Hindi
Box Office: Demonetisation adds to sequel woes
MUMBAI: Attempts to cash in on the trend of sequels is not working. In most cases, the sequel has nothing to do with the original, content-wise and, when there is some connection, the content is poor. Both the releases of the week, Rock On II and Chaar Sahibzaade: Rise Of Banda Singh Bahadur, are sequels.
Both have met with a miserable fate at the box office. There was an added factor of the demonetization of the currency notes of Rs 500 and 1,000 which affected all businesses including cinema which is not really a priority in such a situation. The situation may even lead to the postponement of one or two films due for release soon.
*Rock On II, sequel to the 2008 film Rock On, lacked in just about every department, be it script, content, romance and, mainly, music; not a single song worth humming considering this is a musical. With all these aspects being poor, the film’s length of 139 minute becomes telling on the viewer.
The film had a poor opening on day one, showed little improvement on Saturday as well as on Sunday ending its first weekend with Rs 6.2 crore. The number of shows per screen have been reduced today onwards.
*Chaar Sahibzaade: Rise Of Banda Singh Bahadur (3-D: Animation) takes forward the story of the merciless killing of four sons of Guru Gobind Sikh, the tenth Sikh Guru. The Guru decides to end the tradition of guru and, instead, appoints one of his disciples, Banda Singh, to carry out certain tasks to safeguard the sect. Rather than get to the story, the film takes too much time getting into repeating the story from the first part and, a 134 minute animation film is stretching it thin.
The film fell much short of its first part and the collections remained in lakhs through the weekend.
*Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, with nil opposition, managed to collect Rs 20.4 crore in its second week taking its two week total to Rs 98.6 crore.
*Shivaay managed to rake in Rs 16.4 crore in its second week as the film’s vigorous promotion continued and there were no major releases for a choice for the moviegoer. The film takes its two week tally to Rs 81.5 crore.
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.
