Brotherly Love

Ali Zafar is touring Australia these days for a series of concerts. During his first gig in Sydney, at which he wowed the crowd with his popular film and pop tracks, he was joined on stage by his younger brother, Danyal Zafar aka Danny Zee, for a few of the latter’s original tracks and their upcoming song titled Sushi/Woofer Paar De. It was, apparently, well received. Ali Z is slowly but surely proving to be a good example for all those senior artists who are criticised for not encouraging their juniors. Well, as long as juniors have ties of blood.

The Prep Days

The Legend of Maula Jatt is a gigantic hit. Some of its scenes have become pretty memorable. One of them is the last showdown between Maula (Fawad Khan) and Noori Nath (Hamza Ali Abbasi). In an interview, the director of the movie, Bilal Lashari, has spoken about the sequence in the following words: “Fawad and Hamza prepped for around 20-25 days with our stunt coordinator, Ian Van Temperley. Ian helped our actors with difficult moves in the scene, such as flips. We shot the final scene of the film for five to six days and completed it.” No stunt doubles were harmed in the making of the sequence?

Me and I

According to a report, pop singer Meesha Shafi, who now lives in Toronto and appears to have settled down in the city well, will soon release her first album. You might ask, what’s its title? The answer is: Main. Explaining the name, the vocalist has been quoted to have said, “It translates as ‘I’. Not ‘me’, but ‘I’. You know, there’s a difference. It’s about the self.” Interesting! I, me, (my)self… ever since she’s gone abroad, Meesha S seems to have an ‘I’ on the prize and become an ‘I’ specialist.

Dear Viewers 

The tremendous success of drama series Khuda Aur Muhabbat and Tere Bin have put its makers in a bit of a quandary. Last week, Abdullah Kadwani, the producer, tweeted, “Dear viewers, please let us know what you want first: Khuda Aur Muhabbat Season 4 or Tere Bin Season 2. Your preference matters.” The response was overwhelming, as Abdullah K claims to have received more than 10,000 comments on Instagram and thousands of emails. That is... a good quandary to have, we guess, even if the end result is another sequel.

Unhealthy Split

The Joe Jonas-Sophie Turner break-up is getting ugly. They have two daughters together. Last week, Sophie T filed documents to get the children back [to England] accusing Joe J of “abducting” them. He has now fought back through his representative, saying, “When language like ‘abduction’ is used, it is misleading at best, and a serious abuse of the legal system at worst. The children were not abducted. After being in Joe’s care for the past three months at the agreement of both parties, the children are currently with their mother. Sophie is making this claim only to move the divorce proceedings to the UK and to remove the children from the US permanently.” Folks, this story sounds like a page-Turner not for the average Joe.

AK Versus AI

On September 21, Indian actor Anil Kapoor won a case against artificial intelligence (AI) in a court of law in Delhi. Some time ago, he had filed a suit to protect his “personality rights, encompassing his name, image, likeness, voice, and other aspects of his persona from any form of misuse, including digital media” by presenting examples of unauthorised use of his “attributes”. The court, after a careful hearing, “issued an order, acknowledging Kapoor’s personality rights and prohibiting all offenders from exploiting his persona without consent in any capacity.” This is great. It makes us wonder, though, whether there’s a difference between his personality and persona...

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 1st, 2023