The dismal news at the box office continued for yet another week as all the five releases of the week fared quite miserably. With the ban on releases about to come into effect, there has been a glut of movies over the last weeks at the box office.

This week's fare consisted of films like Nandita Das' Firaaq, Robby Grewal's Aloo Chat, Parvati Balagopalan's Straight, Raja Menon's Barah Aana and Hemant Prabhu's Lottery. The opening collections for all five were quite low, ranging between five to 10 per cent in most places. Of course, one of the reasons being given for the poor response has been the fact that it is exam season, when business is expected to be low. The prospects of neither of the five is expected to improve. As for last week's lot, Little Zizou, Gulaal and Jai Veeru, there is not any good news on their front as well. All three have proved to be duds at the box office. Business did pick up a little for Anurag Kashyap's Gulaal and Sooni Taraporewala's Little Zizou, but it was not good enough. Slated for release next week, are quite a few interesting films. There is Jahangir Surti's Aa Dekhen Zara, which stars Bipasha Basu and Neil Nitin Mukesh; Sangeeth Siva's Ek The Power Of One, which stars Bobby Deol and finally, Deepa Mehta's much talked about Videsh, which stars Preity Zinta as a battered Punjabi housewife.