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"I am not scared, but I am excited for sure," Shruti Haasan's confidence is infectious. The pretty girl makes her debut in LUCK [slated for release next Friday], which will decide her future steps in Bollywood. Not many are aware that it was Imran Khan who recommended her name to director Soham Shah. "Imran and I have been friends for a long time and when Soham narrated the story, I decided to give it a try. I took up the assignment because I feel it's not one of those routine stories. It's not one of those films where the girl doesn't get any scope or is sidelined," Shruti tells me. But there were news-reports that Shruti would debut in a Tamil film with Madhavan. "Yes, I was supposed to, but things didn't work out," she adds. Shruti says her parents were very supportive when she told them of the offer she had received [LUCK]. But was she nervous when she shot with Sanjay Dutt, Mithun Chakraborty and Danny Denzongpa, veterans all? &quo

The famed Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute has arrived in India and the people responsible for taking this giant step are Rahul Rawail and Ahmed Ahsan. With so many institutes in India, what actually prompted Rawail to tie up with the reputed brand in the first place? "A lot of people I know, including Ranbir Kapoor, went to the U.S. to get trained in acting at Lee Strasberg. Besides getting the visa and admission in the institute, you need to be financially sound to realize your dreams. I was discussing this with Ahmed and that triggered off everything. Ahmed got in touch with them [Strasberg], one thing led to another and we shook hands within a very short period," Rawail reveals. To start with, Lee Strasberg will start operating in Mumbai and Hyderabad in its first phase. Mumbai also happens to be the place where Bollywood is based. Hyderabad, because Rawail and Ahmed want to tap the South film industry. "There's enormous talent out there that needs to

Riding high on its box office success, Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor starrer Kambakkht Ishq (KI), one of the biggest openers in the history of Indian cinema, has much more to it than Bollywood masala and a star studded cast including Hollywood stars like Denise Richards, Sylvester Stallone, Holly Valance and others. KI is an example of the ever-growing trend of Bollywood films embracing visual effects (vfx) with some incredible (invisible) visual effects by post-production house Prime Focus. Ask director Sabbir Khan about the film's success and he says, "I feel euphoric. Nearly 150 films release every year and yet only a handful can earn the tag of being a 'super hit'. So, yes, it makes me feel very special that I could do that, and that too with my first film." Speaking to Bollywood Hungama , Merzin Tavaria, Creative Director of Prime Focus and VFX Supervisor of KI shares, "Actually, if we look at KI, there is not much vfx in the movie but more of design

Post the success of Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire , Mumbai better brace itself for another slum saga from Hollywood. Paul Schrader is on the verge of finalizing his script for Extreme City which will be shot in and around the slums of Dharavi. Back from a hush-hush meeting with the director, producer Anubhav Sinha says, "I can't deny there's tremendous interest in another Mumbai slum saga after Slumdog Millionaire . But our project was firmed in much before Danny's film released." After Danny Boyle's dark and passionate look at Mumbai in Slumdog Millionaire , it's American super-director Paul Schrader's turn to do a hardcore Mumbai film, this one for an Indian producer Anubhav Sinha. In what's arguably the biggest collaboration ever between Bollywood and Hollywood, American writer-director Paul Schrader sneaked into Mumbai in July and met up with producer-director Anubhav Sinha for a Mumbai-based underworld drama called Extreme City . Mu