Hindi
Dull pre-Diwali releases fail to ignite the box office
MUMBAI: Dull period and multiple faceless film releases spell disaster at the box office for all of them.
Azaan, Mod, Jo Dooba So Paar: It‘s Love In Bihar and My Friend Pinto either face cancelled shows or collections in few hundreds make them total loss projects. The only film to better them is Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge which collected a dismal Rs 22 million in its first weekend.
The status of Rascals stands as rejected as it started on Dussehra day with figures of about Rs 80 million. It started sliding from day two, ending its four-day weekend with Rs 230 million; the drop in collections has been more pronounced thereafter as the film could add just Rs 51 million in the remaining four days to end its eight-day week with Rs 281 million.
Love Break Up Zindagi collected a poor Rs 16 million in its first week.
Force managed to collect just about Rs 31.5 million in its second week, taking its two-week tally to Rs 276.5 million.
Sabib Biwi Aur Gangster collected a reasonable Rs 18 million in its second week, taking its total to Rs 79 million.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
