SCREEN TESTS FOR THE STARRY-EYED
SHAMMI KAPOOR, arguably India’s first celebrity web-junkie, has teamed up with yesteryear heartthrob, Poonam Dhillon, and filmscribe Taran Adarsh to flag off staryakalakaar.com’s free professional screen test for aspirants to the showbiz bigtime. Predictably, there’s been quite a melee at Video World, Khar, Mumbai, not just of starry-eyed youth but also of talent scouts from Mumbai’s premier production outfits. And it goes without saying that the celebrity twosome’s presence on the vortal’s advisory board has lent a fair amount of credibility to the talent hunt.

BR Films, Eagle Films, Tess Mirza Films, Romu Sippy Films and several hi-profile TV software houses are among the clients who’ve signed up with the vortal in their hunt for fresh faces. The website, not to be confused with the popular TV series with the same name, not only showcases talent online but also promotes it offline.

Now for a minor hitch: gatecrashers will not be screen tested. If you’re an aspirant yourself and are sure you have what it takes, you’re advised to register online, before you hop on to the first Mumbai-bound train.

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A START-UP FOR THE MOVIEBUFF
WAIT. We have more news on the showbiz portal front. The latest start-up with a celebrity director on board is 3to6.com. And the celeb promoting it? Why, NSD alumnus, actor and national awardee, ASHISH VIDYARTHI, of course.
For those who’ve clicked on late or are yet to do so, 3to6.com dishes out a dose of movie news, complete with a list of forthcoming Indian and Hollywood releases, box-office reports, actor profiles, analysis and retrospectives. Couch potatoes will find plenty to catch their fancy, too, we’re promised, with updates on the TV scene.
So what’s new, did you ask? Well, also on the cards are a film welfare trust, an online film school, audio-video streaming, and e-commerce initiatives that run the gamut of DVD, home theatre equipment and music sales. The site’s offline revenue model boasts of talent and placement services and event management. To top it all, launching the portal are Pallavi and Sanjay Jha of cricketnext.com and moneypickle.com fame. So here’s to some compulsive surfing.   

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ANOTHER SEAGAL SURPRISE
STEVEN SEAGAL’s Indian fans now have fresh reasons to rave. The multifaceted star of Under Siege, Out For Justice, Hard To Kill, Marked For Death and On Deadly Ground has been roped in to the board of Bollywood Group Inc, which sponsors movie, music and fashion awards, and is now poised to forward-integrate into an international media company. Seagal will play a major role in the group’s forthcoming Bollywood Music Awards, scheduled for November 12 and the fashion and movie awards next April.
So the Seagal omnibus keeps churning out fresh surprises by the megatonne. Not so long ago, the seventh degree blackbelt in martial arts founded his own Aikido School in Japan, which now has more than 2000 students on its rolls. Seagal, who’s also produced his own movies, is also an accomplished musician and guitarist. Recently, the devout Buddhist partnered Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey in a Seoul concert that helped raise a substantial fortune for charity. Now, he’s working on an album all his own, which features Elton John and Bonnie Rait in guest appearances. And it’s bound to be a hotsell, riding on the strength of its curiosity value alone. So keep licking your chops in glee over that one.  

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MASTERMIND IN WAITING
THE news, please pardon cliche, spread like wild fire, alright. South sensation, KASTURI, made it to the South Indian semifinals of quizwiz, Siddharth Basu’s series for the BBC, Mastermind India. But the word-of-mouth publicity has come a wee bit too late. The episode, wherein she lost out to a Bangalore-based professor by a cat’s whisker, has already been aired. And predictably, the channel’s being beseiged with calls for a repeat telecast.

Kasturi, the quintessential beauty with brains, surprised even her fans by getting thus far on the quiz. Arguably the toughest quiz now showing on the telly had Kasturi opting to tackle questions on ace musicman, AR Rahman in the first round. After a promising start, she ran into some tough and not-so-tough posers in the second round such as this one: What was the title of the Tamil version of Chachi 420?

So what if she capitulated rather tamely in the end in the Mastermind series? Kasturi can now try her luck at getting quizzed by the Big B on Basu’s other, more popular quizshow, Kaun Banega Crorepati, if she cares to. Care to give it a shot, lady?

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WILL HE GO LIVE OR WON’T HE?
MEANWHILE, the indefatigable SHEKHAR SUMAN and his gags unlimited, Movers & Shakers, will soon try a different tack, if he’s to be believed. The show’s finally going live, as Shekhar had promised us in January, if only for one solitary episode. The ploy is an obvious gimmick to celebrate its completing three years and 500 episodes on air.

The live episode, Shekhar’s been quoted saying, will be canned on bigger, 500-seater sets, shaped like a Greek amphitheatre. The top brass at Sony have denied they’re going to try their hand at any such gimmick, though. They say the logistics involved would be too complicated to handle, considering it’s a daily show. But Shekhar’s been promising the pressfolk the guests to the show will soon be ticketed, as is the Jay Leno show on CNN, for one, or Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, the show that spawned our own desi imitation, KBC, for another. Well, we’re gonna have to wait a while by the looks of it, to see who’s right.

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A TASTE OF HIS OWN MEDICINE
WELL, if you had your sights set on occupying the chair made famous by the Big B, you’re gonna be disappointed, pal. The chair isn’t on auction, never was. Neither is AMITABH BACHCHAN signing off as host of Kaun Banega Crorepati after episode number 130. He’s in it for the long haul, it turns out.
But the KBC series is all set to spring a few surprises on viewers, starting with the Bachchan’s birthday on October 11. Chances are, he’s going to trade places at the centre of the dome for one episode. He’ll be fiddling with his designer goatee for a change, tackling the questions. And guess who’s going to pose the questions? Why, Siddharth Basu, of course.

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A FEW LAKHS MORE FOR CHARITY
HERE’S more on the KBC front. What with the show likely to spawn a dozen imitations in coming weeks, the Star TV network is pulling out all stops to inject more pep and fun into its own show. The other day, we ran into AAMIR KHAN on the show’s sets at Film City, and an all-too-eager unithand told us he’s one of several stars who will take the seat beside Bachchan in forthcoming episodes. And Sonali Bendre is another.

Aamir, we hear, made a cool Rs 50 lakh on the show, while Sonali, who had to contend with questions that were a lot tougher, had to settle for Rs 25 lakh. No, neither will get to take home the moolah: the channel stipulates the money they made will go to charity. What’s a few lakhs to the stars, any way, did we hear you ask?    

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HER SEASON IN THE SUN
NOT for nothing is TABU on the cover of SCREEN, this week. We’ve timed it to perfection, too. For starting this week, we’re in for a Tabu season, in every sense of the word, at the counting house.

Wanna know why? Well, releasing this Friday are three Tabu movies. Or make that four, for Astitva, being a Hindi-Marathi bilingual, isn’t one film but two. Judging from the previews, she has meaty roles in the other two, Shikhar and Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar, as well. Tabu, dubbed the thinking man’s actress, is one who has simply refused to repeat herself or do walk-on roles. And this could well be pay-back time, if even one of the four movies manages to hit pay-dirt at the turnstiles, that is. What’s more, the four ain’t all we shall see of her. For Tabu has other equally challenging roles to bank on. So how about these four by way of appetisers?

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MAGIC WITH TINKLE
THE planned IPO launch may not happen in a jiffy. Neither will SANJAY KHAN take on son-in-law-to-be, Hrithik Roshan, on board the online venture he’d announced a while ago. Not immediately at any rate.
But by the looks of it, Sanjay Khan and his Numero Uno International (NUIL) have some big irons in the fire. The company’s profits are set to double in a year’s time, and Khan is determined to float the IPO before long, obviously to fund his ambitious plans. Among them is a JV with Yorkshire TV, to produce telefilms for foreign consumption. Also on the cards is a move to bring Tinkle comics alive, complete with digital effects on the small screen. NUIL has signed a deal with Anant Pai to that effect, and scripting the stories for the TV adaptation will be Farrokh Dhondy.
For the nation’s kids and the kids at heart, who’re starved of real, thought-provoking entertainment, this should be welcome news. Hopefully, they’ll be willing to give those wretched cartoons a miss, and get hooked on to Tinkle on the boob tube for a change.    

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APPAREL FIT FOR THE HEARTTHROB
THE reports from the box-office suggest Fiza will end up being a commission-earner, after all. But HRITHIK ROSHAN fans are still taking umbrage at the raw deal meted out to him by the producers, if the letters streaming in to SCREEN by the day are any indication.

Apparently, Hrithik’s brand equity hasn’t taken a beating, Fiza or no Fiza. The heartthrob continues to wow his fans with every new modelling assignment and film he signs. The campaign for Coca Cola, where a tap-dancing Hrithik works magic with coke bottles, with some help from digital effects, is a case in point. Now, Hrithik’s been signed to endorse S Kumar’s range of trendy pret-a-porter, Cinnamon. The menswear range, launched in Mumbai, last week, includes shirts, trousers, blazers, suits, T-shirts, jeans and loungewear. They come easy on the pockets, too, with shirts and trousers priced upwards of Rs 495 and 545 respectively.

It isn’t the affordability that caught Hrithik’s fancy, though. “Cinnamon’s a youthful, fun-loving and trendy brand, features I readily identify with,” said Hrithik at the launch.

Now, you know what the nation’s star-struck teeny-boppers will soon be wearing.

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Shaju George Alex
With inputs from Subhash K Jha and Shoma Chatterjee

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