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IIFA notes: A full house for Bollywood awards show? It might happen

 
Published April 22, 2014

TAMPA — The cheap seats? Gone.

The not-as-cheap seats? They're moving, too.

Ticketmaster.com has put a yellow "Not many left" flag on tickets for Saturday night's International Indian Film Awards show.

As of Monday night, ticketmaster.com's seating chart for Raymond James Stadium showed just two seats left at the $344 level, fewer than 100 for $562, and fewer for $1,109. And, yes, there are still some of the expensive field seats for $1,655 and $3,295.

On the secondary market, hundreds of tickets are listed for sale on Craigslist and StubHub.com, but Tampa police say they've seen no sign that the IIFA Weekend & Awards has attracted the kind of out-of-town scalpers who flock to Tampa before a Super Bowl. The 2009 Super Bowl, for example, drew as many as 300 "hustlers" or "diggers," as they're known, who chatted up bartenders, hung around hotels and made nice with concierges in search of stray tickets.

"Maybe as it gets closer, but we haven't seen that yet," Maj. Michael Baumaister said.

Travolta to receive recognition at awards

Along with walking the green carpet and attending Saturday night's awards, Hollywood star John Travolta will receive a special honor at the awards, organizers said Monday.

Based on his dancing, singing and acting in movies like Saturday Night Fever, Pulp Fiction, Grease and Get Shorty, an IIFA news release described Travolta as the "most popular all-time international star in India."

The awards show is being recorded for broadcast in June.

From one villain to the next

Actor Vivek Oberoi is nominated for an IIFA award for best performance in a negative role, but he was all smiles on the green carpet at Tampa International Airport on Monday.

Asked what he was looking forward to, Oberoi said, "all of this," sweeping his hand toward the crowd, which whooped.

"We have a huge following here in America," he said, but face-to-face interaction is rare, so "this is nice. This is us finally getting to see each other."

Oberoi said he has another bad-guy role coming up, having just voiced, in Hindi, Jamie Foxx's Electro character in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 for its Indian release. Just as Indians love those kinds of U.S. movies, he hoped more Americans would take to Indian cinema.

"It's fun, and that's how it should be," he said. "Anything creative should have no boundaries or borders."