'The Hangover' Getting a Bollywood Facelift

What happens in Punjab stays in Punjab: The Hangover is going Bollywood. Roll your eyes all want - and I agree on first glance this is a weird fit - but now it kind of makes some sense to me.

First, the specifics: Some sources say producer Feroze Nadiadwala will bring a new version of The Hangover to the Indian market, with Sajid Khan set to direct and Akshay Kumar (Chandi Chowk to China) proposed to star. But there is another group in the mix, with producer Dinesh Vijan claiming Warner Bros. has contacted his Illuminati Productions about handling the remake. So it looks like there might be a bit of a tug-of-war for a little while.

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Movie Review - 'Chandni Chowk to China'

Chandni Chowk to China Starring Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, and Gordon Liu Directed by Nikhil Advani Rated PG-13

It's somewhat daunting to try to review a film like Chandni Chowk to China for mostly western audiences. The overwhelming majority of Americans and Canadians, for example, have never seen a Bollywood film. A lot of them have never even heard of Bollywood. So where do you begin describing a movie that combines the pulsating sights and sounds of a typical Indian film with the traditional wu shu martial arts action of a Chinese kung fu flick? Exactly. Bollywood, if you need the primer, is the portmanteau of Bombay and Hollywood, is kind of regarding as derisive in that part of the world, and it's the common name for the film industry based in Mumbai, which cranks out the most movies of any country in the world. The films made in India tend to be melodramatic, loaded with song and dance numbers, and because the audiences there want to get their money's worth, the films are sometimes very, very long. You'll get everything in a typical Bollywood movie - romance, action, drama, comedy, music, and then more of the same. In one way, it's wonderful to see the vibrance of an Indian or Hindistani film walking hand-in-hand with elements of a Chinese martial arts film, which can be rather sparse and very direct. Ultimately, that's what I was evaluating while watching Chandni Chowk to China, because grading it on its acting or whether or not the plot flows is virtually impossible. It's not designed to make those grades. Chandni Chowk is a bustling market in Delhi, where Sidhu (Akshay Kumar) works for his father, slicing up vegetables and performing other menial duties. That seems to be what he's best suited for, though, despite his own desire to be something greater. Much to Sidhu's surprise, two Chinese travelers have been led to him by the spirit of feudal warrior Liu Shengh, who legend has it, protected the Great Wall of China from being overrun by invaders. Sidhu and his sidekick, a crackpot spiritual advisor named Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey) travel to China to claim the potato peeler's destiny. Of course, Chopstick didn't tell him that it involved killing the indominatable Hojo (the equally indominatable Gordon Liu), an organized crime kingpin who has tormented a tiny village for years. So that's the action set-up. In a very real way, this part of the story resembles Kung Fu Panda. But there is, of course, much more. Sidhu falls in love with an absolutely beautiful TV pitchwoman (Deepika Padukone), and is surprised to see her smuggling diamonds at the airport in China when he arrives. He's more surprised, though, by her astounding fighting skills, as she quickly dispatches an entire squadron of policemen before flying away in that oh so traditional wire fu manner. Was he mistaken, is the pitchwoman actually a diamond thief, or is there some other explanation?

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They don't call it Bollywood for nothing. The Indian film industry releases more movies per year than Hollywood, and even though the majority of those movies never find equal audiences outside of their homeland, it is still one of the big driving forces in international pop culture.

And, much like the hit factory that inspired its name, Bollywood has apparently run out of ideas, too. RealBollywood is reporting that stars Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai have signed on for Action Replay, a retitled new version of Back to the Future. Without knowing all the specifics, I think we can safely assume that Akshay Kumar goes back to the past and through a series of seemingly innocent events, jeopardizes his own future. Kumar is not a known property to most of us in the U.S., but we sure know the lovely Aishwarya Rai. She's never received a huge push in the states although the 2005 release Bride and Prejudice made about $7 million in America without ever seeing more than 300 theaters.

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Trailer - Disney's Bollywood Debut, 'Roadside Romeo'

This Friday is a big day for Disney: It marks the opening of the studio's first animated Bollywood production, Roadside Romeo. It's a co-production between Disney and Yash Raj Films, and in what I think is the major storyline here, all the animation was done in India, not in the United States, which means that future projects along these lines will be easier to execute. This is the first of three Disney/Yash Raj collaborations.And in recent weeks, Disney has further acknowledged the huge global impact of the Indian box office, and has begun production on four live-action films under its Walt Disney Pictures India shingle, two of which are ramping up production, and two more that are currently in development.Here's the English-language trailer for Roadside Romeo, which features the voices of Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor: What are your thoughts on this? Not so much the movie trailer, but the move to go global in a different way, creating new products that fit other cultures better than Lilo & Stich? Will we see this happen more and more often with other studios?

Will Stallone and Schwarzenegger Open a Chain of Planet Bollywood Restaurants, Too?

Bollywood is set to invade Hollywood, signing Sylvester Stallone as the first major American actor to star in an Indian film. The news gets even better, fans of the bizarro world, because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will also play a role in the film. Variety reports that Bollywood stars Ashkay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor headline Incredible Love, about an Indian stuntman who travels to Hollywood, becomes one of the best in the business, but is overwhelmed by sadness because he can't find true love. I say, don't worry, friend, Jennifer Aniston will be on the market again in no time. Incredible Love will be the first Bollywood flick shot at Universal Studios and will have the highest budget in that country's history. Granted, Stallone isn't the star he was 15 years ago and Arnold is probably only in it for a couple of scenes - which he agreed to do no doubt because he saw the filming of an expensive foreign film in California as an economic stimulus for the state - but it's worth noting because this has been an active year for Indian cinema coming together with Hollywood. Anil Ambani, one of the world's ten richest men, has this year kicked in hundreds of millions of dollars to help Steven Spielberg re-establish Dreamworks as an independent studio, and he's also cut production deals with Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Nicolas Cage in the ballpark of $1 billion. As an extra bonus for Bollywood, I think we've even offered to burn every last print of The Love Guru, which would be good news for everybody.