Reformed Sara

My oh my! Sometimes it becomes hard to match what showbiz stars say and do. Sara Loren, the artist formally known as Mona Liza, now also seems to have changed her outlook on life.

She believes our showbiz people have become greedy for money because of which they have forgotten the real purpose of making films, which is: highlighting ills of society and working towards its betterment. Yes, this is what she is saying these days.

Good for you, girl! It must be after acting in Bollywood films such as Murder 3 and Barkha that you realised the wrong direction our society is headed in.

Project Ghazi postponed

It is mind-boggling, to say the least, to know that the producer and director of a film allow its premiere to take place without noticing the technical flaws in the editing process.

The postponement in the form of a Facebook page announcement on July 13 of Project Ghazi due to ‘sound’ issues came as a surprise to many. While it was wise of Humayun Saeed (who has a major role in the film) to ask the movie’s makers to defer its screening, it doesn’t show sagacity on the part of its director and producer. And then we talk about the revival of cinema.

Censor woes continue

The Central Board of Film Certification in India is becoming a Frankenstein for its creative people. So much so that it doesn’t even care about its Nobel laureates. The board has asked to remove the words ‘cow’, ‘Gujarat’, ‘Hindu India’ etc from a documentary titled The Argumentative India based on a conversation between Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen and Kaushik Basu.

This prompted Mr Sen to comment that the board’s insistence gave him the answer to the question “whether such bodies appointed by the Centre acted in the interest of the nation or the interest of the ruling party … the incident offers a fairly clear answer.” Absolutely right, sir! Do not cowtow, sorry kowtow, to them.

The difference in acting

There you go! Anil Kapoor has said it. Said what? That today acting is easier than it used to be when he started out as an aspiring artist in the ’80s. The reason he gives for this is that back then actors got their scripts a day or two before the shooting of the film, but these days they get them five to six months in advance, which helps them understand their characters and learn their lines.

Spot on, Anil K! Despite that, the new crop of actors is not a patch upon their seniors.

Spider love

It is not unusual that two people meet on the set of a film, find each other attractive and start going out. Well, it has happened one more time.

Our very new Spiderman Tom Holland is seeing Zendaya (who plays the character of Michelle MJ Jones in Spider-Man Homecoming). They started dating when the shooting of the film was in its second month.

Ever since then they have been steady with their relationship but they try and keep under the media radar. Hmm … there’s a likelihood that their stint together will be spoiled by the next world-saving assignment that Spider-Man is required to do.

I’m not engaged

The svelte fashionista Sonam Kapoor is super-miffed. She’s not happy with the way the Indian media is spreading news of her engagement with businessman Anand Ahuja.

She has rubbished all such reports and unleashed a tirade against the media on Twitter. “For all the news outlets out there, who are speculating about my personal life and writing unnecessary gossip about it because they think it makes a good copy. If your sources are my friends and family then be rest assured they are not really my ‘friend or family’ and if I do get married or engaged I’ll announce it on my own. So stop writing crap and stick to your real job of journalism.”

Woah! Cool down babe. It is the media that announces people’s arrival in, and removal from, showbiz. And how good or bad they fare as performers. They may get a piece of info wrong, but it’s their job to find where and how the fire broke out that caused the smoke to billow out. That is if you get the smoke-fire analogy.

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 23rd, 2017