Face to face with a legend
YOU’D think VINTA NANDA, the portly, pleasant-faced writer-turned-filmmaker, would be an unlikely candidate to faint at the sight of a star. After all, she’s been around in the world of showbiz for years now, and rubbed shoulders with the biggest of the best. But there’s something about Amitabh Bachchan that has even the jetset swooning? Last week we had Mahima Chowdhury confessing she just couldn’t be herself when the Bachchan was around. She was just too dazed and awed by his presence to be able to concentrate on her shots. And now we have Nanda collapsing in a heap on the sets at the mere sight of her idol, much to the consternation of her unit hands, especially the production chief. Well, there she lay on the floor, oblivious to the scene she’d created until someone had the presence of mind to shout for a glass of water. The water worked like magic, for soon Nanda came to. And guess who was there to help her back on to her feet? A concerned Bachchan, of course. Come to think of it, the incident should make for an interesting cameo in one of Nanda’s forthcoming ventures. If Nanda cares to remember it, that is.

Distressed, Determined
THE same sun melts butter but hardens clay. Interestingly in much the same fashion, the same predicament invites differing reactions from different people. We’re talking of ANIL KAPOOR and RAVEENA TANDON, of course, this year’s winners of the National Awards for best actor and actress respectively.

Raveena, for one, is distressed by the controversy the awards have created, with some members of the jury claiming that the awards were rigged. “Once in a rare while comes a big moment like this, and someone has to come and spoil the fun,” rues Raveena. Anil Kapoor, on the other hand, is taking it all on the chin. “My job was to perform well, it was the jury’s job to choose the best performance. I’m certainly not going to let anyone snatch away my moment of glory,” he asserts.

In Support of Ismat
If Javed Akhtar thought he was letting himself in for a quiet, enjoyable evening in the company of Ismat Chugtai, he couldn’t have been more mistaken. He’d decided one evening to take in the Shahs—Naseeruddin, Ratna Pathak and Heeba—and their three-act play, Ismat Apa Ke Naam, based on the works of Chugtai. Akhtar wasn’t disappointed — the play was engaging and thought-provoking. And when he was quietly mulling over the first half’s proceedings during the intermission, a pretty unusual request came from a bunch of teenage girls seated in the row behind him: could he please explain some of the chaste Urdu words that were thrown at them in the course of the play? For the next fifteen minutes, Akhtar found himself not just explaining what some of the tough words meant, but also interpreting the significance of some of the scenes as he understood them. A full-fledged lesson in literary aesthetics, it turned out to be. Akthar was at pains to see that the teenagers took home a fair idea of the worth of a fellow-writer.

Shindig at the airport
SUNNY DEOL was nowhere in sight, though eager onlookers told us he was very much around. It was 12 midnight, at Mumbai’s domestic airport, and a shoot for Deol’s Indian was in progress. The crowd of extras was so large that it was difficult to distinguish who were real passengers and who were there for the movie. To make matters worse, flights that evening were delayed, the ones from Chennai and Kolkatta touching down close to witching hour. And as impatitent relatives waited for their near and dear ones to arrive, they were treated to some real “time pass”. The Deol is obviously pouring a lot of money into his home production judging by the size of the unit that included an army of 15 dogs. There were fierce looking alsations and dobermanns sniffing around, their trainers holding firmly to their leash. The film is reportedly a remake of theTamil hit, Vallarasu. Sunny plays a cop who uncovers a conspiracy that involves his father-in-law who’s also a top-ranking police officer and guns him down. That alienates his wife, Shilpa Shetty, but Sunny is oblivious to everything as he sets out on his mission to eradicate corruption.