Ainvayi Ainvayi--The Many Faces of Anushka Sharma and Ranveer Singh

Living in the Middle of Nowhere, Tennessee (for.the.moment.) means that I will never get to see Band Baaja Baaraat in a theater.  The closest I've gotten to Bollywood on the big screen was a ticket I had to an early morning showing (who does that?) of Anjaana Anjaani.  Not being at my movie-going best at 8am (never mind that it was an hour long drive just to get to the theater), I gave it a pass.  From what I hear I didn't miss much.

So. Back on topic.  Though I can't see the film in theaters, I can watch the video for Ainvayi Ainvayi obsessively.  (Obsessively = 50ish times per day.  All those views the video's racking up on YouTube?  Yeah, that's me.)

Ainvayi Ainvayi is adorable.  And pulsating.  And exciting.  And eminently danceable.  But what I love most about it are those little moments sprinkled throughout the video that just make me smile--Ranveer's little head wiggle at "Hi-Fi" and Anushka's expression the first time she gets the "ainvayi ainvayi ainvayi ainvayi lut gaya" line.

In fact, I love Anushka's expressions everywhere in this song, so I figured I'd capture a few of them and share.


(All photos copyright Yash Raj Films.)

Put it all together and what do you get?

Ainvayi Ainvayi, my song of the day.  :)

Guessing Games

I spent the evening organizing all my screencaps for some upcoming reviews and had a few that just didn't fit anywhere.  Let's see who the fastest filmi fan is--name all four movies these screen caps come from.

Ready...go!

 

#1

 

#2

 

#3

 

#4

Katrina Kaif In Pictures

In anticipation of the release of Tees Maar Khan, NDTV put up a gorgeous slide show of Katrina Kaif.  I might not think much of her in terms of acting or dancing, but there's no denying the girl's beautiful.  The full series of photos can be found on the NDTV website.  Here are a few highlights:

 

Post Boom and pre-nose job

Katrina and her sister, Isabel (soon to debut in Bollywood)

Katrina's many films with Akshay Kumar (not my favorite jodi but it's box office gold, so who am I to judge?)

Katrina and Akshay in Amritsar

It's pretty hard to find a pic of Katrina Kaif looking anything but glamorous, but photographers caught a few of her as she accompanied Akshay Kumar to the Golden Temple in Amritsar.  The two were in town to promote Tees Maar Khan and stopped to pay their respects (or further promote their film, who knows at this point) at the temple.

I'm going to assume this was taken fairly early in the morning and I get that it was chilly but Katrina's looking pretty rough here.  Minimal makeup, totally fine.  Bulky jacket, probably necessary.  But what on earth is on her head?  I'm sure it's meant to be a scarf but it looks like a beaten up do-rag that you'd wear when you were fourteen and on a basketball team and trying to look cool but you weren't quite pulling it off.  She's got a team of six trillion stylists and assistants traveling with her--couldn't they have come up with something better than this?  (Also what's going on with her lips...has she had them done again?)

My Minor Encounter With the Stars

I was cleaning up some of my picture files tonight and found this--it's from SALTAF 2008 in Washington DC (and not the greatest quality, mostly because I was too excited to take a non-shaky picture).

I'd been planning on going to SALTAF (the South Asian Literature and Theatre Arts Festival) for months prior to the actual weekend of the event, but I got a bit of a late start that morning and that combined with some nasty weather made me more inclined to want to just stay in my nice warm bed rather than trudge downtown to the Smithsonian.  In a bit of an effort to motivate myself to wake up I checked the website for the event again, as a sort of "Melissa!  Get off your ass and get out the door!" gesture.  And it's a damn good thing I did, because they'd updated their guest list overnight with some last-minute arrivals.  The first was Sooni Taraporevala, who is one of my all-time favorite screenwriters and who would be there to premiere her new film "Little Zizou."

The second was Boman Irani.  Boman Freaking Irani!  I don't have words to express how much I love that man.  Love love love.  He was flying in with Sooni to take questions about the film (which he starred in).

If there's anything that'll get me out of bed, showered, dressed, and onto a packed metro train at 7am, it's the prospect of meeting Boman Irani.  So off I went--and here he is, looking dapper and awesome in the only picture I took that came even remotely close to being decent.

Boman Irani, center, and Sooni Taraporevala, left.