Whistle Stop: A Palace for Daayan

As Ek Thi Daayan — a supernatural thriller with a magician as the protagonist — readies to go on floors,producers Vishal Bhardwaj and Ekta Kapoor have found a location that is both grand and accessible. Instead of building a set that looks like a palace,the team has booked Nautanki Mahal,one of the sets at Kingdom of Dreams,the entertainment venue in Gurgaon. With state-of-art technology offered alongside,shooting at Nautanki Mahal,the team hopes,will be free of technical glitches common on open-air sets. The film which has Emraan Hashmi,Konkona Sen Sharma and Kalki Koechlin as part of the cast,is being directed by debutant Kannan Iyer and the shooting will start this month.

Role Model

Nearly all prominent Indian models in the recent past have,at some point in their careers,turned to acting in Bollywood. It doesn’t therefore come as a surprise that supermodel Sheetal Mallar has given her nod to be part of Shoojit Sircar’s next,Jaffna. What’s pleasantly surprising,however,is that while most actresses in the industry retire by the time they hit 35,Mallar who is nearing 40,will instead make her debut. The diva has always defied rules in her career as a model and her casting as John Abraham’s love interest in the film,could be one more such attempt.