Mahesh Manjrekar plays lead opposite Sushmita

After hunting high and low for a leading man to star opposite the stunning Sushmita Sen in his English-Bengali bi-lingual It Rained that Night, director-actor Mahesh Manjrekar has decided to cast himself as Sushmita’s husband.

Explains Mahesh, "I wanted to cast Sachin Khedekar who played Tabu’s husband in the Astitva. Then I thought it would be better if I did not repeat anyone from the original Hindi or Marathi cast in the English-Bengali re-make." Mahesh and Sushmita had a whale of a time recently shooting for Sanjay Jha’s Pran Jaaye Par Shan Na Jaaye which Manjrekar produced.

Sushmita sportingly agreed to put in a guest appearance as a sutradhar (narrator) in Pran Jaaye... Manjrekar and Sushmita even danced together to a pseudo-romantic number in the film. "She’s a wonderful actress and so stunningly beautiful," Mahesh says admiringly. And to think the two had a minor tiff when Sushmita was dropped out of Manjrekar’s Tera Mera Saath Rahe when she asked for changes in the script.

The roles of Tabu and Sachin Khedeker’s friends in the Hindi version will be played by Bengali actors Victor Bannerjee and Satapdi Roy. When Manjrekar flew down to Kolkata to narrate the script, Bannerjee initially wanted to play Sushmita’s husband’s role. With Bhoot and now this film, Bannerjee seems to have rediscovered a film career in Mumbai, after Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug, Lekh Tandon and Doosri Dulhan in the 1980s.

Hrithik is raring to go

He’s just back from an extremely successful concert in Durban. Hrithik just can’t stop raving about how successful it was.

"The highlight of the show was the Men In Black performance where Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Sanjay Dutt and I came on stage to perform live. We were all dressed in black. It was one of my most memorable moments on stage," says Hrithik. "So I can take it a bit easy now."

A date at Palm Springs

The awards season has started for Devdas. Sanjay Leela Bhansali is all set to attend the Zee Cine awards on January 11 and then fly off to the Palm Springs Festival for a screening of his romantic classic in the Spotlight section of the Festival the next day.

"I know it would be cutting it close. But I can’t help it. I’ve to attend our own awards function and at the same time, I also want to be present at Palm Springs for the screening. Incidentally, Devdas is nominated in as many as 20 categories for the Screen awards."

With Richard Corliss of Time magazine listing the Shah Rukh Khan-Aishwarya Rai-Madhuri Dixit starrer among the 10 best films of the year 2002, chances of the film making it into the Oscars has brightened even further. Putting the film at the fourth spot (ahead of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report) Corliss writes, 'Devdas is a visual ravishment... it has a grandeur that old Hollywood moghuls would have loved.'

Vikram Bhatt shoots with AB

It’s a dream come true," Vikram says emotionally.

He has just started shooting with Amitabh Bachchan. Vikram remembers how he’d stand in awe watching his cinematographer-dad Praveen Bhatt shoot Bachchan flicks in the 1980s. "And now, there’s this God from my past standing in front of me, obediently waiting to hear me say 'Action' and 'Cut' for Aitbaar. Sach poocho to mujhe aitbaar nahin hota," Vikram puns. "Everything I had heard about him is true. I’ve never come across a more professional actor before."

In Aitbaar, AB plays Bipasha Basu’s possessive father who can’t bear to see his daughter hitch up with the evil John Abraham.

Subhash K Jha

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