Bollywood

"Jannat 2" is stuffed with the buffet-style storytelling that makes commercial Indian cinema seem gluttonously overwhelming by the standards of most Hollywood output. Would a moody Michael Mann crime drama be improved by a musical number? Could a Nancy Meyers crossed-wires romance benefit from a dense, intense thriller subplot? The film shares its director, lead actor and a few behind-the-scenes names with the 2008 Indian film "Jannat," but this sequel otherwise is a stand-alone affair, with new characters and a self-sustaining story line.

"Jannat 2" is stuffed with the buffet-style storytelling that makes commercial Indian cinema seem gluttonously overwhelming by the standards of most Hollywood output. Would a moody Michael Mann crime drama be improved by a musical number? Could a Nancy Meyers crossed-wires romance benefit from a dense, intense thriller subplot? The film shares its director, lead actor and a few behind-the-scenes names with the 2008 Indian film "Jannat," but this sequel otherwise is a stand-alone affair, with new characters and a self-sustaining story line.

One rarely expects to be moved to tears at a karaoke competition in a Lakewood strip-mall movie theater. But Neil Sheth, a whippet-thin 20-year-old from Palos Verdes Estates, had the crowd on the verge as he auditioned for BollyStar 2009, an open tryout for a singing role in a mainstream Bollywood film.

In the airy Bollywood romance "London Paris New York," the thrill of spending a long day in a faraway city with someone you're growing smitten with is taken to a bubble-like extreme: Maybe only a handful of lines go to anybody else besides attractive leads Ali Zafar and Aditi Rao Hydari. Pakistani pop singer Zafar plays a wealthy Bollywood scion and aspiring filmmaker named Nikhil, who at a London airport meets Lalitha (Hydari), a politically minded college student on her way to university in New York.

Early in the Bollywood film "Bodyguard," leading man Salman Khan performs what is arguably the world's first muscle dance. That is, wearing a sleeveless denim jacket, he glares into the camera and flexes his biceps to the beat of the song. In case you miss the point of the pulsating brawn, the lyrics of the song noisily declare that the Bodyguard is the hottest and toughest man in town. After which, the story of his extremely convoluted love affair with the lady he is guarding proceeds.

B.R. Chopra, 94, a veteran Indian filmmaker whose Bollywood career spanned five decades, died Wednesday at his home in Mumbai of ailments relating to old age, according to Yash Raj Films, a movie studio run by his younger brother. Baldev Raj Chopra was born in Ludhiana, India, on April 22, 1914. After studying at Lahore University, he worked as a movie reporter. After the partition of India, he moved to Mumbai, where he started his career as a filmmaker. He started his own production house, B.R. Films, in 1955.

James Cameron's "Avatar" may have recently become the biggest moneymaker in movie history, but there's another film that's quietly been breaking box-office records. That would be Vidhu Vinod Chopra's "3 Idiots," which now tops the list of highest-grossing Bollywood films, bringing in more than $80 million worldwide. Despite his film's success, Chopra, a writer-director-producer, says he feels like "a kid out of film school." Granted, few kids out of film school would be able to lease a large house in Beverly Hills, score representation with ICM's Jeff Berg or greenlight projects in India over a cup of tea, as Chopra is inclined to do. But now, the man who sits atop a filmmaking empire based on the outskirts of Mumbai is looking to replicate some of that success stateside.

It's 8 p.m. Friday and the historic Towne Theatre downtown is sold out. About 500 moviegoers have crowded into the three-screen movie house, paying up to $12 a ticket to watch not the latest Hollywood blockbuster but instead the premieres of three Indian movies that are opening simultaneously in India. Tonight's showcase feature: the Tamil action thriller "Aadhavan" starring hunk Surya Sivakumar, who enjoys rock-star status among fans known to break out in cheers when his image appears on screen.

India has a population of more than 1.1 billion, and South Asians make up one of the fastest-growing immigrant communities in the United States. The country's thriving Bollywood movie business, however, has not yet exploded in mainstream American theaters —- something "Kites," in an unusual two-pronged release plan, hopes to help change. On Friday, India's Reliance Big Cinema will release the traditional cut of the romantic drama, a two-hour-plus movie filled with extended dance sequences, enough melodrama to fill a season of "Gossip Girl" and plenty of lingering close-ups of bare-chested star Hrithik Roshan (think a Hindi-speaking Fabio, with better hair)

Bollywood mega-star Shah Rukh Khan returned to India today, telling fans that the U.S. immigration screening process was discriminatory and involved bizarre and irrelevant questions -- even as he denied that his strong reaction was a publicity stunt for his upcoming movie. Khan, 43, was taken for secondary screening at Newark Airport for about 90 minutes Friday, which he said happened because of his Muslim name and South Asian origin. Khan was on his way to Chicago to attend a celebration for Saturday's Indian Independence Day. In recent months, he's traveled repeatedly to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York to shoot his upcoming film "My Name Is Khan," about the discrimination Muslims have faced in the U.S. since Sept.

Three women lose quite a bit of money (and pride) to a dashing chameleon con artist in the Bollywood confection "Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl," a colorfully busy splash of romantic comedy nonsense that won't fool any seasoned moviegoer with its bad-boy-taming schematics. The title is something of a head-scratcher, because we don't learn hunky star Ranveer Singh's character's real name until the last moments, after he's played a variety of swindling smooth talkers under various names, opposite a wealthy party girl (Parineeti Chopra)

Dev Anand Star of Bollywood films, producer, director Bollywood star Dev Anand, 88, a charismatic and flamboyant fixture of Indian films for more than half a century, died Saturday of a heart attack in a London hotel, his family said. Within a few years of his 1946 screen debut in the Hindi-language film "Hum Ek Hain," the actor was considered a superstar. With his movie-star looks and a melodious voice, he experienced great success as a romantic lead. As the star of "Baazi," he helped introduce noir-style crime movies to India in 1951.

Terribly earnest and earnestly terrible, the heavy-handed Bollywood political screed "I Am Singh," from veteran actor-director Puneet Issar, begins as a passably melodramatic outpouring of post-9/11 grief. Proud Sikh Ranveer (Gulzar Chahal) flies from India to Los Angeles in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks to investigate the killing of his brother by anti-Muslim skinheads. While there he teams up with former Sikh LAPD officer Fateh (Issar), fired for wearing his turban, and a Pakistani American (Rizwan Haider)

Sushil Kumar's job entering data into a computer earns him $120 a month. His 50-year-old home is in serious need of repair. His family owes $8,500. But his life, so similar to the hardscrabble existence of fellow Indians, has taken a decidedly Bollywood turn for the better. The rags-to-riches story that unfolded in the 2008 Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" came to life this week when the struggling government clerk from eastern India won $1 million on a TV game show.

Early in the Bollywood film "Bodyguard," leading man Salman Khan performs what is arguably the world's first muscle dance. That is, wearing a sleeveless denim jacket, he glares into the camera and flexes his biceps to the beat of the song. In case you miss the point of the pulsating brawn, the lyrics of the song noisily declare that the Bodyguard is the hottest and toughest man in town. After which, the story of his extremely convoluted love affair with the lady he is guarding proceeds.

"My Brother's Bride," a bouncy and good-humored romantic musical comedy, telegraphs its plot within its first 10 minutes — leaving a mere 135 minutes to go. Yet debuting director Ali Abbas Zafar strings together such a constant rush of twists and turns, amid a plethora of pleasing musical numbers, that he makes the getting to the inevitable happy ending lots of fun. It's a stylish Bollywood crowd-pleaser with a provocative subtext revealing the...

Now playing: a real-life, multimillion-dollar horror show for the Indian film industry, starring one of its biggest names. The drama's ending will tell a great deal about how justice is administered in this country, and may reveal who was behind one of the most diabolical terrorist attacks in Indian history. Earlier this month, a Bombay judge sent Sanjay Dutt, the country's muscular, home-grown answer to Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone, back to jail, revoking his bail.

Director Brett Ratner, who cemented his success with the "Rush Hour" trilogy, has taken Anurag Basu's entertaining Bollywood extravaganza "Kites," which opened just a week ago, and reworked it as "Kites: The Remix" to make it more appealing to wider audiences. Ratner has succeeded admirably without destroying the heart and soul of the original, yet oddly, the work opened Friday without benefit of media previews. From the 130-minute original, which is actually a rather short running time for Bollywood, Ratner has cut a fast-paced 90-minute version that preserves the star-crossed lovers theme but cuts back on the soap operatics and other over-the-top moments so typical of Bollywood.

Walt Disney Co. has made a $454-million offer to acquire Mumbai media company UTV Software Communications Ltd. as it seeks to capitalize on the rapidly growing yet fiercely competitive Indian market. Disney offered about $22.68 (1,000 rupees) a share to buy the remaining 49.6% stake it does not already own in UTV, a firm that started out in television production but has expanded into movies, games and other forms of interactive content. Among its claims to fame, UTV says it launched India's first daily soap opera, "Shanti," in 1995.