Actor Rekha is officially a member of parliament now. She took her oath today as a member of the Rajya Sabha -she had been nominated by the government along with cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and entrepreneur-activist Anu Aga.

Wearing a golden-brown sari, Rekha, who is 57, was surrounded by other MPs when she arrived in the Rajya Sabha.

They thumped their desks in approval when her name was called to take the oath. Chairman of the House Hamid Ansari said “Welcome”as she walked up to him and greeted him with folded hands.

“I Rekha Ganeshan” she said, swearing in the name of God in her brief oath in English.

After signing the members’ register, she greeted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Leader of the Opposition Arun Jaitley and other leaders before walking to her allotted seat, No. 99. More

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan has expressed shock over the death of child artist Taruni Sachdev, who played his school friend in “Paa”, in Monday’s plane crash in Nepal.

“Just reading that Taruni Sachdev the girl child artist in ‘Paa’, has perished in Nepal plane crash .. please god may this not be true,” Amitabh posted on his Twitter page.

At 14, Tarini had already featured in almost 50 ads and did a cameo in “Paa”. She was among 13 Indians who were killed when the aircraft crashed into a hill while coming in to land at Jomsom in western Nepal.

Amitabh, 69, has memories of Jomsom.

“Jomsom, where the plane crash in Nepal took place is where we shot ‘Khuda Gawah’, a raw airfield and most difficult to land on,” posted Big B. More

Unhappy about constant comparisons with Sourav Ganguly, Shahrukh Khan, the owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders asks fans to grow up!

Asking the fans to grow up, Bollywood superstar and Kolkata Knight Riders owner Shahrukh Khan, on Tuesday tried to put to rest comparisons with Sourav Ganguly by stating that the fans should stop comparing the two.

“The fans should grow up. This is sport. We should play it like a sport. We keep talking about Kings and Khans… This is crap, to be honest,” Shah Rukh said on the sidelines of the Kolkata Knight Riders post-match party.

“To be honest, if we don’t outgrow this, it is not only embarrassing for us, it is embarrassing for Dada too. We should get over this. Whenever I come to Kolkata, if you are going to bring this up then I think it’s a little unfair,” a visibly annoyed Shah Rukh said.

For the first three Indian Premier League (IPL) editions, Ganguly was an indispensable part of the Knight Riders, though their association was not controversy-free. More

Akshay Kumar seemed elated about the fact that wife Twinkle was pregnant with their second child, and claimed that his son Aarav, 11, was just as happy to have a younger sibling.

The 44-year-old actor said he spends most of his time at home with Twinkle, who is expecting the baby in September.

The couple tied the knot in 2001. “Aarav is happy now as he will have a sibling at home,” Akshay said. Source

Going by the feedback that Ishaqzaade has received, the industry is quite upbeat about the arrival of the newest romantic pair on the big screen – Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra. In the meanwhile, Karisma Kapur’s comeback plans were dashed with Vikram Bhatt’s Dangerous Ishhq performing dismally at the box office.

While the makers of Ishaqzaade are said to have recovered their investments and earned over and above that, the trade is unanimous about Dangerous Ishq incurring a big loss to makers and distributors alike.

Pegging the first three days of the Arjun-Parineeti starrer at about Rs 16 crore, Komal Nahta said, “The initial is pretty good for a film with new actors. The music and the promotions definitely helped. The producers have earned over Rs 12 crore from satellite rights; they’ve nothing to worry about.” More

Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoor says that he agreed to host the 13th edition of International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards in Singapore June 7-9 after a lot of people persuaded him.

“It took a lot of people to convince me that I could do this. I love performing in front of a live audience. IIFA and I go a long way back, but we were never able to come together. So I am very excited that now I am being able to do something,” Shahid Kapoor, who hosted this year’s Filmfare with Ranbir Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan, told reporters on Monday.

Bipasha Basu, who will attend the event, said, “Right from the time when I was a debutant and till now, it’s been almost 10 years and I think I had a wonderful experience with IIFA. I will be performing at the event as well.” More

After making the comeback vehicle for Karisma Kapoor, Vikram Bhatt has another project in store for actor Aftab Shivdasani. The Dangerous Ishhq director has decided to veer his attention towards his next production – the sequel to his horror film, 1920 starring Aftab.

Both of them have already worked together in various projects such as Deewane Huye Paagal, Awara Paagal Deewana, Kasoor and Ankahee.

Vikram Bhatt was quoted saying, “My film with Karisma is out. It’s now Aftab for me. I will now concentrate on this project. The shoot is complete and in the coming weeks we will chalk out a strategy for it. The film has been directed by Bhushan Patel, who was my assistant. There is more evil than the first part in this one. The film depicts Aftab in new light. I am sure he will be noticed.”

Aftab’s film career has not been going great guns. He was last seen in films like Players and Bin Bulaye Baraati which failed miserably at the box-office and his attempt to turn producer also failed with the failure of Aao Wish Karein in 2009.

The sequel has been shot in Sweden and stars Tia Bajpai alongside Shivdasani.  Source

Katrina Kaif is currently working with Bollywood’s three leading Khans – Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan – in three different projects. So posessive is the actress about them that given the chance, she won’t let anyone else work with them.

But she was reticent on who her favourite Khan was. “This doesn’t make sense to me. It is unfair,” Katrina told reporters when asked to pick her favourite Khan.

“If suppose if you will ask them to choose one of the actresses, even I will feel bad. Everyone is different. All three of them are icons and legends in their own way. I am fortunate enough to work with them. It’s been great so far.

“If I had the chance, I would not allow anyone to work with them. But that is not possible as you cannot stop anyone from working with them,” she added. More

Vidya Balan after the resounding back-to-back success of The Dirty Picture and Kahaani, Vidya Balan has signed her No one Killed Jessica director Raj Kumar Gupta’s Ghanchakkar.

Unlike her characters of Sabrina Lall (in No one Killed Jessica), Silk (in The Dirty Picture) and Vidya (in Kahaani), Viday plays a housewife in Ghanchakkar.

“So far the roles that have defined Vidya’s career have all found her playing women placed in extraordinary circumstances. In Ghanchakkar she plays an average woman. Nothing dramatic like a murder or a mysterious disappearance happens to her in the script,” says a source close to the project.

“Both Raj Kumar Gupta and Vidya feel that playing an ordinary woman is a special challenge for Vidya at this stage of her career when she has played a number of extraordinary characters. However, Gupta is being pressurised to modify and amplify Vidya’s part,” says the source.

“I had decided I wanted her for Ghanchakkar even when we were working together on Jessica. It is only now there’s a growing anxiety about Vidya’s positioning in the audiences’ perception,” says Gupta. More

Nargis Fakhri is excited about bagging her latest Khiladi 786 with the original Khiladi of Bollywood, Akshay Kumar. However, rumors surfacing about Kumar coming to her rescue have left her miffed. Buzz was that Akshay came to her rescue with three films under his banner after Fakhri failed to get any offers post Rockstar.

When asked about this bit of news, she was quoted saying, “That is a strange statement, I don’t find it valid.”

However ask her about the film itself, in which she is sharing screen space with the Rowdy Rathore star, she is excited to bits. She was quoted saying, “I am glad I am getting to work with Akshay Kumar, that too in a comedy. At least the first of the three is a comedy. There were many scripts coming in but I wanted to do something fun. When I first came to Mumbai, I happened to see Akshay’s face on a bus, and I screamed, ‘I know this guy, he is a funny man, I like him’. Now it is so cool to work with him. Source

She might have tried every trick in the book to woo the audiences with her latest film DANGEROUS ISHHQ. But, the cruel fact is that none of her hard work has paid her in any sense. So much so that Karisma has been out rightly failed by her audiences.

It’s not only Karisma who is at the receiving end of the audiences taste, the same fate was witnessed by Madhuri Dixit too. In her case she even left the foreign shores in the spirit of making a comeback but unfortunately for her the audiences have given her a unanimous neglect.

The trend of Bollywood moms making a comeback seems to be a boring idea for the audiences. One of the industry veterans describes this trend in these words, “The hype surrounding the comeback of Bollywood moms seems to be based on a false premise. The fact remains that nobody is interested in watching an ageing heroine when it’s the era of sizzle and curves.” More

Farah Khan who just finished shooting for her acting debut in Bela Segal’s film Shirin Farhad Ki Nikal Padi, opposite Boman Irani has stated that though she thoroughly enjoyed working on this film produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, this will be her first and last acting project.

The Om Shanti Om director was quoted saying, “This one was a role of a lifetime, and now that I’ve tasted blood, I would never settle for anything less. So this well could be my first and last role as an actor. As for taking up a role in my brother Sajid Khan’s film, I am sure he will only give me some retarded role, which I would never take up.”

Farah, who has just wrapped this film reveals that her own directorial next Happy New Year, is all set to go on floors post October. The film starring, Shah Rukh Khan and Abhishek Bachchan, will be her next after the box-office failure Tees Maar Khan. ‘King Khan’ was roped in after the director-choreographer patched up with him, following his much-publicized fight with Shirish Kunder. Farah was quoted saying, “I am yet to finalize the casting and we will roll in the last quarter of this year.”

Be it choreographing, directing or acting, we know Farah’s going to be good at whatever she does! Source