What's Your Raashee?Starring: Harman Baweja and Priyanka Chopra Director: Ashutosh Gowariker Rating: ** ½ The movie begins at Bardoli village, Gujarat where a wealthy old man decides to write his assets in the name of his grandson Yogesh Patel (Harman Baweja), the only person in the family to remember his maternal grandfather on all occasions (read birthdays). Yogesh is doing his MBA at Chicago with a rocking life style of a sincere student in the day time, popular guy in the campus and a DJ at a night club. But things are not rosy at home in Mumbai where his elder brother has taken a huge amount of loan and lost it in stock market crash and is not able to pay back to several people including a local bhai. He is supposed to give attendance everyday at Bhai’s office and he is being constantly threatened by two chelas of the dreaded bhai who has a style of threatening defaulters – he would cut the fingers by using a betel nut cutter. A family astrologer predicts that within a very short time Yogesh would get married and he would get a fortune on the very same day. Yogesh makes an urgent visit home after learning of sudden ill health of his dad, which turns out to be a false news and he is further taken aback by the ridiculous request made by his family members - he has to marry a girl in 10 days in order to save his family from an eventual complication and disgrace. After a long phase of jet lag and persuasion and emotional blackmail by family members he agrees to marry and being a principled man he refuses to accept dowry. He starts reading a book which he happens to find at home and what’s that book all about? No prizes for guessing – “What’s your Rashee?” and then starts the poor translation of Linda Goodman’s sun signs book into a loose movie plot. As if it is not enough, there are two additional silly and forgettable sub plots. The girls start entering in a random zodiac fashion and each zodiac has a story to tell. Ashutosh Gowariker struggles to stitch a convincing story relevance-wise as well as astrology-wise. Some zodiac signs lack convincing characterization and a few overlap. Only a few succeed in making an impact due to the versatile Priyanka Chopra who delivers every character with sheer conviction and brilliant performance. Anjali (Mesh) with a slouch and a bad dressing sense, Vishakha (Vrishabh) with a childish behavior who wants to test the person, Kaajal (Mithun) a vivacious and bubbly girl who thinks it is a must to give some time to understand each other before marrying, Hansa (Karka) a traditional girl with a broken heart, Mallika (Simha) an ambitious and headstrong dancer, Pooja (Kanya) a doctor who wishes for a husband to support her in every venture of hers, Rajani (Tula) a dominating business person for whom the marriage is a business contract to save her from an ongoing CBI enquiry, Nandini (Vrishik) who has a conservative exterior with a diametrically opposite true nature and who is passionate about becoming a supermodel, Bhavna (Dhanu) an astrologer with seductive charms, Jankada (Makar) a school going underage girl, Sanjana (Kumbh) a sophisticated and a straightforward girl and lastly Chandrika (Meen) a filmy kinda person who believes in re-incarnation and second lives….huh While adapting the extremes of every character to the demands of screen, the story loses it’s plot (if at all it had any) in a big way only to be saved mercifully by the brilliant Priyanka Chopra. Music has always been a strong point of Gowariker’s films here it’s a downer. Every zodiac breaks into a compulsory song with only very few being catchy. The story becomes so predictable in the second half that you wait for the movie to get over and start counting how many signs are still left and with no interest left to see which sign the protagonist ultimately marries. From whatever little you showed us (for a fraction of a second) on the screen Mr. Gowariker, I could gather that Yogesh Patel is Mithun moon sign and Scorpio sun sign. But his birth details do not match with the chart generated towards the end of the movie. But you were so busy adapting extremes of Priyanka Chopra’s 12 zodiac signs, you completely neglected the characterization of the main lead. He is just a foreign returned student with some music knowledge and giving all similar responses, exclamations and surprise reactions to the extreme idiosyncrasies convincingly exhibited by Priyanka Chopra’s characters. Harman Baweja doesn’t impress overall. However, the rest other cast members have put up a good show. The film would have been a little more bearable had it been under three hours but a running time of 3 hours and 30 minutes appears far too much. If you may ask whether to check it out or not well there are only two reasons to watch this astrological blunder made by Ashutosh Gowariker – Priyanka Chopra and Priyanka Chopra. -- If you like this post, then please subscribe to my Also you can Subscribe by Email so that new posts will be sent to your inbox.

Priyanka: Her only agenda in life is get a boyfriendBy Joginder Tuteja After playing full-on glamorous roles in films like FASHION, DOSTANA and LOVE STORY 2050 last year, Priyanka Chopra has gone for a minimal make up look for KAMINEY. As per the actress, this was a conscious decision since the character of Sweety that she plays in this Vishal Bhardwaj directed film is such that it doesn't warrant extra time to be spent in front of the mirror. "Just imagine, Sweety is someone who comes from a lower middle class family, lives in a chawl and is a college going 22 year old girl. There was no way that we could have justified her as a glamorous personality when her background and upbringing was completely on the contrary", says Priyanka who would next be seen in 12 different looks for Ashutosh Gowariker directed WHAT'S YOUR RASHEE which arrives late September. As per Priyanka, there is a certain way in which young college going girls behave and she has adapted those mannerisms to go with the character of Sweety. "Where is the time for someone so young to be sitting in front of a mirror and get all dolled up", questions Priyanka who is paired opposite Shahid Kapoor in the film, "Most of such college going girls are usually in so much in hurry. Sweety is just one of them who takes hardly any time in getting dressed him, puts on a 'choti', rushes to college and has only one agenda in life- Get a boyfriend! She is content when she gets one!" Playing a hardcore Maharashtrian girl, it was quite a task for Priyanka to actually put on the mannerisms that go well with her background and upbringing. "Being a Punjabi, it was really very difficult", says Priyanka, "I had to work extra hard since I had so many friends belonging to Maharashtra and I had to make them feel proud of me when they see me on screen." Since she has been a part of the industry for quite some time now, Priyanka has been put up in Mumbai for 7-8 years now. Was it still such a difficult task considering the fact that one expects a person to have adapted to the atmosphere by now? "Adapting is one thing and playing someone who belongs to the region is different", explains Priyanka, "I had to go through 1.5 months of training to get the Maharashtrian milieu and language right. I guess I have done a good enough job though I still look forward to all the feedback coming my way once audiences see me on screen."-- If you like this post, then please subscribe to my Also you can Subscribe by Email so that new posts will be sent to your inbox. PRIYANKA CHOPRA TOO HOT TRY THESE HAIRCUTS

To impregnate a girl by mistake, I had to look innocent: Ruslaan MumtazBy Joginder Tuteja After MP3 - Mera Pehla Pehla Pyaar, Ruslaan Mumtaz is once again seen on the big screen in Satish Kaushik directed Teree Sang. In the film which opened last Friday, this 24 year old young man plays the role of a 17 year old boyfriend of a 15 year old girl (Sheena Shahabadi) who gets pregnant from him. The film comes with a message around teen pregnancy and has one of its major promotional pegs being sex education. In this exclusive interview, Ruslaan Mumtaz talks about the entire makeover that he had to go through for Teree Sang and how it wasn't an easy task for him to bag the lead role in the film. Ruslaan, in real life you come with quite an impressive physique. So what did you do to look so different in Teree Sang? I had to actually go through a complete makeover as far as my looks, physique and wardrobe were concerned. For Teree Sang, I had to lose a lot of weight. Since Sheena (Shahabadi) is practically a kid, I had to look innocent too. More so because I was playing the role of a 17 year old boy who could impregnate a girl by mistake. It was imperative that audiences are led to believe that this guy is someone who can commit a mistake. So he had to be simple and quite naive, something that can be projected only if the look and presentation is correct. He couldn't have been shown as a cool dude because then his character wouldn't have been believable at all. Please carry on... This boy is so sweet and simple that the girl keeps bullying him but he still never minds. She calls him a duffer but he only smiles. He is someone who is just not pretentious at all. He comes from a poor family and when he visits Sheena's house for the first time, his eyes pop out by witnessing just the sheer magnitude of the mansion where she lives. He is very vocal about his emotions as well but when it comes to the moment of decision making (when he accidentally gets the girl pregnant), he doesn't shy away from his responsibilities. He could have said that it's the girl who actually pushed him into the act but he never does that. He supports her whole heartedly. There have been interesting stories floating around how you were selected for the role. I have heard that Satish Kaushik was not really keen to cast you even though you were quite persistent. What you have heard is half correct and half incorrect (laughs). It isn't as if Satish Kaushik wasn't keen to cast me. He actually wanted me for the role since he was quite impressed with my screen test. However, he wanted a new boy for the role and I had already signed Robby Grewal's MP3 - Mera Pehla Pehla Pyaar. He asked me if I could leave MP3 but that wasn't possible for me. 6 months passed by and he still hadn't found his boy (laughs). So I approached him again and told him that he would never find a better boy than me to play this role. He again said no to me but surprisingly whenever there were any auditions for different girls who were being looked for the role, he would call me. Finally, I got to know that someone else was taken for the hero's role. That must have been heartbreaking... You bet! Here I was coming week after week hoping that he would finally be convinced and there he went on to take some other boy. Thankfully there were so many other people who had seen the auditions. People from his own family and Bharat Shah (who is producing the movie) - everyone was sure that I was the guy for the role. As was destined, they didn't take either the boy or the girl whom they had selected first. Ultimately Sheena and I were signed on. What happened to that boy who was finalized before you? That guy is now an aspiring director actually. He was a very sweet guy and I completely believe that he was also very apt for the role. In fact he was just himself when he walked in for the audition and that was the very reason why he was selected in the first place. I observed him quite carefully since for me, he was the reference point for the boy I had to play on screen. I had to just wear the kind of loose clothes that he was wearing, get an appearance like him and adapt his mannerisms. You must be pining a lot of hopes on Teree Sang? See, box office is important but then it is at the end of the day quite secondary. As long as I can have DVDs of 10 of my films ready and I can show them to people who matter, it is great. That should be my goal as of now. I am a newcomer and not really in a position to decide where I would be in a few years from now. Ultimately Teree Sang is a Satish Kaushik film and that by itself should be good enough to pull in audiences.-- If you like this post, then please subscribe to my Also you can Subscribe by Email so that new posts will be sent to your inbox. PRIYANKA CHOPRA TOO HOT TRY THESE HAIRCUTS