SABA AND ATIF

Congratulations to the spunky Saba Qamar for getting a best actress Filmfare award nomination for her insightful portrayal of a middle-class housewife who is eager to get her daughter admission to a top-notch school in  Hindi Medium. 

We’re all happy for her, and it doesn’t matter a whit that she didn’t win the award. However, it must be said that it’s unfair to Atif Aslam who didn’t get even a nomination for one of his best-sung playback songs ever ‘Dil diyan gallan’ for the movie Tiger Zinda Hai. Damn these politics!

ED ENGAGED

Arguably the most successful contemporary pop star, Ed Sheeran, announced on Jan 21 that he and his girlfriend Cherry Seaborn are now engaged. Congratulations to them!

The two have known each other since they were together in high school and started going out three years back. The singer told his friends that they are deeply in love and their “cats are happy as well.”

Hmmm… sounds like this “love was handmade for someone like” the The Shape of You singer.

NOT WITH WOODY

British actor Colin Firth has become the first male actor to publicly announce that he’s not going to work with a director accused of sexually abusing someone. Who is that director? None other than Woody Allen.

Recently, Woody A’s adopted daughter Dylan Farrow gave another interview to a TV network once again accusing her father of sexually abusing her when she was seven years old (in 1992) and her parents (Woody and Mia Farrow) had just roken up.

She has made the allegations before but in the current #MeToo climate this time the charges got far more traction. Colin F worked with the celebrated director in the film Magic in the Moonlight (2014). Intriguing. Now let’s see which other actors, male or female, follow suit.

HIGHEST GROSSER EVER

Punjab Nahin Jaungi, directed by Nadeem Baig, is proving to be a film juggernaut that’s breaking, nay destroying, all kinds of records.

It was the most commercially successful Pakistani movie of 2017, and now PNJ has crossed the Rs50 crore mark in terms of its ‘worldwide’ box office collections, becoming the highest-grossing Pakistani film ever. Who did it beat in the process? Jawani Phir Nahin Ani, made by the same director.

Interesting! Tell you what: they say a novelist is as good as his second novel. If the same could be applied to filmmakers, Nadeem B should be feeling pretty smug about releasing his next film.

SUNNY WAXED

The voluptuous woman with an endearing smile, Sunny Leone, would never have imagined that one day her wax figurine would be a part of the famous Madame Tussauds Museum, standing tall alongside the likes of Aishwariya Rai-Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Anil Kapoor. Not in London, though.

The museum’s Delhi branch has decided to make her wax statue for which last week some members of the Madame Tussauds London came to India to take her measurements (ahem). Sunny L was over the moon on the occasion. She profusely thanked them for the gesture and called the museum a one-of-a-kind attraction . Rather apt place to house a one-of-a-kind distraction.

BOLLYWOOD’S ROCK BOTTOM

It came as a total shock to see big names of the Indian film industry striking a pose and taking selfies with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his recent visit to India.

They included the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Imtiaz Ali and even a sensitive poet/lyricist such as Prasoon Joshi. This goes to show that the old notion that artists belong to the sensitive segment of society does not hold water, otherwise they’d have spared a thought for the millions of suffering Palestinians.

What matters is money … and in certain cases jingoism.

Published in Dawn, ICON, January 28th, 2018