Earshot — Pune

MissingSomething or the other is always going wrong with Richy Sinha who produces Prayaschit on DD2. Recently, his director Vijay Pande w...

Missing
Something or the other is always going wrong with Richy Sinha who produces Prayaschit on DD2. Recently, his director Vijay Pande was replaced by Ramesh Gupta following some differences. After that he planned a shooting schedule for five days and everything right from the artists’ dates, bungalows, lights were booked. But he got a jolt when his lead actor Sanjeev Seth who was in Kashmir didn’t turn up for the shoot. Several calls were made to his wife Resham who kept insisting that he was expected any moment. After waiting for two hours they called off the shoot putting them to a loss of about Rs 30,000. The other problem plaguing him is that he has just two episodes in the bag and after this schedule got cancelled he doesn’t have the dates of other artists like Beena and Mrinal Kulkarni for the next one month. Now what?

Film Fare
Ajit Pal, the man behind Baat Ban Jaye and Colgate Top Ten, is now producing a Gujarati film under his banner Headline Entertainment. This is a joint venture with his wife Kosha Pal. The script is being written and directed by Sanjay Shah. The star cast includes Kiran Kumar, Payal, Himakshi and Deepak Tijori (for the first time in a Gujarati film).

New Direction
Santosh Kapoor’s Khushboo which he recently launched under his banner `Komal Arts International’ is already the talk of Tellywood even before its telecast. The reason is that its director Vijay Pande is being replaced by Sapna Joshi who directs Captain House on DD2. “Vijay didn’t have time. He was busy with his other projects and my schedule was getting postponed and this being my first production I don’t want to hurry up and mess it up,” explains Kapoor. “Then I met Sapnaji, she is a nice lady and my serial is woman-oriented so I thought she could handle it better. It’s also very important for the producer and director to share a good rapport,” he adds. Vijay Pande was unavailable as he was shooting in Rajasthan for Ek Mulakat.

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Trading Places
Another casualty seems film producer Jatti Verma who stepped into Tellywood with his soap Laqeer. Well earlier, it had Kiran Kumar and model- turned-actress Usha Bachani. But we heard they had been replaced by Bhagyashree and Sumeet Saigal. “Usha is replaced but Kiran is still there,” clarifies Verma, “There were date problems with Usha. I got Kiran Kumar, Sumeet Saigal’s dates and above all my director Arun Frank’s dates for whom I waited for over two months. So I’d no choice but to replace Usha with Bhagyashree.” So now instead of Kiran and Usha it has Sumeet and Bhagyashree in the lead and Kiran plays Sumeet’s elder brother. According to Frank, Sumeet and Bhagyashree make a good pair and Kumar would look much elder than Bhagyashree, so these changes had to be made.

Mein Khush Nahin Hoon
Raj Babbar’s Main Dilli Hoon which covers 500 years of Indian history and was a tribute to 50 years of Indian independence, is on the way out. It was to go off the air after 52 episodes but got an extension for six episodes and then again for three more. Now, finally, it goes off the air on December 12. However, Doordarshan is offering a new slot of Sundays 11.30 am. But only for six weeks which is not acceptable to Babbar nor to director Ravi Chopra. “Everything is going fine, the TRP’s are quite high, we are selling the programme well, we have a good viewership, it’s on the top 10 list — I just can’t see any reason why we’re being refused an extension or a new prime time slot,” argues Chopra.

Among dead in Vijay rally stampede, young mother, couple set to marry

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A rally by actor-politician Vijay in Velusamypuram ended tragically with 40 deaths in a stampede. Non-political workers gathered to see the superstar, but exhaustion, heat, and poor planning caused chaos. People collapsed, ambulances couldn't reach, and police presence was inadequate. Vijay's team ignored instructions, and the narrow roads and insufficient crowd control added to the tragedy.

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