Tag: Bollywood

  • Indian professor compares how Pakistani artists respond to communal riots vs Bollywood

    Indian professor compares how Pakistani artists respond to communal riots vs Bollywood

    After the Jaranwala riots, where a Christian neighborhood was burned down by a violent mob because of blasphemy allegations, many Pakistani celebrities and public figures were quick to condemn the authorities that failed to control the violence , and called for swift action to be taken against the perpetuators. Ashok Swain, the chairperson of the UNESCO International Water Cooperation and professor at Uppsala University, pointed out how Pakistani celebrities were quick to condemn communal riots and ethnic violence against minorities, while in Bollywood the silence of public figures is deafening when it comes to speaking out against the rising hate crimes against minorities.

    “Pakistani film stars have spine. Indian film stars only know how to count money,” Swain tweeted.

    Since Wednesday, prominent public figures like Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, Mahira Khan and Azekah Daniels have all spoken against the brutal act of injustice against the Christian community in Pakistan. Taking to her Instagram stories, Chinoy, a two- time Oscar winner, slammed ‘hypocritical’ Pakistanis who are quick to react when the Holy Quran was burned but were silent when churches were demolished yesterday by a lynch mob.

    “Two faced: That word best describes Pakistanis who are quick to point out the state of Muslims in India but who turn the other way when someone says look at the state of minorities within your own borders.”

    ‘Pasoori’ singer Shae Gill, who is a Christian, described how the incident made her completely speechless, and expressed hopes that the masses are educated so that these atrocities can come to an end.

    Meanwhile, celebrities in Bollywood have been called out publicly in the past for promoting communal violence and Islamophobia through their films. Akshay Kumar was publicly criticised when his film ‘Sooryavashni’ promoted Islamophobia. During an interview when he was asked about the anti-Pakistani themes of his film ‘Bell Bottom’ to which the A-list actor had responded: “It’s just a film.”

    Recently, Shah Rukh Khan was targeted by BJP politicians as a ‘terrorist’ and in January, the music video for his film ‘Besharam Rang’ was targeted because of the baseless ‘Love Jihad’ theory- that claims Hindu women are seduced by Muslim men and then converted into Islam- by conservatives who threatened to burn down the theaters where the movie would play.

    This obviously doesn’t mean that cinema in Pakistan is more progressive and open to accepting minorities, but we cannot deny the power of public figures who use their platforms to educate masses about sensitive topics, is far more important in today’s troubling issues in order to help fight against the growing communal violence and hatred.

  • Arijit Singh beats Taylor Swift to become third most followed artist on Spotify

    Arijit Singh beats Taylor Swift to become third most followed artist on Spotify

    Indian singer Arijit Singh has surpassed global superstars like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish to become the third most followed artist on Spotify. The musical prodigy, who rose to fame with songs like ‘Agar Tum Saath Ho’ and ‘Channa Meraya’, has a total of 86 million followers on his Spotify page.

    Taylor currently has 83 million followers, making her the fourth most followed artist on the music streaming platform.

    According to chart masters, the most popular artists among the top five on Spotify include Ed Sheeran, pop singer Ariana Grande, Arijit Singh, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish.

  • ‘You’ve done so well’: Shah Rukh Khan’s tribute to working mom Gauri is making Twitter wail

    ‘You’ve done so well’: Shah Rukh Khan’s tribute to working mom Gauri is making Twitter wail

    Kitni baar humara dil jeeto gay, Shah Rukh?

    Bollywood Badshah Shah Rukh Khan knows how to make his fans cry a river with moving words. On Wednesday, his daughter Suhana, who is making her debut in the Netflix film ‘The Archies’, gave an interview to India Today, where she was applauded for her grace and poise. Gauri Khan shared a clip on her Twitter account, writing that it was emotional to witness life come full circle, first attending events with her husband, and now watching Suhana at events.

    “The first event I ever attended with @iamsrk was a book launch… and now watching Suhana speak at another such event has made me feel like life has come full circle!”

    Shah Rukh shared the tweet, writing how proud he was of the way Gauri groomed their three children and raised them to become what they are. We aren’t crying, its the sweat.

    “Yeah the circle of life is closing in for us with our babies helping us complete it. You’ve done so well with the three of them…educated them, taught them dignity & desire to share love…& Suhana is so articulate but the dimple is mine!!”

    Aur kya reh gaya hai, SRK? Twitter was just wailing at the moving tweet, watching the actor shower praises upon his wife.

    https://twitter.com/SandraC69740420/status/1691828212723003741?s=20
    https://twitter.com/khudajaaneee/status/1691825635931689117?s=20

  • ‘While we were dating, Ranbir told me not to wear lipstick’: Alia’s Vogue interview sparks outrage

    ‘While we were dating, Ranbir told me not to wear lipstick’: Alia’s Vogue interview sparks outrage

    Alia Bhatt’s recent Beauty Secrets interview with Vogue has gone viral, but for all the wrong reasons. A clip from the interview has sparked backlash, in which the actress reveals that while she was dating her now husband, Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor, he didn’t allow her to wear lipstick when they were going out.

    “When we used to go out at night he would say ‘Wipe that off’”, the actress commented.

    It should be good to mention here that there is a 10-year age gap between the two. Alia was 17 years old when she began working on ‘Student Of The Year’ when Ranbir dropped by on set, and joked to director Karan Johar about whether he should marry her.

    Since the clip went viral on Twitter, users have expressed outrage on Ranbir’s relationship with his wife. A few months ago, the actor was slammed for body shaming Alia during a livestream, while she was pregnant with their daughter Raha. Then, he was criticized for saying that he hopes Raha doesn’t have Alia’s personality, because “she talks quite loud and is vivacious.”

    READ MORE: Ranbir Kapoor under fire once more after comment on Alia Bhatt goes viral

    “I would dump his a**,” one user commented.

    Many users pointed out how Ranbir Kapoor has qualities similar to a toxic boyfriend, as one user put it:

    “Ranbir is one of those toxic men who finally settle with much younger women they can easily manipulate. she might be happy doing whatever he wants but it’s still a sad situation esp with her background.”

    https://twitter.com/rubypinkpark/status/1691663918530535450?s=20
  • Dalit author slams ‘Made In Heaven’ creators for stealing ideas without credit

    Dalit author slams ‘Made In Heaven’ creators for stealing ideas without credit

    Warning: spoilers

    The second season of the critically acclaimed Amazon series ‘Made In Heaven’ came back on screen after a four year break, exploring darker topics like domestic violence, colorism, and transphobia. However, the show has been accused of plagiarising content. Social media users are demanding that show runners Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti give credit to a Dalit author.

    The episode ‘The Heart Skips A Beat’ received critical acclaim for featuring a Dalit woman getting married in to a Buddhist man in an inter-caste ceremony. However, many who watched the episode observed the close resemblance between the female protagonist, Pallavi Menke, a Dalit author who writes a book ‘Coming Out’ narrating her experiences as a Dalit- to the real life author Yashica Dutt, who had written the same book. Dutt has taken to Instagram to address the controversy.

    On her Instagram post, Yashica shared a picture of the Dalit wedding, calling the depiction a triumph, but also demanded that show creators stop stealing the works of minority communities and to formally give her credit for her work.

    “Before I came out as Dalit in 2016, there was no vocabulary to identify the process of revealing your Dalitness after hiding it for years and owning it with pride either. Today, in 2023, there is both. Dalit directors like Neeraj Ghaywan have revolutionised our cinematic language by showcasing unapologetic Dalits in Bollywood, a tradition that has an even longer history in Southern cinema,” wrote the author.

    “;The Heart Skipped a Beat’, the fifth episode of Prime Video’s Made in Heaven is no less than a cinematic triumph, when it comes to showcasing what it truly looks like for a Dalit woman to take her power back in this casteist society.”

    Addressing the issue, Dutt wrote it was empowering to witness a woman on the popular series speak about how her grandmother used to scrub toilets, and asserts her self before her partner. But she did not see the director giving her credit.

    “The scene where the Dalit author, who is from Columbia, has written a book about ‘coming out’ and talks about her grandmother ‘manually cleaning toilets’, asserts her selfhood with her life partner-to-be, gave me chills. It was surreal to see a version of my life on screen that was not, but yet was still me. But soon the heartbreak set in. They were my words, but my name was nowhere… The ideas I cultivated, that are my life’s work, that I continue to receive immense hate for just speaking, were taken without permission or credit.”

    “Dalit’s have a long history of being taken from, erased, ignored, obliterated from our own stories. Dalit women in particular are the easiest to take from , what’s the worth in their labor they’ve created anyway. It’s for everybody to claim.

    Except this time, I’m reclaiming my work, my worth and my contribution to the discourse and history, defying the order of what’s expected of me as a woman who is supposed to fine tune the ‘register of her rage’.”

  • Alia Bhatt reveals when she met Ranbir Kapoor for the first time

    Alia Bhatt reveals when she met Ranbir Kapoor for the first time

    Bollywood actors Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor are considered one of the hottest celebrity couples within the industry, and now the actress has revealed details of her first meeting with her husband, with whom she shares daughter Raha.

    Bhatt is currently promoting her Netflix film ‘Heart Of Stone’ where she stars along with Gal Gadot and Jamie Dornan. During an interview with Netflix, the ‘Gangubai’ actress said that at her audition for the 2005 film ‘Black’, she met Ranbir, who was working as a film assistant.

    Although Alia didn’t get the role, the two met again in 2012 during ‘Student Of The Year’ which was directed by Karan Johar, where Ranbir visited on set. During an episode of ‘Koffee With Karan’, actor Ranveer Singh took everyone by surprise when he revealed the son of Rishi Kapoor had dropped by during the film shooting, and joked with Karan about whether he should marry Alia or not.

  • ‘I miss you’: Sajal Aly remembers Sridevi on her 60th birthday

    ‘I miss you’: Sajal Aly remembers Sridevi on her 60th birthday

    It’s been five years since Bollywood superstar Sridevi passed away in 2018 from accidental drowning in Dubai, leaving behind a celebrated legacy with films like ‘Chandni’, ‘English Vinglish’ and ‘Mr India’. The beloved Indian actress starred with Pakistani actors Sajal Aly and Adnan Siddiqui in the 2017 release ‘Mom’, and the two have always remembered her in fond words.

    Aly commemorated the Bollywood icon by sharing a picture of her on her Instagram stories with the caption “Happy Birthday! I miss you”.

    In an interview with BBC Asian Network, Aly had praised the late actress, stating that she was “like a mother to me” and discussed her experience of working with her on ‘Mom’ by recalling how kind the ‘Mr India’ actress was to her.

     “…The first thing a good person and a good actor would do is make the other person comfortable,” the ‘Ye Dil Mera’ actress gushed. “She was that kind of actor. She had a lot of empathy and kindness towards me. For instance, I had that one scene where I was wearing this red dress and when I got ready she was like ‘Oh! You should curl your hair more!’ She was acting like a mother to me, although she was just a co-star. But the fact that she cared about how I’m looking and how I could look better, that is something that stole my heart.”

    READ MORE: ‘Sridevi was like a mother to me’: Sajal Aly reminisces about Bollywood star

    The host recounted meeting Sridevi for an interview for a film at her house, where she praised Sajal, by saying she’s someone “you need to lookout for.”

    “I didn’t know she said that about me, but of course in some interviews she pra

    ised my acting a lot. These kind of compliments, I get scared because I feel the pressure. I never talk about her a lot and the relationship we had, it’s something I can’t explain. Because it was really real.”

    Aly was also close to Sridevi’s daughter Janhvi Kapoor, whom she could emotionally connect with because both of their moms had passed away.

    “We met after six years[in Dubai],” recalled Aly. “When my mother had passed away as well as hers. Probably because of our mothers as well we got a lot more closer. So I connect with her and she connects with me. We used to keep in touch but then she started her career and she’s busy with that.”

    Kapoor shared a picture of her mother on set on her Instagram, writing that she wished her mother was still here today.

    “And today as I’m on a set on your birthday I wish more than ever I had you with me like this, so we could convince everyone it was actually your 35th and not 60th birthday. And you could tell me if I’m pushing myself hard enough or not. And I could see in your eyes if I was making you proud. I know you’d be happy seeing us try, in your memory. Every day. I love you, you are the most special woman on this planet.”

  • ‘Degraded descendant of Bond thrillers’: Gal Gadot, Alia Bhatt’s spy film Heart of Stone slammed by critics

    ‘Heart of Stone’, Netflix’s new thriller starring Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt and Gal Gadot has brought out every critic’s stone heart. The spy thriller about an international secret agent who must use all means to protect the mysterious MacGuffin known as ‘Heart of Stone’ has been slammed by critics for its generic plot and poor performances with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 4.9/10.

    Variety called the film “joyless, convoluted, and sludgy-looking” as well as a “degraded descendant of Bond thrillers”. Their review described the film as a laborious two hours long weary form of bloat without a plot and an endless chain of events filled with action sequences.

    Mashable wrote that the film has glaring similarities with Tom Cruise’s ‘Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part One”, calling it a “flimsy action knock-off” and also said that the assemble of the star-studded cast, including ’50 Shades Of Grey’s” Jamie Dornan, failed to charm owing to a bad script that gave them little content to start with.

    Giving it a meagre 2/5 stars, Indian Express wrote that Alia Bhatt’s talent had been wasted, as this was the Bollywood actor’s debut Hollywood project- pointing out how she was minimised when her talent could have been utilized better. Their review futher criticised the film’s poor dialogue and overuse of character’s talking in cliche’s like  “You know what you signed up for”, and, “Behind you!” or the limited ways their roles were fleshed out throughout the film.

  • ‘Made In Heaven’ comes back with a bang in second season, critics praise sinister take on Big Fat Indian Wedding

    ‘Made In Heaven’ comes back with a bang in second season, critics praise sinister take on Big Fat Indian Wedding

    Warning: spoilers if you havent seen season 1

    Eid came a little too early for social media users when on August 10, the much awaited sequel to the critically acclaimed Amazon Prime series ‘Made In Heaven’ released online. The nine episode drama focuses on the lives of Delhi wedding planners Tara and Karan, as they attempt to build a brand name for themselves in the cut-throat world of India’s wedding industry.

    Created by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, the season was lauded for the powerful performances by Sobhita Dhulipala and Arjun Mathur, as well as for boldly bringing to light issues like cast prejudice and sexual assault.

    This time, the second season promised to be quite a show-stopper as Karan decides to stop living in shame because of his sexual orientation and Tara decides to take her ex-husband Adil to court to get a good settlement in divorce. The two were left grappling with loss as their business is torn to shreds after a mob attacks it because of Karan’s support to decriminalize homosexuality. And critics, along with social media, had to agree, kay dair aye laikan drust aye.

    Indian drama critics have praised the show for delivering beyond their expectations, and bringing the four year long restlessness to a solid conclusion. The Indian Express praised the show-stopping performances by Sobhita, Jim Sarbh and Marthur, praising the skills with which Akhtar, Kagti and their collaborators “detail their characters and fill them in with specificity, reflect a sense of inner knowledge and empathy, which makes you curious about what’s going on behind their perfect exteriors.”

    If the first season was praised for addressing bold themes like same sex relationships, infidelity and ageism, NDTV commented that the new season dwleves even deeper by casting a transgender actor to play a career woman who has had a gender-reassignment surgery and is proud of being in her own skin.

    Writing for Film Companion, Rahul Desai praised Made In Heaven for remaining “a rare series that isn’t afraid to present its characters as paradoxical and unlikable.”

  • Actress Rani Mukherjee reveals she had a miscarriage in 2020

    Actress Rani Mukherjee reveals she had a miscarriage in 2020

    Bollywood actress Rani Mukherjee has revealed that she suffered a miscarriage a few years ago. At the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne 2023, she opened up about suffering a miscarriage in 2020, five months after the Covid-19 pandemic began. The incident happened before Mukherjee started filming ‘Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway’.

    “Maybe this is the first time I am making this revelation because in today’s world every aspect of your life is discussed publicly, and becomes an agenda for talking about your film to get more eyeballs. Obviously, I didn’t speak about this when I was promoting the film because it would have come across as me trying to speak about a personal experience that would propel the film…so, it was around the year when COVID-19 struck. It was 2020. I got pregnant with my second baby at the end of 2020 and I unfortunately lost my baby five months into my pregnancy.”

    The ‘Paheli’ actress recalled how the producer Nikhil Advani called her up ten days after the ordeal, and Mukherjee said she immediately connected with the script of the film because of what she was going through at the time:

    “After I lost my baby, Nikhil (Advani) would have called me probably like 10 days later. He told me about the story and I kind of immediately… not that I had to have the loss of a child to feel the emotion but sometimes there is a film in the right time of what you are going through personally to be able for you to connect with it instantly. When I heard the story, I was in disbelief. I never thought in a country like Norway an Indian family would have had to go through.”

    Mukherjee’s recent release ‘Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway’ is based on the real-life story of the Indian couple Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya, whose children were snatched away by the Norwegian welfare services, deeming the couple unfit to take care of their children. Sagarika sued the Norwegian government to win back custody of her children.