“Don’t ask me to remove my dark glasses as I will really look like a ghost!” Amitabh Bachchan declared at the start of last week’s press conference in London to promote this week’s release, ‘Bhoothnath’. The ‘Big B’ had just arrived from a flight from Bangkok where this year’s IIFAs or ‘Bollywood Oscars’ will take place in June. Bachchan remains opposed to the Bollywood word: he reprimanded a journalist for using the term. “It’s the Indian film industry.”

Bachchan plays a friendly ghost, Caspar-style, who befriends a lonely kid in the family entertainer. “I do not believe in ghosts,” he stated, obviously bored by the question which he said was the most frequently asked one. But did anything spooky happen during the making of the film? “Yes, all kinds of lights used to keep falling over the place!” Why did he decide to play a ghost? “I feel blessed to get such roles at my age; I am very happy with my make-up and outfits in the film which made me look like a ghost.”

Bachchan hopes that the film will broaden the appeal in India for children’s films.

“Spiderman, Superman and the one with the big ape have eaten into our market. Indian cinema needs to compete.”

Just best friends

“We became the best of friends,” former leading lady Juhi Chawla states on her relationship with Shah Rukh Khan. The pair will be reunited in the aforementioned ‘Bhootnath’. Does Chawla keep in touch with Khan? “We may not phone each other everyday but we know that we are there for each other at all times, in happiness and crisis.” Chawla was in London to promote the film. She attended the press conference but failed to appear for the promised personal interviews the following day, preferring instead to go shopping in Harrods.

Double dummies

Paris has a new tourist attraction: a waxwork of Shah Rukh Khan was recently unveiled at the Grevin Wax museum. Khan is in saintly company: he is the second Indian to be immortalised in wax after Mahatma Gandhi at this popular French museum. Khan, dressed in a pair of jeans and a black leather jacket, attended the unveiling with his wife Gauri and close buddy, director Karan Johar. After last year’s SRK waxwork at London’s Madame Tussauds, this is the second dummy of the ‘King Khan’. Will there be a third? New York’s Madame Tussauds remains to be conquered.

Preity strikes back!

“The Empire strikes back!” Preity Zinta declared when a British journalist asked her to comment on whether India was now the hub of world cricket with the current Indian Premier League series. Zinta, who is the co-owner of one of the teams, went on to declare that “from chicken tikka massala to art to cinema to potatoes, Indians are everywhere now!”

Spanish success

‘Monsoon Wedding’ actress Lillette Dubey is celebrating. She recently won the Best Actress Award for the Bollywood film, ‘Bow Barracks Forever’, at the recently concluded Madrid Film Festival in Spain. The film, currently available on DVD, failed to get a UK release.

When life scarily imitates art

Sushmita Sen’s obsessive fan, a Delhi based stockbroker, was finally booked under Section 506/509 of the Indian Penal Code for issuing threats and using obscene language against the actress. The former Miss Universe, now Bollywood babe is relieved. Unlike her debut film ‘Dastak’ in which she played a beauty queen who is harassed by a stalker, this episode was real life.

Swiss Sizzler

Switzerland is producing its own Bollywood-flavoured film. Swiss director Oliver Paulus has announced that his third film will be the imaginatively titled ‘Tandoori Love’, “a furious culture-clash love comedy” about an Indian chef who falls in love with a girl in a Swiss restaurant. Will there be songs and dances? “Yes, in a different style,” Paulus confirms. He plans to screen the film at the Locarno or Venice Film festival which takes place later this year, ahead of its global release in the autumn.

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