Rihanna: Singer & Fashion Icon Turns 27 – Happy Birthday

It was only fitting that the fashion icon and singer celebrated her 27th birthday just one day after New York Fashion Week ended. In honor of our beloved bad gal, we rounded up some of our favorite moments of the one and only Riri!

Rihanna’s Birthday: Singer & Fashion Icon Turns 27 – Happy Birthday

From her rumored romance with Leonardo DiCaprio to her new song, “FourFiveSeconds” with Paul McCartney and Kanye West, Riri has made her mark on practically everyone this year!

Fortunately, she even made a return to Instagram to reconnect with her 15 million followers!

And, this is just the beginning, as the singer plans to release her eighth studio album, R8, in 2015

As Riri worked on her highly anticipated album this year, she also continued to immerse herself even more in the fashion industry!

Following her Style Icon Award at the2014 CFDA awards, the songstress added another title to her resume in 2015: global ambassador for PUMA!

She will also put her stylish eye and design expertise to use as the creative director for PUMA’s women’s training category. Go Riri! Equally, we love how the Barbados native has also shown her support for smaller labels too.

Indeed, it seems that everyone wants a piece of Rihanna including Leo DiCaprio! The rumored pair was reportedly hooking up for months, but the jury is out on whether the “We Found Love” singer and the actor will actually settle down.

Regardless of Riri’s dating life, the singers seems to be very focused on her music instead of men. As we previously reported, RiRi is so over dating fellow recording artists like Drake and Chris Brown.

Although Riri isn’t exactly focusing on her future husband, we can already tell she’ll be an amazing mother one day! This past year, the star gave us a preview of her maternal instincts while playing with it-babies, Blue Ivy and North West. What we would give to go back in time so we could be baby sat by the coolest bad gal ever!

'Humshakals' Leads Golden Kela Awards With 5 Nominations

Multi-starrer 'Humshakals', which was critically-panned, is leading at the 7th Annual Golden Kela Awards nominations, with five nods including worst film, worst actor for Saif Ali Khan and worst director for Sajid Khan.

Golden Kela Awards is an Indian version of Golden Raspberry Awards and honours the worst in Bollywood.

'Humshakals' is also nominated in the category of 'most atrocious lyrics' and for 'Baawra Ho Gaya Hai Ke' award.

Action masala film 'Action Jackson' is not far behind with four nominations, including worst film, worst actor for Ajay Devgn, worst actress for Sonakshi Sinha and worst director for Prabhu Deva.

Other movies in the worst film category are Salman Khan-starrer 'Kick', 'Bang Hrithik Roshan-starrer Bang!' and Shah Rukh Khan-fronted 'Happy New Year', all three being hits at the box-office.

For his triple role in 'Humsahakals', Saif is competing for the worst actor title against Devgn for 'Action Jackson', Arjun Kapoor for 'Gunday' and everything else, Salman for 'Kick' and Rani Mukerji for her tough cop act in 'Mardaani'.

'Humshakals' helmer Sajid is vying for the worst director spot with Prabhu Deva for 'Singham Returns', Rohit Shetty 'Singham Returns', Sajid Nadiadwala 'Kick' and Siddharth Anand 'Bang Bang!'.

Sonakshi is the front-runner in the worst actress category as she has been nominated not only for 'Action Jackson' but also for her work in Tamil superstar Rajinikanth-starrer 'Lingaa' and 'Holiday'.

She is competing against Katrina Kaif ('Bang Bang!'), Sonam Kapoor for Everything She Did, Tamannah Bhatia for 'Entertainment' and Jacqueline Fernandes for 'Kick'.

Hit numbers of 2014 like 'Blue Hai Paani Paani' ('Yaariyan'), 'Yaar na Miley' ('Kick'), 'Baby Doll' ('Ragini MMS 2'), 'Galliyan' ('Ek Villain') and 'Tu Mera' ('Bang Bang!') have been nominated for the most irritating song of the year.

Nominees for most atrocious lyrics are — Sameer for 'Caller Tune' ('Humshakals'), Shabbir Ahmed for 'Ice Cream' from 'The Xpose', Yo Yo Honey Singh for 'Blue hai Paani Paani' ('Yaariyan'), Vishal Dadlani for 'Tu Meri' ('Bang Bang!') and Mayur Puri for 'Johnny Johnny' ('Entertainment').

Movie Mogul D Rama Naidu Passes Away

Telugu producer Daggubati Ramanaidu passed away this Wednesday afternoon in Hyderabad losing battle to cancer. Reports surfaced in January 2014 that the multilingual film producer was sick with prostrate cancer and was being treated at a Hyderabad’s private hospital. D Rama Naidu was 78 and is survived by his sons – Venkatesh, Suresh Babu and his grandchild Rana. The sudden demise has left the whole tollywood celebs and fans in shock. Born on 6th June 1936 in Andhra Pradesh in the district of Karamchedu, Rama Naidu did many odd jobs for living such as bus transport business and rice mill business before he finally got in to the movie industry. The launch of a production agency called Shambu Films in his area was what that attracted him towards films.

He became friends with late actor Akkineni Nageshwara Rao when he was taking care of the shoot arrangements. After being acquainted with some other actors, he launched his own productions agency by the name of Suresh Productions in collaboration with his old friends Subba Rao and G Rajendra Prasad. The first movie that came out was in 1964 – “Raamudu Bheemudu”. The movie was a great hit then. Since then, Rama Naidu never looked back. Later on he directed and produced a number of movies in Telugu most of which were blockbuster hits. Other languages in which he produced movies are Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Punjabi, English, Oriya and Malyalam. Probably, there is only one film producer who has worked in multiple languages. D Rama Naidu got his name in the Guinness Book of World records for most number of movies produced by an individual. He produced a total of 150 movies in 13 different languages.

His outstanding work won him the Dada Saheb Phalke Award for lifetime achievement. For his enormous contribution to the Telugu industry he received Padma Bhushan in 2012. Rama Naidu also got to serve as Member of Parliament at Guntur district for the Bapatala constituency during 13th lok sabha elections in 1994. He served till 2004. He devoted a great part of his earnings to generous purposes including the trust he founded in 1991 – “Ramanaidu Charitable Trust”. His death came as a shock to his fans across the globe and a number of fans took to social media to express their condolences to his family and offer prayers. 

His death has shocked many across the globe. Soon after the news of his sudden demise broke out, many of his fans took to their Twitter pages and offered prayers to his departed soul and expressed condolences to his family.

Did you know AAP ka CM Kejriwal could have been Mallika Sherawat's co-star in Dirty Politics?

Did you happen to hear about a film called 'Dirty Politics' before now? If you have, Bollywood should gift you a star in the Yash Raj studios. If you haven't, hey, you'll survive. A Google search reveals that Dirty Politics is a film starring Mallika Sherawat, Naseeruddin Shah, Anupam Kher, and Om Puri among others. In the great tradition of Madhur Bhandarkar films, this one too seeks to reveal the dirty in Indian politics.

But that's not what's the most interesting bit about the film. A story carried on Mid-Day today claims that AAP convenor and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal was approached by director and producer KC Bokadia to star in the film.

If the film's trailer is anything to go by, it explores how sleaze plays an important role in Indian politics. The plotline has Mallika Sherawat as a woman who establishes a ilicit relationship with Om Puri, who plays a powerful politician. She then shoots their sexual encounters and hands the CD over to the opposition, who now blackmails Puri to cede power to them.

The interesting bit here is Mid-Day's source tells them that Kejriwal really liked the script Bokadia sent him. "Bokadia saab had offered Kejriwal the film as it was loosely based on his phenomenal rise from common man to chief minister. After the narration, Kejriwal had liked the script...," the source tells Mid-Day. However, we suspect, good sense prevailed and he excused himself from the film.

The role then went to Naseeruddin Shah.

The trailer portays Naseeruddin Shah as a journalist who is trying to bring justice to the character played by Mallika Sherawat.

While there is no way to confirm if the film was really offered to Arvind Kejriwal, the fact that the makers have decided to reveal this nugget of information now is quite the PR genius.

The trailer of the film was out in December last year but no such claims were made by its makers back then. It is understandable. After all, back then Kejriwal was the chief minister who almost made it. However, Kejriwal's story had made a complete turn now and for all you know, people might want to watch Dirty Politics as the film whose script Kejriwal liked. Or the film which Kejriwal refused!

ENTERTAINMENT Iconic actress Manorama in death hoax; social network abuzz

Chennai: Iconic Tamil actress Manorama, who has lately been unwell, was hit by a death hoax after news spread that she passed away at her home in Chennai.

Having acted in hundreds of films that endeared her to her fans over the years, the news spread across the country on social networks, before the family stepped in and said that Manorama was very much alive, except that her health was not exactly in prime condition.

The family said that spreading canards will not do the actress any good and that people should desist from doing so.

Manorama has acted alongside famed actors who later took to politics like M Karunanidhi, MG Ramachandran and Jayalalitha and Andhra’s NT Rama Rao.

'Badlapur' is content-driven and entertaining: Radhika Apte

Chennai: Actress Radhika Apte, who plays one of the leads in forthcoming action-thriller "Badlapur", says the film is content-driven and also has all the elements of a commercially entertaining venture.

"This is a content-driven film, but it's entertaining too with all the commercial elements," Radhika told IANS.

She plays the owner of a restaurant in the film and most of her scenes were with Varun Dhawan.

"I play this role of an independent woman. It's a strong character and that's all I can reveal about it," she said.

Radhika believes it's really brave of Varun to do something "contrary" to his onscreen image.

"I really loved working with Varun. He's a very hardworking actor. It's so brave of him that he took a leap of faith and has done something so contrast and dark to his earlier roles. I think it's really great that he had taken up this project," she added.

Radhika confessed she's a fan of director Sriram Raghavan's work and that she had been waiting for an opportunity to work with him.

"Sriram is very experimental with his ideas and always tries something different. He allows his actors to collaborate and contribute their ideas to the project. He's supremely talented as a director and writer. I think it's great that he writes as well as directs," she said.

"He's a simple human being and I'd love to work with him again," she added.

Also starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Huma Qureshi, Yami Gautham and Vinay Pathak, "Badlapur" releases in cinemas Friday.

Radhika also has projects such as "Hunterrr", "Manjhi: The Mountain Man", a yet-untitled film with Anurag Kashyap and Telugu film "Lion" in her kitty.

Distributors of superstar Rajinikanth’s ‘Lingaa’ to go on mass begging protest

Chennai: Distributors of superstar Rajinikanth-starrer ‘Lingaa’, who demanded compensation for the heavy losses incurred while distributing and exhibiting the film, have decided go on a mass begging protest.

The distributors and theatre owners have decided to beg for compensation after their plea for refund of Rs.35 crore was declined by producer Rockline Venkatesh.

“Last month it was decided we will be compensated after extensive accounting of the losses. And for this, Rajini sir had appointed his friend and distributor Tirupur Subramaniam, who ascertained the quantum loss suffered by us. However, the producer is unwilling to pay Rs.35 crore,” distributor Singaravadivelan told IANS.

He claims Eros International had bought the theatrical rights of K.S. Ravikumar-directed “Lingaaa at a whopping price of over Rs.100 crore.

“The amount we claim as refund is far less than the salary paid to Rajinikanth. If Eros had paid so much to buy the film, we don’t understand why it is difficult for producer Venkatesh to refund us when he had promised us that the film will do better business than ‘Enthiran’,” he said.

The mass begging protest is expected to start here Tuesday from outside actor Rajinikanth’s residence.

“They’ve made us beg for the refund. And we will do it as we’ve run out of options. We will beg right outside Rajinikanth’s house,” he added.

Following the hunger strike last month, producer Venkatesh had agreed to reimburse ten percent of the losses incurred by the distributors, who turned down the offer.