Netting one

It’s time Shimit Amin shouted, Goal! His film Chak De! India has now gone out of multiplexes and on to sporting fields. The film has just been honoured with the Billies, a global award for the portrayal of women’s sporting achievements. The award, of course, is named after tennis queen Billie Jean King. “It was simply fantastic. It was amazing to witness the reaction of a foreign audience comprising writers, critics and industry professionals,” says the director. “It reinforced our belief that the performances of Shah Rukh Khan and the girls cut across all boundaries.” After all, that’s what a good game is all about. Ask K.P.S. Gill.

State and status

The magic word for Moubani Sorcar, daughter of P.C. Sorcar (Junior), these days is Bihar. Sorcar — Junior Junior — is playing the lead role of a widow in a Bhojpuri film called Pistol: Ek Prem Kahani. And Sorcar says it has taught her a lot both about Bihar and the status of widows. “My acting stint made me realise the pain that widows go through and I thought if I had been traumatised by a widow’s role for a short while how much more traumatic it must be for those who have to bear this agony for a lifetime,” Moubani says. The film, directed by Rakesh Kumar, was shot in Bihar — and Moubani enjoyed every bit of it. “People have this conception of Bihar as a violent place but it was the innocence of the surroundings that touched me the most,” she says. Moubani, we can tell, was enraptured. And the spell is still to be broken.

Food for thought

So what do you do when a film shows no signs of taking off? You try and woo viewers with food. Producers of the Bollywood film Tashan have been sending dabbawallahs — Mumbai’s famous food carriers — to the city’s people, and to one eminent citizen in particular, Anil Kapoor. The actor, who features in the film, was apparently pleasantly surprised when a group of dabbawallahs in Tashan shirts and carrying dabbas shouting the name of the film laid out a spread in front of him. “We decided to give Mumbai’s office-goers a bite of Tashan in their dabbas,” says a film insider. The film-makers, clearly, believe that the way to the box office is through a man’s stomach. If only!

Duo do

It’s not often that you have a mother and a daughter act in a film together. But director Gautam Haldar’s new Bengali film is going to feature the Sixties’ enchantress Tanuja, and her younger daughter, Tanishaa. Tanuja has acted in quite a few Bengali films, but it will be the first such venture for Tanishaa. Work on Haldar’s Mukti is about to begin, after a few initial hiccups over finances. “The characters that Tanuja and Tanishaa play do not have a blood relationship but become very close in the film as the story progresses,” says Haldar. “The chemistry between them is very much evident — after all, they are mother and daughter in real life,” says the director. Now all that it needs is a special appearance by Tanuja’s elder daughter, Kajol. A family that works together gets a hit together.

Artist and his muse

Raja Ravi Varma is not quite the hero for a Hindi film, you’d think. But Ketan Mehta begs to differ. His new film is based on the life of the 19th century artist born in Kerala who, many believe, is right there on top of the pantheon of Indian artists. Mehta’s film Rang Rasiya — which stars Randeep Hooda as the artist and Nandana Sen as his muse Sugandha — is slated to be released next month. That Mehta’s last film The Rising failed to rise — actually it sank — is not something that is going to pull him down. After Rang Rasiya, he plans to shoot a biopic on Rani Laxmibai. His subjects — Mangal Pandey, Raja Ravi Verma, and now Laxmibai — are all larger-than-life figures. No wonder in some circles they have started calling him as Ke-ton Mehta.