published 2 days 23 hours 58 minutes ago.
Time is finally on their side. The Rolling Stones announced on Thursday the relaunch of their US ‘No Filter’ tour, which had been derailed by the pandemic, beginning in St Louis on September 26. “I’m so excited to get back on the stage again and want to thank everyone for their patience,” frontman Mick Jagger said in a statement. “See you soon!” Added Keith Richards: “We’re back on the road! See you there!” The 2021 No Filter tour begins September 26 at The Dome at America’s Center in St Louis, followed by rescheduled stops in Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Minneapolis, Tampa, Dallas, Atlanta, Detroit and Austin. The band has also added three new dates, including the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival — their first time playing there — on October 13, Los Angeles on October 17 at SoFi Stadium, and Las Vegas on November 6 at Allegiant Stadium. Tickets will go on sale July 30 for the new shows. The statement added that previously scheduled dates for Vancouver, Louisville, Cleveland and Buffalo could not be rescheduled; ticketholders will be contacted by Ticketmaster. All previously purchased tickets will be honoured at the rescheduled performances. Further information is available on www.rollingstones.com.
published 6 days 20 hours 41 minutes ago.
Looks like another Bollywood film could be headed towards a digital outing with the makers of ‘Looop Lapeta’ now looking to release the Taapsee Pannu project on a streaming platform. The movie, which is the official Hindi remake of the 1998 German film ‘Run Lola Run’, wrapped up its filming in February, but has been sitting on the backburner awaiting a release slot in cinemas with the COVID-19 pandemic making it all the more hard for them to roll the film out. Film producer and fashion photographer Atul Kasbekar Image Credit: IANS With several months of delay undertaken, producer Atul Kasbekar has now confirmed with entertainment portal Pinkvilla that a digital release in being considered. “Given the circumstances that we are in, it’s likely that we will look for an OTT [over-the-top of digjtal] premiere. It’s not locked in stone yet, but if there are huge films like ‘Toofaan’, ‘Haseen Dillruba’, and so on releasing on OTT, then now it’s cool to be one or the other,” Kasbekar told the website. Over the weekend, Farhan Akhtar’s ‘Toofan’ released on Amazon Prime Video after months of delay. The sports drama, which has opened to mixed reviews, was earlier slated to release in theatre. Similarly, Pannu’s ‘Haseen Dillruba’, which dropped earlier this month on Netflix, was also scheduled to roll out in cinemas but ended up going digital instead. Bollywood actor Farhan Akhtar on ‘Toofan’ Image Credit: Supplied “Technically, our film will probably rewrite a lot of chapters, which is something I am really proud of. Especially when it comes to the camera work done by an absolute genius called Yash Khanna. So just like the original ‘Run Lola Run’, which set a whole technical benchmark, I think we are going to do the same. I have told my DOP that ‘if you don’t get nominated for award functions, then there is a travesty of justice’,” Kasbekar added. Franka Potente played the titular role of Lola in the original, which followed a woman who needs to obtain 100,000 Deutsche Mark in 20 minutes to save her boyfriend’s life. Helmed by filmmaker Aakash Bhatia, ‘Looop Lapeta’ is being bankrolled by Sony Pictures Films India, Ellipsis Entertainment (Tanuj Garg, Kasbekar), and Aayush Maheshwari. Apart from ‘Looop Lapeta’, Pannu has a flurry of films in the works including ‘Shabaash Mithu’, ‘Rashmi Rocket’. ‘Blurr’ and ‘Dobaaraa’.
published 18 days 17 hours 56 minutes ago.
Thiruvananthapuram: Malayalam filmmaker Shrikumar Menon has been arrested in a cheating case, police said. Alappuzha police officials went to his home in Palakkad on Thursday night and took him into custody. The charge against him was he had collected around Rs10 million from an Alappuzha businessman, but failed to honour the agreement to make a film. This isn’t Menon’s first controversy. In 2019, he was let off on bail by police after they questioned him over actress Manju Warrier’s complaint, which alleged he was trying to defame her. He directed Warrier in Mohanlal-featuring film ‘Odiyan’ as well as in several ads. In 2018, he had an issue with writer and Jnanpith awardee M.T.Vasudevan Nair over a script.
published 23 hours 12 minutes ago.
Pakistan star Nausheen Shah’s tirade on single women being picked on in society hasn’t gone down well with the masses on account of her poor choice of words. The ‘Pani Jaisa Piyar’ actress recently took to her Instagram Story to lament against society’s constant need to get single women married in Pakistan. However, her expletive-laden post has resulted in the actress herself bearing the brunt of trolls, with some asking her to leave the country if she’s so unhappy. “This happens only in this [expletive] country if you are not married your mother will remind you everyday. Shaadi kerlo shaadi kerlo. Nahi kerne shaadi bhai maaf kerdo, jaan chordo [Get married, get married. I don’t want to get married, leave me alone],” Shah posted in her Story. And even though the Story is now out of her feed, the reality of her post is still causing rage. Pakistani designer Umar Sayeed was one of the few who took objection to the post, writing in Urdu: “Yeah when you’re unable to get married despite all the efforts, this is what you end up saying to save your reputation.” Actor Aadi Adeal Amjad objected to her choice of words, telling Shah that if she was so unhappy then maybe she should leave the country. However, the post has also drawn support from the public. Geo News anchor Aleena Farooq applauded Shah for speaking the truth, adding: “And if you are married and childless everyone would rub it in your face every single day.” A Twitter user also chimed in to add: “Nausheen Shah is absolutely right it only happens here people will remind you every day that you should get married ASAP they’ll make you feel like it’s a failure as all your age fellows are married.. it never bothered me but only when they hurt my mother with this bakwas [rubbish].”
published 5 days 7 minutes ago.
The diva sings of love and unmitigated desire. Dressed in a scarlet evening gown with her hair pulled high, she cries out to her beloved, longs for a night of undying passion and yearns for the sun not to rise. The vocalist in the 1969 concert video is Umm Kulthum: the Arab world’s greatest 20th-century performer, possibly the best-known Egyptian woman since Cleopatra and star of the exhibition ‘Divas’ at the Institut du Monde Arabe, or Arab World Institute, in Paris. The show, which runs through September 26, is a richly illustrated flashback to the period between the 1920s and the 1970s. It portrays unveiled and openly voluptuous women performing on stage and screen without fear of censorship or religious condemnation, and feminists, political activists and pioneering impresarios facing down the patriarchy. A moving exhibit of Umm Kulthum in Paris Image Credit: NYT Besides costumes and jewelry, passports and posters, album covers and high-heeled shoes, visitors get to watch footage of female performers wiggling their hips in mesmerising moves and posing on the beach in hot pants. The overall picture contrasts sharply with present-day Western perceptions of the Arab world as a place where women are veiled from top to toe and silenced by all-powerful men. “The exhibition knocks down a fair number of cliches and preconceived ideas about this part of the world. Women actually occupied center stage, embodied modernity and were not at all absent from history,” said Élodie Bouffard, the exhibition’s co-curator. “They sang, acted, made people cry, broke hearts and showed off their bodies just as Western actresses did at the time.” “These images are still very present in the minds of younger generations,” she added. “They don’t just represent the past.” Costumes worn by Sabah in 1970s on exhbit in Paris Image Credit: NYT The institute’s president, Jack Lang, who was France’s culture minister in the 1980s and early 1990s, recalled in an interview that when he was a boy visiting Cairo, he sneaked into a theater where Kulthum was performing, and was “stunned, absolutely breathtaken.” He later heard another singer, Fayrouz (the exhibition’s other major diva), while touring in Lebanon as a young actor, he said, then gave her a medal as culture minister in 1988. These women were not just exceptional vocalists, Lang noted: Some participated in their country’s struggle for independence from the colonial powers, Britain and France, and joined in a wave of nationalism that swept across the Arab world. “The emergence of these divas coincided more or less with a time of collective emancipation,” Lang explained. “The music sung by them is an extraordinary expression of freedom.” Ode to a golden era The songs of Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, who died in 1975, remain an integral part of Arab culture. Image Credit: Supplied The exhibition opens in pre-World War II Cairo, the artistic and intellectual hub of the Arab world, where concert halls and cabarets proliferated, many of them established by women, exhibition co-curator Hanna Boghanim said. Women also had a significant role in the film industry, she added, working as “directors, producers, actresses, costume makers, talent scouts.” Many of these women came from very humble backgrounds, including Kulthum, who is introduced in a velvet-curtained enclosure in the show. Born in a village in the Nile Delta, she first performed disguised as a boy, singing religious songs that bewitched the crowds. Eventually, she came into her own, as a woman and as a voice, and became famous for her improvisational style. Her songs sometimes went on for more than an hour. Her story is told through photographs, album and magazine covers, videos and bright-coloured costumes created for the 2017 biopic ‘Looking for Umm Kulthum’, directed by Iranian-born artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat. There are no loans from the Kulthum museum in Cairo, the curators said; they were too complicated and expensive to organise. Nor are there loans from Fayrouz, who is still alive, despite requests made via the family and entourage of the reclusive vocalist. Her section contains posters, album and magazine covers, photographs and other paraphernalia, some compiled by a dedicated fan. Fayrouz Image Credit: Supplied By contrast, the section on half-Algerian, half-Lebanese diva Warda is full of her personal possessions: sunglasses, medals, earrings, passports, an oud instrument, a brown leather suitcase and an Agatha Christie crime novel. Born in the Paris suburbs, Warda made her debut as a child in her father’s cabaret in the city’s Latin Quarter and became a successful recording artist before moving to Algeria in 1962, the year the country gained independence from France. There, she married an army officer who stopped her from singing. Her career took off when she moved to Egypt a decade later. The exhibition gets racier as it goes along, culminating with the last wave of 20th-century Arab divas, including Egyptian-born Dalida, who became a superstar in France. Interspersed among displays of sequined evening gowns, stilettos and powder compacts are video monitors that show a woman singing with abandon. A provided image shows the performer Dalida in Giza in April, 1959. A multimedia exhibition in Paris offers a rich flashback to a period between the 1920s and the 1970s when many female performers took center stage. Image Credit: NYT In the decades since, the place of female performers in Arab countries has changed. Islamist movements and migration from rural areas have made parts of society more conservative about women’s dress and public behavior. That has led to assumptions in the West that Arab women are veiled and constrained today, as opposed to the decades when the divas reigned. To Coline Houssais, author of ‘Music of the Arab World: An Anthology of 100 Artists’, these then-versus-now perceptions, which the exhibition risked encouraging, were misguided. “The Arab world’s development is measured using ultra-Western criteria,” she said. There were “more important factors, to do with equality: the number of women who work, women’s civil rights,” she added. Despite the coronavirus epidemic, the show is a hit with Parisian museumgoers, and visitors to the exhibition appeared to validate Houssais’ assessment. On a recent afternoon, onlookers seemed intrigued by the story of these stars of yesterday, who bucked contemporary stereotypes about Muslim women in France. “It’s really very interesting to find out about the emancipation of women in these societies and to see the contrast with today, even in terms of hairstyles,” said Camille Hurel, 23, a visitor to the show. “These were strong personalities who were known all around the world.” “Nowadays, I have the feeling that there isn’t as much freedom of expression,” she added. Houssais said that, in fact, the Arab world today was mostly populated with people under 30, a generation “glued to social media, completely open to the world and leading their own private revolutions.”
