SHORT TAKES

THE PERFECT MIMIC
Mahima is in the eye of the storm these days thanks to her war of words with Subhash Ghai. We don’t want to add to the controversy, the lady being out of the country at the moment. Sure we’ve heard that she’s already lost one Govinda starrer after her gadbad with her godfather. And we can only say that Chi Chi’s lost out on a delightful co-star. Mahima’s not just bubbling over with enthusiasm and talent. The girl’s a terrific mimic too. She can do a takeoff on just about anyone she sees. And having her around would most certainly have livened up the Raja Babu’s shoots.

A DOLLY NOT A DOGGY
Most of our film stars have a kutta, billi and sometimes even a turtle they dote on. Rekha has her Pisti, Shah Rukh has his Chubacca and Leena Chandavarkar has her pussies. And they just adore their pets. In fact, most of them refuse to spend a minute away from their loved ones. The Indian Airlines staff, for example, have got used to the idea of Rekha cuddling her pom all through the flight. But there’re exceptions among the film folk too. Bhagyashree is one star who refuses to let any member from the animal kingdom step into her squeaky clean house. “No way!” she frowns everytime her son or daughter clamour for a doggie. Take a dolly instead, she’ll cajole.

GOING FOR A SONG
Recently when Juhi Chawla heard that Aamir Khan had sung a song for Ghulam her first reaction was, “No way!” It took a while to convince chirpy Chawla that it was true. “Well then,” she giggled, “he couldn’t have sung it too well.” She was off tangent again. He had done a pretty good job. “But when he had sung with me on a stage show he had been really BAD,” she remembered with a laugh and then added as an afterthought, “Aamir is always ready for a challenge. He must have taken this song up as a challenge and worked on it till he was word perfect, righto?” Perhaps. “Well then, may be he’s improved,” she joked. Talking of Aamir reminded us of their jhagda during the Ishq days. Had they kissed and made up? “Aw, come on, there was never any tiff,” she pouted. So they were on talking terms? “Sure,” she quipped, and then admitted that since they weren’t doing any films together they hadn’t run into each other for a long long time. So there hasn’t been much talking, righto?

SORRY SOORAJ
Aishwarya Rai is despondent. She landed a coveted role in Sooraj Barjatya’s Hum Hain Saath Saath , a role every heroine was eyeing, only to have to turn it down because she had four films on floors. “I didn’t want to grab the chance of a lifetime at the cost of displeasing my other producers,” she points out rationally. So it was “sorry” to Sooraj who, she insists, didn’t mind because “he understood my dilemma”.

SMALL CAN BE SIGNIFICANT
Ash’s loss is Sonali Bendre’s gain. And the golden girl is thrilled to be even the second choice for a Sooraj Barjatya film. What did it matter if it was a star-studded venture with as many as six couples cavorting to catch the eye. Sonali argues heatedly that there are times when you don’t even make an impact even if you’re there in almost every scene in the film. “The length of the role doesn’t matter. You can make an impression even with a two scene appearance,” she asserts. We sure hope you do Sonali.

THE STORY BEHIND VAASTAV
There’s an interesting story behind Vaastav, the much-in-the-news Sanjay Dutt-Namrata Shirodkar starrer. Balagiri, the film’s co-producer from down South, had gone to a temple 92 kilometres from Chennai, for the darshan of the miracle man, Amma. He was waiting in what seemed like a never ending queue when a little girl came tripping up to tell him that guruji wanted to see him first. He was in front of the holy man in a jiffy and was told to go to Mumbai. “You’ll meet a friend who’ll convince you to start a film soon,” he was informed much to his amazement considering he’d never had anything to do with show business. Intrigued, he air-dashed to film city and immediately bumped into Feroz Nadiadwala, Sanjay Dutt and Mahesh Manjrekar. By the third day he had agreed to financing Vaastav. He returned to tell Amma that his forecast had come true and was told that he’d be able to rush his film through in 4-5 months. That was being a little too optimistic but Balagiri, along with his co-producer Gopi Malaya, hopes to wrap up the film by August-September now that almost half of it is through. “And it will be Sanjay’s career best film,” he promises.

WOWING THE CENSORS
Fortune favours the brave, they say. Well, fortune and the censors sure favoured Shravani Deodhar who refused to be swayed by skeptics who thought she was taking too much of a risk by making so bold a film on the politics of today, and stuck to making Sarkarnama the way she had conceived it. “And would you believe it, the censors passed it with just one cut,” she beams. Incredible but true. The film is now breaking box-office records.

AN IMPRESSIVE DEBUT
There are only a few who make an impact right with their debut film and Jagdish Patankar is one of them. He made an impressive debut in the super-hit Marathi film Sarkarnama in which he plays a police commissioner, who initially is an associate of the chief minister in all his evil deeds, but later turns over into a new leaf when he realises that he has a duty and commitment towards society. So convincing was his performance that Jagdish has been flooded with offers to play a police commissioner, which is what he dreads. “I wouldn’t want to be typecast as a police officer and I have turned all those offers down. But it feels great to be noticed,” says the debutante. Jagdish incidentally is an adman and runs an ad agency with his partner Ajey Jhankar, the producer of Sarkarnama. In fact it was Ajey who insisted that Jagdish play the police commissioner in his film since he had done theatre earlier. “Now I am looking forward to doing some interesting and different roles, otherwise I am happy looking after our ad agency,” he says.