I’m ignoring the story about Kalank raising ticket prices because it includes super depressing comments like “movies are for rich people”. Instead, fun stories! PC with her usual ridiculous PR, Malaika and the wedding happy-happy, and a remake I am genuinely excited about.
Call me a cynic, but I am pretty sure PC’s PR is providing the exact language for this story. Basically, Priyanka is the saintly one who brought the brothers back together. That’s the story. “Leaked” by insiders. (story here)
You ready to giggle at quotes and giant PC PR leaps?
While Yoko Ono’s relationship with the legendary John Lennon is said to have been one of the primary reasons why the band Beatles broke up, Priyanka Chopra who is now married to Nick Jonas is being credited with bringing her husband back together with his two brothers.
That’s the opening that reads like something her PR firm wrote. Now here is the “quote” from an “Insider”.
“Priyanka encouraged her husband Nick to re-open dialogue on their association as a band. Since it was Nick who is said to have broken the band, Priyanka personally played the doting sister-in-law to Kevin and Joe and coaxed them to sit with her husband for conversations on re-grouping. If it wasn’t for Priyanka, the Jonas’ new album Sucker wouldn’t have happened,”
Oh Priyanka, you cheer me up! It’s true, you are just like Yoko but better, and you are the perfect sister-in-law who deserves all the credit for the album you did not write or sing on.
Malaika-Arjun Wedding Rumors
This also cheers me up, because I am so happy about this couple. Rumor has it that Malaika and Arjun are getting married Easter weekend in a church in Goa. What a happy thing, an Easter wedding! Don’t know how Malaika’s divorce fits in with a church wedding, but then I’ve never been super clear on Catholicism and divorce rules anyway. (story here)
Rohit Shetty-Farah Khan Remake
It was announced a while back that Farah and Rohit would be coming together to make a movie, which I think is a great idea because they have very complimentary styles. And now rumor has it that the movie will be a remake of Satte Pe Satte, which itself was a remake of 7 Brides for 7 Brothers. Which was a movie my mother wouldn’t let us watch while I was growing up because the plot is kind of gross. Surprisingly, the Indian version of the plot is a lot better!
Let me spoil the original Indian version for you! Or not, you can skip this section if you think you might watch it someday. It is very fun. It starts out like the American 7 Brides for 7 Brothers and then takes a real turn. SPOILERS start. Amitabh is the oldest of 7 brothers who live in a remote lumbar camp. He comes to town and gets sick and stays at a hospital where he falls in love with spunky nurse Hema Malini. He marries her and takes her back to the camp where she makes all the boys get cleaned up and stuff. Meanwhile at a near by vacation camp, there is a group of young women who revolve around a sweet wealthy heiress in a wheelchair. Amitabh’s brothers romance all of them. But meanwhile, the heiress’s evil uncle has hired an Assassin, Amitabh 2 with Grey Hair, to kill the heiress. But while attempting to kill her, he ends up hitting her in such a way that she can walk again! And then she and the assassin fall in love and Amitabh 1 and Amitabh 2 unite to fight off the evil uncle’s goons. HAPPY ENDING. Spoilers Over.
If you read the spoilers, you can see how this is the kind of fun insane masala 70s movie that Rohit Shetty and Farah can both do so well. If you didn’t read the spoilers, just take my word for it. There’s action scenes, and big dance numbers, and a spunky heroine and a hunky hero and all kinds of good things.
dontcallitbollywood 
The audacity of PC’s pr always amuses me. I follow her just to see what new crazy thing she will come up with. It’s working for her too. Did you hear she and Mindy Kaling just signed a deal with Universal to star/produce in a movie about…dun dunn dun.. Indian weddings. Mindy is writing it. She’s making hay from this Jonas wedding and the publicity surrounding it.
I would be more interested in Farah’s movie if it was just Farah and not related to Rohit Shetty. Rohit makes cringeworthy masala. Farah tends to spoof it which makes it a lot more tolerable and fun. I don’t know how they will combine their sensibilities.
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I am ignoring the Mindy Kaling story, because it’s PC, we don’t know what it will turn into. Could be like Isn’t It Romantic? where PC has a ten minute part and the real lead is someone else, or could be not happening at all, or could be PC jumping on the Mindy Kalking story with “rumors” and it isn’t anything. But yes, she has now compared herself to both Yoko Ono and Nargis. Who is next???
I’m still excited to see Farah and Rohit together. Farah has a great fun voice, but her scripts tend to be kind of a mess, going all over the place and not making sense. Rohit’s structure is always great, he knows the story he wants to tell and how to tell it. And their working style seems similar, a lot of preparation and surety of what they want, but then a loose fun set in the end. Could be that this collaboration brings out the best in both of them.
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If it was just PC, I would definitely ignore it. She knows how to make a mountain out of a molehill. Mindy, however, does tend to get projects off the ground. It’s being claimed there was a “bidding war” over the yet-to-be-written movie and they’re already comparing it to Crazy Rich Asians and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
There’s also this in today’s news – Netflix partners up with all the top producers in India to make 10 original movies.
https://www.ndtv.com/entertainment/netflix-india-gets-10-new-original-films-courtesy-shah-rukh-khan-karan-johar-zoya-akhtar-and-others-2023226
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Looks like the Mindy deal has her as the star and PC is co-producing at the moment. If I were Mindy, I wouldn’t trust PC as the lead, especially in a comedy. And PC has had such a run of movies that are “announced, confirmed” and then she is dropped or her role shrinks dramatically last minute, I’m still not holding my breath for this to pan out. Especially because Mindy’s record of a producer is to pick very talented but less famous folks, which is the opposite of PC right now.
Blech to the Netflix news!!! BLECH!!! All of those movies sound like downer “Netflix” movies, the ones that say “you should learn about this issue that poor people face” instead of movies that say “you are already facing this issue and know plenty about it, let’s give you some different ways of thinking about it through fantasy”. This, combined with the stories about the Kalank ticket prices that are causing the reaction of “who cares, only rich people can afford to see movies already, we might as well keep cranking up the price” just makes me depressed for pop culture. It’s no longer pop culture, it’s top 25% (or less) culture. I didn’t start watching Indian movies for “just like American indie films but in Hindi”, I started watching them for the universal human emotions and sympathy.
Oh well, I’m going back to sofa shopping and cheering myself up.
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Those Netflix films do sound like indie movies. Not sure why they’re focusing so much on TV movies. It just gives the vibe that it’s the place to dump low-budget movies that people won’t watch in theaters.
I would rather have them concentrate on lush series’ instead. The production values there are better than regular TV shows. With that said, I wasn’t much interested in Sacred Games and did not finish it.
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To me the Netflix films sound like narrowcasting, movies that would never have been able to survive in theaters because not enough people want to watch them. But the elite in India who have the money to pay for streaming quality internet, or the wealthy Diaspora overseas, would want to watch them. It draws them in to Netflix subscriptions, and then they stay around for the old film classics and the other content.
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You made me curious and I check if Malaika married Arbaaz in the church and looks like yes. They had a wedding in a “chapel”, and also a nikaah. So if she had catolic wedding, and the marriage wasn’t invalidated, she can’t marry again in the church.
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Could she have had a Catholic wedding if Arbaaz never converted? Or would it already be in a fuzzy area?
On Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 12:06 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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It’s possible, but one need a permission to do it. Without permission the marriage is invalid for Catolic Church (finally a topic I studied and can talk about 😉 )
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Then maybe her first marriage and this marriage are taking place without being valid. Could there be a church and/or Priest that isn’t too worried about these things and is willing to do a ceremony without the full blessings? More of a Catholic-style wedding than full on Catholic?
Because now that I think about it, there’ve been a bunch of celebrity weddings that did the white dress in a church and also a traditional Hindu ceremony, so I am assuming no one converted for those either.
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Are we sure a wedding is happening? I thought she denied it?
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Well, she “denied” it. Rumor has it their family and friends have been told to clear this weekend, so it’s still 50/50 in my book.
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Very likely.
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My first wedding was in NYC’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral with all my father’s political connections in attendance. Don’t ask; they’re all dead or in jail now, and the marriage lasted less that 2 years. I was granted a civil divorce but when I wanted to marry my second (and current) husband in a Catholic ceremony, Church said no dice. We ended up jumping over a broom in Central Park in front of an African shaman who accepted as his fee a picnic lunch on the Sheep Meadow (what Strawberry Fields used to be called) and a nickel bag.
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Does that mean you aren’t Catholic-Catholic any more, or does it just mean the church considers you still one of them but living in sin? Just comparing the divorce rate in America with the number of Catholics in America, there must be a lot of overlap and some way of handling it.
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I guess I’m living in healthy sin. I believe in God and afterlife and all that, but as far as religion goes, I’m Italian, he’s West Indian, so I guess I’m a Pastafarian. (Joke thanks to Vir Das.)
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