Monday, 16 May, 2016
Spielberg to make a film on ali gilani’S reScue H ollywood legend Steven Spielberg has offered to make a movie on the abduction and recovery of former Pakistani premier yousaf Raza Gilani’s son Ali Haider, who was rescued from Al Qaeda-linked abductors in Afghanistan this week. Spielberg made the offer to make a movie during a telephone conversation with Ali Haider, Gilani was quoted as saying by a Pakistani newspaper on Friday. “Mr Spielberg telephoned Haider and made the offer on Thursday,” Gilani said. Gialni also said his son plans to write a book and may accept the offer to work for the Hollywood film based on his captivity and “miraculous” release. Though the notes Ali Haider made during his captivity in Afghanistan have been lost, his “painful memory” of the period is very much alive in
his mind, he said. “My son had written a manuscript for a book detailing his ordeal in captivity but it was burnt by his captors. But he intends to pen down what he had gone through during the period. PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also encouraged him to write a book about his ordeal,” said Gilani. BFG closest Film to a love story Steven Spielberg landed at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday with his gentle Roald dahl adaptation The Big Friendly Giant (BFG). The film, about a young orphan (Ruby Barnhill) taken away by a friendly, big-eared giant (recent oscar winner Mark Rylance), marks a return for Spielberg to the magical kind of fable he has largely moved away from in recent years. It is his second film with ET writer Melissa Mathison, who
died last November. Spielberg has dedicated BFG to her. “It’s a love story that children have for their grandparents. It’s a love story that grandparents have for their children,” said directing legend Spielberg. “I think this probably the closest I’ve ever come to telling a love story.” Sitting between his young star and his new favourite actor (Rylance is starring in the director’s next two films as well), Spielberg said enchanting fantasies like The BFG are just as vital as more realistic tales. “The worse the world gets, the more magic we have to believe in,” said Spielberg. “Hope comes from magic and I think that’s what movies can give people. They can give people hope that there will be a reason to fight on to the next day. Hope is everything to me.” Spielberg acknowledged his interest has recently drifted to his-
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LAHORE: Ali Haider Gilani and his wife (R) with Shahbaz Taseer and his spouse (L). Taseer called on Gilani on Sunday to congratulate him on his recovery after three years of captivity. INP
torical dramas like lincoln and last year’s Bridge of Spies, but he said making The BFG was liberating. “It was revisiting something that I’ve always loved to do, which is just to tell stories that are from the imagination,” he said. “It brought back feelings I had as a younger filmmaker.” The BFG, which drew warmly respectful reviews in its Cannes premiere, is largely faithful to dahl’s classic 1982 book and was made in concert with the dahl estate. The author died in 1990. Producer Kathleen Kennedy first obtained the rights in 1993 and later turned to Mathison for the script. Spielberg called collaborating
with Mathison again “a wonderful reunion and a very bittersweet time, as it turned out, for us.” dahl was famously anti-Israel and some considered him anti-Semitic. Asked about whether that was an issue for him, Spielberg said he was not aware of that, and was only concerned with adapting a book he frequently read to his seven children. The BFG, which disney will release in July, played out of competition in Cannes. Spielberg was last present at the French Riviera festival in 2014 as president of the jury. Rylance, who won a best supporting oscar for his Soviet spy Rudolph Abel in Bridge of Spies, performed the Big Friendly
Box office pressure makes actors jittery: Emraan Hashmi COURTeSY The iNDiAN expReSS Emraan Hashmi feels Bollywood now is obsessed with trade collections. It not only takes away the thrill of working, but also makes the actors jittery. Emraan has featured in several blockbuster films like Murder, Gangster and once Upon A Time in Mumbai, apart from starring in relatively smaller movies like Shanghai and Ek Thi daayan. “obsession with numbers gets the thrill
out of working in films. Everything can’t be equated only with numbers. Sometimes, it is a small film and you crush the spirit of the film because it may not do the kind of numbers,” said Emraan. “But it is appreciated to a certain extent and people need to understand that. They need to understand what the film tries to do. And not equate everything with the box office numbers,” he said. The 37-year-old actor has tried to strike a balance between commercial and off-beat movies with films like The dirty Picture and dark-
comedy Ghanchakkar. when asked if the box office pressure dictates an actor’s choice of films, Emraan said, “In some films it does, in some films you like to take a risk. But I think the more you have news articles coming out, the media talking about these terms, then it also gets the actors jittery. They are afraid of trying something new.” The Jannat star feels either an actor will be afraid to move out of his comfort zone or will be forced to try new things as that is something, which the industry dictates.
Content of Indian TV, a huge sign of worry: Prachi Desai New Delhi AGENCIES
FASI ZAKA Different personal summary positions on offshore companies Nawaz Sharif: "I am Iftikhar Chaudhry" Imran Khan: "I am Mangal Pandey"
ROBERT HARRIS I'm thinking of writing a dystopian novel in which Boris Johnson has won the war
ANNALIESE Indian parents: "WHY DO YOU NEED TO BUY A NEW FRIDGE, SEE THIS ONE WE'VE HAD FOR 25 YEARS IT WORKS, okay yes some bits are broken BUT STILL"
MALEEHA MANZOOR In Banistan,gvt dsnt address basic human rights issues rather silences the very voice helping create awareness among ppl #ChildAbuse #Udaari
OLIVIA NUZZI Trump says creepy things about Ivanka being hot because, to him, hot is the most valuable thing a woman can be.
Bollywood actor Prachi desai, who began her acting career on the small screen, feels the content of TV shows is in a dismal state nowadays. Prachi moved into the film world after successfully establishing her name with the lead role of Bani in the once-popular daily soap ‘Kasam Se’, which dealt with the trials and tribulations of three sisters. with no immediate plans to return to the small screen for a fiction show, Prachi said in an interview: “Honestly, (Indian) television right now makes me really sad. It is a huge sign of worry. “looking at where the
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country is going and the things that are happening around us, we should open our eyes and give content to the people accordingly. I am not saying that the medium is a social service, but TV impacts so many people on so many different levels, in a huge way.” The 27-year-old actor, whose latest film Azhar released this Friday, thinks the
current TV shows are “regressive and just so shocking at every level.” “we need to improve so much. years ago, we used to have way more advanced shows in terms of outlook and relatability,” added the once Upon a Time in Mumbaai actor. Having mostly played roles that feature her as mature and docile, Prachi said, “Ask my directors why they give me such roles! I honestly have no idea myself. I am completely opposite. My roles are beyond my age too. “I should be happy that despite of not being this person in reality, I am able to bring such maturity in my roles, but I should also be having a lot more fun, play characters close to my age.
Giant through motion capture. The actor is also to co-star in Spielberg’s upcoming sci-fi thriller Ready Player one and will play Pope Pius IX in the director’s The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. Spielberg described Rylance as not only a new collaborator but a close friend. He called Rylance’s transformation from the quiet Abel of Bridge of Spies to the whimsical colossus of The BFG as “one of the most astonishing experiences I’ve ever had in my entire career working with anybody.” Above all, the director sounded no less enthralled by moviemaking at age 69. “This is something I’ll be doing for the rest of my life,” said Spielberg. AGENCIES
Ranbir buys apartment worth INR 35 crore MUMBAi AGENCIES
Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor has reportedly purchased a sprawling apartment in Bandra for a staggering Rs 35 crore. According to a report, the 2,460 square-foot apartment comes with two parking slots and is located in a residential area. The actor reportedly paid Rs.1.42 lakh per square foot to purchase the apartment on the seventh floor of the 12-storey Vastu Pali Hill. The building is said to be in close proximity to Krishna Raj, the ancestral home of the Kapoors. Prior to his reported breakup with Katrina Kaif, the actor shared a sea-facing penthouse with her on Carter Road.
Saif to learn culinary skills for ‘Chef’ remake eNTeRTAiNMeNT DeSK Actor Saif Ali Khan will train under top chefs and learn culinary skills to get his act right in the remake version of “Chef”. “Chef”, a 2014 American comedy drama, is written, produced and directed by Jon Favreau and is now set to be made in Hindi. director Raja Krishna Menon will direct the film in Hindi with Saif Ali Khan in the lead.
UKRAINE’S JAMALA WINS 2016 EUROVISION SONG CONTEST STOCKhOlM AGENCIES
Ukraine’s Jamala struck a surprise gold in the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday with a song “1944” about war-time deportations of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union in one of the most controversial winners in the competition’s history. In a show known down the years for its playfulness and camp, 32-year-old Jamala struck a sombre tone with her lyrics about strangers coming to “kill you all”, in reference to the forced removal of ethnic Tatars by Josef Stalin dur-
ing world war 2. Jamala, herself a Tatar, stood on the Stockholm stage singing “you think you are gods” against a blood-red backdrop. She said her greatgrandmother was one of the Crimean Tatar victims of Stalin who deported the group en masse to Central Asia after accusing them of sympathising with Nazi Germany. Many of the 200,000 deported died on the way or in exile. Jamala pleaded for “peace and love to everyone,” when collecting the trophy ahead of Australia in second place and Rus-
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sia in third spot. despite being far from Europe, Australia attended the competition for the second time after an invitation from organisers. while the Eurovision
voting has long been tainted by political alliances among competitor countries, songs are not allowed to be political but Jamala’s entry seemed to come close to breaking that rule.
Event organiser, the European Broadcasting Union, said Ukraine’s offering did not contain political speech and therefore did not break Eurovision Song Contest rules.