Shilpa Shetty, who was due to deliver next month, gave birth to a boy on Monday morning, her husband Raj Kundra announced. "God has blessed us with a beautiful boy. Both mother and baby are fine. I am thrilled to bits!!!" Kundra posted on Twitter. "A big thank you to my wife for the bestest gift ever." The couple were flooded with congratulations from friends, including Bipasha Basu, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Farah Khan Ali, R Madhavan and Sameera Reddy. * IANS
Time ranks Devdas in decade's best
Time magazine has ranked Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 2002 film Devdas eighth in the 10 best movies of the decade, describing its star Shah Rukh Khan as an "all-world charismatist". "A year after Moulin Rouge! had its world premiere at Cannes, another visually intoxicating musical opened at the festival, introducing sang-and-danced Bollywood dramas to the international culturati," wrote Time's Richard Corliss. "It has a grandeur the old Hollywood moguls would have loved."
Lata Mangeshkar joins fight for royalties
One of India's most respected singers, Lata Mangeshkar, has given her support to the lyricist Javed Akhtar's recent campaign to secure royalty rights for singers and composers. "My only fear is, how will he cope with all the backlash coming his way from producers and music companies who are very angry? I fought for royalty for singers in the 1960s. My mission collapsed. My colleagues didn't get the point," she said. "Javed is fighting a much wider battle. Musicians often die in penury." The singer said she is being deprived of her rightful royalties. * IANS
Huma Qureshi talks Cannes film
Gangs of Wasseypur, which will screen at Cannes this week, may be a male-dominated film, but features strong female characters too, says Huma Qureshi, who makes her debut in the movie. "The women have a very strong influence in the men's lives. They are strong and irreplaceable," she said. Qureshi feels fortunate to enter Bollywood at a time of "experimentation". "There are so many interesting things happening around. Today, cinema is not only about star power, but also great concepts." * IANS
Anand-Milind lament state of music industry
The veteran composer duo Anand and Milind Srivastva, who ended a six-year hiatus to make the music for Yeh Khula Aasmaan, claim Indian music is going in the wrong direction. "The quality is going down. The number of good songs is decreasing with time. They have no sustaining power," Milind said. According to Anand, listeners no longer pay attention to lyrics and melodies: "Few people use acoustic instruments now, it's an age of technology and computers. And everything is downloaded." Their soundtrack album for Yeh Khula Aasmaan is released on Friday. * IANS
