Sonu Sood rings in best friend Ajay Dhama’s
Mumbai: Back from shooting a Hollywood film with Jackie Chan, Sonu Sood is all charged up. The actor recently ringed in his best friend Ajay Dhama’s birthday. The party was attended by close friends Prabhleen Sandhu, Shraddha Das, Shruti Gera, Sonali Sood, Abhinav Kashyap and Sunil Bora.
On work front, he has already begun shooting for his Indo-Chinese film ‘Kung Fu Yoga’ with Jackie Chan. Directed by Stanley Tong, ‘Kung Fu Yoga’ is part of the three-film agreement signed between the two countries during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India last year.
According to media reports on Friday, actress Ileana D’Cruz has been roped in to play the female lead in the film. She will have a full fledged role and will also have some action sequences which will reportedly be supervised by Jackie Chan. The film crew began the first leg in Barcelona, and then headed to Dubai for the shooting, they will also be shooting in parts of China and India.
Is Tamanna Hiding Her Affairs?
Name a top starlet at the moment, and we hear their name associated with some love affair with a hero. From Trisha to Samantha, Rakul Preet to Regina, to TV anchor Reshmi, there is gossiping about all these starlets though it’s truth or not. But our milky siren seems to be the exception.
During a radio show, Tamanna is quizzed, ‘When every star heroine is almost pulled into some affair news with her co-stars, why Tamanna’s name is never heard in such?’, she gave a puzzling answer. “Maybe, I’m hiding them well”, she said. Oops!! What did she just say? Actually Tamanna is not denying that she’s not even having any single affair with anyone, inside or outside film industry, but she hinted that she’s hiding them well.
When further questioned, if she’s bluffing really, Tamanna said, “Maybe, I’m”. There are million hints in her answers that she might have dated someone already. Moving further, milky siren explained that she can’t restrict herself from going glamorous because her fans will get disappointed if she takes such decisions. Yeah!
Raasi’s big comeback
Yesteryear leading actress Raasi is all set to make a comeback after a long gap. The actress, who has starred in more than 80 films as the female lead, is playing Malavika Nair’s mother in Kalyana Vaibhogame to be directed by Nandini Reddy. “I am doing this film because of Nandini Reddy. She had come to me long ago for this role. I had told her that I was not interested and also, my daughter was just three months old and I had to look after her. But she came again after five months and narrated the role to me. My daughter is now eight months old and I agreed to do it,” says Raasi.
“I don’t want to do whatever roles come to me. I have been approached for Tamil films too,” she reveals. This is the first film that she has accepted after her marriage with Tollywood director Nivas. “I am facing the camera after almost 12 years. But I don’t find any difference between then and now,” says Raasi. “If you look at all my previous films, there was importance given to the actress, too. I played prominent parts in all my films. I really feel happy that at my time, there were some good family-oriented films and the lead actress also got importance. But nowadays, the lead actress is just part of the film and her role is not important,” she adds.
The actress says that she is not interested in social media. “I hate taking selfies and posting on social media. Nowadays, people are not saying ‘good morning’ to their parents, but they put selfies on Twitter or Facebook and say ‘good morning’ to their boyfriend/girlfriend. I don’t like this culture,” she says. Raasi says there are many Telugu girls who are looking for good opportunities in the industry. “It is not true that Telugu girls are not coming forward. Being a Telugu ammayi, I have played prominent roles in many films,” says Raasi.
Aamir Khan spotted at Pune college shooting
Mumbai: Aamir Khan and team ‘Dangal’ have shifted base from Ludhiana to Pune. The actor and his filming crew were spotted at a reputed college in the state. According to online reports, the college has been renamed as ‘National Sports Academy’ for the film. The crew have also been spotted shooting in the canteen area, classrooms and the college hall.
Filming will reportedly go on for 8-10days. Fans of the superstar have also posted a number of pictures from the sets online. A few images show the crew setting up the lights and cameras, while others show give us a peek at the actor’s costume cases.
‘Dangal’, that is based on the life of Indian wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, was previously shot in Ludhiana in the villages of Gujjarwal, Kila Raipur, Narangwal, Dango and Leel.
Soulful number ‘Tu Mere Paas’
Mumbai: The makers of ‘Wazir’ have released a soulful number from the film- starring Amitabh Bachchan, Farhan Akhtar and Aditi Rao Hydari. Going by the trailer and songs that have released so far, this film is going to be a gripping one with several mind games.
The video has some snappy visuals that the film has to offer: Amitabh’s towering presence, Farhan’s action sequences and Aditi Rao Hydari’s svelte presence that promises a back story. The lyrics have been penned down by Manoj Muntashir and crooned by Ankit Tiwari.
Babu’s Movie Released, Did You Know?
Ever since he big adieu to playing hero roles and turned a character actor, there has been no looking back for Jagapati Babu. With the blockbuster hits like Legend and Srimanthudu, Jagapati Babu aka Jaggu Bhai is clearly leading the game. But now, Jagapati Babu has once again played the lead hero’s role in Hithudu, which released today.
After being delayed by several months, Hithudu released today without much publicity blitzkrieg and even Jagapati Babu was nowhere to be seen in the promotional events, except for attending the audio launch many months ago. Barring a few interviews by the director and the wall posters, there was literally no noise about the film in the media, leaving most of the film lovers unaware of the film’s release.
Coming to the film, Hithudu was directed by young debutant Viplove. Jagapati Babu plays an intense role in which he is seen as a Naxalite turned teacher. Critics, even though appreciated the film’s thought-provoking content and stellar performances from Jagapati Babu and Meera Nandan, gave a thumbs down to the film’s unexciting execution.If only the makers hyped up their film with some promotions!
Trivikram & Koratala Saving Small Films
From yesterday’s release Bengal Tiger to many other films, there are spoofs of two movies in most small films coming these days. Attarintiki Daredi and Srimanthudu are the ones we are talking about. Literally those spoofs are saving face of some movies.
Either they use a parody of Attarintiki Daredi’s climax dialogues or of Srimanthudu’s adoption dialogues, to make their films lauded. While few went ahead and created whole scenes of Attarintiki and Srimanthudu as a spoof, some felt happy using dialogues alone like ‘Laavai potharu’ or ‘Simham nenu same to same’. Honestly no other scene in those films sounded as hilarious as theses dialogues and spoofs.
Probably all those small movie makers should thank Trivikram and Koratala Siva for giving them such wonderful scenes with huge recall value. As those scenes and dialogues from AD and Srimanthudu are highly clicking, our directors are now able to re-write them again for fun.
Instapaper: Read out aloud
The people at Apple love creating waves, and they know they will have a market share for whatever they come up with. When they launched Apple Watch, there were many who made fun of the concept, but many who could not wait to get their hands on it. Once it hit the markets, a slew of apps and games began appearing — all meant for the watch!
The Apple Watch is quite good at telling you how healthy you are, tracking your steps, propelling you to move, and reminding you of appointments. But, the watch is not so good for reading. The 38mm by 42mm screen is too tiny to read anything more than a couple of sentences, and it is definitely not suited for long reading material.But, Instapaper for Apple Watch has made that possible. What it does is instead of making you scroll through text and try to read your stored articles on Apple Watch, Instapaper uses Siri’s text-to-speech abilities to read your stories out loud.
Once you select an article, the app provides you with a text-to-speech controller that has options to play, pause, fast forward, rewind, change the rate, and view the current progress of the article. It gets clever at this point. The iPhone and Apple Watch apps for Instapaper are synchronised completely. This means, if you decide to listen to a few minutes of an article on your Apple Watch while you are doing something else, then you can pick it up in text form from right where you left it off in the audio format. The original makers are impressed by the way Instapaper has been adapted for the Apple Watch, for they did not believe that the application would be relevant after so many years, especially on a device that did not seem suitable for it in the first place!
Help a touch away
What was intended to be an app for users to share surplus food, ended up being a lifesaver when Chennai was inundated by rains and half the city flooded. As volunteers struggled to organise their efforts and the affected searched desperately for relief and supplies, Scappi for Chennai, a geo-location-based app, was published on the Google Play store. The app has since helped volunteers and NGOs upload the locations of relief camps and supply caches, helping streamline the relief efforts. Scappi was conceptualised as a pet project by Avira Tharakan, CEO of MyEasyDocs, an online document verification company and Theory Y, a Kochi-based app development firm. The app was supposed to use geo-location to indicate where users could pick up food being offered, but when the floods hit and his own office staff was affected, Avira and team decided to use the existing platform to do some good. “Our main office is based in Chennai, and the floods affected us and displaced our staff as well. At this point it struck us that people need to know where relief camps are and contact volunteers, so we tweaked the app we were developing to do just that,” says Avira, over the phone from Dubai.
By December 2, the team started repurposing the app, and after working 18 – 20 hours for the better part of three days, the app was published. Initial response has been overwhelming, with over 500 downloads and positive feedback. Social media did its part to spread the word, even as the developers themselves were focussed on updating the app. “One problem we noticed was unverified information, so we would conduct basic phone verification whenever someone uploaded their details. We’ve also been trying to get in touch with the army to include the positions of their camps.”
Avira stresses that while the attention has been focussed on Chennai, the app can be used anywhere, allowing volunteers to coordinate gathering of supplies in other cities sending aid to Chennai. The team is also including features that allow volunteers to upload their details and offer aid, and for the stranded or needy to tag themselves and request aid.
Pressed into action without a plan, Avira says the Scappi team wants to continue offering the service beyond the present crisis. “We plan to retain Scappi as a voluntary, NGO-based platform, as we don’t want to affect the goodwill we have earned by commercialising it. We’ll be looking for corporate support to help us achieve that.”
Aditi Sharma relives her childhood memories
Varanasi: Actress Aditi Sharma, who is making her small screen debut with popular show “Gangaa”, got a chance to relive her childhood memories while shooting for the soap opera here. Aditi, who has appeared in films like “Mausam”, “Ladies vs Ricky Bahl” and “Ekkees Toppon Ki Salaami”, will take over the title role of child actress Ruhana Khanna in the &TV show post a leap of 10 years. “My grandparents were from Varanasi, so when I was young I used to come here for my vacations which rejuvenated my childhood memories. Ganga ghats remind me of the time when I used to come early morning with my grandfather. I feel so much positivity and divinity here,” Aditi said..
Talking about her role of Gangaa, she said: “I always wanted to play a strong, powerful and challenging character. She doesn’t cry and finds out a way in every difficult situation. This character is very influencing and would help me grow,” she added. Apart from Aditi, post leap, the show will also feature actor Vishal Vashishtha taking on the role of Sagar. “‘Gangaa’ is a very inspiring story and shooting at the banks of river Ganga is memorable. I’m happy to be a part of this show as a lead. Sagar is a very strong pillar of support to Ganga,” Vishal said..
Post leap, Sagar will be seen returning back from London after studying law. The story will revolve around their friendship, how Gangaa would be seen being caught between opposing ideologies and paving her own way. Aditi and Vishal’s entry will be shown on December 14. Apart from them, the show will also feature actors Sushmita Mukherjee, Hiten Tejwani, Rakhi Vijan and Gungun Uprari.
TDP Obstacles: Leaders Quit, Cadre On Leave
Telugu Desam Party senior leader and former minister K Vijayarama Rao has resigned from the party. He sent his resignation to TDP office through a fax. As per sources close to Vijayarama Rao, he is willing to join TRS party and an announcement regarding this is expected soon.
Ahead of crucial GHMC elections, Vijayarama Rao’s resignation is a big shock for TDP which already last four of its MLAs to the TRS after 2014 elections, including Sanath Nagar MLA Talasani Srinivas Yadav and Cantonment MLA G Sayanna. With Vijayarama Rao quitting TDP, the party has further weakened in Telangana. Here is other problem ahead for TDP for GHMC polls.
Most of the settlers in Hyderabad usually leave to their native places in Andhra Pradesh during Sankranthi holidays to celebrate the festival along with their family members. Hence, they may not cast their vote this time as the elections poll date is January 17th, in the middle of Sankranthi holidays.
This will hugely damage TDP chances in GHMC elections. Last time, TDP and BJP won majority of seats with support of the settlers. So, double blow for TDP!
