Hindi
New Year jinx continues at BO with no big show
MUMBAI: The first Friday of a new year jinx continues to haunt as a film released on the first Friday of a year inevitably fails. But, having watched Mr Joe B. Carvalho, one is convinced first Friday or Diwali Friday, the result would have been the same; the film is bad. The film barely manages to cross two crore mark over its first weekend.
The 3-D experiment with Sholay does not click as the film meets with lukewarm response. The curiosity value of this being the legendary film Sholay or the fact that it was converted into 3-D format seemed to be missing. Having collected about 1.3 crore on Friday, the film did not show much improvement as it ended its weekend with 5.2 crore. At this rate, it may prove to be a costly experiment.
Dhoom 3, true to its title, continued breaking records even in its second week at the box office. The film collected 65.24 crore in its second week taking its two week total for Hindi screens to 245.25 crore. The film is steady over its third weekend with figures of 12.49 crore and adding 42 lakh for Tamil and Telugu versions. At the end of 17 days, the film’s total collections stand at 257.73 crore for Hindi and 12.49 from T&T taking its total recovery to 270.22 crore.
Mahabharat (animation) has not been able to cash in on Christmas vacations. The film has managed to collect 1.3 crore in its first week.
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.
