Nicolas Cage to be honoured
NICOLAS Cage, certainly, needs no introduction. In Leaving Las Vegas, he played the part of a dying alcoholic to perfection and won an Oscar for his performance. In Face-Off, he put up an impressive performance even though he was pitted against an actor of the caliber of John Travolta. More recently, he was credited with putting life into the otherwise lacklustre script of Gone In 60 Seconds.

Neha, Manoj: Wedding on the cards?
AFTER repeating the cliched we-are-just-good-friends mantra over and over again, Manoj Bajpai and Neha have finally decided to come clean about their relationship. They are planning to make their relationship official and are reportedly considering marriage.

Another marriage on the rocks
GUESS you just can’t keep a khalnayak down for long. Even a broken marriage and a stint in jail do not seem to have taught Sanjay Dutt lessons everyone hoped he had learned. The latest casualty of his irresponsible and philandering ways is his marriage with Rhea Pillai, which is far from rosy.

If they were not in films...
By Gautam Grover
IMAGINE Amitabh Bachchan, not as an actor, but your friendly neighbourhood milkman...and Sunil Dutt as a postman, Prem Chopra as a journalist and Dharmendra driving a tractor in Punjab! Well, if Mumbai did not beckon, they would probably have remained in obscurity.

This happens only in movies!

Nicolas Cage to be honoured

NICOLAS Cage, certainly, needs no introduction. In Leaving Las Vegas, he played the part of a dying alcoholic to perfection and won an Oscar for his performance. In Face-Off, he put up an impressive performance even though he was pitted against an actor of the caliber of John Travolta. More recently, he was credited with putting life into the otherwise lacklustre script of Gone In 60 Seconds.

This month, Nicolas Cage will be honoured at an international film festival. He will receive the Charles A Crain Desert Palm Award at the Nortel Networks Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 13. John Travolta, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, Sophia Loren and Frank Sinatra are among those who have received this award in the past.

“We are excited with having the opportunity to honour someone with such greatness. Nicolas Cage is a relatively young actor but the body of work he has been able to produce has just been fantastic,” said festival spokesman Denis Pregnolato. Some other movies in which Nicolas Cage has acted include Raising Arizona, The Rock, It Could Happen To You and Moonstruck. 

Neha, Manoj: Wedding on the cards?

AFTER repeating the cliched we-are-just-good-friends mantra over and over again, Manoj Bajpai and Neha have finally decided to come clean about their relationship. 

They are planning to make their relationship official and are reportedly considering marriage. All this after they went blue in the face denying there was anything between them. They even denied rumours of a live-in arrangement. 

Apparently they did not want to go through the bother of clarifying matters if things did not work out between them. Of course their denials didn’t convince anyone. Someone should have told them that the trouble with having skeletons in your cupboard is that they make too much noise.

Another marriage on the rocks

GUESS you just can’t keep a khalnayak down for long. Even a broken marriage and a stint in jail do not seem to have taught Sanjay Dutt lessons everyone hoped he had learned.

The latest casualty of his irresponsible and philandering ways is his marriage with Rhea Pillai, which is far from rosy. Rumours about Rhea filing for divorce are doing the rounds of Bollywood. 

And the reason is Sanjay’s too-cosy-for-Rhea’s-comfort relationship with Preeti Zinta.

 Not that eyeing other women is an altogether novel experience for Sanjay but this time round Rhea seems determined to teach her husband a lesson. For her sake as well as Sanjay’s, lets hope she succeeds. 

— Glitzy 

If they were not in films...
By Gautam Grover

IMAGINE Amitabh Bachchan, not as an actor, but your friendly neighbourhood milkman...and Sunil Dutt as a postman, Prem Chopra as a journalist and Dharmendra driving a tractor in Punjab! Well, if Mumbai did not beckon, they would probably have remained in obscurity.

But what about the present generation of film stars?

Apart from people like Anupam Kher, Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Manoj Bajpai who were determined and trained to be actors, most of the stars have just strayed into the profession. For them, stardom has been a sheer accident.

Aamir Khan in fact, wanted to be a tennis pro and admits to be “heartbroken” when the success of cousin Mansoor Khan’s Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak made him a film hero overnight. Rani Mukherji would rather be a “good, Bengali homemaker” and Aishwarya Rai, a doctor.

“The human body interested me as a child,” recalls Rai. “But somehow, instead of training to be a doctor, I took up architecture in college. Then Miss World happened. But then, I was already a well-known model and all my dreams went up in smoke.”

Hrithik Roshan’s mother, Pinky remembers how he wanted to be a scientist when he grew up: “As a child he used to be fascinated by the stars. He had a scientific bent of mind. His quest for answers made him take up mechanical devices, musical instruments... anything he could decode.”

For Sonali Bendre, her only ambition in life was to be a ballet dancer: “To my young mind, there was absolutely nothing so feminine, so pretty and as graceful as a ballet dancer. I used to practice walking on my toes and think it was the most beautiful thing ever.”

Likewise, Twinkle Khanna did not want to “get caught in the insecurities of life” (like her star parents Rajesh Khanna and Dimple Kapadia) and was training to be a chartered accountant. But then, Barsaat happened and as they say, the rest is history!

— MF

This happens only in movies!

1. Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people — whether they are employed or not.

2. At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.

3. Should you decide to defuse a bomb, don't worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one.

4. Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communications system of any invading alien society.

5. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts: your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.

6. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your bedroom will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.

7. If you are blonde and pretty, it is possible to become a world expert on nuclear fission at the age of 22.

8. Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement.

9. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gasses, lasers, and man-eating sharks, which will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.

10. All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets that reach the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.

11. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.

12. It's easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.

13. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off — even while scuba diving.

14. You're very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

15. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German or Russian officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German or Russian accent will do.

16. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.

17. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

18. If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.

19. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.

20. Word processors never display a cursor on screen but will always say: Enter Password Now.

21. Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.

22. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off.

23. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.

24. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you meet will know all the steps.

25. Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.