Star Barometer:
Mohamed Mounir's heart, celebrities hawking products, billboard reorganization, and more

(June 7 2001, cairolive.com)

• This week Kazem El-Saher joined the growing list of celebrities who hawk products. Large, full color ads for Samsung mobile phones now feature a slickly-suited, suavely smirking El-Saher. The ads appeared in the papers this week, just a page or so away from the by now very familiar face of Hisham Selim urging us to chomp on more Chipsy.

• Wael Nour may have gotten his first-ever cinematic lead bill in "Al-Tifl al-Umlaq" (The Giant Child), a story of a kindergarten student who suddenly, one day, becomes the physical size of a grown up. Nour is looking forward to the emotional range of possibilities afforded by the philosophical and funny script, the papers report.

• Businessman Ahmed Bahgat has revealed the name of his upcoming satellite TV station. It's to be called Dream TV, and will launch on Nilesat later this year. Bahgat says the channel will be unscrambled. The mogul's 6 October City Dream Park amusement park, meanwhile, has reduced entry prices to LE20 till 20 June.

• Singer Mohamed Mounir is back from Germany, where he acted in a film about a German artist. Mounir, who had previously participated in several German documentary productions, is busy putting the finishing touches on this summer's new album, to be called "Qalbi Masakin Shaabiya" (rough translation: My Heart is a Tenement)

• Not everyone is happy with the way the names of the stars of the new film "Itfarag Ya Salam" (Wow, Look!) are arranged on the film's billboards and credits. Abeer Sabry, for one, says she was promised, when the film was made two years ago, that her name would appear second, right after Maged El-Masry's. Now it appears near the end, and in the smallest of fonts. She has submitted an official complaint and is awaiting a response on the matters, according to Al-Wafd.
Of course even Maged El-Masry seems to have gotten a raw deal on that one, since Itfarag Ya Salaam's lead billing is all Hany Ramzy's. Critics are complaining that the film was only released because of the unexpectedly phenomenal success of Ramzy's recent comedy, Saidi Rayih Gayy (Always an Upper Egyptian) , which has brought in the much coveted LE5 million, thus qualifying Ramzy for potentially huge star status. Aiming to capitalize on that the producers of Itfarag ya Salam have given Ramzy the most props on the film's posters and credits.
 

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