John Abraham will star in Anurag Kashyap's Bombay Velvet

Now, reports say that John Abraham too will come onboard. But, the funny thing is that long back John Abraham had announced that he is part of Bombay Velvet along with Naseeruddin Shah and Kay Kay Menon. We had carried the report in March 2009.

Old hat, this.

In fact, I would take the news that Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan are part of Bombay Velvet with a huge pinch of salt, until the news in confirmed by Anurag Kashyap, Aamir Khan or Shahrukh Khan themselves.

Though, long back Anurag Kashyap has said in an interview that he wanted Aamir Khan to be part of Bombay Velvet.

Bombay Velvet is set in the 1960s and revolves around the crime scene in Mumbai then. Anurag Kashyap was quoted as saying that Bombay Velvet will be like the LA Confidential of India.

LA Confidential is a fantastic flick. It would be interesting to see if Kashyap can pull off a thriller on the same level.

Bombay Velvet, reportedly, will have three segments, with John Abraham, Aamir Khan, and Shahrukh, featured in each of them.

Anurag Kashap had said in an interview that he brought two writers on board, for Bombay Velvet, who criticised him most for No Smoking.

If Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan are indeed part of Bombay Velvet, then they probably have cameo roles in the movie.

It’s not clear what Danny Boyle’s role is in this production, but some reports say that Boyle will present the movie to further its chances in the international market.

Kalki Koechlin photo

Kalki Koechlin has been quoted, in HT, as saying, “It’s a 90-minute film. There will be other characters, but the story is about me. And no, it is no similar to 4 Months, 3 weeks, and 2 Days. It’s a completely new story. It will just be shot in the same style.”

4 Months, 3 weeks, and 2 Days is an award-winning Romanian movie made in the post-communist new Romanian cinematic style.

The movie is set in communist Romania. It tells the story of a young girl, who wants to undergo an abortion, but has to undergo all sorts of complications to be able to do that, in a repressed regime where abortion is illegal.

4 Months, 3 weeks, and 2 Days has been written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, and stars Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, and Alex Potocean.

Kalki Koechlin as Chanda in DevD

Kalki Koechlin has said Happy Ending will not be made in a hurry. Anurag has other movies in the pipeline, reports say, including a segment in Bombay Cutting, called Pramod Bhai 23.

Kalki was born in Pondicherry to French parents. She speaks fluent English and Tamil. Kalki did her schooling in Ooty and studied drama in Goldsmiths, University of London.

Reports say that Kalki Koechlin was attached to Theatre of Relativity, a theatre group for a couple of years, and acted in plays like David Hare’s The Blue Room and Marivaux’s The Dispute.

Kalki Koechlin as Lenny in DevD

She has won the MetroPlus Playwright Award 2009 with Prashant Prakash for their co-authored entry Skeleton Woman.

Kalki does not have any other movies in the pipeline apart from Anurag Kashyap’s Happy Ending. That can be attributed to the fact that most filmmakers, probably, find it difficult to pigeon-hole her. She looks like a “foreigner” but her expressions are like that of any other Indian young girl, her age. So, they cannot offer her their usual “foreigner” roles, which, I’m sure she’d never accept, in any case, nor can they offer her typical filmy heroine roles.

In her last release, DevD, a contemporary take on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas, Kalki played the role of Chandramukhi with aplomb.

Kalki plays a young school girl, Lenny, who  is not allowed to write off a mistake, by her parents or society. She becomes, Chanda, an exclusive escort by night and a student by day.
Sweet and fearless, she is not afraid of Dev’s contempt or his tantrums. Kalki does a fantastic job of getting across her love for Devdas as well as her refusal to take his theatrics seriously.

Kalki Koechlin as Chanda in DevD

Much like Paro, she loves Dev, but has no illusions about him.

Needless to say, Kalki is extremely unusual, not just in terms of her looks but also her incredibly spontaneous acting. It would be interesting to see what kinds of movies she does in the future.

Gulaal poster

Gulaal will be released on March 13, 2009. The movie went into production in June 2008. Gulaal has an immensely talented cast with Kay Kay Menon, the fantastic Deepak Dobriyal (Omkara, Blue Umbrella), Mahi Gill, Raja Chaudhary, Piyush Mishra, Abhimanyu Shekhar Singh, Ayesha Mohan, and the edgy Jesse Randhawa.

Gulaal is the story of an impressionable (kinder word than weak) young man Dileep (Raja Chaudhary) who gets sucked into a political battle waged by the Maharajas in Rajasthan to set up a separate state.

Kay Kay Menon plays the leader of the Maharajahs, Dukey Bana, who uses Dileep for his own political agenda, to bolster the Rajputana movement.

Ayesha Mohan and Kay Kay Menon in Gulaal

Gulaal’s music has been composed by Piyush Mishra, with Indian Ocean singing one track in the movie.

The music of Gulaal has been described by Anurag Kashyap as a cross between that of Bob Dylan and John Lennon.

Gulaal has been written by Anurag Kashyap and Raja Chaudhary. Raja Chaudhary has said that it took him a few meetings to be able to narrate his script to Anurag Kashyap, after which Anurag went with him to Rajasthan and worked on it and narrated it to him. Raja Chaudhary has said that he felt his script was like that written by a five-year-old when compared to Anurag’s version.

Anurag Kashyap has written in his blog, “It (Gulaal) was and is my most angry film. It was influenced a lot by the songs from Pyaasa. That is the music that i use to hear at that time. Particularly “yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai.”

Initially, Gulaal was produced by Jhamu Sughand, but was put on the backburner when fell ill. His other movies in production at that time, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na and Johnny Gaddar, continued to be filmed. No one wanted to touch Gulaal at that time, but in 2008 Zee Motion Pictures stepped in to complete and release the movie.

Hopefully Anurag Kashyap’s ill-fated Paanch will see the light of the day, now that it has been finally cleared by the censors.