Hindi
‘Daawat-e-Ishq’ triumphs over ‘Khoobsurat’ at BO
MUMBAI: Daawat-e-Ishq opened to a lukewarm opening response and the collections remained on the lower side on Friday, improving marginally on Saturday and as well as on Sunday only to slide again today onwards.
A Muslim background love story with an anti-dowry message, its linear narration makes it a routine fare. The film managed to collect Rs 13.6 crore for its opening weekend.
Khoobsurat, having borrowed the basic plot from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s 1980 hit of the same name, about a freewheeling woman entering and challenging the norms of the house laid down by the woman of the house, a royal one at that, comes a cropper. An insipid, poorly scripted and executed film, it started with below average opening with a little improvement on Saturday and Sunday as weekends normally do add to the collections. The film collected Rs 10.5 crore for its opening weekend.
Finding Fanny, a zany road movie about a senior citizen being helped by his village mates find his childhood love, has made a little impact at the box office. Despite some favourable reviews by critics, the film has been able to put together just about Rs 23.5 crore in its first week.
Creature 3-D, another Vikram Bhatt horror had to its credit a fully locally computer generated man-eating creature but the film lacked in substance, got monotonous as its stretched too long and failed to generate interest in the viewer. The film collected a poor Rs 16.8 crore in its first week.
Mary Kom sustained ably in its second week in the absence of any formidable opposition and added Rs 11.15 crore in its second week taking its two week total to Rs 53.35.
Raja Natwarlal added Rs 10 lakh in its third week taking its three week tally to Rs 23.85 crore. The movie will be a loser at the box office.
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.
