Not A Great Birthday Bash For Shilpa Shetty
June 10, 2008
It was planned as her perfect birthday bash in Dubai on Saturday night to bring in her birthday on Sunday.
Alas, Woman proposes, God (with some help from the airport authorities) disposes.
The ordeal for Shilpa began when she landed at the international airport in Dubai with her sister Shamita, parents and life companion Raj Kundra for company.
Her bag went missing at the airport.
“This, let me tell you, is the story of my life, ” the ever-optimistic and cheerful Shilpa laughed from Dubai. “No journey of mine is complete without losing a bag. It could be a hopping flight from Mumbai to Pune.But if I don’t lose baggage the journey is incomplete.”
Unfortunately the baggage that Ahilpa lost in Dubai on Saturday contained the outfit she was supposed to wear for her big birthday bash planned in Dubai.
Late in the afternoon she had to go clothes- shopping in Dubai with her sister for the party in the night…
A party that she finally couldn’t attend. “I’ve been on antibiotics for the past week. Ever since I got repeatedly wet in artificial rain for a song with Sunny Deol in The Man I’ve been suffering these bouts of fever and coughing.
I was in Delhi earlier last week. The humidity only aggravated my condition. It got worse on Saturday. A doctor had to be called.”
Shilp a couldn’t attend her own birthday party. But she has no regrets. “Because I spent the evening with my family. To me there can be no better way to bring in my birthday.
Suitable Match For Shilpa Shetty?
July 22, 2007
Shilpa Shetty’s mother, Sunanda, has made no secret of her desire for her daughter to find a suitable match - and now her prayers may just have been answered.
According to sources the 32-year-old Celebrity Big Brother bombshell has found love with one of
He is reportedly into film financing. He had put his money in a film called Mere Jeevan Saathi was much delayed and sank at the box-office.
The film It Could Be You, with Naseeruddin Shah and Kirron Kher, has the name of Kundra’s wife Kavita as producer.
The Kundras recently had a baby girl but if sources are to be believed, Raj and Kavita are heading for an expensive divorce.
Raj was seen escorting Shilpa at the IIFA awards in
Apne: Movie Review
July 5, 2007
Starring: Dharmendra, Sunny Deol, Bobby Deol, Shilpa Shetty, Katrina Kaif, Kirron Kher, Victor Banerjee
Directed By: Anil Sharma
They all hug each other quite often. The men hug up-front, unabashedly. The ladies creep up on the men from behind them and hold them close to their heart.
In Apne heart and craft come together to create an amazing graph. Apne is a very warm film. It exudes the comforting, heady scent of lives lived in a ruptured repose manifested in scenes that are written with the lavish and meticulous exactitude of emotions invested prudently in long-term action plans.
Yes, the narration is lengthy, sometimes tedious. What, for example, was the need for that ridiculous ‘rock’ song with one of Bobby Deol’s hands in his pocket?
The length is understandable in a film that puts forward Dharmendra, playing a Punjabi Stallone who has been diagraced in the boxing championsip, and his troubled relationship with an elder son (Sunny) who won’t box, and his younger son (Bobby) who can’t.
Caught between the ‘can’t’ and the ‘won’t’ of lives that share tears and chuckles as destiny reigns hard blows on the knuckles, this portrait of bona- fide emotions is free of naqal.
Full marks to Neeraj Pathak’s screenplay for creating a near-perfect vehicle for the trio of Punjab da Puttars who excel in shedding tears, together and apart. Papa Dharam and his two sons share another common ground. They are seem to suffer a perpetual bad- hair day.
Let not the awkward toupees and hairstyles come in the way of appreciating the deep-focussed melodrama’s undulating motions of light and shade.
Cinematographer Kabir Lal paints the frames in colours several shades deeper than life. And that’s the way it is meant to be.
Though the ladies are engagingly portrayed (Shilpa Shetty as the introverted Sunny’s exuberant wife reminds you of Kajol in Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham) this is a patriarchal story, populated with men who fight for self, family, country and morality on territory as far-ranging as the terrace of a Punjabi village, the boxing ring in New York and most importantly, the human heartland where most of life’s most ironic games are played by God and man.
Other recent films like Rahul Rawail’s Jo Bole So Nihal, Gurinder Chadha’s Bride & Prejudice and Vipul Shah’s Namaste London have gone to
Anil Sharma gets it right, in almost every frame. The stretched-out plot takes the Deols and their elegant women and surprisingly-restrained adversaries through several continents and time zones.
Proving himself a master storyteller, Sharma never loses the threads of the plot as the characters scatter across the contients trying to restore family honour in hostile circumstances.
Yes, the narration gets excessively dramatic towards the end. But the magic of the real-life family being alchemized on screen is preserved until the very end.
Let’s stand and applaud Anil Sharma for attempting a theme so vast and dramatic showcasing two generations of Deol plunged into the vortex of a battle that takes them through several levels of emotions and revelations to arrive to a kind of liberating denouement that comes our way in the movies once in a while.
Indeed this Anil Sharma’s Gadar of the boxing ring. It takes hungering leaps into the hemisphere of the Deols’ most precious family ties. Sharma picks up threads of lingering sorrow and abiding ties to weave a tale that’s as sweet tender strong and resonant as any grandma’s tale about the simple god-fearing family which didn’t buckle under pressure.
It’s not the content as much the tightly-clenched treatment that gives the film a feeling of uncompromised ardour.
Swarming with characters and over-sentimental songs about family ties, Apne manages to hold its head high above the intrinsically treacly situation that Anil Sharma creates for the Deols.
The performances are fine as long as you aren’t looking for Brandos and Azmis in the cast. The immensely -gifted Victor Banerjee’s as the Deols’ sounding board is the odd one our specially when he materializes with prayer beads on screen to pray for Bobby’s quick recovery.
Good God!
This could have been one more mawkish attempt to bring together a family that suffers and celebrates together. Instead Apne is our own Rocky.
In fact, better. Not only are the boxing sequences first-rate, the emotions that the macho men invest into each other’s lives makes them look like giants who think big and act for the camera fearlessly.
British Work Permit For Shilpa Shetty
February 13, 2007
Bollywood star and winner of the popular reality show “Celebrity Big Brother” Shilpa Shetty has been granted a work permit by the British government.
Labour MP and former minister Keith Vaz wrote a covering letter for the permit application after which the British government granted Shetty the necessary work permit, enabling her to make money from lucrative personal appearances and media interviews.
“I am delighted to support her application to stay longer in the UK,” said Vaz, the Leicester East MP.
The Indian actress is now in India because the original document allowing her to earn money in Britain had expired when the Channel 4 reality show came to an end two weeks ago.
Forgive, Forget And Move On: Shilpa Shetty
February 9, 2007
Shilpa Shetty might be no “Samaritan” to help Jade Goody come out of distress, but she is also in no mood to carry forward the race row any more.
The Bollywood actress, who has become a “heroic figure” in recent days because of her magnanimous approach to the bullying that went on so publicly in the reality show, wants to move on in life, and let “bygones be bygones”.
Shetty, who yesterday visited the Commons and met MPs, has no vengeance left for any of her housemates, even the ones accused of making her stay hell at the house.
According to her PR guru Max Clifford, while Shilpa still has no plans to see her tormentor again onscreen, she is willing to forgive Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O’Meara for the bullying and taunts she was made to endure in the Big Brother house.
AIDS Charity In Leicester, Launched By Shilpa Shetty
February 6, 2007
Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, who has become a household name in Britain after enduring racist bullying on “Celebrity Big Brother” reality show, launched a charitable foundation in her name to raise AIDS awareness in India.
The actress, who had a brief meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the House of Commons, launched the Shilpa Shetty Foundation amid chaos in Leicester, about 100 km from here, where she was forced to abandon a visit to a local radio station after zealous fans mobbed her preventing her from leaving her car.
The admirers of the 31-year-old star, who had won the TV reality show, waited for hours in the cold for a chance to see the Indian actress who arrived on Wednesday in the city, home to a large Indian population.
Addressing the visitors who had each paid five pounds to see her in Leicester, Shilpa said the AIDS issue has been “very, very close” to her heart for the last four years.
Shilpa Shetty Finds Tony Blair “Very Very Sweet”
February 2, 2007
Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty finds British Prime Minister Tony Blair “very, very sweet” who praised her for her conduct during the reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother.
After her seven-minute meeting with Blair, the actress, who is enjoying enviable popularity after being at the centre of a race row for weeks, said the Prime Minister had been “very, very sweet” and gave her a painting of the Parliament building signed by himself and his wife Cherie.
“He said, I carried myself with utmost dignity and that he was sorry for what I went through in the (Big Brother) house,” Shetty told reporters outside the Parliament on Wednesday.
Earlier, she watched the Prime Minister’s Question Hour.
NRI Labour MP Keith Vaz had raised the issue of treatment meted out to Shilpa in the House of Commons after it grabbed headlines, following which Blair had responded by condemning racism “in all its forms”.
Tony Blair Is Sorry Too
January 31, 2007
Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, winner of the “Celebrity Big Brother” show, was today the cynosure of all eyes at the House of Commons where she had a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and attended a luncheon with leading MPs.
During the seven-minute meeting with Blair, Shilpa thanked him for the support he had extended against racism, of which she was allegedly a victim in the reality TV show.
Blair told Shilpa that he was sorry for what had happened in the show.
The luncheon, organised by Labour MP Keith Vaz, also a NRI leader and a former minister, was attended by several MPs, including Peter Hain, Secretary of State of Northern Ireland. Shilpa also witnessed the Prime Minister’s Question Hour.
Shilpa Is 31 And Yet Single
December 25, 2006
She may be known for her figure and good looks, but Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty is still single and spends most evenings at home watching television, a news report said on Thursday.
“I’m a complete TV addict,” she told The Times of India. “I’m totally out of the party circuit.”
Amid continuing rumours of marriage, Shetty said, “If the media keeps writing about my marriage, what can I do?”
“There must be guys out there who want to date me, but obviously retract after reading all this nonsense.”
Shetty, 31, has acted in more than 40 movies, most of them romances, since her debut in 1993.
In a departure from her usual characters, she played an HIV-patient in a 2004 movie “Phir Milenge,” or “We’ll Meet Again,” India’s first mainstream movie dealing with AIDS. Well on a serious note i never heard about this movie. But i have a strong feeling that Shilpa must have done a great job in the film. And kudos! to her for the great decision to do such a role. Miss you Shilpa.
