Hindi
Sony puts off release of David Fincher film on censorship issues
MUMBAI: Agitated with the Censor Board asking for several cuts in his film, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo director David Fincher has ruled out the release of the film in India.
Fincher categorically told the producers Sony Pictures that if the film had to release, it should only be without cuts. Sony Pictures approached the director again but he denied permission forthright.
Said a spokesperson from the production house, “Sony Pictures will not be releasing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in India. The Censor Board has adjudged the film unsuitable for public viewing in its unaltered form and, while we are committed to maintaining and protecting the vision of the director, we will, as always, respect the guidelines set by the Board.”
Lovemaking scenes between computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) and the journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) have become the bone of contention. Besides, there are two lovemaking scenes between Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) and Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a lesbian scene featuring Lisbeth and a woman she meets at a bar and a scene where Lisbeth is raped and tortured. In the revenge scene, she tortures him and a video of her being assaulted plays in the background.
The Censor Board had asked to blur out the scenes that have frontal nudity, but the Sony spokesperson said that scenes were specifically asked to be cut and not blurred.
Here it may be added that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo faced similar trouble in Malaysia and the Gulf countries while Japan rejected the first version but okayed the second version with pixilated scenes.
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.
