Preity Zinta takes art route

Pretty girl Preity Zinta is changing tracks with a vengeance. With an obvious attempt at shedding away her bubbly tag, especially after the box office failure of her high profile films like JAAN-E-MANN and JHOOM BARABAR JHOOM, she has headed for art house cinema.

One may term her films as meaningful, parallel or offbeat cinema but the fact remains that each of her upcoming films is a far cry from the cute and effervescent image that she has built for herself over the years. Whether it was her initial stint with the likes of SOLDIER and KYA KEHNA or her recent crop of films like SALAAM NAMASTE, VEER ZAARA and KOI MIL GAYA, she was finding herself trapped in a particular brand of cinema.

2008 may just about manage to change it all where she is working on number of art/offbeat films. These are:

Har Pall (directed by Jahnu Barua)
Heroes (directed by Samir Karnik)
The Last Lear (directed by Rituparno Ghosh)
Heaven On Earth (directed by Deepa Mehta)

Joginder Tuteja, Bollywood Trade News Network

Preity plays a 'bad' actress

Arshad Warsi and Preity Zinta share an identical predicament. They've to play 'bad' actors in their latest films. While in Anil Kapoor's production, Shortcut, Arshad plays bad actor, in Rituparno Ghosh's Last Lear Preity is cast as a bad actress.

That isn't the only problem the actress had to face. Preity had a very real problem on the sets of Jahnu Barua's Harr Pal. Pritam Chakraborty has done the music score. Every time someone mentioned his name she thought they were calling out to her, because Pritam is the name given to her by Bobby Deol.

Harr Pal has been one of Preity’s toughest roles ever. But the role of the Punjabi NRI wife in Deepa Mehta's Heaven On Earth has been her toughest yet. She's still carrying the invisible wounds of the battered wives' character. The shooting was wrapped up on Sunday.

Doing Rituparno Ghosh's Last Lear posed its own problems for Preity. She had never worn a sari or a bindi in her life. "Suddenly Ritu-da asked me to stick on bindis that were almost as large as my face. Initially, I was most reluctant. But then I surrendered completely to his vision. I'm actually looking pretty in Last Lear." Even the international critics have noticed. The reviews make a special mention of Preity.

In its review, Variety mentions, "It's an interesting paradox to watch a star like Zinta deliver a good performance as a woman who's widely known as a bad thespian."

Subash K Jha, Bollywood Hungama