Hindi
Blue Mountain….Lost cause
MUMBAI: Blue Mountain is a film about the ambitions and aspirations of the young, the teenagers. The youth at that age have a new aim and ambition about what they wants to do with life and with each passing day. While, often, parents’ unfulfilled desires are forced on children, like wanting the child to accomplish what a parent could not, at other times a child is expected to follow a family tradition.
Blue Mountain is about a young lad accidentally discovering his hidden talent which, it turns out, is in his genes.
A group of four school friends, played by Yatharth Ratnum, Simran Sharma, Vaibhav Hanshu and Rishabh Sharma (the mandatory fat character fond of food and always munching in this kind of groups), spend their spare time riding their cycles around the picturesque hills of Shimla. They aim high and race to the tallest peak, the blue mountain.
All four have different ambitions but one, Vaibhav, aims to become a musician/ singer and, to this end, he has entered his name for the auditions of a famous reality show on TV, Ragarocks. When the auditions are on and his turn comes, Vaibhav develops cold feet. He asks Yatharth to take his place.
At the auditions, Yatharth decides to croon a classical number he always heard his mother, played by Gracy Singh, hum around house. He qualifies. As it turns out, the number he sang has many fans. It was originally sung by his mother, Gracy, who was a renowned singer but gave up her career after marrying the character of Ranvir Shorey.
As Yatharth proceeds to Mumbai to participate in the reality show with Gracy, a wedge opens in the family since Ranvir is against Gracy forcing her ambitions on their son. He has bigger ideas for their son.
The film then proceeds to take a cursory look at the behind-the-scene happenings of a reality show while Yatharth goes on winning round after round till, for no apparent reason, he croaks while singing in concluding the round and is disqualified.
The outcome is that Yatharth is broken, suicidal, snaps at everybody and sulks to the world. While he sulks endlessly, which consists of almost the entire second part, the film sinks to its lowest, never to recover. The makers then decide to force in a happy ending but the cause is lost by this time.
Blue Mountain is an amateurish enterprise which comes across as neither a children’s film nor for mature viewer. The reality show set up is patchy. Music is little help though the intentions are to promote Indian classical music.
Except for the snow-clad Shimla, there is little else to watch here.
Producers: Rajesh Kumar Jain.
Director: Suman Ganguli.
Cast: Gracy Singh, Ranvir Shorey, Rajpal Yadav, Arif Zakaria, Mahesh Thakur, Amit Behl, Vinod Nagpal, Yatharth Ratnum, Simran Sharma, Vaibhav Hanshu, Rishabh Sharma, Mehul Kapadia, Madhvi Shrivastava, Lisa-Marie Rettenbacher, Lamira Faro.
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.
