Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan at HMV's sneak preview of the music of Aks

Aks —Amitabh arranges a special preview for Aamir Khan

HMV played the perfect host at the sneak preview of the music of Aks held at The Club recently. The film is Rakesh Mehra’s directorial debut and stars Amitabh Bachchan, Manoj Bajpai, Raveena Tandon and Nandita Das. A thriller reportedly along the lines of the Hollywood hit, Face Off , the film is being presented by Jhamu Sughand and has already sparked off a lot of interest thanks to its unusual promos.

The evening was a beginning of what is hopefully going to be a long association between Saregama, AB Corp, Flick Motion Pictures and Jhamu Sugandh. The four have joined hands for their forthcoming production as well. Speaking on the occasion, Amitabh thanked Amar Singh, Anil Ambani, Jhamu Sughand and others for their emotional support.

Ravishing Raveena had to rush immediately after the promos to catch a flight. Rakesh Mehra engagingly narrated how Aks came into existence. Manoj Bajpai payed a tribute to his idol Amitabh. Anu Malik spoke about his “original” film score even as the audience wondered if they had heard a particular number before. Then Rakesh Mehra extravagantly introduced Nandita Das as “ Gods own contradiction between beauty and brains”.

With this film Nandita enters the commercial stream but she refused to make a distinction between the two world’s of cinema. “There can be only good or bad films,” she insisted but still managed to grab a lot of attention from all the media persons and directors present. Ramesh Sippy opely told her he wanted to work with her. Nandita was unfazed by all the attention and was seen discussing plays of substance with theatre artist Mohan Agashe.

Abhishek Bachchan and Aamir Khan came in only after midnight. Amitabh organized a special preview of the songs for Aamir alone. It had taken AB two hours to arrange this exclusive screening with the technical guys. AB Corp has signed Aamir for their next venture and knowing Aamir, it must have taken Amitabh a lot of time and energy to convince the Raja Hindustani. It was 3 a.m. before everybody went home, happy and contend.

—Johny D.