Nervous SRK, Drunk Shirsih!!!

Amidst all glitzy OSO ramp walk, Shirish Kunder, Farah's husband, created a big scene when he got extremely drunk and misbhaved with a few women at the party.

His reckless behaviour left Farah totally infuriated and she left the venue. Meanwhile sources claim Shirish continued to make a spectacle of himself and even made a pass at a girl who just chose to ignore him, later he supposedly was seen even kissing another girl.

There have also been rumours that all was not well between Shirish and SRK either. When the latter asked him to make changes in his film script. Shirish apparently was not too happy with this and after having an alleged showdown with SRK decided to approach Akki for the role.

Coming back to event, walking the ramp was a nerve-wracking experience for King Khan.

While talking to press he said, “I was nervous, but it was a nice experience. I had two supermodels, Arjun Rampal and Deepika Padukone, walking the ramp with me so it was fun learning the ropes from them. Walking the ramp is quite an art. Our friends were in the audience, so obviously everyone was encouraging.”

Now that's what we call a Model behaviour.

SRK, Deepika to walk the ramp

Shah Rukh Khan, along with Om Shanti Om co-stars Deepika Padukone, Shreyas Talpade and Arjun Rampal, will soon be walking the ramp for a fashion show displaying costumes worn in the film.

Says director Farah Khan, “It’s a tie-up with Shopper’s Stop. On October 9, Shah Rukh, Deepika and the other stars will walk the ramp at a show at the Grand Hyatt wearing costumes from OSO. Shopper’s Stop will also launch an OSO clothesline based on the film’s unique look.”

Brand value

Farah informs that two lines will be launched. “One will be a retro line inspired by the vintage costumes, while the other will be a contemporary line. Apart from being affordable, both lines are extremely trendy. Shah Rukh will wear the modern line on the ramp, while Deepika will wear retro outfits from the film. Arjun (Rampal) plays a producer in OSO, so his clothes are formal suits and leather jackets, similar to what Vinod Khanna used to wear back then. Shreyas wears shirts with pop art and stretched fabric!” she says.

Farah has got into brand merchandising with OSO in a big way. She says, “Brands like Maybelline have joined in to produce a line of make-up based on Deepika’s look (she’s also the company’s brand ambassador) and Sia for jewellery.”

Ramp talk

Manish Malhotra, Karan Johar and Sanjiv Mulchandani have done the film’s look and styling. As for herself, “I won’t be sashaying down the ramp, Unless you want me to do the elephant walk!” she jokes, referring to her growing baby bump. Talking about SRK, she says he’s walked the ramp only once before for a fashion show in Delhi. “He was shy about doing it, but since it’s a professional tie-up he agreed to do it,” she says.

Govinda Srikhande, CEO, Shopper’s Stop says, “Being market leaders and innovators in retail, Shopper’s Stop has set many trends in the past. This unique association with OSO will surely set a new trend.”

From SRK to Saif to John

While on Anurag Kashyap, are you aware Shah Rukh Khan was the first choice for the principal role in NO SMOKING? “He was keen to do the film. He even said he’d do it for his kids. But, for some reason, he couldn’t accommodate my film,” Anurag states.

Anurag remembers those days. “I was a dejected man. PAANCH was showing no signs of releasing and BLACK FRIDAY was held up. I was desperate to start a film. One night, I text-messaged all the top actors, telling them about the script of NO SMOKING. The only person who responded to my message was John Abraham. He heard the script the very next morning and said ‘Yes’ instantly. He even said he’d get a producer to back this script,” the talented director reminisces.

Anurag continues, “In the meanwhile, Vishal Bhardwaj called to enquire if I’d be interested in starting a film for his banner. I narrated NO SMOKING to him and he suggested Saif Ali Khan’s name. But I told him that I’d already committed to John. That’s how the ball started rolling.”

SRK may perform with Tulsi, Parvati at Ekta's Awards

Ekta Kapoor's television awards ceremony to be held in December in the UAE is growing bigger by the day.

The latest news on that front is either Salman or Shah Rukh Khan is going to perform at the function. And one of them will be dancing on stage with 'Tulsi' Gautami Gadgil or 'Parvati' Sakshi Tanwar.

Says Balaji’s Business Head, Harsha Chugh Khanna, "Right from the start Ekta was sure of one thing, her television awards will be as big as the film awards. To that extent, she has been working towards getting the biggest of Bollywood stars to perform at her awards. However there's only one pre-condition. Each of these Bollywood icons has to be in some way associated with television."

So is it Shah Rukh or Salman for the main performance? "We're currently in negotiation with Shah Rukh and hopeful that he'll agree. He's a source of inspiration not only in cinema but also on television. If you recall he started his career on television with Fauji and recently made a spectacular impact on Kaun Banega Crorepati. So it would be wonderful to have him perform," says Harsha.

Ekta's buddy Karan Johar will be facilitated at her awards named Balaji Global Indian Tv Honours 2007. Karan will also host a segment of the awards. Adds Ekta, "When I decided to have the awards I wanted television to get the recognition it deserves. Today I feel apart from a few filmmakers television is able to deliver more glamour grandeur and density than the average 'multiplex' film. The home medium has certainly come a long way. And that's what we'll be celebrating at our awards."

Shah Rukh Khan to attend Twenty20 World Cup final

New Delhi(PTI): Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, business tycoon Vijay Mallya and BCCI Vice President Rajeev Shukla will join hundreds of fans to cheer for Team India when Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his men take on Pakistan in the final of the Twenty20 cricket World Cup in Johannesburg tomorrow.

Shah Rukh, who played a hockey coach in his latest release "Chak De India", earlier made a surprise visit to the India-England third Test at The Oval last month.

Shah Rukh, Mallya and Shukla will leave tonight by the liquor baron's private jet.

"We will root for the Indian team, which has made us proud by its commendable show. An India-Pakistan match is always a humdinger and we are going to enjoy every bit of it," said Shukla.

Gauri Khan steps into acting shoes

Om Shanti Om directed by Farah Khan under Shah Rukh’s banner, Red Chillies Entertainment, is the most awaited film of the year. And what adds on to the excitement is that SRK’s wife Gauri Khan will also be seen in the film.

Gauri has shot for the traditional end-credit song where she would be making her presence as an official producer of the film. Shah Rukh himself accompanied her to Film City on Monday. It was in Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Na that Gauri actually was supposed to make her first onscreen appearance but she backed out at the last moment as she was very shy.

Gauri Khan is not new to bollywood as far as the talent display is concerned. She managed the costume and wardrobe department of Shah Rukh's in his early films including Baazigar (1993), Darr (1993), Anjaam (1994) and Ram Jaane (1995). Later, she turned producer. Interestingly, Gauri had once modeled for the diamond jewellery designed by Maheep Sanjay Kapoor for Notandas jewellery.

SRK won't sign to 'Save Sanju'

Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan on Tuesday said he was not part of any signature campaign to "save" jailed actor Sanjay Dutt, saying "we understand that the law will take its own course."

"We are not illiterate nor are we stupid. We understand that the law will take its own course and I am sure his (Dutt's) family also realises that. I don't know where this news has come from," Shah Rukh said here on the sidelines of a promotional event here this evening.

"Of course, as a friend I do wish him all the best. But we do realise that we cannot change the way the law functions. Nor would I want that the courts change their decisions just because some say so. That is not how it works at all," the superstar added.

Shah Rukh's name had figured in a section of the media as one of the Bollywood personalities who were thinking of starting a signature campaign in support of Dutt who has been sentenced to six years in prison for illegal possession of arms by a special TADA court which tried accused in 1993 Mumbai serial blasts.

Special Public Prosecutor in the case Ujjwal Nikam had lashed out at such campaigns, saying they amounted to contempt of court.

The 48-year-old actor is lodged in Pune's Yerwada Jail and his lawyers on Tuesday approached the Supreme Court against his conviction and also applied for bail.

What has gone into Yashraj?

With Chak De India, Yashraj Films has decided to do what the banner has been seriously contemplating for a long while.

The most illustrious and productive production house in the country has finally gone experimental with their commercial entertainment.

No no. Don't get them wrong. They aren't going into the offbeat mode. If they wanted to, they would've done so with Feroz Abbas Khan's Gandhi My Father which Yashraj took on, and then decided against it after burning their fingers distributing the other Gandhian film Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara.

What Chak De India signals is a bolder braver and more audacious phase in Yashraj's distinguished existence.

It's simple, really. With Shah Rukh Khan in his only Yashraj outing so far not directed by either father or son Chopra but by the US-returned one-experimental-film old Shimit Amin, the banner could have played up SRK's Rohit-Rahul-Raj image.

Instead they have cast SRK in his most unorthodox image-defying role ever. As the red-eyed burnt-out coach of an all-girls' team in Chak De India SRK has neither songs nor a leading lady to reckon with.

Whenever the superstar has tried something unexpected, for example Ashutosh Gowariker's Swades he has been greeted by a far-from-overhwhelming audience response.

But is the banner daunted by the possibility of the masses staying away from a film about an out-of-favour game (albeit featured a furiously favoured lead star)?

Not the least. Chak De India is being released with the same fanfare that we associate traditionally with the banner.

And that isn't all. Their two other big releases this year would again push the envelope…but oh so glamorously.

Pradeep Sarkar's Laga Chunri Mein Daag moves ahead of the expected ambit by showing the eldest daughter of a respectable Brahmin family bending the rules of morality for the family's sake.

The last film that showed the daughter of the house taking to an unconventional profession to keep the kitchen fires burning was K Balachander's Aaina in 1974.

The film despite its powerful plot and treatment, bombed.

Says a source close to Yashraj, "The banner is hoping that audiences today have matured beyond watching Shah Rukh as a lover-boy, or cringing if Rani does something unthinkable."

Keeping this in mind the banner has also got Aaja Nachle on release. The film casts 40-year old Madhuri Dixit in the lead and has the theatre at its background.

Again,an offbeat gambit….and one that shows the way Bollywood's most illustrious banner is heading.

And contrary to rumours not one frame is being re-shot in any of the above films.

In fact the seeds of change are to be seen in Yashraj's earlier releases this year, Tara Rum Pum Pum dragged the Indian middleclass' poverty line to the US and Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom was so wacky it was indecipherable to the average viewer.

Hopefully with Chak De India Yashraj will find a more meaningful métier in its 30 year existence.

"Chak De is a dream come true": Shahrukh Khan

"I don’t think Shimit and Adi are the kind of people who’d make an off beat film," says Shahrukh Khan discarding rumours that his next film Chak De India is another attempt by him at off beat cinema. A film based on the trials and tribulations of Indian women’s hockey team, SRK plays the amiable coach that weaves a bunch of girls from all parts of the country into a combative unit of strength and drive. In this interview King Khan expresses his fondness for director Shimit Amin (in the process he dismisses all rumours of the alleged differences between the two), the experience of working with raw young talent and why he feels Chak De India should become the anthem of Indian Sport. Time to dig in guys….

What made you decide to do this film?
There were a lot of reasons, first is off course the director. I have known him for years and he is a very simple, hardworking and talented. He has worked with me in the film Asoka. He’s a very sweet, unassuming kind of a guy and to choose a film which is on sports and which is normally neglected say perhaps apart from Lagaan, Hip Hip Hurray and Iqbal. Now we haven’t really made sports film and its something that I thought when I was younger I should be doing but I didn’t get a chance. So when I am old and grey and over the hill I am glad someone like Shimit thought that I could sort of fill in to a sports film and field hockey has been a personal favourite sport of mine and I have been wanting my kids to learn it. I do feel I am no one to really comment from the outside that the state of Indian Hockey is not good but I have always felt that if there is anything I can do via the medium that I work in about the things that I think are special like field hockey. My father used to play, my friends used to play and I love it too so when all these things came together and off course Yash Raj producing it, they are all friends and family and I couldn’t have got a better chance to make a dream come true about doing what I like doing most which is acting and doing a subject which is close to my heart.

Can you tell us something about the character you play?
The character’s name is Kabir Khan. He’s a coach; an ex-Indian hockey player who is living with some demons, has got some problems in life, has not been successful, wants to overcome that but without being cynical or disturbed. He decides in his mind and heart that he going to do something positive about it so it’s a film about achievement in the face off failure and it’s a film that looks at failure in a positive way that if you haven’t done well fairly or unfairly the idea is not to give up or become cynical .The idea is to take on some kind of a challenge and try to overcome that obstacle which had stopped you earlier. I would say the character is quite aggressive when he wants to be. If you really ask me though I have played it I really don’t know what the character is. I have played from my heart. It’s a mix of Jaideep’s writing, it’s a mix of Shimit’s outlook on the whole film, it’s a bit of Adi’s belief in the film and it’s a bit of my mannerisms and style. It’s all rolled into one. I would like it to be thinking, feeling may be of an elderly brotherly kind of a character who you feel confident in, who himself is shattered from inside, so it’s very complex its not just like a simple explanation. I haven’t been able to understand it myself yet.

What was it like working with a whole lot of newcomers?
Fantastic, earlier I thought that working with newcomers would be a bit of a hassle because they would not know their lines, you know you become a little patronizing you become a little kind at times, a little agitated and irritated at times because things are not going the way you think they are going but I think the whole production and the whole team had worked very hard with them and not to take any credit away from these girls. I think they are very hardworking and wonderful. They put their heart and soul into the film. They have practiced and learnt hockey, they have learnt the lines, they know the scenes they knew everything and at the end of it all after having worked for 18 years as an actor I got a lot to learn, because there is a bit of rawness when newcomers come and face the camera working for so many years you tend to become a little mechanized .You see a scene with a young girl who has never acted before, she says her few lines and they don’t seem like you would do them this way but when you hear it out it sounds very right so it’s a great learning process to work with newcomers. I had done that a bit in Swades but which was with still honed theater actors not film actors but here there were most of the girls had ever faced any kind of acting job so this was really nice and it was a great learning process for me.

Among the girls in the team many of them must have been your fans what was it like working with them?
The girls are very sweet and they were working really hard and we had a lot of readings before we started the film and couple of meetings so that we got easy with each other. Apart from some of them liking me, its a little embarrassing because some of them were 5/6 years old when they saw my films. It’s a little embarrassing to be working with girls where you suddenly realize god you are old, you have been working a lot. But it was also important for me to be comfortable with them and not treat them like kids because the whole purpose of the character Kabeer is that he doesn’t treat them like kids or girls. He treats them like grown up, tough people so I think that little bit of being fans and stalwart compared to the others got over very fast in the reading and meeting stage and then we were all co-actors and co-actresses just working together and having a great time and they were really nice, very well mannered very well brought up and really nice kids.

Is Chak De India another effort by you to do off beat film like Swades and Paheli?
I don’t think these are off beat films sometimes I like the stories because they are different and I don’t think Shimit and Adi are the kind of people who would make an off beat film. Its very on beat I think but the subject is that you can’t make it every year, it’s a different subject so I don’t know what an off beat film is. I don’t like boring films myself so I don’t try to do those. I think this is a film with a different kind of a soul and a different kind of a story line so that’s how it’s different and I don’t think it’s off beat

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the words Chak De India?
Chak De strangely to me is a line from Dilwale. I remember we used to say Chak De Phate in Dilwale so I don’t know but I get reminded of that but I hope Chak De India becomes like a sporting thing whenever Sachin is playing or whenever Dhanraj Pillai is going with the ball somebody screams Chak De India which means score a goal or hit a sixer or get Sania Mirza to win the Wimbledon….

Premieres in London, Los Angeles

CHAK DE INDIA, Yash Raj Films' latest production, is hitting the marquee in style -- with gala premieres in London and Los Angeles. What's more, both the premieres are part of mega festivals that celebrate India and Indian culture in U.K. and U.S.A., respectively.

The London premiere, to be held on 9th August, is part of 'India Now', a three-month season celebrating London's strengthening relationship with India and exploring India's culture and its contribution to London life. The premiere will take place at Somerset House.

The Los Angeles premiere, to be held on 10th August, is part of 'India Splendor'. The festival runs from 10th to 15th August and is a mega showcase of India's arts, business, technology, food, dance, spirituality on the occasion of India's 60th anniversary of independence. CHAK DE INDIA will be the opening night film of 'India Splendor'.

SRK is excited about his Girls

Shah Rukh Khan is hugely excited aboyt Shimit Amin's Chak De India.

Says SRK, "I feel hockey as a sport has been monstrously neglected in our country. I used to play the game during college. In fact I was quite a good hockey player. So the role was a lot like going back to my past."

Shah Rukh has a whole lot of fun doing a sports film. "We had real Australian female hockey players playing for the film in Australia. And it was truly amazing watching them go through their paces. They were thorough professionals."

Shah Rukh dismisses the myth that he only likes to work within the comfort zone. "I do as many films for Yashraj Films or Karan Johar as I do for other directors. Swades and Don were with first-time directors for me.

And now I'm working with Shimit Amin in Chak De for the first time. It's interesting to see where he comes from, and where he hopes to go with this film. I think making a film based on the game of hockey is really cool."

'Goal' promo with 'Chak De India'

UTV has altered the title of GOAL, starring John Abraham, Arshad Warsi and Bipasha Basu. The film will now be called DHAN DHANA DHAN… GOAL. If you jog your memory, the film was scheduled to release on August 10, in the same week as CHAK DE INDIA, but UTV decided to shift DHAN DHANA DHAN… GOAL to a latter week since they didn't want to clash with another sports-based film on the same date. Besides, SRK - Yash Raj is a lethal combination!

Although the release of DHAN DHANA DHAN… GOAL is now confirmed for December, UTV will launch the promo of the film in the same week as CHAK DE INDIA. “The footfalls at cineplexes are expected to be optimum during this week and we expect DHAN DHANA DHAN… GOAL to reach out to a wider audience due to this reason,” Siddharth Roy Kapur of UTV confirms.

Beware Ekta, here comes SRK

Shah Rukh Khan has bought stakes in a company that will produce content and serials for a glamour channel.

The Badshah and his Begum, have together bought a 10 per cent personal stake in a new company about three months ago, say company sources

"The Khans are very choosy about picking business associates. Besides, the superstar plans to expand his production house and also has plans to produce TV serials," says a source.

Khan, who first forayed into business through his film production company - Red Chillies Entertainment, is currently in the process of building up a FX company that he launched after seeing the film 300.

His other business interests include membership of the board directors of a major airline.

He will now become the first actor to have a stake in an entertainment company.

"When it comes to business, SRK is very choosy and knows what he wants," the source said.