Mumbai:
Film: Blue (U/A)
Director: Anthony D’souza
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Zayed Khan, Lara Dutta and others

Anthony D’souza, director of Blue, said in an interview that it was important to keep the running time of the film under two hours (1.57hrs to be precise) so that the audience didn’t get bored. D’souza couldn’t have got it more wrong. Blue could have easily been shorter, or even not have been made at all.

Okay, agreed that India hasn’t seen an action film of this scale before. The canvas is huge, the cinematography pretty good and the making slick. Money has been spent like water and that’s the closest the film comes to its theme.

But even as Blue tries to emulate every Hollywood film in the action genre, it hardly matches up to any of them. It instead ends up, embarrassingly, like a poor B-grade film from the west. Bad Boys anyone? Nope, this one’s just bad.

If you’ve seen the promos, you roughly know the plot. It’s another matter that even after the film ends, you don’t really know what the plot was after all. Way back in 1949, the British decided to return some of India’s jewels back to the country and dispatched them on a ship called Lady in Blue. The vessel sunk, untraced, in mysterious circumstances and its contents remained lost.

source: dnaindia

Bollywood Trade News Network

Akshay and wife Twinkle were amongst the first to arrive at the Mata ki Chowki.

And proof that this bonhomie was real was seen when in return Akshay invited his co-stars Sanjay Dutt and Zayed Khan for the finale of his show ‘Khatron Ke Khiladi – 2′. All the three male leads of Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision Ltd.’s underwater action thriller BLUE have recently shot with the final contestants for the nail biting finale of this season!

Looks like the gossip mills will have to resign themselves to their friendship and look for other fodder!

BLUE, an underwater action thriller directed by Anthony D’Souza, is not only Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision Ltd’s but also Bollywood’s most ambitious and promising projects till date.

BLUE captures the fast paced action, above and below the ocean as never seen before in Indian Cinema! With a dream cast of Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Lara Dutta, Zayed Khan, Rahul Dev and Katrina Kaif, this underwater action thriller promises to set your pulses racing this Diwali!

New Delhi, Sep 23 (IANS) Lara Dutta, who has been creating waves with her svelte figure and bold avatar in the promos of ‘Blue’, hopes the film turns out to be a hit and makes her Diwali really special.

‘Blue’, also starring Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt and Zayed Khan is centered on an underwater treasure guarded by sharks and is slated to release Oct 16, just a day before Diwali.

‘My next film after ‘Do Knot Disturb’, ‘Blue’ is releasing just a day before Diwali, so I’m hoping that it does well and my Diwali becomes a bumper Diwali,’ Lara, who was wearing a pink satin dress, told reporters here.

The former beauty queen-turned-actress was in the capital to attend the 25th edition of MMTC’s Festival of Gold.

Asked how she planned to celebrate the festival of lights, Lara said Diwali would be a family affair for her this year, unlike last time.

‘Diwali is a festival meant to be celebrated with family, but last year I was shooting in Singapore for ‘Do Knot Disturb’. So this year I’ll be spending time with my close ones,’ Lara said.

Sampurn, Bollywood Trade News Network

A close source says, “Zayed and Kylie got a long like a house on fire. The two shared an excellent rapport and those who have seen the rushes of the film say that their chemistry is pretty visible on the screen too.”

Zayed even gifted Kylie a designer sari, the Indian traditional wear, on the last day of the shoot.

The gift took Kylie by surprise more so because it was a sari. She wondered how Zayed knew the size that’d befit her. Kylie later even asked Zayed about it. Zayed told her, “It was just that I kept my wife’s size in mind. Kylie was touched by Zayed’s friendly gesture,” said our source.

Mumbai, Sep 17 (IANS) Actor Zayed Khan says he is learning ‘the hard way’. He was supposed to sing and dance to a solo number in the film ‘Blue’, but was shocked to be informed that he would not be the only one to feature in it.

The same song has been turned into a group number and is being shot with Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Lara Dutta, Katrina Kaif and, of course, Zyed in the film by Tony D’Souza.

‘I’m learning my lessons the hard way. In this industry it’s always the big fish eating up the little fish (an apt description considering our film ‘Blue’ is an underwater sea adventure). Fine. Hopefully, one day I’ll get there,’ said Zayed, who is shooting in Delhi for ‘Sharafat Gayi Tel Lene’.

‘But when I do I can assure I won’t behave the same way. But no more being taken for granted. I can’t afford it,’ he added.

As for not participating in the number, he said: ‘I was thinking of not participating in the shooting. If I am not considered important enough, no point in hanging around. But then I decided to be professional about this. I’m flying from Delhi to Mumbai for the song.’

Zayed, however, absolves the ‘Blue’ director of all blame.

D’Souza says, ‘Yes, we’re shooting a song with the entire cast next week. I’d really like Zayed to be part of it. Because he’s a very important and pivotal part of ‘Blue’. This film will take him to another level.’

Farhan Akhtar believes in being exclusive. The producer cum director cum actor cum singer managed to create quite a stir with his songs for ‘Rock On!’. In fact, Farhan wowed many with his acting and singing skills in this movie, directed by Abhishek Kapoor. Therefore, it is understandable, his wanting to remain exclusive and reap the dividends for a longer period of time.

But it comes as quite a shock when one hears that Farhan has turned down an offer from AR Rahman to lend his vocals for a song in the forthcoming movie, ‘Blue’. For quite a while, one had been hearing about Farhan lending his vocals to Zayed Khan’s character in Anthony D’Silva’s ‘Blue’. But it seems that Farhan was lying low as he was not willing to lend his vocals to any other actor. It’s not often that someone like Rahman gets to hear a ‘no’. Generally, people are dying to get a chance to work with him, but Farhan apparently is not one of them. He would rather reserve his vocals for his own films instead of giving playback for some other actor. The actor realizes that his is an unusual voice which needs to be used in just the right measure. Over exposure could kill the novelty factor associated with his voice. Hence, even though it was not the easiest thing to do, Farhan came clean with Rahman and opted out of the number, called ‘Fiqrana’, which will now be sung by Vijay Prakash.

Bollywood Trade News Network

And when you talk of a film based on underwater sequences, how can you miss out on the most adorable sea animals – the dolphins?

In Shree Ashtavinayak’s BLUE directed by debutant director Anthony D’Souza, you can see Sanjay Dutt and Lara Dutta frolicking with the dolphins!

The audiences will get to see Sanjay and Lara cavorting delightfully with the sea creatures in a romantic song ‘Aaj Dil Gustak Hai’ in the film.

Says director Anthony, “It was very difficult to shoot with the wild spotted dolphins and we had to travel overnight to Bimini to shoot with them. It was well worth all the efforts as the outcome was spectacular! We were extremely lucky to find a cluster of them and the delightful tricks which the dolphins learnt especially for the song make for a visual treat.”

The song has been picturised on the actors playing with wild dolphins in all their majestic glory in Bimini Islands. There were also scenes which required them to shoot at close range for which they had specially trained dolphins at the dolphin encounters! These mammals were specially taught tricks which are shown in the film. Not just the actors even the dolphins were trained for their roles!!!

Even after the required shots, Sanjay and Lara would stay back in the dolphin encounters and play with the dolphins!!! And being very intelligent creatures, the mammals picked up the tricks very fast and were loved and petted by the entire team!

Slated to hit the theatres on 16th Oct ‘09, this oceanic spectacle features Bollywood stars like Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Lara Dutta, Zayed Khan, Rahul Dev and Katrina Kaif.

Dr. A R Rahman has composed the tracks for the film with the winning combination of Resul Pookuty engineering the sound.