Priyanka Chopra bags the best actress national award for ‘Fashion’

The 56th National Film Awards on Saturday, handed over as many as 13 awards to Bollywood. However, the Bengali film ‘Antaheen’ stole the show by winning the best feature film award and three more awards.

Priyanka Chopra bagged in the best actress award and Kangana Ranaut got the best supporting actress honour, both for Madhur Bhandarkar’s ‘Fashion’. Farhan Akhtar’s ‘Rock On’ got the best Hindi film award and actor Arjun Rampal won the best supporting actor award for the same film.

The Indira Gandhi award for the Best debut film of a director went to Neeraj Pandey’s ‘A Wednesday’, Yash Raj Films’ ‘Roadside Romeo’ bagged award in the best animation film category. Dibakar Banerjee’s satirical ‘Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!’ was awarded the best popular film award.

The award for best direction has gone to Bala for Tamil film Naan Kadauul, while the best actor is Upendra Limaye for Marathi film Jogva.

Music launch of ‘Karthik Calling Karthik’

The music of Farhan Akhtar’s much awaited film, ‘Karthik Calling Karthik’, was released recently at a suburban multiplex of Mumbai amidst the cast and crew of the film. The trio of Shankar Ehsaan Loy has introduced a new singer in the film, Elisa Mendonsa, who happens to be Loy’s daughter.

Talking about the music of the film, Farhan said, “Shankar Ehsaan Loy could never manage to disappoint anyone with their music. Honestly, Karthik Calling Karthik has some of the best songs heard. I hope everyone will like it as me.”

Explaining the reason for not having sung himself for any song in the film, Farhan said, “There was no need for me to sing in this film since my character didn’t required to. Karthik doesn’t even talk much in the film so if I start singing, it would look out of character. Even in Luck By Chance I didn’t sing. In Rock On, singing was an integral part of the performance. So it depends on the film.”

Talking about the film and its making, Director Vijay Lalwani said, “This is my first film and I desperately wanted to get the film made. So honestly, I never thought whom to cast as Karthik. For me, Karthik was the main character in my story. When we started our company Magic Beans, Amit and I thought why not try Excel out. I narrated the script to Farhan and he was on. Even Deepika said yes to it, which was surprising. So everything fell into place.”

Kangana Ranaut has reasons to celebrate

Kangana Ranaut seems to be on seventh heaven as she wins the National award for best supporting actress in Fashion at the 56th National awards announced on Saturday.

An elated Kangana said, “There’s a mini-celebration in my house, though my parents were crying when they heard about it. At 23 I seem to have cracked the highest cultural award for the country. What more can I do? I should just pack up and go back to my home in Himachal now with my parents.”

Not only her parents, but her fans too are overjoyed at her achievement. In fact, a Delhi-based fan of hers, Sameer, sent her a huge gift hamper to congratulate her for her National Award win. The hamper contained three boxes – one that had 22 wine bottles, one with 22 cakes of different types and sizes, and one with 22 accessories like earrings, bangles, bracelets, etc.

Attached to the gift hamper was a note from the fan which read, “22 because you are 22-year-old and a National Award is no mean achievement at such a young age.”

What more can a 22 year old actress ask for?

Bollywood stars in ‘Phir Mile Sur’

‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ had created stirs 22 years back as it exuded the essence of unity and nationality of India. This year, as India completes 60 years of its Republic, the song has been re-created as ‘Phir Mile Sur’ featuring more than 60 known personalities, including actors Aamir Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Salman Khan, Shilpa Shetty and Juhi Chawla. In all, the song features 22 superstars, 18 musicians, 13 artistes and singers and 15 other known personalities. The song has been composed by jazz artists Louis and Geno Banks.

The earlier version of the song featured vocalists Bhimsen Joshi and Balamurali Krishna, sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, tabla maestros Allah Rakha and Zakir Hussain, sportsmen Narendra Hirwani and Prakash Padukone and film personalities like Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Lata Mangeshkar, Mithun Chakraborty, Jeetendra, Hema Malini, Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, Kamal Haasan, Sharmila Tagore, Tanuja and Waheeda Rehman.

Amitabh Bachchan, who released this album, expresses his gratitude and says, “I was part of the old Mile Sur… and now yet again I am fortunate to be part of this one. We have integrated many tunes together and that’s precisely the message of this video.” Featuring in the video is well known musician Sivamani, who says, “I wanted to do something unique for this so I started playing drums on water. This has never been done by any artist.

Deepika Padukone and Bipasha Basu on the ramp for LFW 2010

Lakme Fashion Week kicked off the Summer/Resort 2010 Collections with Rocky S who came up in a palette of pastel hues like pink, peach, nude and turquoise and then moved to luxurious shaded tones which finally ended with ivory and black….and lots of gold trim and embellishment. All of it accessorized with diamonds from a new collection ‘Queenie for Giantti’ (a new line from sponsor Gitanjali Lifestyle) and the well known Bombay jewelry designer, socialiter and columnist. The showstopper for Rocky S was his all time favorite Bipasha Basu.

Deepika Padukone was the showstopper for the designers Shantanu and Nikhil who entered the sports arena with their new S&N label for Adidas Style Essentials. The collection called “Motochic” included track pants, shirts, muscle sleeve and body hugging Tees, skirts, tunics as well as trendy bags, belts and wallets, footwear and accessories. The entire collection was in (NYC) taxi cab yellow, black and white….and was presented on a runway/roadway, with flashing lights, road detours and the white line down the middle– keeping the models in and out of the traffic.

Check out Bipasha Basu and Deepika Padukone as they sizzle on the ramp for Lakme Fashion Week 2010.

Marriage makes Esha Koppikar worried about her hot scenes in ‘Right Yaaa Worng’

Eesha Koppikar has given quite a few sizzling hot scenes in her forthcoming ‘Right Yaaa Wrong’ and the actress was quite worried about the scenes before her marriage. After all she is now the bahu of a traditional family.

The film has Eesha playing the role of Anshita, Sunny Deol’s wife. Deol plays a cop and Eesha an interior designer who is a modern and independent woman. Eesha apparently plays a cheating wife who has a torrid, sexual affair on the side with newcomer Aarav Chowdhary as well.

Filmmaker Subhash Ghai is all praises for Eesha’s performance in the movie and says, “Eesha’s not only hot as ever in the film, she’s cool as an actress too.”

Newcomer Aarav was very nervous while shooting the lovemaking scene with Eesha. It took quite a few rehearsals and also some encouragement from Essha to help Aarav get over his inhibitions.

“It was a very nervous feeling to make love to Isha in the film. We had to do many rehearsals before canning the act. The seductiveness of Isha is quite palpable in the bath tub scene. Moreover, the fact that I was a relative newcomer in front of Isha made it all the more difficult for me to enact the scene. Finally, after many rehearsals and some good encouragement from Isha, we have performed some of the best love scenes ever performed on the big screen,” says Aarav.

Harman Baweja & Kareena Kapoor awarded as worst actors

In the style of Hollywood’s Razzies, the second Golden Kela awards was held this Friday night where actor Harman Baweja won the Worst Actor award for his performance in “What’s Your Raashee?” and Kareena Kapoor got the worst actress title for her role in “Kambakkht Ishq”. Interestingly, even Hollywood stars Sylvester Stallone and Denise Richards won the “Baawra Ho Gaya Hai Ke” (Have you gone muts) Award for participating in “Kambakkht Ishq” alongside Kareena and Akshay Kumar. The movie also won the worst film award, thus bagging in the highest number of ‘worst’ awards.

Abhishek Bachchan won the Dara Singh Award for worst accent in “Delhi-6″. Sporting as Abhishek is, he posted on twitter, “Another milestone in my career. I won the Golden Kela award for worst accent in ‘Delhi 6′. Chalo at least ‘Delhi-6′ won something. I’m overjoyed!”

The chief guest of the evening was Bollywood funnyman Cyrus Broacha, who was awarded the Cyrus Broacha Memorial Award. “It’s great. I’m thrilled. I hope to win this award every year,” Cyrus said.

Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar won the “Bas Kijiye Bahut Ho Gaya (Please stop its Enough) Award”!, asking him to stop making films. Ashutosh Gowariker was declared worst director for “What’s Your Raashee?” Jackky Bhagnani and Shruti Haasan were declared the worst newcomer actors for their roles in “Kal Kissne Dekha” and “Luck” respectively.

As expected, none of the stars named for the awards were present at the event.

Beautiful Aishwarya at the audio launch of ‘Rettachuzi’

It is not very common to see the Bachchan Bahu at the audio release of a film. But the occasion was special here as it was the audio launch of Tamil film “Rettachuzhi” produced by Shankar, who is directing her in “Endhiran: The Robot”.

Aishwarya looked ravishing as ever in a white saree at Sathyam Cinemas Monday evening.

“When we explained to her the significance of ‘Rettachuzhi’ and the cast of the film, she immediately agreed. It’s not just her beauty but her commitment towards her profession, which has made her a great actress,” said Shankar who was obviously thrilled to have her at the occasion.

Ash released the audio cassettes and CDs of “Rettachuzhi” which were accepted by noted lyricist Vairamuthu. Ash had once been described by Vairamuthu as a “Taj Mahal weighing 50 kilograms” in one of his lyrics for the film “Jeans”.

The fans were elated when Ash spoke in fluent Tamil and later switched backed to English.

“It’s an honour for me to have been present at this place among legends like Balachander and Bharathiraaja and I feel proud about it. I also feel happy that a woman is treated so respectfully at a public function like this,” she said.

“I can never forget the Tamil film industry and director Shankar in my life. Shankar’s ‘Jeans’ was my first successful film. The many things I learnt during the making of the film gave me enough self-confidence that I could continue to act for a few more years.

“I feel even more proud to be part of Shankar’s ‘Endhiran’ opposite superstar Rajnikanth…I watched a few songs and some sequences from ‘Rettachuzhi’…I think Karthick Raaja’s music and tunes are excellent. I would surely watch the film in future,” she added.