Anupam Kher, the name that needs absolute no introduction, has been away from the national news for sometime now. If you wondering why, it's only because he has been extremely busy creating international news!

On one hand, when he has just wrapped up the Akshay Kumar's Hollywood production titled Breakaway, on the other, Kher is all set for the launch of his acting studio, 'Actor Prepares', in association with H R Shah, Chairman and CEO of TV Asia.

Speaking to us, a visibly excited Anupam said, "My institute 'Actor Prepares' is indeed very close to my heart. I have spent considerable time scouting for the best acting schools in the world, studying their curriculam. Each student here receives individual guidance and counseling throughout the program from me." 

And when asked him about how his school plans to be a bridge between actors and acting, he said, "Acting is a craft which is universal and can be taught, learned and perfected. It is a craft that has now transcended regional and national barriers as reflected in productions with global themes and locales in an era of crossover films. 'Actor Prepares', the school is just not Bollywood-centric; it trains actors to perform anywhere."

Speaking about this association, H R Shah of TV Asia said, "The Bollywood industry is growing faster than Hollywood. India and Indians have been influenced by Bollywood entertainment for the past 100 years. That is why; it is today the largest producer of films in the world. There are a lot of talented Indian American actors in North America, who have no platform to promote their talent. 'Actor Prepares' will help them gain a foothold not just in Bollywood, but in Hollywood."

The official launch of Actor Prepares in New York, will take place soon.

Katrina Kaif has never admitted to her relationship with Salman Khan in the last eight years. Although they acted  together and she was a permanent fixture at his home, she had maintained they were only friends.

But on Tuesday in an interview to a daily, she admitted that she'd split from the Dabangg actor.

An industry source reveals, "On Monday, an article in a morning newspaper carried quotes of an old interview of  Katrina, in which she'd spoken about Salman and her closeness to him. This upset the actress, who has been trying to maintain a strictly professional relationship with her ex."

The actress called up the higher-ups in the organisation and told them that she wanted to clear the air about Salman. The following day, her interview admitting to her split was flashed in the front page of a city tabloid under the heading: For The First Time.

So the question is: Why did Katrina finally come clean about Sallu? Says an insider, "That interview made matters embarrassing for her. She is seeing Ranbir now, and the Kapoor khandaan have welcomed her into their fold. How would she explain an interview gushing about Salman being a '4 am friend'?"

Her break-up confession was a face-saving attempt.

Signal ka khel

A source close to the actress adds, "When Katrina read an article about Salman and her closeness, she was extremely upset. She doesn't want to send out the wrong signals to Ranbir and his family. She is not with Salman anymore.

Last month, at a press conference for a foreign airlines she endorsed, she'd vaguely hinted at Salman's bachelor status."

The source continues, "Though Salman and Katrina broke up long ago they continue to be friends. She appreciates all that he has done for her, and they will always be there for each other.

After the Being Human show recently, he even asked her to party with him and his friends but she refused as she had an early morning flight. 

Though Salman and she still keep in touch they are not romantically involved anymore and she wants to dispel that wrong impression." 

Tommy Hilfiger has become one of the best selling international brands in India thanks to a little unexpected help from actor Shah Rukh Khan, says Mohan Murjani, who built the brand in the U.S. and brought it to India six years ago.

Some Indian consumers knew Tommy Hilfiger even before they knew Levis because they saw superstar SRK covered head to toe in Hilfiger in the 1998 mega hit "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai."

The romantic comedy — which was a defining moment for the Hindi film industry as it was director Karan Johar's first – created millions of new Hilfiger fans and an untapped demand which the chairman of the Murjani Group has been riding ever since he brought the brand here in 2004.

Its bright shirts and jeans got all this attention without having to promote itself in Bollywood or even pay a penny for product placement, says Mr. Murjani.

"The (movie's) stylist just loved Tommy Hilfiger. We couldn't believe it when we saw it," he told India Real Time. "Even before we launched in India it was on top of the list of brands to buy."

Many foreign brands have complained that India is a tough market to crack. Not only has the government put restrictions on foreign ownership in retail but the Indian consumer has been much less likely to pay big bucks for the international names than in other markets like China.

Some retail brands have come to India and left and even homegrown stores are struggling. Mr. Murjani gave up the franchises of Gucci and Jimmy Choo in India when he realized he had overestimated demand for luxury goods.

Still, Indian sales at Tommy Hilfiger have been unstoppable, he says. His revenues have been rising 50% per year every year, even in 2008 and 2009 when almost everyone was struggling. Tommy clothes, perfume, watches and underwear can now be found at more than 1,000 different points of sale across the country.

"The consumer base is growing extremely rapidly, not only in terms of number of people but also in terms of the individual disposable income," of the Hilfiger customer, he said. "It is really boom time."

And he expects growth to continue at this pace as he brings the brand into smaller and smaller towns, wherever he can find Shah Rukh Khan wannabes.

Mumbai, Oct. 27: Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone and Sidhartha Mallya, the owner of Kingfisher Airlines, judged models for the Kingfisher Calendar 2011 here on Tuesday.

Many aspiring models took part in the contest with the hope of appearing in the limited edition Kingfisher swimsuit calendar.

This year, too, ace lensman Atul Kasbekar would shoot the entire calendar.

Padukone said models have to be not only good looking, but also intelligent.

"I think apart from just a great body and a great face, I think it's also very important for the girls to be smart witty, intelligent, because at the end of the day, it's not, like I said, it's not just the way you look, I think it's the entire package, and I think that's what really takes one forward in life if you really want to become successful. So, I am looking for someone who is, you know, not just good looking but also very, very intelligent," said Padukone.

She added that she had also been a part of the calendar, and empathised with the aspiring calendar girls.

"When I was there in the calendar, there was no hunt for the girls. I think I was just lucky that I had already started modelling and these people (Kasbekar) noticed me and I was a part of the calendar, and I think I am really fortunate that till today I have never really been part of a contest or never been part of a Miss India, so I think somewhere I feel a lot of, I mean, I feel nervous for these girls because I know what it feels like to sort of go through judges, and to be judged for the way you look and things like that. So, it's definitely tough on them," added Padukone.

Mallya said that it was one of the biggest platforms for aspiring models.

He also complimented the models, saying they were bold and beautiful.

The calendar, introduced in 2003, was the first of its kind in India, and promises twelve months of glamour and visual appeal.

Kingfisher Airlines and the Kingfisher range of beers are both owned by the United Breweries group.

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan's appeal to Indian audiences appears undiminished after he delivered early ratings success to Sony Entertainment Television (SET) in the relaunch this month of the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, known in India as Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC).

Bachchan, who turned 68 the same day KBC's fourth series began running on October 11, is reprising a role from a decade ago, only this time with a different channel. He was the inaugural host of KBC in 2000, when it catapulted SET's rival Star Plus (owned by News Corporation, which also owns The Australian) to the top of the ratings among Hindi general entertainment channels – the most lucrative part of India's crowded television firmament.

This time around, KBC's opening episode scored 6.2 television viewer rating points – a far cry from the double-digit ratings of 2000, but a huge success in an Indian television universe that has expanded to 500 channels over the last 10 years.

Man Jit Singh, CEO of Multi Screen Media, which runs SET and six other Indian television channels, told The Australian this week that he was delighted with KBC-4's ratings and it had established itself as "the unquestioned king of the non-fiction shows currently playing in India."

He said that when SET was conducting market research ahead of a relaunch, the "overwhelming response was that if KBC was coming back, it should have Mr Bachchan as the host."

Bachchan, known as the "Big B" of the film world, has been a fixture of the Indian entertainment scene for four decades, making his movie debut in 1969. He held the KBC role for two long runs between 2000 and 2006 before illness sidelined him. Star Plus opted to use his younger rival Shah Rukh Khan for KBC-3 in 2007, but the show ended after only four months. KBC was put on the shelf after that, before SET bought the rights in 2008 as part of its comeback plan.

In recent years SET has languished in fourth place among the Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs), behind Star Plus, newcomer Colors and another long-time rival, Subhash Chandra's Zee Entertainment.

Figures from the industry survey agency Television Audience Measurement (TAM) show that SET had just 11.7 per cent of the Hindi general entertainment audience before the relaunch of KBC, well behind Star Plus on 23.8 per cent, Colors on 21.3 per cent and Zee on 18.6 per cent.

Bachchan and KBC-4 have given SET a major boost since then in both viewers and sponsorship, giving credence to Singh's turnaround plan for MSM.

"There has been a terrific response from advertisers and the show is completely sold out," Singh said this week. "We started with eight sponsors that were signed on weeks before the show opened and our spot sales were completed the first week of the show."

Industry sources say that 10-second spots on KBC were sold for 250,000 to 300,000 rupees, or about A$5700 to A$6800 each.

With strong economic growth delivering more money into the hands of 1.2 billion Indian consumers this year, the number of TV households in India is expected to reach 132 million by 2012.

According to a recent study of the Indian media and entertainment industry by KPMG, advertising and subscription revenue for TV will grow to about A$18 billion by 2012. And while there is a growing push into more regional language offerings, Hindi GECs dominate the revenue stream, taking about 35 percent of all advertising spending.

According to Singh, MSM, which is the Indian arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment, has had a "tremendous year" after a subdued performance since the mid-2000s.

"Today we have two of the top five Hindi GECs in our network (SET and SAB) and three of the top 10 channels (SET, SAB and sports/movie channel MAX) in India. Our strategy and channel positioning is clear and the ratings have validated our approach," he said.

Still, Singh has his work cut out in the GEC arena to grow and hold his market share. Altogether, there are 12 general entertainment channels doing battle for an immense Hindi-speaking audience that is worth more than A$7 billion in advertising revenue.

Star Plus has held the top spot for a decade, although it has been pressed in recent months by the aggressive, disruptive programming of Colors, launched in July 2008 as a joint venture between U.S. entertainment major Viacom and the fast-growing Network 18 media group set up by former TV anchor Raghav Bahl.

In an interview in Mumbai in April last year, Singh told The Australian that SET aimed to get back the No. 1 or No. 2 entertainment spot it had occupied in the past.

"We may have lost our way a little. But we have a strategy to get back. You'll see us be edgier, more contemporary, with a skew to younger viewers," he said then.

Eighteen months down the track, Amitabh Bachchan and KBC -4 are an integral part of that strategy. Those younger viewers, it seems, respond well to the 'Big B' of Bollywood, judging from the steam of comments left on his Twitter page.

On his blog this week, Bachchan wrote that KBC is playing for the "celebration season of Diwali" (India's festival of lights). "An entire week dedicated to fun and joyous laughter; to be in the mood for lightness of spirit and joy."

Right through the making of 'Jhootha Hi Sahi', there were murmurs and speculations around how the film had to go through various ups and downs due to costs involved in the production of the film. When launched around a couple of years back, Bollywood was at its peak, films were being launched with mammoth budget and stars were being paid through the roof. However, situation took a turnaround with recession hitting the industry.

"Fortunately for the makers, they had spent all the money before recession so nothing could be done anymore from the production perspective", says a highly placed source attached to the film, "See, the thing is that when people say that a film's cost is very high, they only talk about the actor and the director. Most of them conveniently ignore the money which goes into other aspects of production."

There were a few detractors who have claimed that the film was also stuck in the interim period due to monetary issues and other budgetary constraints.

 

"Abbas (Tyrewala), the director of the film, was always very sure that 'Jhootha Hi Sahi' had to be an October or November release. The time period between the last day's shoot of the film and the release has been around 8 months. However, the makers always knew that the film would take this much time since the climax required a lot of CG work", continues the source.

When contacted, John laughed away the insinuation, "In fact Abbas and I also used to joke around this that there would be a lot of speculations around the so-called delay in the film's release. But that's okay, people do talk. I just carried on with my work."

With countries like Sweden supporting their filmmakers monetarily, it seemed like the normally ignored Bollywood women directors would love the same subsidiary. Negative. Bollywood women directors do not feel the need for the government to help them finance their films. They went on to individually explain that there are perfectly fine by themselves. The following ladies took to a panel at the MAMI's 12th Mumbai Film Festival and explained their passion for cinema albeit the fact that they a) were not men and b) did not need the help of men to make good films. 

Acclaimed director Zoya Aktar, went on to explain that even if her films are more feminine, it's her film ultimately. "If I'm the director, it's my party. I will cry if I want to. I will be in all my hormonal glory. I'm not going to be embarrassed by it. As a man, you have chosen to be part of my set, so you handle it, boy," she added.

Newbie Anusha Rizvi was questioned as to sexism in the industry in all facets. "In workplaces, men have two ways of dealing with women, quiet flirtation or outright condescending. So you have to figure out how to deal with it. Beyond a point, there is no point talking about it," Rizvi said.

In fact, Aisha director Rajshree Ojha experienced a number of interesting events while shooting her directorial debut. "Everybody was shouting. We had fights on the sets. There were a lot of hormones. The men were very scared of the women on the sets," she explained. 

Actress and now director Nandita Das added, "They expect you not to be able to handle the pressures that comes on the set as a director. There is definitely a thing of labeling women."

Leena Yadav, whose first film Shabd was a washout at the box office went on to explain her experiences of direction, "There's an expectation that as a woman you'll probably make something different, and your women characters have to be outstanding."

And finally Sooni Taraporevala, who directed Little Zizou, confessed her reasons for taking years before finally deciding to plunge into direction. "After having written numerous scripts for others, it took me 24 years to write my own and once I had written it I did not want to give it to anyone else. I wanted to give myself a 50-year present."

NEW DELHI: Close to Rs 100 crore is at stake for Bollywood during the Diwali weekend with two big budget movies, Golmaal 3 and Action Replayy, slated for debut that will set the tone for other significant releases next month. 

For cinema theatres that tend to focus on cashing on the maximum during the opening weekend of a movie release, launch of a big film around a major holiday has become crucial for their revenue model. It also dictates fortunes for the Indian film industry that produces the most number of flicks in any single year around the world. "Movie buffs look forward to Diwali and Christmas as big movies are released during this time," said trade analyst Taran Adarsh. 

Although, the quantum of money at stake this year is just half of the production budget of the three movies released last Diwali, the industry would be hoping for a better show. While mega budget flick Blue and a mid-sized movie Main Aurr Mrs Khanna sank, another relatively big budget movie, All the Best, was the only one that managed to woo audiences last year. 

Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision produced Golmaal 3 starring Ajay Devgn , Kareena Kapoor and Arshad Warsi will lock horns with Vipul Shah produced Action Replayy starring Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, for eyeballs. Golmaal 3 is being distributed by Eros International that recently raised money through a public issue of shares and PVR Pictures, a subsidiary of multiplex operator PVR Ltd , will distribute Action Replayy in India. 

"We slotted Action Replayy for a Diwali release as it is a fun film and in sync with the festive spirit," said producer & director Vipul Shah. Kamal Gianchandani, CEO of PVR Pictures said scheduling a film release during Diwali has to do with consumers' willingness to spend on shopping and entertainment. Both the comedy movies will have wide release with an above average 1,800-2,000 prints with marketing budget of around `7-8 crore each, the same amount used to make a small budget film. 

Rupen Amlani, director-marketing & distribution at Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision said the company has tied up with several brands for in-film placement and promotional tie-ups. These include Tupperware, Emami and Bagpiper among others. The multiplex industry executives believe if both the movies click with the audience, it could turn out to be one of the biggest weekend grossers for them this year, possibly surpassing the previous best during the Id weekend when Dabangg was released. 

Following the two Diwali weekend releases in November, there will be Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai Bachchan starrer Guzarish besides movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 in 3D. December will see Farah Khan's Tees Maar Khan starring Akshay Kumar.

As per recent reports, Bollywood hotties Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Kareena Kapoor are competing with each other for the No. 1 spot. However, Ash rubbishes the reports as pure rumours. Interestingly, both the divas have their next biggies 'Action Replayy' and 'Golmaal 3' releasing on the same day. 

Thus, questions about the competition for the No. 1 spot were inevitable. When posed with such a query recently, Ash laughed it off and replied, "Do you think so? I never worked like that. Never felt any competition or followed any." 

She further explained that she never planned her career with an agenda to become No. 1 in Bollywood rather believed in giving her best to the films and characters in hand. "I never planned my films; I don't think we can do that," said Aishwarya and pointed out, "I made my debut with a regional film 'Iruvar' opposite Mohanlal. I worked with Shah Rukh for the first time as a sister in 'Josh'. I chose my path. I never thought or was concerned about competition. And if you ask me about being the highest paid actress in Bollywood, I think you get what you deserve." She concluded. 

We wish Ash all the best for her film and hope she doesn't cross the thin line between confidence and overconfidence. 

While "Rakta Charitra" may have scored over "Jhootha Hi Sahi" during the opening weekend, the latest verdict from Bollywood says that the John Abraham starrer has acquired extra notches over the last few days, so much so that the total collections from "Jhootha Hi Sahi" have gone past that of "Rakta Charitra"! Media reports claim that while the RGV production did well down south, Abbas Tyrewala ruled in the north.

With three films releasing on the same Friday, a cut-throat competition was on its way. And while critics have vehemently slammed Mallika Sherawat's "Hisss" act, it has not been too bad for either Vivek Oberoi or John Abraham. But while the Ram Gopal Verma production attracted more attention because of the violence projected in the film and the political hiatus surrounding its characters, Abbas Tyrewala has surely proved himself as the tortoise who ultimately wins the race.

"Jhootha Hi Sahi" had garnered a total of Rs. 1.5 crore on the first day of screening, a paltry sum when compared to the huge budget with which the film was made, but nevertheless things have been improving over the past few days. "Rakta Charitra" on the other hand, got a collection of only a crore on the opening day. Both films