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The world's movie capital is not Hollywood but Bollywood. Bollywood is the nickname for the Indian film industry located in Bombay (now known as Mumbai, though Mollywood hasn't quite caught on.)

Indians are in love with movies, even though most films follow a similar format called masala (the word for a collection of spices). Movies are three to four hours long (and include an intermission), include dozens of songs and dances (featuring 100 or so choreographed dancers), top stars, the story between the songs of boy meets girl (without any kissing or sexual contact), lots of action (though no bloodshed), and always - a happy ending.

Songs

Housefull 2 songs


Rowdy Rathore - Official Trailer


Fourteen million Indians go to the movies on a daily basis (about 1.4% of the population of 1 billion) and pay the equivalent to the average Indian's day's wages (US $1-3) to see any of the over 800 films churned out by Bollywood each year. That's more than double the number of feature films produced in the United States.

Although American-made films have been edging into India, only the blockbuster Titanic has ever made India's top five list. One hundred and fifty U.S. films arrived in India in 1998. However, Indian films have become somewhat of an international obsession.

Bollywood films are being shown in American and British theaters on a more and more frequent basis. These theaters have become community foci for the South Asian communities around the world. Though separated by a vast distance from home, South Asians have found Bollywood films to be a great way of staying in touch with their culture and their fellow South Asians.

Since India is a country of sixteen official languages and a total of twenty-four languages spoken by over a million people each, some portions of the film industry are fragmented. While Mumbai (Bollywood) leads India in film production, its specialty lies with Hindi movies. Chennai (formerly Madras) produces films in Tamil and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) is the Bengali movie capital. Neighboring Pakistan's Lahore calls itself Lollywood.

Bollywood's film production center is a government-owned studio facility known as "Film City" in the northern suburbs of Mumbai. Bollywood traces its start to 1911 when the first silent Indian feature film was released by D.P. Phalke. The industry boomed and today there are over 250 theaters in Mumbai alone.

The stars of Bollywood are very popular and highly paid, considering the budget of the films. The lead star in a film often receives as much as 40% of the US $2 million budget for the typical masala film. Stars may be in such high demand that they're working on ten films at once. Photographs of Bollywood stars grace shop windows and homes throughout the country.

Providing three to four hours of escapism is the primary objective of Bollywood and it's a recipe done well. Indian movies are becoming more and more popular around the world so watch for them in theaters and video stores near you.

Filmmaker Sajid Khan once assured that the audience would love Housefull 2 and would surely watch it out 3 to 4 times. Though the typical Sajid Khan brand of humour managed to impress a major chunk of the comedy lovers, many others even blame it to be a lose-script. The madcap entertainer Housefull 2 was a treat to those aam-janta who expects a full-too entertainment and sufficient tummy laughs out of a loud masala movie. Here's what our viewers' had to say about Housefull 2:

Priyabrata Sahoo: Housefull 2 is a phool paisa vasool movie. Hope it will break all the records of bollywood.

Pramod: Pathetic, miserable, demoral, unrealistic, stupid comedy, downgrade direction, full paise waste, moreover 3hours of life drowned, i suggest never watch sajid khans movie in future.The story and script is total bakwaaaaaas, never suit the big actor like Kapoors.
Housefull 2, a sequel to 2010 hit Housefull, seems to be inspired by Tamil film Bandha Paramasivam. After watching the Hindi film, we could not help but notice the striking similarities between the two films.

Bandha Paramasivam was directed by TP Gajendran and produced by Selvakumar, under the Varshini Films banner. The movie cast comprised Abbas, Rambha, Kalabhavan Mani, Livingston, P Vasu, Monica, Manivannan, and Manobala. However, the makers of the film are reportedly in no mood to take necessary action against the Housefull bosses because of the fact that the Hindi rights were sold to a Mumbai-based production house a few years ago.

Meanwhile, Housefull 2, which has big stars like Akshay Kumar, Asin, John, Jacqueline and Ritesh in the leads, has got a flying start at the Box Office. The film has collected Rs 43.5 crores nett at the collections centres in the first weekend despite getting moderate reviews.

It has been four months now that Aishwarya Rai has delivered a baby girl, but the Bachchan household is still on the seventh heaven over the arrival of their darling Aaradhya. But the only Bachchan member who hardly gets time for Aaradhya, is her papa Abhishek Bachchan.

Abhishek has got no time since the arrival of his daughter on November 16, 2011. Due to his busy acting and film promotion schedules, Abhishek hasn’t been able to spend much time with his daughter, which has been very difficult for him. The busy daddy was once quoted saying, “It’s very difficult to peel yourself away from the baby and go ahead and work, but you know, we are professionals, we have to do that, that’s our job, but it is difficult.”

Abhishek, who is currently busy for Bol Bachchan, couldn't accompany Aaradhya and Aishwarya for the Dubai trip. But thanks to mommy Aishwarya Rai, who is doing it all for the baby single-handedly. The Bachchans are overwhelmed with Ash's motherly gesture, who has hung her working boots for sometime now for Aaradhya. Well Abhi, you definitely have a responsible wife to take care of your kid.

What do Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Shahid Kapoor have in common? Well if sources are to be believed, their lives – or more correctly their love life – is the source of inspiration for a new Bollywood film.

A new Bollywood flick titled "The Secret Life of Kareena" from the Spectra Multimedia stable is all set to go on the floors. The Rs 20-core flick features a female super star who is a prostitute in real life and the male lead called Saifee who is brigand and smuggler.

The film is loosely based on the life of Bollywood super star Kareena Kapoor and has some very controversial scenes which deal with the love life of the characters in question. It also features a rogue character called Saifee and another called Shaheed – subtle, but apparent references to Saif Ali Khan and Shahid Kapoor.

Aspiring actress and south star Apsara Soni will play the role of Kareena in the film. She has been signed on for Rs 30 lakh, after dancing sensation Shradha Sharma refused to do the film.

According to sources, Shradha Sharma was offered Rs 50 lakh to play the role of Kareena in the film but she turned it down as "she didn't want to offend Kareena Kapoor".
Says Shradha Sharma, "The production house Spectra Multimedia approached me last week with a script for their film - The secret life of Kareena. The script is very interesting and is a combination of Murder, Kwashish and Jannat. It has murder, sex, passion, romance and is also features a gambler who falls in love with the heroine who is a sex doll. However, when I learnt that some portions of the script were 'inspired' from the personal life of Kareena Kapoor, I decided not to do it, as I really admire Kareena Kapoor and doing this film would definitely mean rubbing her the wrong way."

According to sources at Spectra Multimedia, the film which is expected to go on floors soon has a scene where the hero slits his wrists when his lady love (supposedly Kareena) refuses to take his calls. The script writer has used a lot of poetic license and freedom to portray the characters of Kareena and Shahid.

Saif Ali Khan's character called Saifee also features in the script, but in this film he is the villain who 'snatches' the hero's lady love. There are many other controversial scenes in the film where the 'villain' even attempts to rape the heroine who ultimately succumbs to the lucre and lure of big money and gives in to the carnal demands of the villain.

Padmasri Hema Malini and her talented-troupe's scintillating performance thrilled all the Nobel Laureates and their spouses attending the Nobel Laureates' Science Conclave at the IIIT-Allahabad. Hema who flew into Allahabad on Tuesday morning with a troupe of over 40 performers got a grand welcome and a standing ovation for her terrific performance that held the entire audience spell-bound for almost two hours. Most Nobel Laureates were seen busy clicking photographs and videos of the performance.

In a performance on the second day of the Conclave that lasted more than an hour, Hema Malini's troupe performed various acts in continuity using different Indian dance forms and styles. While the main performance was a ballet that talked about Krishna's love for Radha, there were other theatrical and musical depictions of how Krishna overcomes and fights with a demon and so on.

Her performance was attended and watched with rapt attention by more than 2000 students and scientists from all over the country and even abroad. Other artistes like Peenaz Masani, Shradha Sharma, Anoop Jalota, Shovana Narayan and Bhupinder and Mitali will also perform during the week-long science conclave

For the first time in Asia, the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIIT-A) is hosting the biggest Asian gathering of international Nobel Laureates at the Nobel Laureates Conclave, IIIT, Allahabad from December 15 to 21st, 2008. The Nobel Laureates Conclave is part of the Science Conclave 2008 and about 8 out of 12 Nobel Laureates scheduled to attend and about 10 other international scientists of renown have already landed in Allahabad.

Actress Smithaa who has lived most of her life in the US, decided to take a break and go back-packing across the country after the release of her film "The Awakening". She hitch-hiked, traveled by train, bus and even bullock-cart to see and live the life that the people of Bharat live.

We caught up with Smithaa who is just back from a four-month pan-India back-packing trip for a one-on-one. She covered Rajasthan, Goa, Kerala, Hampi (in Karnataka) and various other parts of South India, she said explaining that she was surprised that she could actually live out her entire life over two months from a back-pack. Actually, Smithaa who is also shooting for some regional movies did make occasional trips back to Mumbai and Pune for her shoots. But these were for a few days at a stretch and as soon as her shoot was over she was back-packing again. According to her publicist and Media Manager, Flynn Remedios, Smithaa has also planned to back-pack across Asia at some point in her life.

This wasn't her first time though. Smithaa who is an ace at adventure sports, athletics, also a wine connoisseur by profession, a kayaking trainer, a outdoors biker, a national level swimmer, and a Judo champion has trekked all over the US where she spent most of her life. For a while she was a visiting faculty at the National Institute of Water sports, Goa for basic white water Kayaking. The gorgeous, vivacious, and energetic girl that she is she has done many fashion shows and walked the ramp for local and national designers in Surat, Goa, Pune, Kolhapur, Aurangabad, and Bangalore. She is a well-known Marathi film actress and is always attending events and functions all over Maharashtra.

Her first introduction to glamour was while doing ad commercials for brands like Nivia Cream, Pepsodent, Maaza, Rema Bulbs, Ricela Cooking oil, Century Plywood to name a few. Her first attempt at acting was when she did the Marathi Movie "Mumbaicha Dabewala" directed by Manohar Sarwankar. Her entry into mainstream Bollywood began with the international English Crossover Film "The Awakening" She has also done a silent film for Percept directed by Rahul Kapoor called "My Daddy's the Strongest" another untitled film by Ramesh Saini.