Bengali Babes in Bollywood - Rani Mukherjee

Rani to talk about her 'engagement'

Apart from a scene or two in her films, Rani Mukherjee has never touched a cigarette in her life.

A story that Rani has been lately puffing on the cancer stick has her family and friends amused exasperated and bewildered.

A very close friend of Rani says, "Rani's mother has apparently been asking Rani to quit smoking. Rani's mom is having fits. She wants to know why she'd ask her daughter to quit smoking when the girl doesn't light up at all?

All her friends smoke and drink, and Rani is okay with that. But she won't touch either. We've never seen Rani smoke in our life. She has done a couple of scenes in Bicchoo and Bunty Aur Babli where she had to smoke. Beyond that she has never touched the damned thing. "

Says the friend, "First the false report on Rani's engagement with Aditya Chopra, now this report about she being a smoker…The day Rani was supposed to have been engaged she was shooting the entire day for Pradeep Sarkar's Laga Chunri Mein Daag and laughing her head off.

'Hey guys guess what? I got engaged and I don't know about it,' she called her friends and joked. But now Rani is really up to her neck. Her father cannot go on clarifying on her behalf.

Even on the engagement issue she felt it wasn't right to for her ailing dad to be harassed. 'Dad is already handling my work. How much more can he take?' Rani said to us friends.

Her silence is being misconstrued as acquiescence. Rani has been lying low because she feels the stories are much too baseless to be dignified with a clarification. But now she feels some people are taking advantage of her silence. "

The lady in question is all set to speak out against all the controversies.

Ironically, the story about her smoking comes at a time Rani is all set to do a campaign against smoking.

Says the friend, "Rani had decided to do an anti-smoking campaign on television even before this story came out. Now she's all the more determined to do the campaign, and not just that.

She'll soon be giving her version on the supposed engagement with Aditya Chopra because her family and close friends feel such talk and her silence are damaging her career. "

Abhi-Rani renew friendship!!!

After Abhishek and Aishwarya's marriage, rumours were ripe that Rani Mukherjee and Abhishek would not be friends any more as wife Aishwarya is not keen on this friendship.

But apparently while shooting for ‘Laga Chunari Mein Daag’, Rani and Abhishek renewed their friendship and were back to set the set on fire.

Though initially Rani was miffed about not having called for the wedding of the century, Abhishek's friendly behavior brought everything back to normal again.

But it is heard that wife Aishwarya dropped in to spend some time with dearest hubby during the movie's outdoor shoot. To ponder deeper into the topic- was it to spend time with Abhi or was to spy on him?

Rani's tryst with Sexuality!

So Rani is getting bolder! And so are the meaty roles she is getting though controversial. The ever-so-careful-oh-so-lean-money-making-machine, the Yashraj Films are facing 'a moral question’ (never mind the creative one).

Aditya Chopra and director Pradeep Sarkar are hesitant about Rani Mukerji's portrayal of a sex worker in Lagaa Chunari Mein Daag.

The plot has Rani coming from a respectable middle-class family living in a small town. City life lures her and eventually, falling on bad times, she turns to flesh trade for a living.

The makers feel that Rani's journey, from a middle-class woman to a sex worker (in the film), may not go down well with the audiences. In fact, a middle-class woman being portrayed as a sex-worker has always been a strict no-no.

Although a good measure of mother-daughter relationship has been thrown in but that doesn't solve the problem. The plot essentially focuses on Rani's predicament in a big bad city.

There is a also this question of repetition as Rani Mukerji is also playing a sex worker in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saawariya.

Apparently the recent box-office letdowns (read Tara Rum Pum and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom) has prompted Aditya to mull over the script yet again before the film makes its way to the editing table.

The creative team behind the film already have had a few meetings. We say, when will Yashraj films the family moral instigator grow up and outrage the viewers' sensibilities to a little more than reality. the film is intended to release in September."

Rani engaged to Aditya Chopra? Nobody knows for sure

Mumbai, Jun 20: Is Rani Mukherjee engaged to Aditya Chopra? Speculation among news agencies is rife, as rumour mills continue spinning off stories about the couple.

Reports claim that Rani Mukherjee, 29, got engaged to producer-director Aditya Chopra, son of veteran filmmaker Yash Chopra, in a quiet ceremony at Chopra's Juhu bungalow.

Industry sources were quoted saying that the ceremony was attended by close friends and family, and that no date has been set for the wedding.

The information is however unconfirmed as yet, even as certain agencies went ahead to deny the rumour, while noting that Rani and Aditya are said to have been seeing each other for two years now.

Aditya is in the middle of a divorce from his estranged wife Payal Khanna, and his family is apparently unhappy about his decision.

Tabloid reports even added that Yash Chopra has threatened to disinherit Aditya from the Rs.1,000 crore Yash Raj Film empire if he does marry Rani - Yash Raj Films were quick to deny this report too, saying the father-son relationship continues to be cordial.

The chemistry between Rani and Aditya was supposedly sparked off on the sets of his home production Saathiya. Rani was later cast in several films produced under the Yash Raj banner, including Mujhse Dosti Karoge, Hum Tum, Veer-Zaara, Bunty Aur Babli, and Tara Rum Pum.

She's also got a role in the soon to be released Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, and is currently working on only three films in all.

Aditya Chopra, who is known to be a recluse, and is credited with transforming Yash Raj studios into Bollywood’s biggest film conglomerate, has rarely ever been spotted together with the actress.

Yash Raj Films spokespersons have reportedly denied the engagement, saying the reports are false, while Rani and Aditya are not available for comment

Rani engaged to Aditya Chopra. Rumor or Reality?

It's been only two months since the Abhishek Bachchan-Aishwarya Rai wedding, and now comes news of another Bollywood leading lady who will soon be tying the knot.

Industry insiders are saying that Rani Mukherjee is engaged to be married to producer-director Aditya Chopra, son of veteran filmmaker Yash Chopra.

Sources say that the couple got engaged in a quiet ceremony at Chopra's Juhu bungalow, attended by close friends and family. No date has been set for the wedding, since Aditya is in the middle of a divorce from his estranged wife Payal Khanna.

The rumour mills say that Aditya's family is unhappy about Aditya's decision. Tabloids also say that Yash Chopra has threatened to disinherit Aditya from the Rs 1,000 crore Yash Raj Film empire if he does marry Rani.

It's believed that Aditya and Rani have been seeing each other for two years, and that Aditya took to Rani after working with her on his home production Saathiya. He subsequenetly cast Rani in many films produced under the Yash Raj banner, including Mujhse Dosti Karoge, Hum Tum, Veer-Zaara, Bunty Aur Babli, Tara Rum Pum and the forthcoming Laaga Chunari Mein Daag.

Rani has reduced her workload in the last one year. The 29-year-old actress is currently working on only three films.

The couple has never been spotted together. In fact, Aditya Chopra is known to be a recluse. He has given only one print interview in his life, and has never appeared on television. Aditya is the mastermind behind transforming Yash Raj studios from a modest film company into Bollywood’s biggest film conglomerate.

Showdown between Yash and Aditya Chopra

Bollywood's most powerful family is on the verge of breaking up. If one is to rely on the reports doing the rounds, there has been a showdown between Yash Chopra and his son Aditya. The trigger is Aditya's impending divorce from his wife Payal. The couple was married in 2001 and trouble in the marriage began soon after with Aditya moving out of home for a while and then beginning divorce proceedings. Payal is the daughter of close family friends.

According top sources, the father and son, Yash and Aditya, have stopped speaking to each other for a while now, but matters really took a turn for the worst when Aditya pressed ahead with the divorce proceedings. An upset Yash Chopra is believed to have threatened to disinherit him. At stake here is the Rs 1000 crore plus Yashraj empire. While the business is currently run by Aditya, who is the brain behind the current stature of Yashraj Films, Yash Chopra is still the head. A fallout between the two will definitely impact the clout they enjoy in Bollywood. This is definitely the mother of all big fights!

Amisha in Yash Raj's next

Actress Amisha Patel has been signed for director Kunal Kohli's next film starring Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukherjee. The film will be produced by Yash Raj films. Apparently, the actress has bagged an important role in the film, which goes on the floors in September.

The actress is understandably excited at having signed a Yash Raj film. Director Kohli is already scouting foreign locales for his movie. He has just returned from Singapore and Bangkok, but is yet to make a decision. The film will be mainly shot in New Delhi but there will be one foreign location required for certain portions. Kohli has the Rani-Saif hit Hum Tum to his credit as well as the Aamir-Kajol starrer Fanaa last year. This should definitely give Amisha's career the push it needs.

Tara Rum Pum - A Movie Review

Tara Rum Pum

Starring Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Ali Haji, Angelina Idnani, Jaaved Jaffri
Directed by Siddharth Anand
Rating: ***

Now we know why the director is named Anand. Hrishikesh Mukherjee meets Walt Disney in this utterly heartwarming take on life's most serious and cruel jokes.

There's a moment in Anand's film where Rani plays that clichéd sequence where the hero's fallen-on-hard-times wife rejects a fat cheque from her rich father.

"I did the right thing, didn't I?" Rani asks her screen-hubby Saif, who looks aghast. "You turned down a cheque for 50,000 dollars? For that sum of money I'm ready to be compromised every day."

The above sequence is a strangely subverted interpretation of that sequence from Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Satyakam where Dharmendra's idealism was weighed against Sharmila Tagore's ability to ward off temptations.

Tara Rum Pum is like a romp through the highest emotional summts of life's lowest blows. Cleverly Anand situates this rags-to-riches drama of a a spendthrift car racer, his cautious and principled wife and his two adorable kids (Sooraj Barjatya, roll over) in New York where the economically challenged family moves from up-market Manhattan to downtown Queens.

Cinematographer Binod Pradhan captures the underbelly of New York and the empty belly of racing-driver RV's family in a restrained rush of emotional adrenaline.

Anand, God bless his unfettered soul, mixes the business of an absorbing riches-to-rags tale with tons of hyphenated homilies.

In the true Walt Disney tradition, the family makes the best of its challenged morality when it falls on hard times.

There're moments, like the one where Saif's hungry little boy (Ali Haji, delightfully natural) devours a half-eaten burger retrieved from a trash can, where eyes turn to collective moistness.

You can't fault the director for pumping up the tears. Commercial cinema is all about the pleasure you derive in bringing the fundemental emotions of love and life together in a clasp of a giggle and a gasp.

Tara Rum Pum makes you do just that. Anand's screenplay is original from far. Get closer, and you see scenes from Days Of Thunder and a whole chunk from the Russell Crowe boxing film Cinderella Man brought to us in vibrant colours.

Saif, I'd like to believe, is a better actor than Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe. He invests the role of the roguish rugged dare-devilish and impetuous Fallen Hero with pathos and parody.

Watch him in the scene where he tricks his little daughter into staying back in their new run-down home as part of an imaginary reality show (it's a long story….let's just say Siddharth Anand knows Life Is Beautifu and not just for Robert Benigni ). Saif invests even the minutest moment with a tapestried irony.

It helps to have Rani Mukherjee as a co-star. Though her make-up and clothes are all wrong in the first- half, Rani brings a thehrao and a emotional resonance to her supportive wife's part in the second-half where she has to stand by a man who has lost his heroic sheen and is a bit of an embarrassment to the mirror.

Javed Jaffri replicates the role of the star-manager from dozens of Hollywood films. Though his penchant for doing accents (this time Gujarati) is admirable, he doesn't quite blend with the fabric of fertile feelings that irrigate Anand's joyous ride into the raga of richness.

Oh yes the performing stalwart Victor Bannerjee is outstanding…. That is to say, he stands out of the script trying to give a semblance of originality to the role of the heroine's rich snobbish father done by everyone from Madan Puri in Avtar to Sharad Saxena in Pyar Ke Side Effects.

The huggable inspirational tale is buoyed by a bewildering array of songs and dances (including an item where the protagonists dance with animation figures) all choreographed to spotlight the sheer lightness of being a happy family undergoing distressing times.

The initial fifteen minutes could have been more inspired, though. The first 'rave' number replete with hose- pipes going off in the middle of the night, serve as a reminder of how trendy the traditional Family Saga purports to become in present times.

Nothing, not even the tepid songs (Vishal-Shekhar, what were you thinking?) can take away from the sheer weightlessness of the narrative as it moves through several superbly written scenes….take the one at the family dinner where Saif and Rani pretend to be satiated so as the kids could eat properly.

And that one shot where Daughter, Son and Dog stand staring longingly at a confectionary stall, make you wish all your cynicism would dissolve.

Feel-good cinema, anyone? When was the last time you felt so good watching a mainstream Hindi film? Replicating the current international trend towards making films that stress family values (Mira Nair's The Namesake, Gabriel Muccino's The Pursuit Of Happyness) Siddharth Anand gives us a slick slice-of-life served up in courses that go from khushi to gham while your heart goes…tara rum pum pum!

A 'moist' see family film.

Tara Rum Pum Wallpapers

Source : SantaBanta.Com

'I'm glad I've no man in my life'

For those who are wondering how Rani Mukherjee managed to get into those short skirts in Siddharth Anand's Tara Rum Pum Pum Rani has the answer. "Getting slim, my dear.

That's the magic mantra," she reveals while shooting for Pradeep Sarkar's Laga Chunri Main Daag. "The minute I was told about what kind of look I'm supposed to carry off in a major part of Tara Rum Pum Pum I knew I had to get seriously slim. If I had put on those short skirts looking the way I did earlier, I'd have looked pretty cracked.

"For the period that Rani toned her physique for the skirts she made her trainer work over-time. " I made my trainer Satya's life a living hell. I don't think he has ever had a more demanding client."

Besides the slim and svelte look Rani also had to make sure the clothes went with the transitions in the character's life.

"See, at first Saif and I play collegians. Then I gradually go on to being the mother of two growing kids. So I had to have a specific before-and-after look. Surprisingly I've never played a mother before in any of my films."Says Rani, "My dress designer Sureeli Goel was driven up the wall by my demands. See, today the character's LOOK is very important. Not just the heroines, even the heroes devote a lot of time to getting the look right. Earlier I'd constantly have fights about my clothes with Manish Malhotra and Sabysachi. Now it was Sureeli's turn to get the brunt of my exacting nature. All three designers feel I'm one of the most quarrelsome heroines they've worked with."

Rani chuckles hard, and then sobers down when director Pradeep Sarkar drops in to brief her for the day's shooting. They converse in fluent Bengali and obviously have a lot of feelings to share.Sighs Rani, "I don't know where all those stories about me squabbling with Dada came from. Probably from people who want to see us fight and cannot bear to find me getting along with my directors.

Whether it's Siddharth Anand (who incidentally was in college with me) or Pradeep Sarkar, I'm the last person to create any problems." Rani will now finish her solo portions in Sarkar's film and then wait for Abhishek to return from his honeymoon in June before shooting with him. "Almost all of Abhishek's scenes in Laga Chunri Mein Daag are with me. So we'll be shooting together constantly in June. I'm looking forward to that. I'm really happy for Abhishek and Ash. They deserve all the happiness in the world."

What about romantic love in Rani's own life? "I'm not holding my breath for it. Love isn't something that obeys a time frame. When it happens, it'll happen.In a way I'm glad I don't have a man in my life. It gives me the chance to focus completely on my work.

But if and when it happens, I'm not going say no to love just because I'm busy with my career. No way."