Bolly-Kolly meeting in S'pore
Hectic would not even begin to describe the weekend of June 7 to 9 when Bollywood's glitterati descend on Singapore for the International Indian Film Academy awards (known popularly by its acronym IIFA).
It will be a hot night, or so IIFA's organiser Wizcraft International promises, one where Bollywood and Kollywood will party under one roof.
Not only will you get to see the likes of Bipasha Basu, Anil Kapoor, along with the other Bollywood stars and starlets, but representing the might from south Indian cinema will be A.R.
Rahman (who straddles both industries), actress and producer Radikaa Sarathkumar, actress Shreya Saran, Telugu film producer K.S. Rama Rao, actors Suresh Babu and Allu Arvind and many more.
While Shahid Kapoor helms this year's awards night as the host on June 9 at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, Tamil cinema's director-choreographer Prabhu Deva will be choreographing IIFA Rocks and the awards. This is the first time he will be choreographing an awards show.
Part of the IIFA weekend will be various other activities such as film launches, the IIFA world premiere of the political thriller Shanghai directed by Dibakar Banerjee and starring Emraan Hashmi, Abhay Deol and Kalki Koechlin.
The film is the thinking person's masala movie, according to Dibakar. And when he spoke to tabla! from his office in Mumbai recently he added that he's interested to see how the film will be received in Singapore.
"Singapore has a distinct Indian diaspora that is made up of local Indians and the diaspora from India, so I would like to see how they would react to it," he said.
Kamal Hassan will be here too, screening a sneak peek of his much-anticipated film Vishwaroop. One of his biggest projects, the movie will be unveiled on June 8 at the Raffles City Convention Centre.
As for the films in the running for an IIFA award, Zoya Akhtar's multi-starrer Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara leads the pool with 14 nominations while Ekta Kapoor's hit film The Dirty Picture is a close second with 13.
The Ranbir Kapoor-hit Rockstar has nine nominations and Salman Khan's Bodyguard has seven.
Unsurprisingly, Vidya Balan scores another best actress nomination for her role as the tragic Silk Smitha in The Dirty Picture while Tamil cinema actor Prakash Raj has scored a nomination for his role as the villain in the Ajay Devgan film Singham.
The weekend also includes fashion and music show IIFA Rocks, which will be held at the Esplanade Concert Hall on June 8.
And the grapevine has it that leading Bollywood stars attending IIFA have bought tickets for the Taj Express musical presented by tabla!. The musical is having its world premeire at the Esplanade on June 7. sheela@sph.com.sg
