CMYK Thursday, 16 April, 2015
ARTS KAMILA SHAMSIE SHORTLISTED FOR 2015 ‘BAILEYS WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION’ British-Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie is among six contenders shortlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Shamsie has been shortlisted for her novel A God in Every Stone published in 2014, according to Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction website. A powerful story of friendship, injustice, love and betrayal, the story follows a young Englishwoman, Vivian Rose Spencer. In the summer of 1914, Spencer finds herself fulfilling a dream by joining an archeological dig in Turkey. Working alongside Germans and Turks, she falls in love with archaeologist, Tahsin Bey, and joins him in his quest to find an ancient silver circlet. The outbreak of war in Europe brings her idyllic summer to a sudden end, and her friends become her nation’s enemies. This is Shamsie’s sixth book to be shortlisted for the title. The novelist was named to Granta magazine’s list of best young British novelists in 2013 – a once-a-decade roster with a reputation for predicting literary stars. agencieS
FARHAN SAEED PAYS TRIBUTE TO PAKISTAN ARMY IN LATEST MUSIC VIDEO Jal’s former front man, Farhan Saeed, has released a song that pays tribute to the army’s ongoing efforts to fight terrorists in the ongoing Zarb-e-Azb operation. The song is a joint effort between Farhan and the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR). Tou Thori Deir’s video features Farhan as an army officer who is wrenched away from the arms of his wife, played by rumored real-life love interest Urwa Hocane, to serve the country. The video shows Farhan reminiscing about the love of his life while he is away at war and shows how he is asked to leave for the operation on the night of his wedding. “We all need you. But the nation needs you more,” says Farhan’s mother in the video, as she interrupts his wedding night. Though the video is a little dramatic, it highlights the daily struggles of army personnel who leave their loved ones behind to serve their country. The video is reminiscent of Jawad Ahmed’s Dosti which was also a tribute to the Pakistan Army. Staff report
ABHISHEK TO SHARE SCREEN WITH WIFE AISHWARYA RAI IN JAZBAA Abhishek Bachchan is all set to share the screen space with wife Aishwarya Rai in Sanjay Gupta’s Jazbaa. Jazbaa marks the Bollywood comeback of Aishwarya Rai. The two stars, who last worked together in Raavan, are appearing in a movie together after a gap of five years. Director Sanjay Gupta shared the news with fans on his Twitter account. “Big excitement at the shoot today as Abhishek Bachchan shoots his special appearance in JAZBAA,” Gupta tweeted. They earlier worked together in Guru, Dhoom 2, Kuch Na Kaho and Umrao Jaan, among others. Jazbaa, also stars Irrfan Khan and will be Aishwarya’s first movie after the birth of her daughter Aradhaya in 2011. newS deSk
VIRAL PHOTO: PAUL WALKER’S ‘GHOST’ SEEN STANDING NEXT TO VIN DIESEL A photo tribute that shows Paul Walker’s “ghost” standing next to Vin Diesel has gone viral on the net. The photo, created by Jeffrey Raymond Frohlich, shows Diesel leaning against a car with the silhouette of Paul Walker standing next to him. Walker was killed in a car crash in November 2013. Fast and Furious 7 was in the filming stage at that time and was finished using CGI and Walker’s brother Cody and Caleb as stand-ins. The film released on April 3 and has become the biggest hit of the franchise. The film was dedicated by Vin Diesel to Walker. The actor also named his daughter Pauline in memory of his friend. Diesel had the audience in tears when he sang See You Again at MTV Music Awards which took place on Sunday. The song has the perfect message for one friend missing another: “It’s been a long day without you, my friend. newS deSk
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PAKISTAN’S CARTOON ‘BURKA AVENGER’ SWOOPS INTO INDIA TO EMPOWER GIRLS NEW DELHI
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female cartoon superhero who dons a burka to tackle crimes against girls and other social ills is bringing her message of women’s empowerment to India, the creator of the Pakistani children’s series said. The Emmy-nominated “Burka Avenger” series started in Pakistan in August 2013 and has since launched in Afghanistan, winning global accolades including the Peabody Award, International Gender Equity Prize and Asian Media Award. Its main protagonist, a teacher called Jiya - who tackles everything from the ban on girls
going to school, to child labour to environmental degradation - was named as one of the most influential fictional characters of 2013 by Time magazine. The series’ creator and director Haroon Rashid said “Burka Avenger” would launch in India in April with the Zee Network and will be broadcast in four languages - Hindi, English, Tamil and Telegu. “It is launching on the ZeeQ channel which is a children’s edutainment channel so it is the perfect fit for ‘Burka Avenger’,” said Rashid in a statement late on Monday. “We are rolling out a worldwide launch for the ‘Burka Avenger’ series this year so it is fantastic that one of the first territories is India where we are able to reach such a large audience.” Media pundits say the series immediately
struck a chord in Pakistan where Taliban militants have prevented thousands of girls from going to school and attacked activists campaigning for their education. The issue grabbed the world’s at-
tention in October 2012 when child rights activist and Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai was shot and badly injured by militants who boarded her school bus in northwest Pakistan.
With ‘Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck,’ Brett Morgen Demythologizes a Legend
HBO’S NEW COMEDY ‘THE BRINK’ SHOWS PAKISTAN’S GEOPOLITICAL INSTABILITY
LOS ANGELES Clad in a crimson dress, Courtney Love blew into the Beverly Hills Hotel in March 2007 with a lawyer in tow and Kurt Cobain’s legacy on her mind. For the first time, she wanted to provide a documentary filmmaker with unrestricted access to her dead husband’s archives, including journals, artwork, home movies and more than 100 never-before-heard cassette tapes stashed in a mysterious storage locker. And she wanted the unorthodox nonfiction director Brett Morgen, tucked in the booth beside her at the hotel’s Polo Lounge, to take on the project. “It was time to examine this person and humanize him and decanonize these values that he allegedly stood for — the lack of ambition and these ridiculous myths that had been built up around him,” Ms. Love, the actress and musician, said recently by telephone. It would be the first authorized documentary since the Nirvana singer committed suicide in 1994, leaving Ms. Love a widow with a 20-month-old daughter, Frances Bean. Mr. Morgen, whose movies include the celebrated Robert Evans cine-memoir “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” figured a Cobain documentary would take about 18 months. It took eight years — “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” arrives in limited theatrical release April 24 — as Mr. Morgen wrestled with an unexpectedly enigmatic subject. Mr. Morgen also had to navigate a mother-daughter legal drama and pick through that storage locker,
The new HBO show, The Brink, is an American political comedy which showcases geopolitical crisis in different parts of the world. The first season set in Pakistan, is an attempt to recreate the country’s current scenario and focuses on its political instability. The dark comedy revolves around contrasting characters who must save the world from WWIII. Affected by the chaos around them they have to find a way to compromise with each other and prevent the eminent catastrophe at hand. Tim Robbins (from Shawshank Redemption) plays Walter Larson, a skirtchasing, booze-swindling US Secretary of State who takes the help of a sleazy foreignservice peon, Alex Coppins (Jack Black) and is accompanied by a cynical Pakistani US embassy worker, Rafiq Massoud (Aasif Mandvi from Million Dollar Arm) and an ace Navy fighter pilot Zeke Callahan (Pablo Schreiber). Taking a comedic twist on global annihilation, the show must tread carefully not to provoke any hate or bias from either side by depicting war-laden countries in the series. Written by former Weeds executive producer Roberto Benabib and his brother Kim Benabib, The Brink “might be heightened comically, but it’s very real. The situation in Pakistan is the Pentagon’s worst nightmare, and they are gaming it out,” said Robert. Staff report
which turned out to be a gargantuan task. (“It’s totally true,” Ms. Love said. “I’d never gone through any of it.”) In the end, Mr. Morgen, 46, said he discovered a guy who was “enormously complicated, much more than I ever imagined,” an artist whom the culture had come to misunderstand, or at least confine to a distorted niche. “I thought I was going to meet a rock star who got tired of his fame, because that’s the narrative that has settled around him,” Mr. Morgen said. As he dug deeper, “a character started to emerge who I had never met before.” Yes, the romanticized rock-god misery was there: the unwanted spokesmanfor-a-generation pressure, the disturbing art and journals, the horrific heroin spiral. “But there was also this loving and funny and warm guy who enjoyed parts of his life,” Mr. Morgen said. The ingrained perception of Cobain as an unambitious, helpless waif overpowered by Ms. Love was “shattered,” Mr. Morgen continued. “On the home movies I saw, Kurt is not meek.
Courtney is not dominating him. I think this film is really going to challenge people’s perceptions.” In one eye-popping 1992 home video included in the film, Cobain and Ms. Love are seen blissfully living in druggie squalor in Los Angeles. Standing in a towel in the bathroom with shaving cream on his face, Cobain teases Ms. Love about her tabloid image as a man-eating monster. “You and Roseanne,” he says playfully, referring to Roseanne Barr. “You’re tied for the most-hated women in America.” She pretend-pouts. Mr. Morgen said the 108 cassettes he found in a Southern California storage space were the most enlightening. Recorded by Cobain when he was still unknown, the cassettes find the budding musician experimenting on the guitar (singing the Beatles song “And I Love Her,” for instance), talking on the phone, giggling, listening to 1980s pop (Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America”), working on embryonic versions of Nirvana songs (“Polly”) and relating raw stories about his anguished teenage years. newS deSk
KATE WINSLET TAKES ON VERSAILLES GARDENS IN NEW FILM ROLE VERSAILLES: Oscar winner Kate Winslet returns to the big screen as a landscape designer tasked with constructing the grand gardens of Versailles, but the British actress says she is not so green-fingered when it comes to her own backyard. The 39-year old star of “Titanic” plays Sabine De Barra in romantic period drama “A Little Chaos”, who is commissioned to create the Rockwork Grove in the gardens of the French palace under King Louis XIV. The film stars Alan Rickman as the king, Stanley Tucci as his
brother Philippe, Duc d’Orleans and Mathias Schoenaerts as landscape artist Andre Le Notre. Winslet can be seen weeding and chopping down plants in the film but says the experience does not mirror real life. “I’m not a gardener. I wish I was,” Winslet told reporters at the London premiere of the film on Monday night. “Every year I say ‘Right, this year we’re going to do raised beds, this year we’re going to grow carrots, this year we’re going to do tomatoes,’ and somehow life gets in the way
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and we never get around to it.” Winslet reunites in the film with her “Sense and Sensibility” co-star Rickman, who also directed the fictional and loosely historical “A Little Chaos”. “Working with Alan again after 20 years ... was really a fantastic experience,” said the actress, who was
dressed in a midnight blue dress. Asked how they had both changed since then, she said: “Well I think we’re probably both fatter and we’re definitely older but that’s the way it goes.” “A Little Chaos” is due for release on April 17 in Britain and at the end of June in the United States. agencieS