

I unashamedly love Aamir Khan's "item number" from Delhi Belly.  It's hilarious.  The jumpsuit.  The chest hair.  The scarf.  THE DANCING.  If you ask me there's a criminal lack of dancing going on in Aamir Khan's world these days, and "I Hate You (Like I Love You)" is the perfect remedy.

LOVE.  IT.

Some New Looks

I didn't follow any of the casting shenanigan stories when it came to Heroine, and I'm still not that psyched about the film--Aishwarya's a mediocre actress on all but her very best days and after having seen Page 3 and the hot mess that was Fashion I'm not really digging the idea of sitting through yet another Madhur Bhandarkar "deep dark industry expose" film (unless there's a drinking game involved).  I'll do it though, because I love Arjun Rampal and Arunoday Singh, and because I'm more than mildly curious how they're going to deal with Aishwarya's pregnancy.

From the looks of this just-released shot of Aishwarya in costume it looks like they're dealing with it by wrapping her in a silver sack.

Another film I haven't been following all that much (a Bollywood blogger who doesn't really follow films...novel concept) is Singularity.  There was a time when I considered myself a Josh Hartnett connoisseur, but 1999 is in the past now and the only reason I know about this film at all is because of my love love love for Abhay Deol.  I have to say it just sounds...wrong...to put Abhay in a period film (well, a period part of a film at any rate).  I'm sure he can pull it off but he's a modern actor with a modern look and I'm not sure how I feel about this look on him...

Yeah, that's Abhay Deol, with a beard and long hair.  I...don't know what to say.

The rest of Singularity's B'Town cast is ok.  Bipasha Basu stars as Josh's love interest (or the love interest of the dude who looks like Josh Hartnett who Josh Hartnett dreams about while he's a vegetable in a hospital) and I'm guessing the casting session went something like this: 

Producer 1:  Find me a hot Indian actress.

Producer 2:  Well there's this actress named Konkona...I hear she's pretty badass.

Producer 1:  Can she act?  She can?  Ok, she's probably too expensive for us then.  How about this Bipasha person, who can't act but has a nice rack?

Producer 2:  Done and done.

Atul Kulkarni's in the cast as well which is...awesome?  I think that's the right word.  I've always had this little crush on him...I even halfheartedly started sketching a little script where he and Vijay Raaz play small-town buddy cops who have a "you distract this guy while I go flirt with his wife" routine.

Um.  Ahem.  Yes.