Queen | Gujariya | Official Song | Kangana Ranaut | 7th Mar, 2014

Russell-Jemima engaged?

Russell Brand has openly confessed to being in love with Jemima Khan - but could the couple be planning to wed? Judging by the ring on her finger in these pictures clicked in east London, the answer could be yes.

Jemima also had a diamond ring on at a London restaurant on Friday.

A source said: "It looked like an engagement ring. It was very pretty and classy. She looked very happy."

Jemima, 40, and Russell, 38, began dating last summer. She has two sons by ex-Pakistan captain Imran Khan, and dated actor Hugh Grant.

Meanwhile Russell is divorced from stunning pop star Kety Perry. Russell has revealed how Jemima has made him a "Changed man" and inspired him to swap his womanising ways for meditation and dog-walking.

The comedian told how he loved spending time with his socialite girlfriend, 39, and her German shepherd Brain, who both joined him on the Jonathan Ross show.

Lindsay claims to have scored with soccer star

The list of celebrity conquests complied by Lindsay Lohan includes a Premier League footballer, the Sunday People reported. Lindsay, 27, who had Hollywood in a spin, when a list of her alleged former lovers was published this month, is said to have slept with the international player after meeting on the party circuit.


She apparently scribbled the soccer star's name on a piece of paper and threw it to a friend.

For legal reasons, his name was not printed in the list of her lovers published two weeks ago. But the player is married with children and has played for his country. A friend of the Mean Girls actress said: "There were some names blocked out of the full list of her 36 lovers. The footballer was one of them.

"Lindsay met him while out on the party scene. She thought he was pretty hunky and became quite fond of him. The footballer would be mortified if this came out.

"He is married and his wife wouldn't be very happy at all, because she likes to live a far quieter life than Lindsay."

Grover refuses to be backbencher

On Sunday evening, Salman Khan's charity foundation, in collaboration with a TV channel and a couple of other NGOs, hosted a fundraiser for the physically challenged. And besides Anupam Kher, Swara Bhaskar and Vishakha Singh, the list of invitees included Bad Man Gulshan Grover.

The event, which was held at a suburban five star hotel, commenced right on schedule at 4.30 pm. However, Grover walked in only around 6 pm and by then the front row seats were already occupied. Revealed a source: "Gulshan refused to sit in the back and promptly walked out leaving the organisers upset."

When contacted he said: "I had told them in advance that I wouldn't be staying for too long as I had to be at some place else around the same time. So, I quickly left after meeting Salman. If I ask for front row seats, I get it."

Of course! Or else you throw a fit and walk out.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Salman Khan's body double injured while filming Kick in Delhi.

When you'll watch the high-octane chase between Salman Khan and Randeep Hooda in Sajid Nadiadwala's forthcoming film Kick, if you don't read this, little will you know what happened to the guy who kicked off the scene for Salman. This guy, who goes by just his first name Ajay in the industry, landed himself in the hospital with serious facial injuries.

The incident happened in Delhi last week. Nadiadwala had rented a row house near a railway track. Ajay (one of Salman's body doubles) was supposed to jump from the first floor of the house onto the railway track.

The scene then required Salman (not Ajay) to get onto a moving train with Randeep Hooda (who plays a cop) close on his heels. Ajay went through the sugar glass (a brittle transparent form of sugar used in place of glass) but the timing went wrong and many broken pieces of the glass pierced his face. 

Salman and Nadiadwala both rushed to Ajay and the latter immediately arranged for a car to drive him to a hospital. The shooting was called off for the day.

"Salman has four body doubles specialising in different kinds of action for Kick as the movie has several deadly stunts. It would be foolish for Salman to risk his life all the time. What happened was unfortunate," an eyewitness told Mirror.

Till the time of going to the press, Ajay had not returned to the sets. Mirror has learnt that the scene was wrapped up the next day by one of the other three body doubles working on the film. 

Silver lining

On Saturday night, producer Vashu Bhagnani hosted a bash to celebrate his banner, Puja Films' journey of 25 films. The party started at 10 pm and went on till 1 am. Amitabh Bachchan was one of the first guests, going on stage with Jaya and Abhishek Bachchan.

Vashu admitted that when he came to Mumbai, he stood outside the gates of Big B's Juhu bungalow. "If I got a rare glimpse of him, it was a day well spent. I never imagined one day, I'd cast him in Bade Miyan Chote Miyan one day," he reminisced.

Amitabh responded by saying that Vashu is one of the most generous producers. "And what's most nice is the permanent smile on his face - it's a sign of a very content man," he added. Sushmita Sen who starred in Biwi No. 1 recalled how he'd sent a team to Miami to pick up clothes for her, instructing them, ''Buy all the top brands for Sush, no compromise."

Dia Mirza thanked Vashu for not only giving him her first film, Rehna Hai Terre Dil Mein, but also giving her a family in Mumbai. To that Hrithik Roshan joked on stage,"Please cast me sir, 25 films and I don't feature in any of them!" 

David Dhawan, Sajid Khan, Tusshar Kapoor, Anupam Kher, Riteish Deshmukh, Genelia D'souza and Arshad Warsi were also present. Only Vashu's 'No. 1' hero Govinda stayed away. 

'This will be my Lord of the Rings’

Contrary to speculation, Fitoor, Abhishek Kapoor's desi adaptation of the Charles Dickens' classic Great Expectations, has not been shelved.

"We're shooting in Delhi, London and across Kashmir. The weather plays a central role in the plot so the prep took a little longer as we had to figure out the conditions we want to capture on film at the chosen locales. Fitoor will release as per schedule in July 2015,"he asserts.

Meanwhile, Disney India has announced their next collaboration with Abhishek-- a cinematic rendition of Mahabharata which the director, known by his nickname Gattu, will start after wrapping up the shoot of his Katrina Kaif-Aditya Roy Kapoor starrer by the end of this year.

The tome has seen plenty of cinematic renditions, the latest being Jayantilal Gada's animated version. But unlike the latter, Kapoor's Mahabharata will be a live action epic with a script penned by writer Ashok Banker, who is well known for his eight-volume Ramayana series. 


When Mirror contacted the director, he said that the Bhagwad Gita inspired him to take up the project. "There was a phase in my life when I was going through hell. It was the spiritual solace I got from the Bhagwad Gita which gave me the courage to carry on," asserts Gattu. But isn't the scale of the project giving him the jitters?

"It's all about going out there and making the impossible," he says confidently. "Unless we attempt it, we will never know if we are capable of making it. Look at what the West has achieved. They routinely make films on such a lavish scale and with every new film break the current record. My idea is to make the Mahabharata on the same scale as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings series." 

'Samrat is not Sherlock’

She's a Barjatya yet her first production is not a sappy family drama but a thriller, Samrat & Co., revolving around 20 characters. Each has a dark secret. Even the sleuth, played by Rajeev Khandelwal, according to Kavita Barjatya is not the stereotypical "doodh mein dhula hero".

Kavita, the third generation of the filmy family, forayed into showbiz with TV soaps and after eight years of good bahus, bad vamps and no shades in between, was ready for a palate cleansing thriller.

Surprisingly, her father, Kamal Kumar Barjatya, who is the head of the family and the business too, showed an interest in murder mysteries during a period of convalescence two years ago and immediately said yes when she narrated this story writer-director Kaushik Ghatak had been working on for four years. "The rest of the family too has been extremely supportive," says the debutant film producer.

The breakaway from the Rajshri tradition does not end there. Kavita has used technicians who've never worked with the home banner before, including a host of composers who came up with a party song, Tequila Vequila, which is unlike anything we've heard in a Rajshri film'. 

"My favourite film was my grandfather Tarachand Barjatya's Dulhan Wohi Jo Piya Man Bhaye, but the idea here is to reel in the youth since they are the main theatre going audience," she says, explaining the need to go for digital movement posters and a YouTube campaign made up of animation videos based on Ghatak's short stories.

Explaining why she chose to go with Rajeev Khandelwal, she reasons that A-listers are very busy and she didn't want to wait for their dates for two years: "Besides, as soon as we gave Rajeev the script, he memorised all the lines. That's the kind of involvement we were looking at."

So can we expect to see an Indian version of the BBC TV show Sherlock, given that Samrat seems to have a lot in common with the British sleuth played by Benedict Cumberbatch? "Sherlock Holmes is a benchmark for every detective. But I've read Edgar Allen Poe and Agatha Christie and dada has grown up on Bengali literature. Samrat is very Indian. Yes, he uses a magnifying glass and wears a long coat but so did Karamchand," she argues.

Does she plan to return to TV's kitchen politics again with her partner-in-crime Ghatak? "No, as far as TV goes, creative stagnation has set in. Besides, it's an exhausting grind and right now all I can think of is going off on a 10-day break with no Internet or phone connection," she laughs, adding when she returns Ghatak will be waiting with a traditional love story and a quirky one. "And Samrat 2. We made this film with the idea of a franchise." 

Love in Dubai

On March 3, Mirror brought you the news that Tanishaa Mukerji and Armaan Kohli had visited Vaishno Devi temple to seek blessings, along with Tanishaa's mother Tanuja and Armaan's father Rajkumar Kohli. Now the couple has been spotted in Dubai, painting the town red.

Early on Saturday, Tanishaa landed up at Armaan's place and told him to pack for Dubai. Initially he thought it was a joke but she had come armed with two tickets to the most expensive city in the Middle East. She had planned the trip to coincide with Armaan's birthday.

When the lovestruck duo landed in Dubai on Saturday, a limousine took them to Faysal Ali Zarooni's palatial mansion. Faysal, who is a family friend of Tanishaa's, owns many luxury properties in Dubai. During the drive, Tanishaa refused to disclose the final destination to Armaan and he was dumbfounded when the car finally pulled into Faysal's bungalow.

When Mirror contacted Armaan yesterday afternoon, he gushed, "I am not over the surprise that Tanishaa planned for me. I'm floored. This holiday is like a dream. We are in Dubai and will be back in a couple of days."

Rahul dating Mugdha?

Buzz is, Rahul Dev has found love again, but when asked if he is indeed dating Mugdha Godse, the model-turned-actor seemed confused as he mumbled, "I can't say."

However, he quickly added that he knows the actress pretty well since they are from the same fraternity. "We met at a fashion show last October and since then she's been a very close friend and a well-wisher," he said. Rahul, who lost his wife Rina to cancer in May 2009, has been shuttling between Mumbai and Delhi. "Right now I'm in my house in Delhi since my son studies here. Life has not been easy but I still maintain my Yari Road flat too," he sighed.

Rahul who made his debut with Champion in 2000, has done 85 films, several of them down South. "I might do an interesting role in Lara Dutta's Chalo China next," he revealed. Mugdha Godse remained unavailable for comment.

She’s the girl you wanna take to mom

Says proud papa JP Dutta, as he prepares to launch daughter Nidhi in showbiz.

JP Dutta has been working on two projects-Border 2 and Border 3 based on the Indo-China 1962 war and the Indo-Pak 1971 war respectively. But due to reasons he refuses to divulge, the filmmaker has put his war epics on hold to focus on a medium-budget film that he hopes to roll with by the end of May. This story about friendship and love will launch his daughter Nidhi as an actress opposite Nafisa Ali's son, Ajit Sodhi.

Speaking to Mirror Dutta says, "Nidhi is the third generation of Duttas to become a part of the film industry. She had assisted me during Umrao Jaan and I then realised that she was keener on facing the camera than staying behind it. But after that I went to Border 2 and being a war film, there wasn't anything substantial for a girl."

Then, one day, he heard her speaking to Binoy Gandhi, who has assisted Kunal Kohli in two films, and understood that his daughter was interested in starting out with a light-hearted romance. 

"Since I haven't made any romcoms I decided that Binoy who was ready with an original script, should make his directorial debut with this as-yet-untitled film," says Dutta, who had worked with Raj Kapoor, a filmmaker who never interfered when another director was at the helm and promises to give Binoy his creative space.

The film will be shot partly abroad and Dutta is toying with locations like Mauritius and Bangkok. And in India he is looking at archaeological sites down South and in Rajasthan. "I've visited some of these places but never shot there.They would be a perfect setting for the characters," he reasons.

So, what sets his actors apart from the crowd of newcomers? Ajit, he says, is a "good-looking, hard-working boy" he had planned to launch in Border 2. "Since he was committed to the company, we cast him opposite Nidhi."

Prod him on his daughter and he smiles with paternal pride, "During a recent photosession with Nidhi, her resemblance with Bindiya (wife Bindya Goswami) struck me. She has the same ende-aring quality, a girl you would want to take home to your mother."