Celebrity Gossip: October 2009

This Is It Destined To Win The Weekend

Michael Jackson is really the only one who can take on Halloween weekend and win.The annual holiday is known for being a box office killer, especially when it falls on a Saturday night, so it’s no wonder Sony Pictures slotted This is It for a Wednesday bow. No other major release was scheduled for the weekend, so uber-fans will come out early and perhaps often considering Jackson’s favorite holiday, big shocker, was All Hallow’s Eve. The studio has been working overtime to tamp down expectations for the concert film they spent $60 million for the right to release. Wednesday’s gross of $20 million worldwide ($7.4 domestically, $12.7 internationally) proves that this film will be a worldwide phenomenon with its international receipts far out-grossing what it makes in the U.S. If Jackson isn’t your bag, this weekend there will be more horror on display with Paranormal Activity continuing its impressive run while Saw VI tries to eek out a profit after getting slayed last weekend in theaters. Read on for predictions.1. This is It: $21 millionEven non-Michael Jackson fans are coming back from this film exuberant over what director Kenny Ortega has done with the 120 hours of rehearsal footage of Jackson’s final days. So now it’s up to the fans to show up in theaters and make this film a success. There’s no doubt that Sony will recoup its investment on This is It but what the movie becomes is a complete wild card. I think the film will get close to $35 million for its first five days domestically. But again there’s Halloween and two World Series games competing for attention.2. Paranormal Activity: $13 millionThis low-budget wonder has already grossed $65 million, becoming the most profitable movie of all time. What Paranormal Activity does from now on really doesn’t matter. A sequel is underway, stars Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston have already received the huge jump start on their career, and director Oren Peli is already making his second movie. Paranormal has out-Blair-Witched Blair Witch. Reaching $100 million shouldn’t be bad for this $11,000 film.3. Law Abiding Citizen: $7 millionGerard Butler and Jamie Foxx have already pulled in $42 million for this film. Another 40% drop is likely this weekend, giving this inexpensive actioner a solid $50 million gross.4. Where the Wild Things Are: $6 millionSpike Jonze’s meditation on childhood has made $55 million, not enough for this expensive film. Parents seem to be leaving their children at home, which isn’t a bad thing but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t see it themselves. It’s worth the two hours of their time.5. Couples Retreat: $6 millionIt doesn’t matter that critics hate this film. The Vince Vaughn-starrer has already grossed $79 million and comes as a well-needed hit for the struggling Universal Pictures. Last weekend it fell only 38%, proving that audiences want a good comedy right now. This weekend expect another 40% drop off, which would put the movie in striking distance of $100 million

Michael Jackson's This Is It

Michael Jackson always said that he wished he could live on stage, and in Michael Jackson's This Is It, there isn't a moment when he looks less than comfortably and pleasurably at home there. On the vast, half-empty, often darkened proscenium of the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where we see him in bare-bones videotaped rehearsals for the 50 London concerts that he never lived to perform, Jackson moves lightly and easily, with his herky-jerky demon-marionette grace. On the rare occasions when he's not focused on dance moves and has nothing to do but sing, as in a soaring interlude of ''Human Nature'' or a version of ''I Want You Back'' that he tosses off with affection for his child-superstar pluck, the music pours out of him like sunlight.

This Is It is not in any way ghoulish. It has now been established that when Jackson died, he was, physically speaking, a relatively healthy man. And so we're spared the macabre spectacle of combing the movie for any literal signs that he was knocking at death's door. It should also be said, though, that in This Is It, Jackson shows no telltale signs of a broken spirit, either. From the moment he takes the stage, he's loose, robust, and in control. Maybe a little too in control. In the relative privacy of these rehearsal sessions, which took place from March of this year until his death on June 25, Jackson comes off as his friends have often described him — as a gentle, sweet, but very shrewd soul who was also a painful perfectionist. Coaching his keyboardist and musical director, Michael Bearden, on how to play ''The Way You Make Me Feel'' with the exact right syncopated pull, Jackson says that he wants the song to sound ''like you're dragging yourself out of bed,'' but Bearden can't seem to get it. Though they banter a bit about the word ''booty,'' we get a hint of what a frosty taskmaster Jackson could be. When he's displeased, it stings.As the last set of images we'll ever have of Michael Jackson, This Is It offers a raw and endearing sketch of a genius at work. The movie was directed, by Kenny Ortega, with enough liveliness to make up for its home-movie scruffiness, and I had a good time reveling in what amounts to a soft-edged vérité scrapbook for Michael-maniacs. By the end, though, This Is It feels like the half-complete experience that it is — a mere diagram of the excitement that Michael, for his comeback, had planned to unleash upon the world.It's clear from the movie that the London concerts were conceived as a very grand series of onstage music videos, each with a huge, intricate set that at times involved digital projections, and each choreographed as a disco-inferno Broadway showstopper. (''Thriller,'' one of the few songs we watch as it was meant to be, had a full earth-packed graveyard.) The dancers were going to pop out from beneath the stage and crawl over skyscrapers, as Michael shimmied and boogied and got lifted into the air. Watching this without most of the sets, with the gears and pulleys still showing, and from two functional camera angles in front of the stage, we get the flavor of the songs but not the majesty.And that's not just due to the lack of trappings. Jackson, it's clear, held back in rehearsal. In This Is It, he's singing and dancing, but he's also watching himself sing and dance, stepping out of his performance. What's missing — what the film gives you only a tantalizing glimpse of — is his ferocity. When he does a tamped-down version of his solo whirligig in ''Billie Jean,'' playing air guitar on his crotch (a gesture that elicits a round of cheers from the dancers in the Staples Center), you feel him sketching in the heat without quite committing himself. ''At least we get a feel of it,'' he says.This Is It is fun, but it's a slightly airless experience. If the movie allows you to bask in Michael Jackson's aura, it also uses his image to foster ''nostalgia'' for a concert epiphany that never quite was. Maybe it was Michael's destiny to leave us all wanting more. Would those concerts have returned him to his magical pedestal? We'll never know the answer, of course. But watching this movie, at least we get a feel of it.

Gentlemen Broncos

Will Britney Spears get married again ?

The House of the Devil

The Wedding Song

Katie Price denied love making to Peter Andre!

Carmen Electra is the best celebrity stripper

Angeina Jolie slept with mother's boyfriend

Debt forced Dannii Minogue to strip for Playboy

GOLDEN GLOBES 2009 - ALL RED CARPET DRESSES

Charlize Theron kisses woman for $ 140 thousand in charity auction

Longoria shoots topless with husband for fashion label

Zeta-Jones' nude romp with co-star in The Rebound

Theron kisses woman for $140,000

Salma Hayek has ditched traditional Christmas food for her husband.

Saw VI (2009)

The Saw series long ago cannibalized its cleverest bloodbath gimmicks, but now it's figured out a new way to torture us: by taking a barb-wire stab at political relevance. In the opening sequence of Saw VI, two parasitical bureaucrats of the pre-crash American economy — the implication is that they're subprime mortgage vendors — pay for their sins, and compete for survival, by seeing which one can lop off a weightier portion of body parts before a timer runs out. The pudgy white guy saws away at his belly fat, but the fierce black woman is way ahead of him — she grabs a butcher knife and hacks, hacks, hacks off her forearm, easily outdoing his measly pound of flesh. The fact that each one makes the choice to suffer (rather than die) is the key to the sadomasochistic appeal of the Saw films. The characters' effective collaboration in the series' pain games plays as a metaphor for those of us in the audience, who have all made the choice to get off on these mutilation-porn theatrics.John Cramer (Tobin Bell), the Jigsaw puppeteer and twinkly-eyed sadist-mechanic-ringleader of the Saw series, was killed off several installments ago, but thanks to the miracle of pre-taped torture-play instructions, he seems busier in death than he ever was in life. His mission in Saw VI is to teach a lesson to William (Peter Outerbridge), the CEO of a health-insurance company who hides his lust for profit behind a welter of fake smiles and byzantine actuarial data. It's fine that the producers of the series have come up with some topical bad guys, but I'd be remiss in my duty as a critic if I didn’t write the following sentence: The trouble with Saw VI is that it never devises cool enough ways to torture people. Where are the baroquely jaw-dropping (if not jaw-snapping) De Sadean Rube Goldberg contraptions? At one point, the CEO has to decide which of his six underlings, all strapped to a carousel, will live or die (the game is supposed to reveal to him that in his insurance work, he's really playing God), but since we don't give a hoot about any of them, and the method of death is unremarkable, the sequence is a dud.So is the rest of the movie. Saw VI is the thinnest, draggiest, and most tediously preachy of the Saw films. It's the first one that's more or less consumed by backstory — which is to say, it's one of those hollow franchise placeholders in which far too many fragments from the previous sequels keep popping up in flashbacks. If your goal is to do a quick study for a round of Saw Trivial Pursuit, then this may be the movie for you. If you're looking to be jolted into fear or queasy laughter, skip this sequel and hope that the producers get their sick act together next time.

Paranormal Activity (2009)

Cheryl Cole wants to kiss Dannii Minogue.

Robin Wright Penn thinks her career will benefit from her impending divorce from Sean Penn.

Astro Boy (2009)

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)

Alexandra Burke is reportedly dating Amy Winehouse's backing singer.

Amelia (2009)

Amelia is a frustratingly old-school, Hollywood-style, inspirational biopic about Amelia Earhart that doesn't trust a viewer's independent assessment of the famous woman pictured on the screen. The mystery we ought to be paying attention to is: What really happened on the legendary American aviator's final, fatal flight in 1937? But the question audiences are left with is this: How could so tradition-busting a role model have resulted in so square, stiff, and earthbound a movie? Why present such a modern woman in such a fusty format? Dressed for the title role in a wardrobe of jumpsuits, leather jackets, scarves, and slinky evening wear dashing enough to stop air traffic, Hilary Swank's Earhart doesn't so much talk as make stump speeches even when she's at her own breakfast table. And director Mira Nair (The Namesake), working from an overexplanatory script by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan (based on dual biographies by Susan Butler and Mary S. Lovell), overloads the picture with a cargo of messages, so much so that she deadens her subject's spirit. Some of these talking points are aimed at today's teenage girls who might admire the subject's highly personal fashion sense; others go out to older women who cherish her feminist cred. All of them add up to banners that might as well be flown from an aircraft tail over a beach: Amelia Earhart lived free in life and love! And Fly! She! Must! Of course, she did, setting records as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928 (she was a passenger, but still, ladies of the day generally didn't wear leather helmets and zoom through the air). Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. She went on to launch her own brand-name fashion line. In 1935, she became the first pilot to fly solo from Hawaii to California. Sometimes the press dubbed her Lady Lindy, linking her fame to that of pioneering pilot Charles Lindbergh. Most famously, she vanished (along with her navigator, Fred Noonan) in the middle of the Pacific while on an around-the-world flight in 1937; her plane was never found, and she was declared legally dead in 1939.Along the way, the celebrity married George Putnam, the publisher and tireless promoter who shaped her public image. (Richard Gere does the honors as Putnam with all the dated, silver-head-in-hands poses required of him as a worried businessman/spouse whose wife is also his client.) For a time, the freethinking woman also conducted a love affair with aeronautics pioneer Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor), now best known as the father of writer Gore Vidal. Swank delivers long, carefully composed explications of Earhart's unorthodox attitude toward marriage and feminine autonomy, taken from her journal entries, in studied accents somewhere between those of the Kansas plains of Earhart's birth and those of Katharine Hepburn in her most famous trouser-wearing, gumption-gal roles. Amelia dutifully conveys the salient biographical info with a trusty cinematic device: As Earhart and Noonan embark on their doomed flight, flashbacks catch the audience up on the events that got her there. (Christopher Eccleston, as Noonan, is the one understated player in this endeavor.) Those last 10 minutes or so of radio-communications loss, concurrent instrument failure, and dawning awareness of disaster are honestly gripping. But just in case the point isn't clear enough (She! Must! Fly!), throughout the drama composer Gabriel Yared lays on blasts of musical exclamations that are as distracting as sirens. Sometimes that music says, ''It's great to be in the sky and surfing the clouds!'' Sometimes it says, ''Look how pretty the landscape looks below — kind of makes you miss the music in Out of Africa, right?'' Sometimes the rumble of violins and horns hints, ''Uh-oh, we're getting to the tragic part of the story!''Mostly, the busy orchestra backs up the starry cinematography to remind us, ''This slim, androgynous beauty, with her unusual love life and her driving need to take to the skies, sure was something, huh?!'' Whatever the message, there's no navigating around such intrusive messengers.

Antichrist (2009)

Paris Hilton speaks in a baby voice because she thinks it's funny.

Motherhood (2009)

Lily Allen Topless Again!

Shauna Sand's Sex Tape

(Untitled) (2009)

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning (2009)

Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

Profoundly beautiful and affecting, Where the Wild Things Are is a breath-taking act of artistic transubstantiation. From Maurice Sendak's beloved picture book about a rambunctious little boy named Max and the kingdom of untamed creatures who adopt him as their like-minded king, filmmaker Spike Jonze has made a movie that is true to Sendak's unique sensibilities and simultaneously true to Jonze's own colorful instincts for anarchy. This is, to quote the 1963 children's classic, ''the most wild thing of all.'' It's also personal movie-making, with corporate backing, at its best. Whatever the (well-documented) struggles it took to create this gem, the result is worth every monster growl. ''Let the wild rumpus start!'' Max declares in Sendak's pages, and Jonze, working from a just-right screenplay he co-wrote with simpatico spirit Dave Eggers, begins the boy-centric hullabaloo from the very first frame. Max Records, a Botticelli-faced discovery, plays the fictional Max with a lovely purity of energy and freedom — he has a rare kid-aged talent for concentration in the midst of brouhaha. When we first meet him careening around the home he shares with his patient mom (huggable Catherine Keener), Max is a boy on a tear, all motor and no brakes. Whether roughhousing with his dog, devising snowball-warfare strategies, shrieking with a power surge of energy, or collapsing in a child's heap of spent emotion, Max is a dervish of mixed instincts. And Jonze's astute longtime cinematographer, Lance Acord, captures the jumble naturally, chasing after the kid with the nimbleness of a monkey-cam.It's when Max pushes Mom's tolerance to the limit — Mark Ruffalo has a sweet, small bit as a visiting boyfriend who wears the glazed smile of ''Do I really need this crap?'' — that the hero's adventure really begins. In Sendak's spare book (fewer than 350 words in all!), Max, outfitted in a really cool wildcat costume with whiskers, travels to unknown territory without leaving his room. In Jonze's seamlessly expanded view, he runs outside, whiskers erect, then boards a boat and heads to sea, and on and on ''in and out of weeks and almost over a year'' (to quote the book) to the place where the Wild Things are. The dark colors of nightmares break into golden hues. The music, by Karen O and Carter Burwell, haunts.Such a place — so playful and mysterious! So liberating and scary! (Yes, some littler kids might be frightened during this PG-rated film, but probably no more so than they already are in their dreams, the kind that come with no rating system to guide a parent; besides, to face one's demons is to tame them, right?) Jonze and Eggers make a smooth storytelling leap by giving each Wild Thing a name and a personality, joyously inspired by Sendak's own illustrations of the creatures' bodies, balloon-big heads, and little V-shaped shark teeth. (Jonze regular Casey Storm designed the ebullient costumes.) I'll leave the discussion of personality integration to shrinks and online discussion groups. Any kid — or adult, for that matter — can identify with the anxieties of Carol (James Gandolfini, more delightfully vulnerable than we've ever heard him); the peace brokering of Judith (Catherine O'Hara, funny to her marrow); and the squabbles, preferences, vanities, and insecurities of Ira (Forest Whitaker), Alexander (Paul Dano), and Douglas (Chris Cooper). I especially like the measured feminine wisdom of KW (Lauren Ambrose). In their gorgeous landscape of dunes, jungle, and enigmatic structures that are as graceful as Noguchi sculptures (the production designer is K.K. Barrett), Max's new friends show him the way home to a self he can live with. On the way, I found myself bowled over with emotion.Sendak's great gift to readers, old as well as young, is the seriousness with which he presents even the wildest mayhem, the deepest contradictions in human (and Wild Thing) behavior; the author empathizes with fantasists but has no time for cuteness. In his transcendent movie adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze not only respects the original text but also honors movie lovers with the same clarity of vision. This is one of the year's best. To paraphrase the Wild Thing named KW, I could eat it up, I love it so.

Mischa Barton to quit TV

Cameron is clueless about life

Hayek blasts ‘freaky’ paparazzi

John Travolta and Kelly Preston were the surprise guests at a Scientology event in England.

Dumped Miss California sued by pageant officials for cash over boob job

When drunk Aniston rang Pitt and Jolie picked up

Rakhi spits fire

Rakhi Sawant is appalled and angry by the way her mother is being treated on Bigg Boss.She wants revenge. “How dare the Channel use my mother as a pawn? Last year it was Rakhi Sawant. So this year it’s her mother? I could take on the whole house. Let them send me into the house once. I’ll show all these English-speaking snobs what a daughter can do when her mother is insulted. No one can fool around with me. But my mother is a simple housewife. That poor woman is being completely isolated by the other contestants.”And Rakhi, though not on talking terms with her mom, won’t take any slight to her lying down. “How can they isolate her because she can’t speak English?We come from the chawls. My grandfather never sent my mother to school. She is a poor uneducated housewife. I wonder how she put those two signatures on the Bigg Boss deal because she can barely sign her name.”Rakhi is specially upset with Tenaaz Currim. “Tenaaz is behaving extra-smart. When the housemates did the Mummy- Daddy act, Tenaaz completely ignored my mother. And do you know, when I meet Tenaaz mother I’m very polite and respectful?”Rakhi blames the channel for using her mother as bait. “They thought Rakhi is comig on Pati Patni Aur Woh, so let’s put her mother on another show. I had no idea my mother was invited to Bigg Boss. Whatever our personal differences I don’t want my mother to be put in a compromising position, ” says Rakhi and accuses the other housemates for discriminating against her mother. “There’s definitely bhed-bhav against my mother. Nine contestants voted against her out on the second day. I’m frantically calling up all my friends and fans to vote for my mother, ” says Rakhi who has just bought herself an office in Lokhandwala.“It’s in the Kamdhenu complex. I’m very proud of it. From there I’ll start my production house. Whatever money I’ll make on the reality shows I’ll use to produce my serial on the Bible. As it is I’ve realized movies don’t pay.I got only a token amount from Yashraj Films for Dil Bole Hadippa. And on top of that, my role and my dances were cut drastically. So why should I not do television where I’m the queen?”

Kangna Ranaut's new guy

Main Aurr Mrs Khanna

Samir (Salman) and Raina (Kareena) are married and settled in Melbourne, Australia. What started of as a loving relationship which lead to a quick marriage between the two has now turned into a complicated situation what with Samir facing major hurdles in his career to some wrong work decisions that he had taken.Raina is working as a waitress to support their house.Jobless Samir gets an opportunity to work in Singapore and make a new beginning. He takes Raina along with him but only to tell her at the airport that he has booked her ticket for India to go back to his parents and that he will come back to her once things fall in place in his career.After Samir catches his flight for Singapore, a dejected and sad, Raina keeps waiting at the airport lounge right till the final boarding announcement for her flight to India comes in.A bar tender at the cafeteria in the departure lounge, Akash (Sohail) sees her plight and offers help. He falls for her instantly but only to realize she is married.Raina gets confused whether to go to India or stay back in Australia. Just then, help comes in form of her friend Nina (Nauheed) who arranges for a job through a friend (Mahek Chahal) and Raina decides to stay back.Incidentally, Raina gets a job at the jewellery shop situated bang opposite of that of Akash’s café. Gradually friendship grows between the two. But what happens after Samir arrives back to take Raina along with him to Singapore forms the rest of the film.Debutante writer-director Prem Soni must be called truly lucky to get a top line lead pair of Salman – Kareena and a reasonably good budget basing his film completely in Melbourne.While his film begins well, establishing his main characters and their issues without much deviation to sub plots, he fumbles in the second half.While there are a few extremely well handled and well penned sequences in the second half, but the points that the film downhill are – unconvincing situations, lack of depth in emotional issues, too simplistic solutions and most importantly you feel zero sympathy for Mr. Khanna (Salman) or Mrs Khanna (Kareena) or even Akash (Sohail).The drama is just not engaging towards the climax. The actors however have risen above the script and have pitched in wonderful performances.Salman looks smashing and shows he can play a serious romantic role extremely well too. Kareena looks WOW and acts superbly, especially in the emotional scenes.Sohail in what one may call one of his career best roles does complete justice to his character and rises much above his written role. Yash Tonk aids him perfectly. He is hilarious in the second half especially in his scenes with Salman.Nauheed and Mahek Chahal (last seen as the gangster’s moll in Wanted) add glam quotient and act ably. Bappi Lahiri is hilarious as the jewellery shop owner. Deepika Padukone in a special appearance has nothing much to do.Sajid Wajid’s music is very good and has been well incorporated in the film. Also, the use of RD Burman’s song sung by Amit Kumar – Bade Achche Lagte Hai has been made smartly use of two times in the film.As you come out of the film, you do keep feeling that film could have been much better had the second half been handled well. But overall its not a bad film and you won’t regret your time wasted watching it.

Shakira dressed like a man so she could go to university.

Katherine Heigl used to dress like a "sex-bomb" to attract men.

Moss to celebrate New Year at Depp's island

Tokyo film festival opens with 'green' carpet

TOKYO — The Tokyo International Film Festival opened with stars including Hollywood actress Sigourney Weaver strolling a "green" carpet made of recycled plastic bottles.The theme of the nine-day festival, which started Saturday and will feature more than 100 movies, is ecology. Films include "The Cove," a documentary that depicts an annual hunt of dolphins in Japan. Festival organizers added it at the last minute in part because of pressure from overseas.While the movie has won more than a dozen awards worldwide, it is not among the 15 Japanese and foreign films competing for the festival's top prize of $50,000."The Cove" has provoked outrage over the dolphin hunt in the seaside town of Taiji in southwestern Japan, where 2,000 dolphins are killed every year, mostly for meat.The film shows fishermen banging on poles to frighten the dolphins into a cove, where they are killed with spears. The cove is closed off by barbed wire, and the movie crew had to film most footage covertly.Japanese police say the film's American director, Louie Psihoyos, and other members of his crew violated trespassing laws."The Cove" will be screened Wednesday. Advance tickets for the film were already sold out, festival spokeswoman Haruna Koike said.Psihoyos has said he plans to attend the screening, even though he could be arrested for the alleged trespassing.Weaver's "Avatar" will also be screened. It is one of the first major Hollywood 3-D releases that's not animation. Directed by James Cameron, creator of "Titanic" and "The Terminator," the sci-fi epic centers on humans placed inside alien skins to survive on a distant world.Weaver waved and blew kisses to fans at the opening ceremony. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama joined starlets walking the green carpet."Many great films have been made in Japan. Movies may be more influential than politics to develop relations based on love and friendship," Hatoyama said.The festival opened with "Oceans," a documentary on sea life. "Babel" director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu will head the competition jury at the festival. The 2006 film starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett earned the Mexican director the best director award at Cannes Film Festival that year."Japan's culture and film traditions have had a personal impact on me and inspire in me respect and admiration," he said at the opening ceremony.

Natalie Portman reveals Heat torment

Lohan's probation period extended

Diwali fever grips nation

Many thronged temples, distributed sweets and sent "Happy Diwali" greetings to friends and relatives, with SMS messages going to and fro all the time. After people had cleaned and decorated their homes with colourful rangolis and flowers on doorsteps, prayers floated in the morning air. Goddess of prosperity Lakshmi was invoked in many homes. Radhika Mishra, a marketing professional, said: "I got up early and went to the temple with my family. We also picked flowers and like every year my sister and I will decorate the courtyard with rangolis and diyas." Boxes of sweets were exchanged, and firecrackers and diyas (earthen lamps) were readied for the evening festival of lights. In the evening, millions of lights from tiny earthen diyas to dazzling strings of electric bulbs will light up homes, factories and offices. Homemaker Shuchi was busy cooking up a storm. She said: "I like to make the sweets myself and don't buy from the market. After the sweets are ready we will visit our relatives and friends, carrying gifts." Sanjay Singh said he "didn't want to miss out on the festivities and fun" and purchased firecrackers worth Rs.2,000. Expecting brisk business from last-minute buyers, confectioners opened early. Many people have extended their Diwali weekend and taken a small vacation. "I took the opportunity to go to Jodhpur with my wife. She was eager to see how the festival is celebrated in Rajasthan," Prateek Shah, an engineer, told IANS. Delhi Police beefed up security in all major markets on the occasion of the popular festival. Additional police personnel have been deployed to keep vigil. The fire service department too has geared up by mobilising its entire fleet. Festive mood gripped Bangaloreans as the three-day Diwali celebrations began with lights, colours and a bit of caution. Hundreds of homes across the city were decorated with strings of small bulbs of various colours while over the next three nights, traditional diyas will add a touch of tradition to the festival of lights. "I am going to enjoy Diwali fully. I know the state has been stuck by tragedy as floods have ravaged north Karnataka, but I want to forget all the sad incidents of past and want to welcome a new beginning for all by celebrating Diwali," Santosh Nair, a techie, told IANS. Echoing Santosh, BPO employee Soma Saha said Diwali is a festival of lights when one prayed for happiness of all. "Let us pray for a better future for all," said Soma during her last minute shopping for Diwali at Brigade Road, Bangalore's popular shopping hub. As people, particularly youth look forward to bursting crackers in the evenings, experts have advised the revellers to stay away from firecrackers as much as possible. The advice is not only because of possible burn injuries but also due to the high levels of pollution the city is suffering from. According to Karnataka State Pollution Control Board, Diwali celebrations in Bangalore during 2008 led to a high level of Respiratory Suspended Particulate Matter (RSPM). Bangalore generally has RSPM level of 73 mg/m3. However, Diwali 2008 saw it rise to 159 mg/m3. In order to deal with any emergency health related cases, several helplines have been opened by various hospitals in the city. As eye-related cases see a rise in the city during Diwali, Narayana Nethralaya, a leading eye hospital, will remain open 24 hours for the next three days. Bengalis in the city are adding to the cultural scene by bringing in wandering minstrels - the Baul-Fakir singers - to enthrall Bangaloreans Saturday evening.

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