Hindi
‘Lincoln’, ‘Life Of Pi’ top Oscar nominations
MUMBAI: ‘Lincoln‘ continued to gain strong momentum in the Hollywood awards season. The Steven Spielberg biopic got 12 nominations. Just behind is Ang Lee‘s ‘Life of Pi‘ with 11 nominations.
Both are among the nine pictures nominated for best film. The others are ‘Argo‘, ‘Silver Linings Playbook‘, ‘Amour‘, ‘Zero Dark Thirty‘, ‘Beasts Of The Southern Wild‘, ‘Django Unchained‘ and ‘Les Miserables‘. Missing from the list are ‘Skyfall‘, ‘The Master‘ and ‘Moonrise Kingdom‘.
But the big surprise is in best director. Apart from Lee and Spielberg none of the other three directors who were nominated for the DGA have gotten in. This includes Kathryn Bigelow who helmed critics favourite ‘Zero Dark Thirty‘ and Ben Affleck for ‘Argo‘. That seriously hurts both these films‘ chances of winning the best picture Oscar. The last time a film won best picture without its director being nominated was ‘Driving Miss Daisy‘ way back in 1989.
Apart from Lee and Spielberg, the directors competing for an Oscar are Michael Hanecke for ‘, Benh Zeitlin for ‘Beasts Of The southern Wild‘ and David O Russell for ‘Silver Linings Playbook‘.Amour
Another big surprise is in foreign language film. The nominees do not include ‘The Intouchables‘. ‘Amour‘ is the favourite to win here. The other nominees are ‘Kon-Tiki‘, ‘No‘, ‘A Royal Affair‘ and ‘War Witch.
The best actress category has the oldest ever nominee Emannuelle Riva for ‘Amour‘ and the youngest ever in Quvenzhané Wallis in “Beasts of the Southern Wild”. But the race is probably a shootout between Jessica Chastain for ‘Zero Dark Thirty‘ and Jennifer Lawrence for ‘Silver Linings Playbook‘. Naomi Watts in ‘The Impossible‘ has also made the cut.
Lawrence has a bit of an edge in that ‘Silver Linings Playbook‘ did better than expected. It got eight nominations including one in supporting actress for Jackie Weaver. It is the only movie to have been nominated in all the acting categories. ‘Les Miserables‘ also got eight nominations, though more were expected. Its helmer Tom Hooper has been left out.
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.
