PEOPLE
— Arthur J Pais The return of Sanjaya
Former American Idol star Sanjaya Malakar will make his stage debut in New York, February 23, singing and dancing in Freckleface Strawberry. The hit show based on a children’s book by actress Julianne Moore has been performing in an
off-Broadway theater for over four months. “Being on American Idol has given me a lot
of courage, and I am able to perform before thousands of live audiences and I am prepared to act before a small but demanding audience,” Sanjaya has said. Born to an
Indian father and American mother, Sanjaya, who has wrestled with identity issues all
his life, may find the musical expressing his own feelings. It celebrates the importance
of tolerance and the need to accept people for who and what they are. Though not the
centerpiece, he has meaty scenes and songs and dances with the title character — a
seven-year-old redhead called Strawberry, who is deeply unhappy over her freckles.
With Sanjaya’s continuing popularity with teenagers, the producers surely expect an
uptick in ticket sales. The singer has come a long way from his American Idol days,
when his hairstyles attracted almost as much attention as his performances. Since then
he has participated in I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, written the book Dancing
to the Music in My Head, released an EP, appeared in commercials aimed at Indian
Americans, worked on his original music for a full length album — Life-Love-Music,
and worked for a well-known Seattle pizza restaurant. And his hair is no longer a talking point; his recent photographs show him with shorter hair.
SANJAYAMALAKAR.COM
Freida prettier
than Pretty Woman!
DANNY MOLOSHOK /REU TERS
Freida Pinto has outrun Hollywood stars like Natalie Portman and Julia Roberts in a new ‘Most Beautiful Women in Film’ list. Compiled
by the Los Angeles Times, the list has the Slumdog
Millionaire star at number 38, followed by Oscar-nominated Portman and Hollywood’s own Pretty
Woman Roberts. Pinto also pipped Sharon Stone
and Elizabeth Taylor, who were at 43 and 44 respectively. French actress Isabelle Adjani, 55, known for
her roles in Queen Margot and Possession, topped
the list comprising 50 names. But there is certainly
more to Freida than a pretty face. She and her next
film, Miral, are being seen as the olive branch in
Oscar-winning director Julian Schnabel’s effort to
normalize Indo-Pak relations, said The Times of
India. Through Miral, which is about strife
between Israel and Palestine, the filmmaker wants to
talk about how the two South Asian neighbors countries can move forward. He is still in the planning
stage of this drive that will see Freida and his girlfriend Rula Jebreal (author of The Road of Flowers
that was into Miral) head to India. Meanwhile,
there's chatter that Freida may head to Bollywood to
play a role in Dhoom 3, which already has Aamir
Khan as the villain.
Que sera sera, Shehnaz
Shehnaz Treasurywala, better known now as Rama Patel of One Life to Live, firmly believes whatever will be will be. She was going
through college in Mumbai when a
scout recruited her for a commercial.
And before she knew it, she had an
MTV show of her own. Just as accidentally, she landed her role on One Life to
Live. ‘In August 2010, I went to a family wedding in the United States, and a
friend introduced me to an agent who
sent me to an audition. It was for the
role of Rama Patel on One Life To Live,
the longest running show on ABC. The
audition process took a few months but
I ended up getting a role on the show,’
she wrote in the Indian Express. ‘I’m in
New York City now; acting in an
American soap. I love living here, I feel
like I belong here. It’s the city for young,
vibrant, ambitious people and it’s so
pretty right now, despite the frigid temperature and snow,’ she added.
Revenge is tweet for Vic
It’s absolutely devilish, but we love the way Google vice president Vic Gundotra, left, got back at Nokia for not allying with
Google. ‘#feb11 “Two turkeys do not make an
Eagle”,’ he tweeted February 9. Sounds like
gibberish? To most people outside the tech
space it would. It isn’t. ‘It was cool and calcu-
lated,’ said TechCrunch.com. February 11 sig-
nified Nokia’s annual Capital Markets Day,
when new chief executive office (and former
Microsoft president) Stephen Elop was
expected to announce radical changes to the
company’s plan, the portal explained. ‘For
weeks, rumors have swirled that Nokia may
ally with either Microsoft or Google going forward in the smartphone busi-
ness,’ it added. ‘Gundotra’s tweet… made it very clear who Nokia is going
with. The other guys.’ He not only exposed their news early, but did it in a
blatantly insulting manner. And it gets even better! Gundotra borrowed
the line ‘two turkeys don’t make an eagle’ from former Nokia VP Anssi
Vanjoki, Engadget pointed out. Vonjki had said it in 2005 about rival
BenQ buying the Siemens’s handset business. ‘So yes, there are many lay-
ers in such a short tweet. One layer of malice, one layer of intrigue, one
layer of humor, one layer of irony, and at least four layers of awesome,’
TechCrunch said.
Studying
Hrithik
Hrithik Roshan’s drool-worthy body will now be the subject of an aca- demic book based on Indian cinema,
written by Nandana Bose, assistant professor, department of film studies, University of
North Carolina, reports the Mumbai Mirror.
‘The writer is speaking to various filmmakers who have worked with him and then
penning an entire chapter on him,’ a source
revealed. ‘The chapter focuses on how
Hrithik has worked on his body, starting
from his debut to now… The chapter will
draw from scenes in Jodhaa Akbar, Krrish,
Dhoom 2, etc.” Now that’s one lesson no student, at least not the female ones, will miss.
