Christian Louboutin once designed a shoe inspired by a Satyajit Ray film; Ranbir Kapoor wants to develop a tic to boost his recall value; Karan Johar doesn’t know why he made the super-sappy Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (we don’t either).

This isn’t information from reruns of Koffee with Karan or Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, but from what promises to be a cooler, expanded 2.0 alternate to the super-sappy chat shows: launching next week, TheBigIndianPicture.com is a website featuring Bollywood stories, video interviews, memorabilia and promises to “use [movies] as a prism to look at culture, politics and society.”

It sounds like a tall order, but we’re holding out hope because the website is run by the guys behind the very cool Balcony TV India, who have managed to rope in some pretty big names: journalists such as Gyan Prakash, Hartosh Singh Bal, Aatish Taseer and Teju Cole are working on the project, as have celebrities like the abovementioned as well as Diane Von Furstenburg and Amitabh Bachchan, who is scheduled to launch the website.

Some sections on the website will include:

Eye Of The Beholder: Writers, artists and designers talk about the relationship of their work with cinema.

Moveable Feast: Group discussions on cinema in India. The first in the series will feature Bollywood directors, the next, film critics from Mumbai.

Tete-e-Tete: Celebrity interviews, kicked off by Ranbir Kapoor. 

Slideshows: Photos of film art, posters and memorabilia.

Getting there: Visit www.thebigindianpicture.com, see the teaser trailer and view the Facebook page here.