Hindi
Sleaze takes over script in Jism2
MUMBAI: Jism part of the Jism2 is an apt title in that the reputation of its female lead, Sunny Leone, as a porn star and her willingness to shed her clothes in front of the camera makes this film with a banal story idea into a hot proposal in trade, the media and finally the by-now-curious moviegoer. It has given the film great start.
Sunny Leone introduces herself as a porn star at the onset; does not matter that this has nothing to do with whatever happens in the film thereafter. Arunoday Singh represents a secret intelligence force made of a select few whose existence is not on any record; he is chasing Sunny Leone for some prolonged time to enrol her into an assignment. She is willing to sleep with him as soon as she sets her eyes on him but is not sure if she would be interested in his assignment.
A price tag of Rs 100 million convinces her to take up the assignment but she is not sure again if she should because the assignment is to go back to Randeep Hooda, who she loved immensely once and who walked out on her one night. She only has hatred for him now. That he was equally in love with her is why she is chosen to take up the job. The prospect of getting even with Hooda convinces Leone to go ahead.
Hooda is holed up in some picturesque location in Sri Lanka. Singh and Leone land up in a cottage bang opposite him. Their cover story is that she is here with her fiancé, a PR man who has some work to finish but the real purpose being to find a hard disc on which Hooda has a list of crimes and criminals. Hooda loves Leone still as much but his new profile as an assassin compels him to keep her away from his troubled life. He is drawn to her again easily enough providing Singh the opportunity to search Hooda‘s place for the disc and to producers to put Leone‘s body on exhibition, not that she wears much throughout the film anyway!
As Leone gets deeper into luring Hooda back to her, Singh meanwhile falls in love with her and becomes jealous as well as possessive of her. This has now developed into a love triangle. While Singh gets a couple of pecks and kisses, sex with Leone is Hooda‘s domain. The thought makes Singh furious. The proceedings are slow and rather boring with just three characters dominating the screen time and no twists and turns in the story. Songs are the only distraction but they are of a kind that one would rather hear on a system than watch on screen.
The little excitement, though predictable, happens only at the end, when the cards open and it is revealed that the good men were not really good and the bad man was not a bad man as he was made out to be.
In the absence of a sensible, taut story, Jism2 has an excuse for a plot. The treatment is routine. In all, there are three decently penned dialogues. The location is beautiful. The film can be trimmed and will serve the purpose of showing Leone and her Jism. Randeep Hooda as at times violent, at times tear shedding lover and at times a loony loner does well. Sunny Leone tries to act; Arunoday Singh does not.
Besides the casting of a porn star, Jism2 can be called marketing coup of sorts where the producer Pooja Bhatt has more than doubled her investment and the all-world theatrical distribution rights holder, Wave Pictures, already has in their kitty a handsome margin of about 70 per cent. The film has had excellent opening at most places. All this notwithstanding, a couple of distributors, who have paid high price for their territory, will stand to make losses.
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.
