STAR BAROMETER
Catch up with the entertainment industry: Read about Soad Hosni as TV drama, the most expensive scene ever and Nour El-Sherif's new big galabiya role.

(cairolive.com, November 4, 2001)

MUSIC

Silly song makes serious money
The song-writer who came up with the legendary ditty, "Il Sahin Dahin Boo" (a nonsensical line referring to Egytian ingenuity ["Il-Sahin Dahin Boo... al-wad tala li Aboo"... sahin dahin boo... the boy's like his father]), has filed a lawsuit against the Musicians and Songwriters Association, claiming the group did not protect his rights to the song's use. Al-Wafd, which ran the news in a tiny item on the front page, says the songwriter -- known as Rayyis Biro -- thinks he deserves a little more than the LE14,000 in royalties he has received since 1973 for writing the song. Citing shaabi legend Ahmed Addawiya's use of the song, with tape sales topping LE6 million, Biro wants LE240,000 from the group. His case will be heard in court on November 29, the paper says.

Multilingual love mix
 One of the songs on Youssra's new tape is called "Khali al-nass ti-hibb" (Let people love). By expanding her talent for marketing herself in different guises, the actress has followed in the footsteps of Mohamed Heneidi and Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz. Youssra's tape is a compendium of songs she's performed in past films, as well as original material like Let people love, which was orchestrated by pop hit maker Hameed El-Sha'iri. To boot, Youssra belts out her universal message of love in three languages -- English, French, and Arabic -- and the song also has a video clip, which was directed by Youssra's friend, Inas El-Degheidy.

MOVIES
Vague kind of liberal
Deghiedy, meanwhile, who picked up a Best Arab Film award at the recently concluded Cairo International Film Festival for "Mozaqirat Morhaqa" (Memos from a Teenager), was pummeled by veteran arts columnist Amal Bekir in a recent Al-Ahram. Bekir says the film -- purportedly directed by a self-proclaimed feminist like El-Degheidy -- does not serve any cause at all. The examples of liberated women Deghiedy portrays in the film, Bekir argues, are liberated only in a superficial sense, and not in the real, deeper meanings of the word.

TELEVISION
Before the dust clears
An ambitious scriptwriter says he can't resist turning late actress Soad Hosny's exciting but turbulent life into a screenplay. Akhbar Al-Youm reports that Mohamed Aboul-ela Al-Salamouni is trying to get his hands on anything that's ever been written about the "cinderella of the Arab screen", who died tragically earlier this year in London. The TV drama, currently in pre-production by the TV Union, will trace Hosny's rise to fame as one of the Arab world's leading stars. Meanwhile, the investigation into possible criminal undertones to Hosny's death is still being investigated by Scotland Yard in England.

Taking history to another level
The most expensive scene ever undertaken by Egyptian TV went into production recently, reports Al-Akhbar's entertainment page. The LE400,000 opening scene of "Hadith al-Sabah wal Misaa" (Conversations of Day and Night) takes the protagonist -- an Egyptian who comes back to his country after a long trip to Germany -- on a dramatic journey through 300 years of his family's history in Egypt. Based on a tale by Nobel-winner Naguib Mahfouz, and with the help of computer graphics, characters from the family's history, spanning several centuries, will appear together in the same scene. Farouk El-Fishawi, Abla Kamel, and Leila Elwy, the paper reports, are among the stars in what looks to be an interesting experiment in historical drama.

Another biggie for Nour
Nour El-Sherif looks set to put his "big character" galabiya back on for another epoch-moving role.
"'Aa'illat al-Hagg Metwali" (Hajji Metwali's Family) should reconfirm El-Sherif's reputation for successfully playing characters that stick in viewers' minds thanks to his ability to give their life journeys both depth and range. In Al-Ragul Al-Akher and Lan A'ish fi Gilbab Abi, he managed to play both rich and poor men with equal grace and intensity. This time, El-Sherif will be playing an equally complex role -- an ambitious, and much-loved fabric merchant -- who has four wives. The drama explores the situation both from his end, and how he strives to treat them all equally, in every way, and how the wives' react. The cast also includes standouts Magda Zaki and Inaam Salousa.
 

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