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2009 has not been a great year for Prithviraj so far as all his films fell flat at the box office. But it seems that the producers and directors still have great faith in him as he has quite an interesting line up of films this year and the next. The first one in that list is ‘Puthiya Mukam’ which will hit the theatres tomorrow.

‘Puthiya Mukham’ is directed by Deepan who was an associate to Shaji Kailas. Deepan had earlier debuted as an independent director with the film, ‘The Leader’ which couldn’t make any impact at the box office.

The film has Prithviraj playing the character of Krishnakumar, a mridangam player. After joining an engineering college in Cochin his life takes a turn and he is forced to take on the real estate mafia and liquor lobby.

Priyamani and Meera Nandan are paired opposite Prithviraj in the movie. Bala plays an important role in the film which has Saikumar, Jagathy Sreekumar, Shammy Thilakan, Sudheesh, Vijayaraghavan, Suraj Venjaramood and Janardhanan in supporting roles.

Deepak Dev has scored the music for the film and Kaithapuram Damodaran Namboothiri has penned the lyrics. Prithviraj has turned a singer for this film. He has sung the title song, “Suryamugham Ini Oru Puthiyamugham…”.

‘Puthiya Mukham’ is produced by Anil Mathew and S. Murugan under the banner of Bethesda Productions. The film is marketed by Time Ad Release.

Mallika Sherawat is having the time of her life! She has been going places ever since she went to Hollywood for the post production work of her upcoming movie ‘Hissss’. The latest buzz is that she has been personally invited by the social networking biggie Twitter to visit their headquarters. Mallika will visit the Twitter office at San Fransisco, California on July 14th.

Mallika is in Twitter by the name MallikaLA. She is relatively new to Twitter, but is the most popular Bollywood star on the site and has one of the fastest growing followers list. As of now, this Bollywood bombshell has around 6300 followers. The sultry actress has been regularly posting messages on her experiences in Hollywood, along with giving some tips to men on how to impress women!

Mallika has been creating news ever since she reached Hollywood. She garnered awards and was busy meeting and making celebrity friends. Recently a new milkshake in the “Millions of Milkshakes” shop at West Hollywood was named after her. Then it was the legendary Greek musician Yanni, who dedicated his new song Changes to the “one of a kind” Bollywood beauty.

Also Mallika is invited as a guest at the Miss India-America pageant, scheduled for August 7 at LA. And according to reports, Mallika will start working on her next Hollywood film by this October. In this movie, she will be playing a character inspired by San Francisco Attorney General – Kamala Harris.

Well, it seems Hollywood is doing more for this Bollywood beauty!

Yesteryear Malayalam films were rich in their scripts and connected easily with the social and cultural life of people in Kerala. But, unlike Bollywood and other regional film industries in India, Malayalam film industry had always shied away from remaking its classics. But, the first step in this direction is made now and this year Malayalam cinema will witness the release of the first ever remake in its history. ‘Neelathamara’ (The Blue Lotus) is this path breaking film in the history of Malayalam Cinema.

‘Neelathamara’, one of the most beautiful movies ever made in Malayalam cinema, was scripted by M.T. Vasudevan Nair, the renowned Malayalam author, scriptwriter and director. M T has made some slight changes in the script for the remake to connect to new generation audience.

The original movie, released in 1979 was directed by Yusaf Ali Kechery. Ambika immortalized the lead character of Kunjimalu, a 16 year old village girl, with her fine performance in the original. The remake, helmed by Lal Jose will have debutant Archana playing Kunjimalu.

The male lead of the film will also be played by a newcomer. Debutant Kailash steps into the chappals of Ravikumar, who played the hero in the original. Suresh Nair, who is making his debut as an actor, will be seen as Appukkuttan, the character that Sattar did in the original.

The remake is produced by G. Suresh Kumar under the banner of Revathy Kalamandhir. The new version is Suresh Kumar’s tribute to the original, as he was fascinated by the original in his youth days.

Vidyasagar has set the tunes for lyrics penned by Vayalar Sarath Chandaravarma. Vijay Ulaganathan is the cinematographer. ‘Neelathamara’ is scheduled for release on October 9th, 2009.

Mercury levels are rising high in Bollywood as the beauties of Bollywood are joining the bikini brigade one after the other! Kareena, Amrita Arora, Amrita Rao, Shruti Haasan … these beauties are setting and will set the screens on fire with their super hot bods this month.

Kareena flaunted her size-zero figure in a black bikini in ‘Kambakht Ishq’. Her best friend Amrita Arora joined her in a purple color bikini and the two had greatly contributed for the enormous pre-release hype that the film had.

Amrita Rao was the next to join the bikini brigade as she unleashed her sexy avatar in her film ‘Short Kut: The Con Is On’ which hit the theatres yesterday. This petite babe has took her fans by surprise as she was known for her girl-next-door image and homely roles.

Newbie Shruti Haasan will be the next to sport a bikini. She will be seen in a two-piece swimwear in her debut movie ‘Luck’ displaying her well toned body.

The list is not over! Lara Dutta will also be seen in a bikini later this year in her upcoming flick ‘Blue’.

Well, the fan following of these bikini babes have certainly increased with their skimpy shows. But can their hot bodies set the cash registers ringing? Let’s wait and see.

Most of the younger actors these days rely heavily on their dancing skills, particularly in their debut film. But the hot favourite in the list of emerging actors, Imraan Khan has stuck to his ‘Pappu Can’t Dance Saala’ rule in his first two films. This dashing youngster who is known to have two left feet had always tried to avoid dance if he possibly can.

But it seems that the director Soham Shah and choreographer Remo have found out the dancer in him. Soham insisted Imraan for a leg shake in their upcoming movie ‘Luck’, but the actor wasn’t game for it.  Anyway after his choreographer Remo gave him confidence, he decided to give it a try.

Two days rehersal and Imraan shook legs with his co-star Shruti Haasan for the special number ‘Jee Le’. And what we hear, he has done it splendidly! The youngster was so impressed with himself that he couldn’t stop beaming. And the entire crew of the film is all praise for him.

Well, ‘Pappu Can Dance Saala’ if he decides so!

‘Ghajini’ was a treat for action lovers at the end of 2008.  But Bollywood missed quality action films in the first half of 2009 as most of the films released belonged to romance, comedy or drama genre. ‘Kambakht Ishq’, though not an exclusive action film, brought an end to this drought with some daredevil action from Akshay Kumar. More films aimed at the adrenaline junkies will hit the theatres this year, the most anticipated ones being ‘Luck’ and ‘Blue’.

Hrithik Roshan’s anti-gravity stunt in Dhoom-2 is still fresh in the minds of action lovers. The man behind the scene, action director Allan Amin has made Imraan Khan perform a similar stunt in ‘Luck’, where he would be seen jumping from an airplane onto a moving train. Imraan and co-star Shruti Haasan have an underwater action scene in ‘Luck’ where they would be seen swimming with sharks.

But the  highlight of ‘Luck’ will be another scene involving the aging hunk Sanjay Dutt. He jumped off a speeding train blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back for this scene. Sanjay will also be seen running towards fast moving trains in the film.

‘Blue’, starring Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Zayed Khan, Katrina Kaif and Lara Dutta,  is reportedly Bollywood’s biggest film, made on a lavish budget of around 100 crores. The makers have roped in Hollywood action director James Bomalick for this movie that is centered around an underwater treasure guarded by 40 sharks. Bomalick has films like ‘Mr. And Mrs. Smith’, ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’,  ‘Die Hard 4′ and ‘Mummy 3′ to his credit.

The underwater sequences for ‘Blue’ were filmed at Bahamas in and around a real sunken ship at over 80 feet below the sea, with real sharks and real explosions. The movie also has some street chases and a train chase as its other attractions.

The most interesting fact is that the stars themselves have done these daredevil stunts. Good Luck, for viewers’ sake!

The beautiful lass Tamanna is the most happening actress in Kollywood today.  Her recent hits ‘Padikathavan’ opposite Dhanush and ‘Ayan’ opposite Surya has made her a household name. This beauty is all set for a successful round in Kollywood with an enviable line up of films in her kitty.

Tamanna will soon be seen in ‘Kandein Kadhalai’ opposite Bharath and in ‘Paiyya’ opposite Karthi. ‘Kandein Kadhalai’ is a remake of the bollywood super hit ‘Jab We Met’ and she will be seen playing Kareena’s role in the original. Then there is the much hyped ‘Paiyya’, a road movie directed by Linguswamy.

Tamanna has projects opposite Vijay, Dhanush and Jayam Ravi and these films will go on the floors very soon. She will join Vijay for his 50th film rumoured to be directed by S P Rajkumar. She will play Dhanush’s heroine in a movie to be directed by the ‘Padikathavan’ director Suraj. She will pair up with Jayam Ravi in his forthcoming film which is a remake of the Telugu movie ‘Kick’. This film will be directed by Ravi’s brother and remake specialist M.Raja.

It is rumoured that Tamanna will be roped in for the heroine’s role in Vetrimaran’s Dhanush starrer ‘Aadu Kalam’. The movie started shooting with Trisha as the heroine. But it is rumoured that Trisha might opt out of the film to adjust dates for a Priyadarshan film which will be her Bollywood debut.

At the start of the year it seemed Akshay Kumar is all set to make 2009  his own at the box office. Akki, who was riding high on the success of ‘ Singh is Kinng’, was having much hyped  films to be released all throughout the year. But as the year is half over, things are not going as expected for Akshay.

Akshay’s first release of 2009, Nikhil Advani’s ‘Chandni Chowk to China’ was expected to set the theatres on fire . But for all the pre-release hype that surrounded the film, it became a disaster at the box office. Then Akki experimented with Nagesh Kukunoor’s ‘8X10 Tasveer’, but this film managed only to be a critical and commercial failure.

Two unexpected failures and the critics started slamming Akshay from all corners. All eyes were on his next release ‘Kambakkht Ishq’, the much hyped international love story with all those big names from Hollywood appearing in cameos. The makers of the film promoted it as an out and out entertainer  with Akki branded action and humour on a lavish scale.

The opening of ‘Kambakkht Ishq’ once again confirmed Akshay’s ability to be a crowd puller but ‘Kambakkht Ishq’ has managed only to get mixed to negative reviews and the word-of-mouth is also poor. Will this film survive or not, we will have to wait and see.

So far all his releases this year could not live upto the expectations. Let’s take a look at Akki’s forthcoming releases this year.  His confirmed upcoming films in 2009 are ‘Blue’ and ‘De Dana Dan’.

‘Blue’, from debutant Anthony D’Souza, is one of the most anticipated movies of 2009. This film brings Akshay back to his forte, action. ‘Blue’ with all those hyped underwater fight scenes could well be the first blockbuster for Akshay this year.

Akshay joins his favorite director Priyadarshan in ‘De Dana Dan’. This will be another comedy flick from Akki-Priyan duo and could bring smiles back on the face of Akshay fans.

Also there is ‘Action Replay’ with Vipul Shah, though not confirmed could be a late 2009 release.

With all these big films gearing up for release, Akshay Kumar could make the latter half of 2009 his own at the box office.