Bollywoodbloggers. Let´s met again. This time in Munich.

Hah. I´ve just re-read my posts about the 1st PEIBBM last March and it all came back. How super-duper fun it was. Even back then we were talking about a repeat-performance. And that's why today I´m bahut khuchi to announce the 2nd Pan-European/International Bollywood Blogger Meeting.

Get ready to join the fun from March 7th to March 9th 2008 and this time in Munich!

The preliminary rough schedule, conceived by Michael, Kaddele, Beth, Marco, Maini, Maria, me and a whole lot of other helping spirits shows that the program will be pretty similar to last year:

We meet on Friday March 7th, this time already during the afternoon, hang out, blog, chat, do silly stuff, eat, drink. One idea is to catch a Bollywood flick in a Munich cinema (which might be a problem since Munich isn´t as lucky as Vienna and we still have to convince one of the local distributors of playing an Indian film. But no fear, we still have some aces up our kurta sleeves..) in the evening.

The "Big Day" like last year will be Saturday March 8th. Matlab typical Bavarian "Weisswurst" breakfast, the Liveblogging during the afternoon and in the evening we will start with the award ceremony of the 5th Central European Bollywood Awards (voting will start early February) and lead right into an open end paaaaarty.

Sunday will see another joint breakfast and then its already time to leave for home.

We also have a lot (and I mean a whole lot) of surprises in store. So this year is going to be even bigger and better than the last. Just keep watching this space for updates.

We would love to have you all there. And if you make it to Munich we will, like last year, make sure to find you a cheap place to stay. And you will have a filmitastic time! Kasam se!

Now that is where he got the idea from

A bit over a week ago at a classified meeting concerning the next IBBM, this little guy showed up for a short impromptu visit.














Now we finally know whom the big Khan got the idea for his six-pack from. It seems he just tried to look more like his doll :-D

We´re making News ;-)

Mehru Jaffer, a columnist for Hard News in India, wrote an article about the IBBM and the ACEBA ceremony last month.

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/portal/2007/04/884

Hah! We´re news-worthy.

Bollywoodbloggers. The 4th ACEBAs.

The voting for the 4th Annual Central European Bollywood Awards closed last wednesday and since I forced (nicely) Marco into having the results ready by the time the Blogger Meeting would take place, we were able to present the results in a fun impromptu awards ceremony during the evening event of the PEIBBM.













I prepared a Keynote presentation, ordered Birgit and Beth to screenshot their way through some of the winner movies, made a panicking Marco prepare a introductory speech *hehe*, put on my Sari and then we were ready to rumble. But not before more little thing.













Setting up the presenation got me the results early and knowing that they would not please the majority of the people attending, Birgit had the brilliant idea to bring handpainted "Wah!! and "Boo!!" signs. Lovingly made by Maria, Beth, Kaddele and Michael on friday, they came in quite handy.













But see for yourself. Here are the results as voted by the german speaking Bollywood fanbase. Which obviously is very SRKish or as we started to call it "Khanian". But maybe if the german distributors and TV stations would start sceening more non-SRK movies the fanbase will widen. And we won´t have Karan Johar winning Best Director for KANK. Bleh.

Mehru Jaffer, an indian journalist, who attended the ceremony asked me if we are planning to repeat the real-life ceremony and had plans to give away the awards physicly in the future. Well, even if it was a lot of work preparing and organizing the event, I think the crew with Marco, Markus, Birgit, Beth and Michael did great work. And the attending Blogwriters and -readers were getting along so well and we all had a ball. So, yeah, why not?

PS: and here´s the flickr set of my pics from the ACEBAs. All Pics taken from everybody can be found in this blogger group.

Bollywoodbloggers. Next Stop. Evening Fun.

So, we´re off. Unfortunately the restaurant we´re going to has no web-access, so the next update will come sometime during the night. :D

UPDATE 03/12/2007: I´m in the process of sorting and uploading tons of pictures. And apart from doing as little as possible at my "real" job today, I´ll try to post some afterthoughts on the weekend and of course my take on the evening event...

in the meantime here a pic of most of the superwow people that attended.













here a link to pics my bestest husband took during the evening. link. and here the link to all the pics we took from friday to sunday. link.

Bollywoodbloggers: Main Hoon Naa. Liveblogging

Everybody is set up with their own or borrowed laptops. Well fed from the walk to the Naschmarkt and ready for action.

14:18 And we´re rolling.














And there we have Naseeruddin. "Are you in charge here? - Yes. - Not anymore."
Oh and I genuinely dislike the TV show host.

14:22 I so had a crush on Kabir Bedi when he played Sandokan in the 70ies (?).

14:24 Yesss. Finally someone shot the annoying TV show host. The Blogger crowd is cheering.

14:26 "General, nobody is going to help you now."

Ghalad. Raghvan. Ghalad. SRK hai naa...

14:27 Damn you, Raghavan. Damn you!!













14:29 Oh I love how the crowd reacts.

14:34 Oh pulleeeaaase. Khirron. It was a mistake. How is the boy to blame. Oh get over it !!!!!

14:40 SONG!! I luurve the continous shot.

Hectic blogging everywhere. And tons of comments. Cheers for every actor.

14:57 Childhood trauma: "Please refrain from hanging out with us. You´re not cool enough."

How rude!

15:06 Isn´t it a shame how slow the computer equipment in this college is?

15:09 Ram to the rescue. The crowd goes wild.

15:10 Main Hoon Na. Finally. Sigh. Cheer.

I´m starting to lag behind. It´s so much fun to read the other blogs and watch the film and sing and whistle.

But there is no dancing yet. At least it seems that at 5 people are able to whistle the Main Hoon Naa chorus.

15:22 Sush is about to show up.. The crowd "uuuuhhhhhs. aaahhhs" and there are "Sing Ram Sing" chants.

15:27 The crowd goes wild at the bullet-time spitting scene.

15:28 I love how the Gabbar Singh poster is mirrored in the cars window... Great job Farah!
Those bicycle-rikshas are pretty fast. Hain Naa?

15:33 Well, bad luck Raghavan. "General Bakshi sent his "bloody best"!

15:38 And there we have it. The waterfall scene. No collective sigh? Is the male audience dead? tsts

15:44 INTERVAL













How superwow. Koi, our professor in residence, brought his violin and played "Main Hoon Na" during Interval. Wah! Wah! Sunniye!!

16:10 And we´re back in College. Pyaar hota hai.

Btw. Michael has sound and video bytes. Birgit too. Live from Vienna.

16:13 Lucky is such a jerk.













16:15 Tumse Milke. Gotcha Lucky! Hah. Marco sings. Ulli bhi. Me too :-D

16:27 Poor, poor, sweet, heartbroken, fatherless Lucky. "Do you care, do you love me, do you hate me? Anything. Anything." Damn I´m out of tissues.

16:30 Can you imagine anything more gross then being wooed by Prof. Rasai? Even if it´s just on the phone?

16:39 Aren´t our boys cute in their black suits, getting ready for sports day prom night?

16:45 Ahhh, the laser pointer thingy bandhuk. Nice, Ram can be pretty cold.
"Sorry about the Sari Ma´am"!

16:50 Wohooo. "Happy teacher´s day"

16:52 Uuh-oh. I see drama coming. And tears. Curse you Raghavan.

17:01 Uuh-oh. Again. Somethings off. No kids in the school yard..

17:02 "Project Milap is finished, General Saab" I knew it! I mean I of course really already knew it, but you know I knew it even when I didn´t know it.

17:08 That little white lock of Raghvan is making me crazy. Good crazy. Pity that he such a despiseable looser.

17:11 Ok, something that always bothered me. Is Khan such a bad shot or why else the first shot in the arm?

17:14 "You are a very bad man"! Oh Boman *shakes head in sorrow"

17:16 What kind of bad-ass terrorist is Raghavan? Can´t even look the traitor in the eye while shooting Khan. Wimp.

17:18 "Paanch minutes, Ram" hehe. Climax time.

17:22 Typical bad boy mistake. Don´t talk. Shoot. Bah.

"Damn it, turn around" Three, two, one. Bhoooom. Huge cheers in the room.

"Just shut up and pull me up. Ahhhhhhuuuuhhhhaaaaahuuuu.Woooohooooooo. Aur phir. Wooohhhoooooooo.

AND NOW:

The bestest end-credits ever.

That was just too much fun. I´m voting for doing it all over again next week :D


PS: and here´s the flickr set of my pics from the Live Blogging. All Pics taken from everybody can be found in this blogger group.

Bollywoodbloggers. Evidence.

Michael started a flickr group for all the pics we will take during the meeting. Chal dekho na. And btw. we already started as you can see :D

http://www.flickr.com/groups/bollywoodblogger/pool/

Bollywoodbloggers. Ready. Set. Go.

Location. Check.
Movie. Check.
Program. Check.
Logo. Check.

Lets roll.


I can´t believe it. A week from now it will all be a pleasant memory. Come saturday, March 10th the Bollywoodblogger Meeting will rock the city.

Here is the final program with all the important infos (here the program in german):



















Thanks to Judith and Birgit for the great help and the awesome logo and layout.

So, if you happen to be in Vienna next saturday, be sure to drop in. You just don´t want to miss this.

P.S. Birgit entrusted her Carom board in my care. (She´ll be going to India for 6 months end of march) We´ll set it up at the meeting. And I hereby challenge all of you.

UPDATE 3/9/2007: And they started to arrive... Beth is here since Monday and Michael, Kaddele and Maria just touched down..

Bollywoodbloggers. I´ve got good news and bad news.

For all those who felt a disturbance in the force on monday (15:00 GMT+1) -- that was me. Sorry. Isn´t it cool how when you get real angry all those curse words in any language you´ve ever learned come back?

So now let me give you the bad news. Bloody iDream moved the release date of the Bommarillo DVD from Feb 28th to March 7th and I am pretty sure that even with UPS it won´t reach Vienna in time. So we need a new movie to watch. Suggestions?

I know we will find a movie that we all will be happy with. So the bad news is not that bad. And the good news is really really good:

We will unveil the results of Marcos 4th ACEBA at a small and for sure funny awards ceremony during the evening event on the 10th. So anybody joining us will be able to get the result first. The rest of the world will have to wait until the 11th. No worries. There shall be pictures.

Bollywoodbloggers. Now we´re getting somewhere.

Don´t think that only because the last update concerning the First Pan-European/International Bollywoodbloggers Meeting in Vienna is from a week ago, there was no planning work going on behind the scenes.

So here is the first draft of the schedule for Saturday March 10th 2007.

First rule of the 1st PEIBBM. It´s all about having fun. So timetables are approximate values only!

Since some of you will arrive in Vienna on Saturday morning I will have an open house with lots of coffee for those poor red-eye-flight gals like Maini and whoever wants to join. Around noon the idea is to grab some lunch and since it´s so nice there we´ll head to the Naschmarkt.

At 14.00 we´ll get into serious business and meet to watch Bommarillo. The place we´ll be doing that has WLAN so expect some heavy live-blogging.

Next point on the agenda is 18.00 where we´ll meet (at an until now undisclosed) Indian restaurant and at 20.00 we´ll have some cool stuff coming up (again undisclosed as of now *wavesatmarco*)

So hang in there. It is only a few days until I will be able to come up with more details.

PS: Participants get in shape. There might be press coverage too....

Update 02/12/2007: Oh I almost forgot. I even went so far as to fill my spare iPod (yes I have more then one) with a background score for the 10th. If you have any suggestions on songs that I missed out, fire away. Here is what´s on the playlist so far.

Bollywoodbloggers. A suggestion for the meeting.

Hiya there. We´ve been brainstorming quite a bit as to what to do with all you Bollywoodbloggers in Vienna. Today I have a suggestion I´d love to read/hear your opinion about.

One to me very important issue is that I want to/must watch a movie together with all of you. Problem hai, the possibility of a BW movies being screened in cinemas here at that date are slim to none. (Thanx Eros International.) I also think that it would be great if we could do a sort of simultaneous/live blogging while watching it. That is something that can easily be done if we´d watched a DVD in one of the classrooms in my school. Beamer hai, DVD player hai, sound hai aur Broadband Wlan bhi hai. I can even come up with a couple of Macbooks (for those who don´t want to/can bring theirs to Vienna).

Which leads us to the question of what movie to watch. Preferably one that nobody of us knows yet. That is a problem especially if you have Marco on the panel (no kiddin´see for yourself) So my suggestion today would be Bommarillo. Nobody attending has seen it yet. The DVD will come out Feb 28th, I already pre-ordered it and it will be sent via UPS. So we should get it right on time. I know it´s not precisely Bollywood, but it has Siddarth in it. Siddarth. And Genelia.

Any objections? Or other movies you can think of?

Bollywood Blogger! Let´s meet. In Vienna.

There is no way I can fall asleep with the storm knocking with a speed of 75mph/120kmh on our windows (and we have lots of big windows) So why don´t I shoot forward and tell you what Michael, Beth and I have come up with.

There will be the first Pan-European/International-Bollywoodblogger-Meeting in Vienna on Saturday March 10th. And you´re all invited.

Kyun? Because we can. And because Beth will be visiting Vienna then. And since that is a very special occation and calls for a celebration anyway and since Michael invited himself too, we thought, hey, why not meet all of us?

We don´t have an agenda yet. But what we have is ek pura din, the whole saturday. And that means we will talk, eat, drink, watch (a) movie(s) and party. Plainly speaking a bunch of nice people with a vast interest in indian cinema (yes, it´s not BW-exclusive) will meet a bunch of nice people with a vast interest in indian cinema. Sounds fun, hai-naa?

So far I already have almost definite consents from some very cool people and I hope you will have time to show up too!

I´ll keep you posted with any news concerning accommodation and program and what else I might not think about right now (while the bloody wind throws around my -as I thought- heavily secured flowerpots). Oh and fire away with any questions you might have. Haan, email bhi, if you don´t want it public. babasko [at] gmail [.] com

UPDATE 1/31/2007: Yaaahooooo! Great feedback and already an impressive (if a bit heavy on the germanspeaking side) line-up. Beth. Michael. Marco. Maini. Oliver. Kaddele. Maria. Birgit. Maja and "my" complete Viennese BW gang.
ad Accommodation: If you´re short on funds. Don´t worry. As long as you make it to Vienna, we´ve got a couple of sofas for you (Not that there´s going to be much time for sleep).