(English version)
WWW.KABIR-BEDI.COM - OFFICIAL WEBSITE -The Source-
Andrea says: Thank you very much
for your loyal support for Kabir Bedi and his official website in 2003 and
A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!
| Heartfelt greetings from Kabir | ||
|
| KABIR'S CAREER - WHAT'S HOT? | |||||
| Who is Kabir Bedi? A press kit for professional visitors to the official Kabir Bedi website will be online in January 2004. Although meant mainly for media representatives, this information will also be of interest to Kabir's fans. |
|||||
| Kabir adds another Lifetime
Achievement award to his long list of honours! Kabir was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2003 Capri-Hollywood Film Festival in Italy. Kabir and Nikki spent the last days of 2003 at the Capri-Hollywood Film Festival on the Italian island of Capri, and although they were wrapped up snugly against the cold, they must have been glowing all the same! At 5.30 pm on December 28, Kabir held a news conference at the Congress Centre Capri and spoke about his part in Da Nessuna Parte (working title). The final version of Marco Ponti's film has now been entitled A/R Andata+ritorno and will get its world premiere in early 2004. "The Italians are used to seeing me as a hero, but in the Ponti film I am a lowly porter, a stranger living among a group of eccentrics, almost on the wrong side of the law," Kabir said. Movie producer Kabir was one of the participants at a seminar called "Working today in the film industry: job opportunities and prospects for young people with dreams." The event was held at 3 pm on December 30, 2003 at the La Palma Hotel on Capri and was one of several seminars organised by the Capri-in-the-World Institute. This year, the participants discussed markets and international job opportunities for Italian movie makers. Kabir got together with many old friends on Capri, including the Egyptian star Omar Sharif, who won the Capri Legend Award. Sharif was Kabir's partner in as many as four movies (1979-94). Carlo Pedersoli, better known to many of his fans as Bud Spencer, was given the Capri Special Award. Bud Spencer was Kabir's co-star in Noi Siamo Angeli (1996), and the two had great fun during the shooting in Costa Rica. The Capri-Hollywood Film Festival was held December 27-31, 2003. There was a programme of new films and other events on January 1 and 2, 2004. Please also visit the official Capri-Hollywood Film Festival homepage which has many more pictures. The German members of the Kabir Bedi Online Club received this Hot News on January 2, 2004 directly per e-mail. In the near future, ALL Online Club members will receive important news about Kabir per News Alert directly in their inbox. |
|||||
| Lights, Camera.... MANGO
MOVIES! Kabir's Mumbai-based company, MANGO MOVIES, is planning to produce at least three films in the next two to three years, including one international project, for a total cost of 10.4 million euro/about 13.3 million US dollars. Kabir will be going through the scripts in the next six months, with shooting scheduled to begin around the end of this year. Mindful of the global success of India's computer industry, Kabir says he wants to promote India as an inexpensive venue to produce western movies. The marketing of Indian movies overseas should also get better, Kabir says. "I would like to give due weightage to marketing and promotion of movies, devoting as much as 35 per cent of the total budget." In an interview, Kabir names the new movie Kaash as one of the projects he is currently working on as an actor. Kabir is sure he will no longer be standing in front of a camera once his plans to become a director and producer take off. |
|||||
According to Khan, Indian police have seized 5,000 copies of Robin Khosla's unsuccessful movie "Taj Mahal - A Monument of Love", which were being sold in VCD/DVD boxes labelled as the rival 11 million dollar (9 million euro) blockbuster which stars Kabir as the elder Moghul ruler. In a Kerala News interview, Khan said the pirates have lifted the designs from his official Taj Mahal homepage. When it was released two months ago, the Khosla film didn't last two days in Indian cinemas, he said. "News about this racket came to us first from Bangalore. Our lead actor Zulfikar's mom, who lives there, was excited to see a Taj Mahal VCD carrying the picture of her son on the inlay card. Though she was surprised to see it so soon, she decided to buy it," Khan was quoted as saying. Naturally, the actor's mother was disappointed when she inserted the film into her DVD player. Zulfikar plays Moghul ruler Shah Jahan to Kabir's elder Shah Jahan. Director Khan said the "pirated" release amounted to a deliberate attempt to sabotage his movie. If confirmed, the Taj Mahal DVD scam may even have spread to Europe and the US. When kabir-bedi.com recently bought a copy of Khosla's movie on a UK-based website, it had the correct labelling on the box, although the DVD inside was falsely branded as a copy of Khan's movie starring Kabir. Khosla's film is an Indian-Canadian co-production starring Raghu Raj, Purnima Patwardhan, and Moon Moon Sen, shot in Kashmir, Jammu, Mumbai, Agra and at the Taj Mahal. It was savaged by critics, with the Mumbai paper Mid-Day saying it should have been entitled "Taj Mahal: A Shoddy, Amateur Educational Video - unfit for kindergarten pop history classes." "A few minutes past the opening credits and you're off to grab some zzzz," the review said. Our warning to Kabir's fans: buyer beware!!! |
|||||
| On Valentine's Day, Kabir's fans
will hear sweet music In a fitting tribute to the love theme of Kabir's Taj Mahal film, the music to the movie will be released on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2004. It is usual in Bollywood for the soundtrack to be released some time before the movie itself. Kabir warned us in August 2003 that Taj Mahal was unlikely to premiere in December 2003 as planned and that we would probably have to wait a few more months. Director Khan is now planning the world premiere of the multi-million dollar movie for May 2004, to coincide with Indian holidays. |
|||||
| Kabir, the
Poetry Reader At the Teachers Achievement Awards 2003 in Mumbai on November 29, 2003, the audience of prominent guests including Kabir's daughter Pooja was treated to Kabir's velvety voice reading a selection of poems. Incidentally, the name "Teachers" has nothing to do with schoolmasters but refers to the whisky brand of Allied Domecq, the drinks company that sponsored the event. |
|||||
| A KABIR-BEDI.COM EXCLUSIVE! Kabir, the man of 1,000 trades Kabir has been working on about 20 productions recently, ranging from reading movie scripts to dubbing the film in post-production. Because of this huge amount of work and his return to film directing, Kabir has had only limited time lately to work on yet another career - that of being an autobiographic writer. However, nearly half of Kabir's book is now finished! |
|||||
| Bond goes Bollywood - Octopussy released
in Hindi In a May 2004 Indian re-release of the James Bond movie Octopussy, Kabir will be dubbing his own role in Hindi. Sophisticated new technology has enabled the producers to coordinate the Hindi words with the lip movements of Kabir's baddie, Gobinda, and others in the 1983 English-language blockbuster. The Hindi Octopussy is part of a project to dub all of the 007 movies in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu to make them accessible to the hundreds of millions of Indian cinemagoers, especially outside the big cities, who do not understand English. The project, due to start January 2, 2004, will be accompanied by a big media and merchandising drive whose budget is 40% of the overall investment into the project! Included in that is a Bond "Yatra" - a massive roadshow that will criss-cross the country from the final December week of 2003 and include street shows, contests and other events to put 007 on the map in India. |
|||||
| Kabir the entrepreneur takes
on Bollywood Inc! Film guru Kabir has renewed calls for Bollywood to work harder at marketing its films in the West. Although the Indian movie industry's yearly output of more than 1,000 films is a world record in volume terms, it only has 2% of the world market by income, Kabir said at the "TieCon India 2003" event in New Delhi (December 18-19, 2003). Kabir addressed conference-goers in his capacity as a film producer, and gave a number of interviews in which he further explained what is needed to get Bollywood out of the doldrums: "A good script will lead to a successful film which in turn will make money, a bad script will fail and lose money. And that's the universal truth." Kabir the entrepreneur will be pumping more money into the rapidly growing Indian movie market. |
|||||
|
|||||
| The soundtrack of Kabir's horror
thriller Rudraksh was released to rave reviews
on December 12, 2003, with nine innovative and highly catchy tunes. The premiere of the film itself is now being planned for February 6, 2004. Kabir's part as the father of hero Sanjay Dutt is short but important. He is a wise Tantric master with paranormal powers that he passes on to his son. With his long, flowing, guru's beard and ruffled hair, a somewhat intimidating Kabir looks a little like the older Shah Jahan's brother in the Taj Mahal movie... Rudraksh's theme of the supernatural is unusual by Indian standards, and the movie has enormously expensive special effects. Please also visit the official Rudraksh homepage, which has been online since the autumn of 2003, with many more set shots, downloads and song samples. |
|||||
| Sandokan Kabir kills
tiger on the web! Check out a two-minute Italian trailer of Kabir's first and most famous Sandokan film from 1976 available on the internet! The trailer, published by copyright owner RAI, contains a few quick shots of the various actors, plus the now legendary scene where Kabir, the best Sandokan ever, kills a tiger with one stroke of his knife to show his deep love to Marianna, the Pearl of Labuan. direct trailer link Bravo, RAI! Thousands of Kabir Bedi and Sandokan fans around the world will be grateful. Many fans last saw Kabir's Sandokan more than 20 years ago, and until now they could only tell their children about their hero. ;-) You can also buy two separate sets of Sandokan movies with Kabir as dual-DVD sets at freerecordshop.nl and in Free Record Shop outlets in the Benelux countries. The films are in the original Italian version with Dutch subtitles, although the copyright owners are planning DVDs in other languages too. A promotional campaign is already being prepared in several European countries. |
|||||
| A KABIR-BEDI.COM
EXCLUSIVE! Kabir the guru in his best-loved project Whenever I hear from him, Kabir speaks glowingly about his movie project Maya.The Mirage. He is the only male lead actor, while the search is still on for a young girl, probably a newcomer from outside India, to play the female lead. Shooting for Maya.The Mirage had been planned to begin in November 2003, but is has been postponed to 2004 because of other commitments. |
|||||
| Kabir as Tughlaq A first picture of Kabir as the ruler Tughlaq in the play of the same name will be online in January. Unfortunately there is no picture of Kabir's spectacular opening scene in the play, one of his early stage appearances which caused a sensation in Mumbai. More details, quotes, pictures etc of Kabir's stage career will be published in the coming year. |
|||||
| Kabir travels there and
back again Kabir's Italian film Da Nessuna Parte has been finished and is now called A/R Andata+ritorno, meaning "return ticket." According to Kabir and Italian news reports, the cinema premiere will be on March 12. For more details about Kabir's romantic comedy, check out the MOVIE IN DETAIL pages and the STILLS section. |
|||||
| Kismat calling! In several sessions throughout 2003, Kabir has worked on the relationship drama Kismat, completing shooting in December 2003. The film is now in post-production. Its director Guddu Dhanoa describes Kismat as a perfect mix of action, drama and emotion. The premiere is planned for early 2004. For a new trailer, a dance act with main stars Bobby Deol and Priyanka Chopra, check out this direct trailer link (789kb). |
|||||
| Sandokaaaan, Sandokaaaan... make me warm and I will be the one... Warning: After speading to Hungary, Spain, France and Italy in 2003, several severe cases of Sandokanitis were reported in Germany, with TV showing a prime-time re-run of the original 1976 Sandokan series in December, and unleashing a major fan revival. Kabir is happy that so many fans have been faithful over all those years to him and his most famous role. Many fans wrongly assume that Kabir's Sandokan films hardly ever are shown on TV and have been looking for them for years. However, Kabir is on (German) TV every month, and Kabir's Sandokan movies are on TV every year! Now that you have found Kabir's official website, there's no excuse for any one to miss their favourite Kabir! The Sandokan soundtrack by Guido and Maurizio de Angelis is available from: JPC Versand, Germany Tarantula Records, Germany Amazon, USA Footlight, USA |
|||||
| Kabir Kabir takes Turin
by storm, under police escort! Finally, the RAI has put the pictures back online of Kabir's visit to Turin, a few days after the world premiere of his Sandokan movie of early 1976. Most fans will know the pictures from way back yonder, but here are the direct links: - Kabir in cold Turin - Kabir and Milla Sannoner among the fans - Kabir and Milla Sannoner at the window of Salgari's mansion - Kabir, the new star in the streets of Turin - Kabir adored by his audience - Hundreds of fans applauding Kabir - Kabir at the window of Salgari's mansion - Kabir signing autographs - the poster says:"Sandokan per Voi/Sandokan for You" - Nunzio Filogamo welcoming Kabir |
|||||
| Kabir's new leading role
in Vardi...The Uniform For more information, pictures etc about Kabir's career, including the new projects, Vardi, Bewafa etc check out kabir-bedi.com |
| KABIR FOR FANS - WHAT'S NEW? | |||||
| On January 16, 2004, Kabir
is celebrating his birthday! As in previous years, you can send your birthday wishes to Kabir via his official website. For cards, letters, presents and especially autograph requests, please use the autograph address. Kabir loves getting fanmail. But for good reason, he would much rather have mail from individual fans than collective efforts or mail sent by others on behalf of his fans. As often, Kabir may well find the time to reply personally… |
|||||
|
|||||
| As we celebrate the new year and
Kabir’s birthday, please remember there is plenty more we
can do for others in that big world of ours. Kabir is a star who prefers action over words. Over many years, he has been working on aid projects that relate to his own experience in life. Kabir is active in India and overseas. Apart from the organisations mentioned below, Kabir supports a number of other charity groups. Details and addresses will be published in the CHARITY section of the website soon. These projects are especially close to Kabir’s heart. Kabir supports them personally, and would be very grateful for any donations from his fans: Childline India Foundation National round-the-clock phone line for children in need Indian charity, Mumbai Plan International International aid group for children in more than 40 countries Foster a child, for instance in India Global Tiger Patrol - Working to save the Wild Tiger UK charity Lifeforce India - Saving the tiger, his people and his trees Indian charity |
|||||
| Sandokan & Kabir back
on TV! The new TV year kicks off with Kabir’s fourth Sandokan film, the mini-TV series Il Ritorno di Sandokan on German TV. In the next few weeks, please also check out Kabir’s appearance in the The Master and his antics above the Golden Gate Bridge in Octopussy. Broadcast dates and times, including repeats, are in the TV section (German TV). |
|||||
| 'Yanez' Philippe Leroy -
Sandokan's best friend is doing well... Philippe Leroy's official homepage, is now available under another URL in French. Here is a recent picture of Philippe Leroy, taken in July 2003 in Italy on the occasion of his new film, Cinecittà, with co-stars including Barbara de Rossi and Chiara Conti. After Sandokan, Philippe Leroy in 1980 went on to shoot another movie with Carole André, the famous Marianna, Pearl of Labuan, the Italian comedy Bello di Mamma. Check out the Philippe Leroy area - in the Sandokan section - for an almost complete filmography and many pictures. Elsewhere in the Sandokansection, you'll find a nearly complete list and many stills of Carole André's movies. |
|||||
| Sandokan stars on TV *Sandokan as a cartoon character *Vittoria Belvedere fighting for happiness in ancient Rome *Carole André and the Big Good Wolf in golddigger-era Alaska *Philippe Leroy in Luc Besson's French cult thriller *Carole André and Marcello Mastroianni taken hostage by Oliver Reed *Bounty-hunter Bud Spencer dents Philippe Leroy's armour *Mandala Tayde, very cute in nurse's uniform All of these programmes are coming to a TV screen near you! Andrea's own reviews and pictures of these programme's are available on kabir-bedi.com. |
|||||
| Kabir's India on TV Check out Andrea's TV Tips in the TV section for pictures and reviews of: *Reports about India, Kabir's fascinating home country *Movies *Documentaries *Animal films *Bollywood films *and more... Many thanks to Doris! |
|||||
|
|||||
| COPYRIGHT
! © Andrea
Verschuur If you use this material, LINK TO WWW.KABIR-BEDI.COM AND QUOTE Kabir Bedi's official website as your source. Publication of this material in print media and/or for commercial purposes is not allowed. |
|
| The OFFICIAL Kabir Bedi website - WWW.KABIR-BEDI.COM |
| This NEWS! is being sent to your
e-mail address, #email#, because you are a registered member
of the international club "FRIENDS OF KABIR" at Kabir's
official website. NEWS! is sent out to more than 1000 subscribers in 57 countries. To unsubscribe: Please send an email via the CONTACT section online. The editor/webmaster of the Official Kabir Bedi website is not responsible for the content of ANY external web sites mentioned in this document. design & contents: Andrea Verschuur Please write to me online via the CONTACT section at WWW.KABIR-BEDI.COM - fax: +44 7092 396143 COPYRIGHT © Andrea Verschuur - All rights reserved. |