Bollywood gets personal with a bevy of biopics

 

From underworld figures and political activists to famous artists and star athletes, Bollywood is going biographical with a series of films based on, or inspired by, real lives.The first to hit screens is "Once Upon A Time in Mumbai", a thriller set in the 1970s about a power struggle between two gangsters, complete with big hair, even bigger moustaches, wing-collar shirts and flares.

Related

  • Bollywood clashed with local politics in Mumbai as backers of a right-wing party attacked cinemas to protest remarks by one of India's biggest stars.

  • India's twin obsessions of cricket and Bollywood are at the heart of a bitter row that has broken out between the country's top film star and a radical right-wing party in the movie capital Mumbai.The dispute, which has seen the ultra Hindu-nationalist Shiv Sena party threatening to scupper the release of Shah Rukh Khan's latest blockbuster, has its roots in a diplomatic spat over the Indian Premier League (IPL).

  • Promotional posters for a new Bollywood thriller, showing leading actress Kareena Kapoor from behind and apparently naked from the waist up, have got some people's backs up in India."Kurbaan" (Sacrifice) hits screens in India and more than 25 countries around the world on Friday and has attracted intense interest because Kapoor and leading man Saif Ali Khan are a couple in real life.But the Shiv Sena, a hardline Hindu nationalist group, have called the poster and the love scene from which it was taken an affront to Indian values.

  • Columbian pop queen Shakira, the star of the World Cup song "Waka Waka," is to sing for a Bollywood film in the latest move by a global star to target the Indian market, a music director said Thursday.Shakira, whose catchy Africa-themed football anthem has had a mixed critical reception, is to follow in the footsteps of fellow pop diva Kylie Minogue who made a move into Bollywood last year.

  • Colombian pop queen Shakira, the star of the World Cup song "Waka Waka," is to sing for a Bollywood film in the latest move by a global star to target the Indian market, a music director said Thursday.Shakira, whose catchy Africa-themed football anthem has had a mixed critical reception, is to follow in the footsteps of fellow pop diva Kylie Minogue who made a move into Bollywood last year.

  • US R&B star Akon is to record a track for a Bollywood film, following in the footsteps of rapper Snoop Dogg who raised his profile in the 1.2-billion-strong Indian market with a similar foray.The Grammy Award-nominated star will contribute to the soundtrack of "RA.One," a sci-fi action film currently in production starring heartthrob Shah Rukh Khan as a flying superhero and actress Kareena Kapoor as his love interest.Unlike Snoop Dogg, who featured on the soundtrack of the 2008 Bollywood film "Singh is Kinng", Akon will sing in local language Hindi.

  • British actor Ben Kingsley this week makes his debut in a Bollywood film, nearly 30 years after his Oscar-winning performance in "Gandhi" catapulted him to worldwide fame.The 66-year-old plays a brilliant mathematician, Perci Trachtenberg, in the thriller "Teen Patti" (Three Cards) who meets a reclusive fellow academic, Venkat, at a London casino.Venkat (Amitabh Bachchan) tells him of a discovery he has made that he believes could redefine ideas about probability and tests his theory on a tour of Mumbai's illegal gambling dens.

  • Foreign private equity investors, studios and film funds will be given a chance to invest directly in Bollywood films at the project level as the world's most prolific movie-making industry goes into capital-raising mode

  • Bollywood actresses are slimming down, as an increasing vogue for showing bare flesh on screen and Western ideas about body size and beauty take hold in India's big cities.Whereas former leading ladies like Mumtaz and Zeenat Aman once found their curvaceous figures no barrier to success, their modern-day counterparts are as famous for their diet and fitness regimes as their acting and dancing skills.

  • Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan, basking in a late flowering of critical acclaim, has no plans to bring down the curtain on his four-decade career despite a number of health scares.The 67-year-old "Godfather of Bollywood" received the lifetime achievement award at the annual Asian Film Awards held in Hong Kong late Monday."If you recognise me, you recognise the Indian film fraternity, and indeed my own country. So, deeply, thank you," said Bachchan, who has appeared in more than 100 movies after he emerged as a tough-guy hero in the early 1970s.

 
DJI: 10447.93 1.22% |S&P 500: 1104.51 1.3% |FTSE: 5428.15 1.05% |Nikk.: 9114.13 0.56% |DAX: 6134.62 0.83% |HSI: 20971.50 0.49% |
FX: EUR/GBP: 1.1997 | USD/EUR: 1.2892 | JPY/USD: 84.375 | Commodities: Gold: 1247.05 | Crude - CLH09.NYM: 0.00 |