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The film, ‘Thinking of Him’, is based on the encounter and deep spiritual, platonic friendship between Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo, an Argentine high-society lady Rarely one comes across a biographical cinematic production which explores both the personal life story and explores the meaning and power of ‘ideas’ of the ‘subject’ or the ‘individual. Case of the recent movie, Thinking of Him, an Indo-Argentine production, seamlessly slides between the foreground of a contemporary setting about the search for Rabindranath Tagore’s ideas about education by an Argentine school teacher and the historical background of an episode from his personal life of an encounter with Victoria Ocampo. According to film director Pablo Cesar, this alternating parallel tracks method was to emphasise the universality and timelessness of Tagore and his relationship with Victoria Ocampo. Thinking of Him is based on the encounter and deep spiritual, platonic friendship between Tagore and Argentine hi...

Lee Jung-jae, the award-winning star of Netflix's “Squid Game,” spent years developing the 1980s-set Korean spy thriller “Hunt” before electing to direct himself. He did it a little reluctantly, without big plans to continue filmmaking. But Lee did have a vision for what it could be — and where it could premiere. “Before deciding to direct, I thought I just wanted to make a very fun film,” Lee says. “After I got my hands on it and started writing the script myself, I actually wanted to come to Cannes. Because I wanted to come to Cannes, I had to find the subject matter that would resonate with the global audience.” Few actors know more about capturing the attention of the global audience than Lee. Already one of Korea's top movie stars, the 49-year-old Lee is at the nexus of the “Squid Game” phenomenon, starring in the dystopic series that — subtitles and all — became Netflix's most-watched show in some 90 countries. Now, Lee is in Cannes to premiere “Hunt," which is p...

It would have been a dauntless pundit who gambled on where Sophie Ward would go with her second novel. Her 2020 debut, the Booker-longlisted Love and Other Thought Experiments, took the form of a series of loosely interconnected stories, each one a riff on a well-known philosophical thought experiment such as Pascal’s wager, a bet on the existence of God, or Heraclitus’s river, the idea that change is the only constant. Inventive and ideas-heavy, the novel defied genre, taking in everything from modern relationships to space exploration and AI. One chapter was narrated by a child in the process of being born, another from the point of view of an ant living inside a human character’s brain. While the book divided critics, it established Ward as a literary provocateur, a writer pushing at the bounds of what fiction could do. Yet her follow-up, The Schoolhouse, is a much more conventional undertaking. The novel takes place over a long December weekend in 1990, and divides its increasingly...

The amazing Sadashiv Amrapurkar was born on this day, 72 years ago. On the occasion, Amborish Rochoudhury recounts some stories around Ardh Satya and Sadashiv’s breakout role, Rama Shetty. Shivanand Shetty is one of the four producers of Ardh Satya. Doesn’t talk much. Sometimes during the shooting, he’s seen standing on one corner of the set, without making any noise. Shetty’s flat is on a high-rise building in the backyard of Dadar-Portuguese Church. Shivanand Shetty’s flat becomes Rama Shetty’s flat in the film. He is a rather successful politician now, he is surrounded by luxury and opulence. His flat is spacious, well-equipped. A far cry from the dark hovel that his earlier den was.  As the bell rings, the help answers the door. Anant Welankar enters. They have met before in very different circumstances. Rama Shetty leads him in. They sit in adjoining sofas. Anant is here to ask for Shetty’s help, much as it kills him to do so. He is suspended for killing a young man in custody...

The timeless comedy 'Padosan' began its journey as a short story which was adapted first in Bengali and then in Telugu, both by Calcutta-based production houses. It was a rage in three languages before Bollywood even knew that it existed. Once Upon a Cinema is a new series which will illuminate the dark, unexplored crevices of Indian cinema. In it, the writer will showcase stories and faces long forgotten, share uncommon perspectives about stars and filmmakers, and recount tales that have never been told. Had Bhanu Bannerjee  been alive and worked as a comedian today, he would have been in deep trouble. One of the things he was known for was the scathing social satire in his audio plays, some of which involved poking fun at politics and…religion. His skit Naba Ramayan would send ripples across the establishment. Nevertheless, Bhanu was more famous as a comedian in mainstream Bengali films, and he was active at a time when comedians were accorded the same respect given to the le...

Tom Cruise landed a helicopter on aircraft carrier USS Midway on Wednesday to kick off the film's world premiere, appearing alongside co-stars Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Jennifer Connelly and Jay Ellis. It has been 36 years since Tom Cruise donned his aviators, jumped into a fighter jet and ascended Hollywood's A-list with Top Gun -- and, finally, a sequel is about to land. "I was a little slow -- sometimes I'm a little slow," Cruise joked to AFP at the world premiere of Top Gun: Maverick, held aboard a retired US aircraft carrier in San Diego on Wednesday. Slow is not usually a word associated with Cruise, arguably the world's biggest movie star, who landed via helicopter onto a red carpet that was rolled across the USS Midway's sprawling top deck for the occasion. In his new film, out in US theatres on 27 May, Cruise's hotshot pilot Maverick returns to the Navy's elite TOPGUN fighter weapons school where he earned his wings to train the latest ba...

In the coming days, Hollywood will treat us with biggies like Top Gun: Maverick, Thor: Love and Thunder, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and many others. This summer at the movies, Tom Cruise is back in the cockpit behind those iconic aviators. Doctors Grant, Sattler and Ian Malcolm are returning for another round with the dinosaurs. Natalie Portman is picking up Thor’s hammer. And Jordan Peele is poised to terrify us with the unknown. Again. Hollywood is bringing out some of its biggest and most reliable players for the 2022 summer movie season, which unofficially kicks off this weekend with the help of Marvel and Disney’s “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” and runs through the end of August. It’s an uncertain time for the movie business as studios and exhibitors are still making up for losses incurred during the pandemic and adjusting to new ways of doing business, including shortened release windows, competition from streaming and the need to feed their own ...

Aamir Khan's daughter Ira Khan recently opened up on dealing with anxiety attacks. She wrote a lengthy post talking about her anxiety and how she is improving her health with this one hack. Bollywood actor Aamir Khan's daughter Ira Khan recently disclosed that she has been suffering from anxiety attacks through a post on social media. The star kid later shared another post and revealed what helped her deal with the situation after the attack. She wrote, “1 thing that helped my anxiety. I used body scrub for the first time in my life. I only managed to shower after the palpitations had passed but I wasn't feeling settled and I was worried they would be back. It took a while to figure out what I felt like doing and then actually get up to do it. However, eventually - I took a relatively long shower (mine usually last only 3-5 minutes) with body scrub. Why I think the body scrub helped me is because it made for a heightened tactile (sense organs - touch) experience." She ...

Actor Amber Heard suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from the violence she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband Johnny Depp, including multiple acts of sexual assault, a psychologist testified Tuesday. The sexual assaults included being forced to perform oral sex and having Depp penetrate her with a liquor bottle, the psychologist, Dawn Hughes, told jurors at Depp’s libel trial against Heard. He accuses her of falsely claiming in a newspaper op-ed piece that she was a victim of domestic violence. Hughes’ testimony contradicts that of a psychologist hired by Depp’s lawyers, who said Heard was faking her symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and suffered from borderline and histrionic personality disorders. Hughes disputed that Heard suffers from any personality disorder. Hughes was the first witness to take the stand on Heard’s behalf after Depp’s lawyers rested their case Tuesday morning. Hughes said there is corroboration of many of the instances of abuse, including apolo...