Either there is always a lot of news on Mondays, or I am always catching up on all the news I missed over the weekend. Either way, here is a post!
Aditya Roy Kapur Watch! Reunion with Mohit Suri
For those of you who care desperately about ARK’s career, there is good news! He has Kalank with Dharma, and he has the Sadak sequel with the Bhatts, and now here is a story about reuniting with Mohit Suri (the Aashiqui 2 director). (story here)
He’s costarring with Disha Patani, which isn’t great. I saw both of her movies, MS Dhoni and Baaghi 2. She isn’t so terrible it is distracting, but she also isn’t so good that she is good. I’ll put it this way, she was a good match for Tiger Shroff in terms of acting ability.
But maybe, as an ARK fan, this is a good thing? Mohit Suri clearly likes him and knows how to use him well, a weak co-star could just give ARK more chances to shine and show what he can do. I just want him to have more opportunities! There aren’t that many hot guys who can also act and are tall out there in the world!
Farah Khan Will Launch a Beauty Queen
This seems kind of low-level for Farah, doesn’t it? Resorting to stunt casting of new celebrities? We don’t even know anything about the film, the rumor is focused on “launching Manushi Chillar”. I mean, she did win Miss World in 2017, so she is a big name, but I would have thought at least in the movie news world, Farah is a bigger name. (story here)
And also, blech! I don’t want another beauty queen trying to act! I have been surprisingly happy with the models-turned-actresses, I think because “model” often really means “person who appears in ad films that are really more like short stories” rather than just “person who is pretty”. But the beauty queens do tend to be just “person who is pretty” above all else and, for me, that is not enough to make a film enjoyable to watch.
Did that seem mean? I didn’t mean to be mean, I am sure she is perfectly nice, but do we have any evidence she can actually be entertaining?
Begin Again Again
Not sure how to feel about this, because I haven’t seen the original film. At first glance, just looking at the poster and the cast and the one sentence plot description, my reaction is “That movie is way too Brooklyn for me to ever like or relate to the characters”. But then, I haven’t seen it, maybe I will be convinced to care about people rediscovering their pure art and so on. Oh wait, that’s not Brooklyn, that’s Tamasha and I HATED Tamasha. Yeah, none of this seems very Margaret-friendly. Not sure if I want a remake (story here).
You know what does seem Margaret-friendly? Same director as Veere Di Wedding! That makes me optimistic. It is supposed to be a story about a woman and a man who are platonic friends, and it is equally their story, or else more 60-40% with the woman having the larger part. Veere Di Wedding shows he can direct female lead films, and he can direct friendship love stories, so that’s good.
If they make it less Brooklyn/Tamasha, more grounded in the Indian music producing and movie producing crossover kind of world, that could be cool. Certainly it will be a fun movie for us all to mentally cast, there needs to be an older couple that has grown apart with the guy trying to rediscover his passion for his music producing work. And a young couple with the woman being intelligent and talented and a little off-beat, and the guy being a mainstream rock star. Call me crazy, but I kind of like the idea of Varun Dhawan for the egotistical rock star. It would be a cameo appearance, but I think he could knock it out of the park and really have fun with it.
Pati Patni Aur Woh First Images-Hmmm
Well, the casting is locked and the first image is released. A love triangle between Kartik Aaryan as the husband, Bhumi Pednakar as the wife, and Ananya Panday as the secretary/mistress. I have THOUGHTS. My biggest being, Ananya is way WAAAAAY too young for this role.
The original film is a classic farce, a husband impulsively decides to start a fun affair with his secretary, lying to her that he has a miserable home life and so on. But then it takes a twist when the wife finds out and she and secretary end up allied and torture the husband together. He and the wife are finally reunited after much back and forth. It’s a surprisingly amoral film, the husband has no particular reason to cheat, he just does. And he keeps lying and cheating straight through until he discovers he can’t trick both woman any more. The nice thing is, the wife is playing the game too. She isn’t a broken woman who tries to kill herself or anything, she picks herself up and figures out how to “win”.
So, Kartik Aaryan at least is perfect casting. He is very good at that kind of amoral trickery, manages to make it so amusing that the audience can enjoy it even while not sympathizing with him. Bhumi Pednakar, she is probably okay, she hasn’t had a chance to do much pure comedy so far in her career, but the little bit she has had, she has done well. And she has a kind of confident mature attitude that would make me go “oh she will be fine” if she is the cheated on wife, instead of worrying about her.
Ananya is the problem. She looks so young and uncertain in this photo, if she is the secretary/girlfriend, I will be so worried about her character that I will not be able to relax and enjoy the farce. If you see what I mean? For a farce to work, you have to feel like everyone onscreen is tough, can play the game and not be hurt by it. Throwing Ananya in there is like asking us to enjoy a football game when half the players are all armored up with padding and helmets, and the other half are little puppies thrown on the field.
The producers are also saying that it is a “new” take on the film, which of course is what everyone always says about remakes. But I do have some hope that if it is a really really new take, it could work. If the plot is changed to be Ananya as an innocent fiancee, and Bhumi as the secretary/girlfriend, and the end of the film is Ananya being set free because she is too innocent to be tied to Kartik, and Kartik realizing that Bhumi is his true match. Seems unlikely, but wouldn’t it be better?
Madhuri Trailer!!!!
Well, here’s a challenge. A movie I very very very very very VERY much do not want to see. And yet, it has Madhuri. Not only that, it has Madhuri co-starring with Anil. I love Madhuri and Anil!!! Is that enough to watch this film?
But then, I’ve seen It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and while trapped visiting a friend I even watched Rat Race. Do I need to see yet ANOTHER version of the “let’s throw a whole bunch of famous actors together and have them chase a fortune in a road trip/race format” plot? I think the answer is very much NO.
Especially because the reason It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World worked was that the stars were so BIG. Everyone from Spencer Tracy to Sid Ceasar in the same movie. And the stars were so fresh too, or at least, reborn. These weren’t comedians and actors that you saw every day in other movies, these were older stars who had faded away and it was a rare comeback to see them again. Like Madhuri in this movie. If this film had been entirely Madhuri’s, so her plus Sanjay Dutt plus Pooja Bhatt plus Kajol plus Karan Johar plus Dimple Kapadia, people who really truly had not had major roles in a comedy film in ages, then I would be rushing right out to see it. But, it’s not. It’s a bunch of people who are constantly appearing in comedy movies and have nothing new to contribute, and just aren’t that big of a name in the first place. And also Madhuri.
I don’t know, what do you think? Go see this in theaters, or stay home and rewatch It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Beta and call it good enough?
dontcallitbollywood 
Other important news today:
https://www.indiatoday.in/movies/regional-cinema/story/r-madhavan-to-direct-the-rocketry-the-nambi-effect-alone-after-co-director-anant-mahadevan-backs-out-1435504-2019-01-21
I’m little worried.
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I am a little worried too! Did you see the rumor of TWM 3? So Kangana and Maddy can sit around exchanging stories of when they surprisingly ended up directing a movie.
Anyway, at least he looks good with the grey hair and beard.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 10:47 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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It’s 20 years thet he works in movies so I think he knows what he’s doing but still, I want this movie to be huge, and I wish him all the best.
And for Total Dhaamal, think that the worst scenes in The Bucket List were those when Madhuri was doing comedy, so I don’t think you should watch it for her.
I’m so untinterested , I didn’t even watch the trailer.
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Good point about Madhuri and comedy. She can be great in a comedy movie, so long as the comic things are happening around her, not to her. A good straight woman. But I don’t want to see her actually attempt comedy.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 10:58 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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All this Pati Patni Aur Woh drama reminded me that there was a movie with Rajpal Yadav and Rituparna Sengupta with very similar title: Main, Meri Patni Aur Woh. I always wanted to watch it and had a copy somewhere, I think it’s time to find it.
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Pati Patni Aur Woh is kind of Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam in that the title is so great and so classic, everyone keeps riffing on it and changing it a little. Which makes it very hard for poor confused me to find the original “good” one to watch.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 11:26 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Ooh i love the Rajpal yadav movie. It’s a very sweet story of the insecurities of a short man who is married to a tall beautiful woman, and then her old tall college friend Kay Kay Menon (who I think is supposed to be hot in the film) becomes their neighbor. I recommend it!
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It’s on hotstar I think.
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Yay for ARK getting good films. I also have no desire to see Disha Patani on screen. I couldn’t even watch her in one scene in Baaghi 2 before I turned it off.
Farah Khan doing a biopic with a beauty queen?! OK, that seems plausible only if it’s campy as hell. How about a biopic based on an amalgam of the careers of Aishwarya, Priyanka, Neha, and Lara. I hope whatever she does is that she stays true to her brand and does something wacky. I have no interest in seeing her turn to “serious” filmmaking.
Begin Again wasn’t even a hit in the US…it kind of came and went. The rights must have been cheap. I could see SRK or Saif in the older jaded music producer role and someone like Sonakshi or Parineeti in the younger role. Or wait a second…Hrithik might be perfect for this!
Continuing to just be grossed out by everything Kartik Aryan is associated with, but I’m excited to see Bhumi in the urban romance realm.
I watched the Total Dhaamal trailer and thought it looked fun, but definitely not for me. Too many jokes in Hindi I won’t get and really stupid slapstick involving bad CGI and makeup. However, something about it was kind of charming and a big part of it was Madhuri, Anil, Ajay, and Ritesh, all of whom I enjoy on screen and want to see have hits.
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I love your campy biopic idea!!!! You know what would be great? A spoof bio, seems like it is serious but really it is just taking all the biography tropes and treating them as a joke. It will make no money and be terribly unpopular and I will love it.
I might really like a Begin Again casting of SRK, Alia, and Varun. The art versus popular push-pull between Alia and Varun as two artists who started in the same place would be really interesting to explore.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 3:02 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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No mention of Maddy, interesting
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Wait, this is all based on a thing Kangana randomly declared in an interview? I immediately doubt ALL of it. As I do pretty much everything Kangana says.
Also, the producer of Manikarnika had a stroke? Oh the poor man. I cannot imagine a more stressful job.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 3:21 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Maybe this means that she’ll end up with Jimmy Shergil’s character in the end which by the end of TWMR would have been the only palatable plot twist! They destroyed Maddy’s character in the second one.
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Or it means they kill off Maddy and Kangana plays opposite herself?
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 4:10 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Oh my looks like the failure of OK Jaanu really caused a dent in ARK’s confidence and now he’s slowly on course to getting it back. I wasn’t surprised at all because I didn’t like the original even. ARK should’ve asked me before he signed up for it!
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ARK should ask all of us about all of his career moves! I would have told him to turn down OK Jaanu and Fitoor, and I would have told him to start a fake dating relationship just to stay in the news and amuse us all.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 3:51 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes to the fake dating relationship!! He should take our advice and get together with Pari. But she’s apparently dating someone else now
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Who??? Who is she dating???? I must know!
And Adi can fake date Katrina, give a boost to her ego and his career.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 4:44 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Charit Desai – directs her in the Australia ads https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/parineeti-chopra-is-not-getting-married-to-charit-desai/articleshow/67105344.cms
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Isn’t Farah launches a beauty queen basically what happened with Dips? I mean, I guess she had been on screen before but Farah has said she was basically cast for her looks.
OK, I watched Begin Again just because I wanted to watch something and it was on Netflix, and I wound up really liking it. It’s the anti-Tamasha, in that it has a believable story of growth. Mark Ruffalo starts as a giant man-child but ends as someone you’d want to hang out with, and he doesn’t have a romance with Keira Knightly. So, I am remaining open about this, and it will depend on the cast for me. Abhay Deol is basically the same person as Mark Ruffalo, that’s who I’d go with. Keira’s character is strong and important to the story, so it has to be someone with a bit of heft, and preferably not Alia because she’s in everything.
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Oh wow, Abhay Deol would be perfect. And should be in more things anyway. What do you think of Kriti or Bhumi for the Keira role?
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 9:17 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I never put it together but Abhay Deol is the Indian Mark Ruffalo! How about him and Sara Ali Khan in the remake?
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I was sort of thinking of Bhumi, but she doesn’t give off a feckless young hipster vibe. Maybe Sara? She looks right but I haven’t seen her in anything.
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I’ve seen Sara but I haven’t seen Begin Again, so I’m stumped. Sara is very peppy and confident. If the heroine has to be depressed and self-doubting, I’m not sure she can do it.
On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 3:43 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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The Keira character is a talented songwriter who was fine with a small and private life, living and working closely with her boyfriend and collaborating on music. Then his band hits big, and suddenly she’s in a beautiful big apartment in NY but he’s off touring – they’re not together and her role in creating the songs is sidelined. Dude gets impressed with himself and doesn’t stay loyal, and she moves out of big nice apartment into tiny corner of gay BFF James Corden’s shabby little one room place. Crisis of confidence and identity and wondering if she should just move back home. James forces her onstage on open mic night and Mark Ruffalo sees her and convinces her to stay and try to make a go of it, but no one has any money so they cobble together a band out of other NY hopefuls that Mark knows how to find because of his long years in the business. So Keira character is strong and talented but a bit battered by circumstance and finding her way out of a hole.
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Hmm. I think not Sara then, she is too young and happy feeling. Dips might be interesting, although she would also feel like more of a viable romantic option with Abhay, which would be bad. It’s a perfect role for Konkona Sen Sharma 10 years ago. But not now.
On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 9:57 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Margaret! Begin Again was the movie we cast in the comments a few weeks ago because I watch movies three years late, and these people definitely read your blog and got the idea here. We cast SRK and Juhi as the older leads, Ali Zafar as the no good but suddenly successful musician boyfriend. I still don’t have the perfect person for the Kiera part. The teenage daughter is a good role for a young actress with a bit of rebellious edge. You should watch it, decent chance you would like it, and you’d definitely have ideas about casting. I don’t patience for navel-gazing Brooklyn movies either, it’s not one of those. The Kiera song sequences have kind of a Ranbir in ADHM vibe, only her character is more appealing. Mark Ruffalo is great, Adam Levine is acceptable, and James Corden is fun.
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Yes! I wasn’t sure of I hallucinated that or not and I couldn’t track it back.
Now that I have discovered Abhay Deol is Mark Ruffalo (he is! He so is!), that knocks out the SRK-Juhi side of things. But Abhay would work well with any of the mid-30s and up actresses. Maybe Abhay-Preity? They have matching dimples. Or Abhay-Vidya? Maybe Abhay-Chitrangda Sinha? I really loved her in Bazaar and I want to see her do more.
What do you think about Sanya Malhotra in the Kiera role? She’s even has kind of the same background, she’s popular for her dance videos on youtube.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 10:17 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Abhay is a little young, but it could work. I like him with Vidya as Catherine Keener. Would they be old enough to be parents of a teenager, though? It really does add a dimension to the story.
I haven’t seen Sanya Malhotra, but based on her look and the strength of the characters she’s played it could be a match. Plus people seem excited about her, which would be perfect for this kind of role. You want to be rooting for her to be discovered, but still stay true to herself.
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Abhay feels young, but he’s 42. Figure a semi-young marriage, like around 25, and their kid would be 15-16-17 easily. Vidya is 40, so they are a good match age-wise.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 11:37 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Abhay could totally do the role and age is workable, I was thinking more about the conversations we’ve had about what kinds of roles actors will play at different ages. Wondering if parents of a teenager roles would age up Abhay and Vidya too suddenly career-wise. I’ll go with it though, they’d be great.
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Abhay doesn’t seem to care about his career, which is frustrating because I want him to be a big deal. But it does mean he would be up for playing a parent of a teen. And Vidya played a parent of a pre-teen in Tumhari Sulu so it’s not that big of a stretch for her. And Zaira Wasim (from Secret Superstar) could play the teenager!
On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 9:59 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I want a daawate ishq 2 with Adi again!
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And instead it looks like we might get Aashiqui 2 2, this time with Disha.
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I loved the first Dhamaal and I still find Arshad and Javed Jafferey hilarious in it. I couldn’t even complete watching the trailer for the new one. A these funny movies turn boring with huge stars and CGI.
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You are right! I hadn’t thought about the CGI before. But it is the same as the action movies, they are using weird special effects in place of clever jokes and dialogue.
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Another exciting news about ARK (I think we haven’t talked about this upcoming project yet):
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Ooo, that is exciting!!! I’m surprised Fatima and Sanya are working together so soon. I can believe they are close friends and like each other, it just seems like it would be something they would avoid for career reasons, being typecast together.
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It looks like potentially very good film so they couldn’t say no.
I’m more surprised that they already have the date. I never heard about this project, it’s hasn’t started yet, but we know the date.
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I always picture them throwing a dart at a calendar to come up with these dates so far in advance. Super 30 has now been delayed, what, like 3 times?
On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 2:10 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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And isn’t Anurag Basu famous for delaying and spending too much money?
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Oh right, that’s why I recognized his name!!!! Because I yelled at him so much during the making of Jagga Jasoos. Yeah, I am guessing he picked a date out of thin air. Unless the producer has some stranglehold on him to keep him on time.
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