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Howard Stern speaks, which comes as no surprise to the millions of people who listen to him, and last weekend he was speaking to me, saying, “Twenty years ago I had so much more energy and my narcissism was so strong that I really enjoyed talking about myself. But now I realise that I don’t like talking about myself so much and that there is great value in listening to other people.” The most successful and influential radio personality of his generation and arguably in the history of the medium, Stern has been talking into microphones for most of his life, which in now in its 65th year. He shows no signs of shutting up. So, there he was on the telephone from the large Long Island, New York home he shares with his wife Beth and a large number of cats (more on this later), saying, “I now have a chance and the freedom to explore my own curiosity and allow my guests to be heard.” The next day, he would be talking with correspondent Tracy Smith on CBS News Sunday Morning, telling her, “Donald Trump asked me to endorse him but I couldn’t.” The day after, he said to his close friend George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America, “George, I never think of you as a sex fiend.” All of this talking — on television, radio and for print — is part of the promotional blitz for his third book. Howard Stern Comes Again (Simon & Schuster), published earlier this week, is a gathering of 50-some lengthy and dozens of shorter portions of the hundreds of interviews he has conducted on his radio shows. A lot of the media attention has focused on the president of the United States, whose interviews with Stern from 1995 to 2015 pepper the book in 11 short And Now a Word from Our President …  chapters. Trump is so prominent because, as Stern says, “Donald is one of the best radio guests ever. Why? Because he says whatever pops into his head.” That’s not exactly news. But vastly more interesting, entertaining, self-revelatory, shocking, honest, provocative, surprising and sometimes sad is what comes out of the mouths of the others in the book, a vast panorama of famous and talented people such as Bradley Cooper, Billy Joel, Ringo Starr, Sharon Osbourne, Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson, Barbara Walters, Tina Fey, Robert Downey Jr., Kid Rock, Lady Gaga, Rachel Maddow, Hugh Hefner, Paul McCartney, Courtney Love, Bill Murray, Madonna, Amy Schumer, Harvey Weinstein … This list is long. “Some people I didn’t even remember interviewing, let alone remember what was said,” said Stern. “But in rereading the transcripts I saw a lot of wisdom and humour that I had missed.” The book was born a couple of years ago when S&S’s Jonathan Karp presented Stern with a bound copy of a finished book, saying, “We want a book of your best interviews and we took the liberty of putting it together. … You don’t have to do a thing.” Stern was flattered but soon realised that “what was collected weren’t even my favourite interviews.” So he gathered and edited those that were his favourites. He wrote lively introductions for each interview. He also composed an introduction that is detailed and charming, autobiographical but also self-reflectively honest. “And that,” said Stern, “is why it took two years to finish the book.” Stern and I have talked before, a long time ago. In 1993, I spent time at his Manhattan studios and attended a wild party for his first book, Private Parts, which was to become the fastest selling in Simon & Schuster’s long history. It was 446 pages in which Stern wrote of his intimate habits; skewered those he considered phonies (Oprah and Johnny Carson among them); praised those he admires (Bob Hope, Richard Simmons, Sylvester Stallone and Dick Cavett); chronicled his career, family life and world view. At the time, he told me that writing the book was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done. My editor wound up moving into the house on weekends to help me pull it together. To a degree, [the book’s success] might have something to do with a backlash against political correctness.” Stern’s morning radio show was No 1 in New York and syndicated to 15 other markets, reaching an estimated 3 million listeners daily. (His Chicago radio experiences were short and bitter). He was riding high, assailed by some, adored by others and fined lavishly by the FCC for various on-air transgressions. I next talked to him in 1995, in New York again for events surrounding the publication of his second book, Miss America (Simon & Schuster), which was riding atop the New York Times bestseller list with 1.4 million copies in print. It was, much like his first book, a compendium of intimate fantasies, personal stories, transcripts from the radio show, hundreds of photos, and biting examinations of American celebrities, done up in varying typographic styles. Sitting in his cozy office, he said, “I don’t know why I touch base with my audience. I guess that it’s because I’m honest, brutally honest. I appeal to the cynic in all of us.” Some saw his four hours on air every weekday morning as threat to the nation’s morality, his radio show a dangerous feast of crude, racist, sexist and untoward comments. To others he was an often-hilarious voice. Deep-thinkers deemed him a new Lenny Bruce, pushing the bounds of what some consider good taste by frankly exploring life’s conventions, problems and obsessions. I asked, “What is the one thing you have in mind when you sit behind the microphone?” “To entertain,” he said. Since last we talked, a lot has happened to Stern. Where to start? Well, as his lengthy marriage to college sweetheart Alison Berns and the mother of their three now grown daughters began to disintegrate in the late 1990s, he began seeing a psychotherapist, eventually visiting four days a week. The pair divorced amicably in 2001 and in 2008 he married longtime girlfriend Beth Ostrosky, about whom he writes in this book, “We’ve been together for nineteen years, and every day I thank God she wanted to be with me. … I call her ‘Sweet Love’ … Howard Stern, me — I call my wife ‘Sweet Love.’ She is a saint.” Well, in 2005 he left terrestrial radio for Sirius XM, the then-new subscription-based satellite radio service. He signed a five-year deal worth $500 million. There are now two live channels, Howard 100 and Howard 102, as well as an new app featuring his interviews. His latest contract will expire in 2020. Well, his being a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent from 2012 to 2015. The job paid $15 million a season but, Stern writes, “My principal motivation for joining the show was to shift the American public’s perception of me. In just one summer, I went from being America’s nightmare to being Santa Claus.” Well, in 2017 he was operated on for what doctors suspected was cancer. It wasn’t but this experience gave him a hard taste of his own mortality. As he writes, “As you start to get older and your body begins to break down, it does get you thinking about your legacy, what you’ll leave behind, what you’re proud of.” The cumulative effects of these events has been transformative. “The pose I’ve tried to maintain just doesn’t work for me anymore,” he writes. “It was a safe world but a lonely one — a kind of prison.” His first two books are not on the shelves of any of the homes he owns (yes, more than one). “It’s like looking at old photographs. I don’t like the way I looked,” he said. “I don’t listen to myself on old radio shows. I don’t like the way my voice sounds. I almost don’t recognise myself in the previous book. I am not proud of them. But I love this new book so much.” It is, on a number of levels, a terrific book. Only two of its interviews (one with Trump and another with Ozzy Osbourne) are from the pre-Sirius era, when his obsession with ratings combined with his self-absorption “didn’t lend itself to doing serious interviews.” They are, as you will read, serious now. He deeply researches all of his guests and he is able to get honest emotions and genuine insights from most of them. Yes, his radio shows can still dip into tawdry territory and he remains wildly funny and provocative. His interviews sparkle. There is a great freedom in being able to talk for an hour or more with no commercial interruptions and he has come to realise that interviews are not inquisitions intended merely for a saucy soundbite or “gotcha” moment. At their best, interviews are conversations. On the phone, he talked a bit about Trump; mentioned that he regrets long ago interviews with Gilda Radner and Robin Williams; spoke of his deep affection and respect for his radio sidekick Robin Quivers who, “more than anyone is my courage on the air”; said that his interview with Conan O’Brien is the best he’s ever done; and he talked about cats. His wife is an author and animal right activist. Over the last six years, the couple has opened their homes to nearly 1,000 foster cats and found families to adopt each. “This has really been a passion and pleasure for my wife,” he said. “We have fostered so many cats here in our house and I have gotten way, way into it.” You can often see and hear Howard talking to cats on his wife’s Instagram feeds (@bethostern and@bethstern). Earlier this week she posted on the latter a photo of a cute cat named Yoda, paws resting on a photo of Howard in the New York Times magazine. This was the caption: “Yoda Stern is so proud of his dad.” — Chicago Tribune/TNS

Growing up in England, Naomi Scott, like so many other young girls, fell in love at an early age with Disney’s animated heroines — particularly Mulan, Pocahontas and Jasmine from Aladdin. But while those three are officially part of Disney’s juggernaut princess line of media franchises and toys, alongside the likes of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Belle and Ariel, it wasn’t their ostensible princess-y trappings that enthralled Scott. It was something deeper. “I just gravitated toward the characters as opposed to the princess side of it,” Scott said on a recent afternoon in a Beverly Hills hotel suite, wrapped in a white bathrobe at the end of a long day of interviews to promote Disney’s new live-action remake of Aladdin, in which she plays Jasmine. “At the end of the day, that’s what girls will gravitate towards: that person, that human.” The 26-year-old Scott wasn’t even born when 1992’s Aladdin hit theatres, one of a string of hits that fuelled Disney’s ’90s animated renaissance. Now the actress and singer finds herself bringing three-dimensional life to a character she once pretended to be as a child, images of whom countless girls have had plastered on their walls and bedsheets. It’s a lot to wrap her head around. “Jasmine was my favourite, so I can’t really reconcile those two things,” Scott said. “You have to have a healthy respect for what came before, but I still see those things as separate. It’s more a case of being able to create this human version of her. That’s the way I saw it.” In fact, Scott’s new take on Jasmine stands apart from the original version in ways that go beyond simply the storytelling medium. Whereas the original film’s Jasmine was mainly concerned with choosing a spouse, Scott’s version dreams of breaking with archaic patriarchal traditions and ruling her kingdom of Agrabah. This is a Jasmine for the era of female presidential candidates and the #MeToo movement, reflecting broader societal shifts in gender norms and expectations over the past 27 years. Scott sees the character’s evolution as a natural progression. “It doesn’t feel like we’re shoehorning something in,” she said. “In the original movie, as great as it is that she’s fighting for the choice of who she wants to marry, that’s where her ambition kind of stops. In this movie, she’s more ambitious and she looks outside herself. She’s trying to protect her kingdom against this evil dictator [Jafar]. It’s showcasing that you can lead and you can have love. You can have both, girls, and the two aren’t mutually exclusive.” In recent years, as Disney has sought to leverage its animated back catalog with new live-action versions, the studio has found that depictions of gender roles that were accepted in decades past may now induce cringes. But figuring out how to strike the right balance, delivering audiences a fix of nostalgia while also reflecting today’s heightened awareness around issues of identity and power, is far from simple. “Obviously we deal with gender and how these stories have changed throughout history quite a bit, whether that’s Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin or The Little Mermaid, which we’re working on now,’ ” said Sean Bailey, Disney’s president of production. “You’ve got some real issues you have to dig into and discuss at great length.” With the Aladdin remake, those discussions began early in the development process, as director Guy Ritchie, screenwriter John August and the rest of the creative team looked for ways to blow some dust off the story and make it feel more in tune with today’s audiences.  “We watched the original movie and said, ‘In these times, does it feel outdated?’ And there are times relationship-wise that it does feel a little out of date,” said producer Dan Lin. “We felt like we had a real opportunity to make Jasmine really be a strong female leader in this movie that maybe she wasn’t so much in the original movie.” According to a 2016 study by linguists at Pritzker College and North Carolina State University that analysed the gender breakdown of dialogue in numerous Disney movies, male characters delivered some 90% of the lines in the original Aladdin. (Much of that disparity was no doubt accounted for by Robin Williams’ famously motor-mouthed performance as the Genie.) To help address that imbalance and further flesh out Jasmine’s more empowered character, Aladdin composer Alan Menken, in collaboration with the songwriting duo of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, wrote a song for Scott to perform, a soaring power ballad called Speechless in which Jasmine expresses her desire to unleash her voice. “We were really inspired by a line in the original movie where Jafar very misogynistically says, ‘You’re speechless, I see. A fine quality in a wife,’” said Pasek. “In the world that we live in, so many people need to reclaim their voice — or claim it for the first time — and be outspoken about who they are and what they believe in. It was a really exciting opportunity to put that message into the voice of Jasmine.” Crafting the song’s lyrics in mid-2017, months before the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct scandal broke, Pasek and Paul couldn’t have foreseen how they would soon resonate with the zeitgeist. “The song was written before the Time’s Up movement,” said Paul. “I think it’s just confirmation that this has been an age-old struggle for people who have felt marginalised and continue to be.” Highlighting the perils of reimagining a beloved classic, the new Aladdin has faced multiple criticisms on the road to the screen. After the film’s first trailer dropped, many faulted the look of Will Smith’s Genie, while others complained about the casting of Marwan Kenzari as the villainous Jafar, deeming the actor too good-looking and insufficiently menacing. The casting of Scott as Jasmine has not been free of controversy either. Though Agrabah is a fictional country, some took to social media to decry the casting of Scott, arguing that the actress, who is of Gujarati Indian and British descent, was taking a role that should have gone to a Middle Eastern actress. “All these Arab actresses on the planet and they cast half-white, half-Indian Naomi Scott as Jasmine,” wrote one Twitter user. “Indian isn’t middle-eastern, Hollywood.” Scott, perhaps best known to American moviegoers from her role in the 2017 reboot Power Rangers, says dealing with the intense scrutiny that goes along with a high-profile project like Aladdin has been “a good learning curve.” “You have to just be comfortable with knowing in yourself what you’re doing and not allow outside voices to get into this part,” she said, pointing to her heart. “I’m very proud of this movie and how diverse our cast is and what it represents and the message of the movie. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I didn’t look too much to the left or right or listen to what people were saying. You can’t get into that habit, can you?” Even as she waits to see what audiences make of her fresh take on Jasmine, Scott is already looking ahead to another breakout role later this year as one of the stars in Elizabeth Banks’ Charlie’s Angels reboot and cultivating a parallel career as a singer-songwriter. Not unlike Jasmine, she has ambitions that won’t be stifled or contained. “I love the breaking down of walls that someone like Donald Glover does,” Scott said. “I’m definitely not someone who wants to stay in a box. If you put me in it, I’m probably going to break it down anyway. So you might as well just let me run free.”                     — Los Angeles Times/TNS

The day before the Cannes premiere of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, his hotly anticipated movie set in Los Angeles during the tumultuous events of 1969, Quentin Tarantino published an open letter online. He addressed it to audiences at the festival, opening with the words “I love Cinema,” which may be the most redundant thing this movie-mad auteur has ever written (and given his endless, self-admiring flurries of dialogue, that is saying something). The letter then implored us not to reveal “anything that would prevent later audiences from experiencing the film in the same way.” A version of this entreaty was repeated from the stage by a festival representative shortly before the picture screened on Tuesday for members of the press, some of whom booed and snorted in response. I didn’t join in. Even as someone who believes that excessive spoiler sensitivity is a sign of an entitled, infantile approach to moviegoing, it’s easy to understand Tarantino’s anxiety, especially after a leaked script nearly led him to shelve The Hateful Eight. (Many, of course, still wish that he had.) Twenty-five years after Pulp Fiction won the Palme d’Or at this festival, Tarantino’s movies may no longer have quite the same audacity or revelatory power, but the ability to shock — and, if you’re lucky, to make you think — remains an important tool in his kit. This turns out to be the case even when he’s dealing with real-life subjects such as Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski and members of the Charles Manson cult, whose well-documented stories would, by now, seem beyond spoiling. Not quite, apparently. I will do my best to oblige Monsieur Tarantino and his collaborators on this richly evocative, conceptually jaw-dropping, excessively foot-fetishising, inescapably terrifying and unexpectedly poignant movie. Still, if you wish to preserve the purity of a first viewing, it is probably best if you read no further and that you read nothing else about the movie before Sony Pictures releases it in US theatres July 26. Like Tarantino’s 2009 picture, Inglourious Basterds, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is both a luxuriant, sometimes lumbering ode to a bygone era of moviemaking and a singularly bold reinterpretation of a violent chapter of history. The title is practically a spoiler in itself: We are not just in the dream factory, but also within the realm of fantasy. Our guides to this cracked-mirror vision of Hollywood, which kicks off in February 1969, are Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), an actor whose career peaked years ago with the western TV series Bounty Law, and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), a war veteran who is Rick’s longtime stunt double and best friend. The first screen pairing between DiCaprio and Pitt proves worth the wait, even if the practical realities of the actor-stuntman relationship don’t seem to interest Tarantino all that much. That’s fine; the personalities are what matter. DiCaprio, his golden-boy wattage persuasively dimmed, is both mockable and sympathetic as a handsome has-been actor, the unwitting star of his own male midlife-crisis movie. He’s cradled beautifully by Pitt as the most loyal of pals, someone who’s always there to lend a shoulder — or some serious muscle — as needed. (The second-billed Pitt may be playing the lower man on the industry totem pole, but this is very much his movie.) It would be a hoot to watch these stars in boozy, cigarette-chomping buddy-comedy mode even if they weren’t tethered to such a loving and persuasive re-creation of the movie industry at the time. Fans of the era may be reminded of legendary actor-stuntman pairings such as Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham, and some will supply their own real-life reference points for Rick and Cliff’s work, even if they are unable to match Tarantino’s characteristically obsessive scholarship. Bounty Law is a distant cousin of western serials including Gunsmoke and Bonanza. One of Rick’s more successful movies, 14 Fists of McCluskey, might be a callback to The Dirty Dozen. Barbara Ling’s production design is a wittily intricate treasure trove of fake movie memorabilia, though there’s some real stuff in the mix too. A one-sheet for the 1949 Roy Rogers western The Golden Stallion is just one of many decorating the walls of Rick’s Benedict Canyon home. Yes, Benedict Canyon. The early sight of a Cielo Drive street sign cuts ominously through Tarantino’s flood of references and reminds you that he does have a very dark story to tell. That story is slow to coalesce, however, in a movie that doesn’t always draw a distinction between period detail and narrative thrust. Is Mike Moh’s amusingly cocky Bruce Lee impersonation a gratuitous touch or a key piece of foreshadowing? Do the extensive scenes of Rick struggling on the set of his latest movie count as character development or mise-en-scene overkill? (Thanks to Julia Butters’ lovely performance as Rick’s preternaturally confident child costar, I didn’t much care either way.) For most of its 159-minute running time, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood both does and doesn’t behave the way you might expect a Quentin Tarantino picture to behave. The storytelling is entirely linear. The talk loops and drones endlessly, as usual, but it’s also slow to gather momentum. The loose hangout vibe achieves some of the mellowness and melancholy of Jackie Brown (a very good thing). A chill enters the picture whenever attention shifts to the Manson family, especially when we arrive at their temporary digs at the Spahn Movie Ranch, but overt acts of violence are (initially) few and far between. Given the movie’s lurching stop-and-go rhythms, you could blink and miss some of the actors listed in the huge ensemble cast, including Scoot McNairy, Clifton Collins Jr, Damian Lewis, Rumer Willis and Rebecca Gayheart. You will, however, remember the faces of Bruce Dern and the late Luke Perry (in one of his last performances), and also of Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler, Mikey Madison and Dakota Fanning as Mansonites. Most of all, perhaps, you will remember Margot Robbie in the role of Sharon Tate, who pops up every so often, hijacking the narrative as she goes about her day, her luminous presence working in almost contrapuntal rhythm to the main story. I am both reluctant and obliged to say more. When the picture was first announced in 2017, many expressed their reservations about Tarantino, not a director known for his tact or sensitivity, taking on a story that would deal with a subject as horrific and painful as the Manson murders. And that was months before the #MeToo storm broke, bringing with it the downfall of Tarantino’s longtime collaborator Harvey Weinstein, plus Uma Thurman’s account of having been subjected to reckless treatment on the set of Kill Bill. A resurfaced 2003 audio clip of Tarantino defending Roman Polanski (played by Rafal Zawierucha in a few scenes) didn’t help matters. In short, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood arrived in Cannes on Tuesday saddled with the kind of foul-smelling baggage that perhaps only a filmmaker of Tarantino’s reputation, an artist still revered as one of the industry’s last true big-picture originals, could possibly overcome. Does he overcome it? It’s far too early to tell. But after a first viewing, it seems clear to me that Tarantino delved into this project intent on allaying our worst fears and doing right by his subject. And he does this, of course, in the language he speaks best: the love of cinema. Where the character of Sharon Tate is concerned, that love takes the form of a seemingly unconnected subplot that shows her casually walking up to a Westwood theatre screening her 1968 movie The Wrecking Crew. We see the real Tate light up the big screen, and Robbie’s eyes glow with joy in the audience, as she watches the person she’s playing. It’s a moving act of homage, and it is not, crucially, the only way in which Tarantino seeks to inspire a fresh and compassionate reconsideration of Tate’s memory. The final act of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is funny, scary, troubling and exhilarating by turns; the meandering structure clicks into place as it becomes clear where Tarantino has been taking this story and, given his track record, perhaps could only have taken this story. This is hardly the first time that this director has turned fiction and reality into blood-slicked bedfellows; nor is it the first time he has made the outrageous suggestion that cinema, as both an art and an industry, can make up for some of life’s most grievous imperfections in ways that nothing else can. Spoilers or no spoilers, you may not be terribly surprised, which doesn’t mean you won’t be astonished.                       —Los Angeles Times/TNS

Since its inauguration, Doha Metro has been an exquisite travel experience, both for the residents and visitors of Qatar. The Doha Metro service witnessed an increased number of passengers recently when people from Doha headed towards the newly built Al Janoub Stadium to watch the Amir Cup final. The residents enjoyed both the experience of travelling in the metro service and watching the final match in the stadium. Among other prominent spectators and travellers was also Faizel Moosa, Ambassador of South Africa. He along with his family and expatriate South African community members boarded the metro from City Centre to reach the stadium. Community interacted with the ambassador and asked him to share his experience of travelling via metro service and watching the final match at the new stadium. “First of all, I want to thank His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani for inviting me to the opening of the new Al Janoub Stadium to witness the final of the Amir Cup between Al Saad and Al Duhail.” Talking about his experience of using the metro for the very first time, he said, “Some of the South African community members, including my wife Anik and my football crazy son decided to opt for the newly-opened metro rail from City Center to go to Al Wakrah. It was truly a remarkable experience. The train arrived on time at the station. “When I was at the station waiting for the train, I met Ahmed, SASOL Accessible Qatar Ambassador. He is in a wheelchair, but as all of us had a great experience using the metro, Ahmed also found it very easy to access the station and the metro train.” The ambassador added, “The train took exactly 24 minutes from the City Centre to Al Wakrah stop. The train stopped at many stations in between as more and more people embarked on the train on their way to the very exciting Amir Cup final.” Ambassador Moosa also enjoyed the fanfare at the opening of the stadium. He said, “The opening of the stadium was done with great fanfare and was in itself a spectacular event which culminated in a very impressive fireworks display. “I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the Supreme Committee for the opening of its second stadium for FIFA Football World Cup 2022. Al Janoub is surely a piece of art when it comes to the world cup stadia.” He added, “As South Africans who have the experience of hosting the Football World Cup in 2010, we congratulate Qatar for their enthusiasm and determination to ensure that they deliver an amazing world cup as South Africa did against all odds. “As South Africans, we also want to play a significant role to ensure that Qatar delivers an amazing World Cup event. We have therefore embarked upon a volunteers programme whereby South African living in Qatar as well as others from South Africa can come and be part of the great event. This volunteers’ project is headed by South Africa’s very own sports star Brad Habana. Finally I wish to congratulate Al Duhail Football Club for winning the Amir Cup and having played a great match.” He added, “Danny Jordan who delivered the 2010 World Cup for South Africa was also present at the Amir Cup and we are seriously considering bringing the South African Professional Football League winners to Qatar for a friendly match with the winners of the Amir Cup. Discussions between South Africa and the Supreme Committee in this regard are currently underway.”

It was like the world coming together at Doha Exhibition & Convention Center (DECC) where the Ramadan Market continues to attract people for shopping in the holy month. Organised by QSports in collaboration with United Expo, Ramadan Market started on May 10 and will continue till May 30. It offers lots of attractions both for the retailers coming from other countries and the people living in Qatar. As Qatar is fast becoming a hub of numerous festivals and events, events like the International Ramadan Market are a place where international vendors and local buyers come across under one roof. The market that is open from 2pm to 12am daily and provides an entertaining shopping experience for local residents and a solid platform for local and international traders and visitors to offer their unique products to the Qatari market. There are over 200 retail outlets at the market. Aya Kasab, Head of Business Development Unit at QSports, said: “The concept is to gather international vendors with their products from different countries. There are people from 25 countries gathering here. They are from India, Pakistan, China, Turkey, Kuwait, Oman, Iran, Yemen, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Thailand, Malaysia, Italy, Philippine, USA, and other African and European countries.” Aya said that the Ramadan Market inside DECC is a unique experience. “I know that there are many Ramadan related activities in all major malls in Qatar. DECC is however unique for its location and available space. It is located right in the middle of West Bay where all people can have easy access. The area is safe for kids as they have play corners as their parents get busy in shopping. The place is safe and has other relevant facilities. It offers a family-oriented shopping experience during Ramadan. “There are so many different cultures gathered under one roof. We have diverse activities. We have many entertainment facilities. We have very support partners to help us organise and run the market successfully. We also plan to have short and interesting on the sport quiz competitions in the last few days of the market.” When asked about the facilities for traders coming from outside Qatar, she said: “We are partnering with many other companies in attracting the retailors to the market. We have created a kind of synchronised theme for the traders. The price for the space is not high. They get a chance to sell their products at a place there are people from different parts of the world. It is said to be one of the biggest shopping, food and entertainment destinations during the 2019 Ramadan season.” Ghanim al Mohannadi, Deputy Chairman of QSports, added: “One of the aims of the Ramadan Market is to promote local small business. So, we have allocated dedicated reserved spaces for local business wanting to take part in the event to showcase their products.” The organiser are also organising special activities at the market on the occasion of Garangao. Each activity session lasts for two hours and includes Garangao special-mascots, clown balloon twister, free Garangao bags (with candies), and complementary vouchers as giveaways. Awawadah, a Jordanian expatriate was at DECC with his family. He said: “We are here to enjoy after Iftar and do some leisure shopping. The place is well organised and there are lots of different products available under one roof. My kids can play different sports here. We got the information about the market from different social media accounts.” Shehryar, a Pakistani expatriate doing business in Kuwait, has set up a stall for different handicrafts. He said: “I have brought many hand-made items from India and Pakistan. “We are in Doha for the first time. We were hopeful that we would do well here. It has been three days and I am doing good business. I plan to come to Qatar again in future with my products. I am also thinking to establish a store here. I have really liked to be here in Qatar.”

This 40,000-seat Al Janoub stadium was packed to the rafters for the Amir Cup played between Xavi led Al Sadd and a resurgent Duhail, which came from a player and goal down, to seal a famous victory over the star-studded recently crowned QSL champions. Both teams were without a few of their star players but that didn’t diminish the quality of the match played to the beats of Qatari fans playing their drums and urging the players on. The Amir Cup also brought together communities from far and wide as Africa and Asia to Turkey and Kuwait. There were fans sporting their respective club jerseys like the famed Galatasary legend Metin Oktay “No 10” to probably the most popular Arab footballer currently, Mo Salah. The volunteer team did a commendable job and one was pleasantly surprised to meet young Kuwaiti girls, who flew into Doha to volunteer for this historic occasion — truly bringing the Arab world together by way of volunteerism. Playing a balancing act between adhering to FIFA standards and promoting a sustainable world, the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar committee have hit two birds with one stone, as FIFA stipulates all World Cup stadiums should have a minimum seating capacity of 40,000, the stadiums keep to those stipulations but what happens post-World Cup is that a certain number of the seats will be donated to various stadia across the world. This will not only assist other sporting nations but also leave a lasting legacy of 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar and to top it all, all the seats of Al Janoub stadium are Made in Qatar!  — Text and photos by Bosco Menezes (@bigbfotography)

Nothing is excess for Karan Johar till it is all about beautiful people and expensive things – designer bags, labels and an attitude that can raze the wrath. Johar creates a quixotic world full of such content and high in emotions way too well. The world has moved on in the seven years since the phat college caper Student of The Year (2012) that launched the careers of Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra and so has Johar and his filmmaking, for good. Where the first part of the franchise caterwauled glamour all along, even in the tiny bits, Karan has played sensibly with this one. Directed by Punit Malhotra, nothing seems too vacuous and over-designed, it’s all within the limits which is what holds the essence of the film. Loose ends? Yes – a bit, but come-on that’s with every other Bollywood entertainer. The actors in the follow-up, Student of the Year 2, are a fresh bunch led by Tiger Shroff paired with Ananya Panday and Tara Sutaria – millennial cast with a sexy appeal to their acting.  Much to the joy of SOTY fans like myself, we are happy to pronounce that the second edition is equally glossy and picture perfect. Rohan Sachdev played by Tiger Shroff and Manav Singhania, played by Aditya Seal, spend an entire academic year preparing for the prestigious Student of the Year Competition, that can merely be achieved by winning a Kabbadi match. The only thing which wasn’t really striking was, why a huge trophy in college without even a whiff of academics in general? I agree, in the first part there was all that pizzazz glamour and Hermes bags, but there was also an entire sound track which was about academics and doing well in the aptitude test to qualify to take part in Student of the Year Competition in the first place. Something that should have been included in this franchise as well. However, KJo did his bit of promoting the lesser popular sport. He infused a cool factor to the game with his players doing back flips and slow-mo jumps. Manav Singhania is a rich brat, while Rohan is a middle-class scholarship student, who barely makes it to Saint Teresa, IVY school, on sports quota just for the sake of his girlfriend Mia, played by Tara Sutaria, to be closer to her. Like Rahul and Anjali in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the story of Rohan and Mia’s love, friendship and falling out is a school legend. But the pretzel is the introduction of Manav in the love triangle at first, which fades away post intermission and you see a whole new love triangle in the making.  Where three fall apart, with well-done fight sequences, Shreya, played by Ananya, takes the screen space with Rohan and you know the rest. Ananya is Manav’s younger sister and in the first half of the film is presented as the spoiled mean girl. She’s the leading lady; carries Louis Vuitton bags and wears Dolce and Gabbana. She’s like Shanaya (Alia Bhatt from Student of the Year) but without the killer attitude. Shreya is substituting her lack of family ties with designer labels and snobbish setting. All three, Rohan, Mia and Shreya, might be emotionally damaged but their physical perfection is established with numerous shots. This is youth without awkwardness or vulnerability.  There are ‘two’ many love triangles. Too often, the storyline is swallowed up by the overwhelming gloss, perfect styling and set-piece songs. Drawing a parallel where the competition in first part was so silly and shallow that it was hard to take any of it seriously, but this time it is out-done. The Kabbadi sequences are well-shot and athletic in every sense.  Yet, Karan creates moments that are genuinely moving and humorous. Karan also deserves applause for putting his faith in new actors every time. He elicits commendable performances from his cast of debutants. Tara and Ananya’s brief is to be pouty and attractive, which they manage to do. And Tiger has evolved in appearance and acting and on big screen it’s a treat to watch him. Student of the Year 2 is a love story that traverses the trodden path (a high school romance). But KJo is an artisan with intellect and taste and he ensures that the script is spruced up and modernised with such elan that it doesn’t offend the spectator’s wisdom or intelligence. The accomplished director takes on familiar material and gives it an entirely new twirl.  Do not miss a second of the song Yeh Jawani to get a glimpse of Will Smith’s Bollywood cameo and also wait for the credits at the end of the film to see Alia Bhatt in a spooky hot item number – which is nothing but something haute all the way. 

“You have learnt so much. And read a thousand books. Have you ever read yourself? You have gone to mosques. Have you ever visited your own soul? You are busy fighting Satan. Have you ever fought your ill intentions? You have reached into the skies, But you have failed to reach what’s in your heart!” says Syed Abdullah Shah Qadri, popularly known as Bulleh Shah, a Mughal-era Punjabi Islamic philosopher and preacher poet. These verses from Shah’s poetry exemplifies how exactly we should keep up with the spirit of Ramadan, how we need to find that positive light in our heart in the first place to drive us for the greater good. What is a pure heart? The pure ones are those who clean themselves from sin, doubt, cheating, lying, and jealousy. That’s pretty much the very first step – the light to shed off the barriers of sins, finding peace within and then heading towards Almighty for forgiveness and a spiritual quest.  These lanterns in the desert are just like that – that little light of faith that breaks up the vehement darkness of the night. If you have faith from within, nothing can tear you apart.  Have you ever wondered, why lanterns become so popular during the time of Ramadan? Because they have been exemplifying breaking the tangent of darkness and spreading light – just like the holy month of Ramadan for years, in which the Ultimate Guidance for mankind  — the Holy Qur’an — was revealed.  It is believed that the tradition of lantern was started in Egypt more than a thousand years ago when lanterns were used by people to light their homes and the streets at night. Lanterns have always been spreading the light. You need to find a spark of positive light in your heart and you’ll accomplish His contentment.  – Text by Muhammad Asad Ullah, photos by Syed Hasan Iqbal Zaidi

What is the UN’s global assessment report and why is it important? That humans are meddling with the natural world, in ways that we often fail to understand, is no longer in doubt. From the near-extinction of many land animals — the elephant, the tiger, the rhinoceros — in their natural habitats to the destruction of forests in the developing world, the decline of insect life in areas of intensive agriculture in developed countries, and more recently the increasingly evident scourge of plastics in the oceans, our imprint on the natural world has become impossible to ignore. There is scarcely any natural environment, from the Amazon to Australia, where the hazards we have introduced are unseen — take microplastics, now known to be almost ubiquitous, or the dark stains of soot we have left upon the Arctic snowcap, in places where humans have never trodden but our footprints are clearly visible. Beyond these obvious effects, we are also wreaking changes on the climate which scientists warn will have dire consequences. Until now there has been no comprehensive attempt to look at all of these effects, even though some of them have been long known. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was convened by the United Nations to find an answer to the questions: what are we doing to the world’s species, its biodiversity, its ecosystems and its natural resources? And what are the consequences — for human life, as well as the natural world? What has the report found? At least a million species are at risk of extinction because of human actions. The abundance of native species in most major land habitats has fallen by a fifth since 1900. Frogs and other amphibians, particularly vulnerable because of their bodies and breeding habits, have suffered an astonishing 40% decline. Many scientists see amphibians as the “canary in the mine”, signalling dangers such as pollution and the spread of disease that can hit frogs and other amphibians harder at first than they do other animals. Nearly a third of corals around the world and more than a third of marine mammals are also threatened. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction in the last 400 years, and that is of those that can be reliably counted. Even among the animals we value commercially, the picture is grim: about a tenth of all the domesticated breeds of mammals that we eat have been driven to extinction, as we increasingly focus on just a few breeds. Why does this matter? We do not know what the long-term consequences of our destruction will be for the rest of the Earth. We do know that the changes we are wreaking are already leaving us vulnerable. In the case of domesticated plants and animals, for instance, the lack of biodiversity in genes is leaving us with less protection against diseases, and fewer options for breeding plants and animals that will be better adapted to our changing climate. The decline in insect populations is another key example: where pollinators are not available, the cascading effects on ecosystems can quickly become catastrophic. Once these wild populations are eradicated or severely depleted, we have few ways to try to bring them back, and we cannot replace the “ecosystem services” — of pollinating plants that we need for food — that they provide. Should we not have realised this sooner? The signs of our despoliation of the natural world have been evident at least since the extinction of the dodo in 1681. Some of the earliest shouts of what turned into the modern environmental movement in the late 1960s and early 70s were to “save the whale” and other charismatic megafauna, such as the elephant and tiger. Yet while there has been growing awareness of the dangers to these few species, we have managed to ignore the much wider devastation that has been going on. Few noticed the decline of the bumblebee until just a few years ago, and frogs have gone largely unlamented, despite playing a key role in ecosystems. Why has all this happened? Increasing population has been a key factor, as it reduces the habitat available for animals and plants, but this would be less of a problem if it were well-managed — deforestation, for example, could be vastly reduced if we used existing resources better. Pollution of the air and water is also important, and the threats posed by some of the substances we have used for pest control have gone unremarked for years. In the oceans, overfishing and plastic pollution have played a big role. Climate change is likely to exacerbate these problems. What do we do now? The IPBES recommends changes to agricultural practices as a important step, and better co-ordination among countries and authorities to help them cut down on destructive practices. Increased awareness of the problem is vital — as with climate change, which scientists have been reporting on in detail for 30 years, gaining information and understanding on the nature of the problem is at least a start towards solving it.                                           **** What is biodiversity? It is the variety of life on Earth, in all its forms and all its interactions. If that sounds bewilderingly broad, that’s because it is. Biodiversity is the most complex feature of our planet and it is the most vital. “Without biodiversity, there is no future for humanity,” says Prof David Macdonald, at Oxford University. The term was coined in 1985 — a contraction of “biological diversity” — but the huge global biodiversity losses now becoming apparent represent a crisis equalling — or quite possibly surpassing — climate change. More formally, biodiversity is comprised of several levels, starting with genes, then individual species, then communities of creatures and finally entire ecosystems, such as forests or coral reefs, where life interplays with the physical environment. These myriad interactions have made Earth habitable for billions of years. A more philosophical way of viewing biodiversity is this: it represents the knowledge learned by evolving species over millions of years about how to survive through the vastly varying environmental conditions Earth has experienced. Seen like that, experts warn, humanity is currently “burning the library of life”. — David Carrington

The second edition of Inter-Community Beach Volleyball was comprehensively won by the Indian expatriates as they won first three positions.The team of VOLIQ-A was crowned as the champions of the Apparel Challengers Cup 2019. VOLIQ-B remained runners up in the tournament where the third position was grabbed by Doha Spikers, another team comprising of players from Indian community. Indian Sports Centre (ISC), in collaboration with Qatar Volleyball Association (QVA), recently organised 2nd Inter-Community Beach Volleyball Tournament at Al Gharafa Beach Volleyball Stadium. The two-day long tournament was more like a festival as different expatriate communities attended the event in large numbers. The tournament was opened with a grand inaugural ceremony. The opening ceremony featured a march past by the members of the participating team, which was followed by a cultural performance by the Indian community. As many as 20 teams from nine countries, including Tunisia, Egypt, Ghambia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Senegal participated in the tournament. The league matches were played by various community teams in six pools, which was followed by knock-out matches. The final was played between VOLIQ-A and VOLIQ-B, both teams of the Indian community. The players of the winning teams, include Shereej V K, Mohammed, Abbas, Ashker, Ansari, Fawas and Moosa. The prize distribution ceremony was conducted in presence of Sunny Saxena, Training Manager of Apparel Group, the title sponsor of the event. The Pakistani Team from The Next Generation School was presented with a Special Appreciation Award for being the youngest participating team of the tournament. Hussain Imam Ali, QVA Technical Director Captain, was the chief guest at the event. Speaking on the occasion, he said, “We are ready to work with ISC in future. We encourage more and more interactions among different communities through sporting events. We would like to have full support from the expatriate communities for the Amir Cup Volleyball final that will be held at 9:30pm on May 17 at QVA stadium.” Nilangshu Dey, ISC President, said, “We are happy to have successfully completed the second beach volleyball tournament. The response has been overwhelming. There were crowds in large numbers. The enthusiasm among the contesting players was very high. “The second edition of the tournament has further cemented the ties between QVA and ISC. We are committed to extend our full support to QVA in the upcoming Amir Cup. I really appreciate the idea by the QVA to organise a big volleyball tournament for expatriate communities. ISC is ready to work with QVA to make the planned tournament a success. The beach volleyball tournament has become an yearly phenomenon and we will continue organising the sport event for the communities,” he added. Ashik Ahmed, Secretary Volleyball and Basketball with ISC, proposed a vote of thanks. He said, “ISC has shown remarkable achievements in organising Inter-school tournaments in table tennis, swimming, yoga and skipping rope among all the 15 Indian schools. We have also organised inter-organisations tournaments in volleyball, table tennis and cricket. Inter-companies tournaments in table tennis, and volleyball are an other accomplishment of ISC. We are also focusing on establishing proper coaching camps for volleyball coaching for school students through the support of QVA.” Talking to Community, winning captain Shereej V K said, “I am very happy to be captain of the winning team. We faced a tough challenge from the other Indian team in the final. The teams from Sri Lanka and Pakistan also played well but the real challenge came from the Indian teams.” He said, “The main reason for our success is that we have continuously been practising. I enjoy playing beach volley ball. If you have flexible body and good movements, you can become a better player. I really appreciate the kind of encouragement that sportspersons gets in Qatar. I have been in Qatar for four years.”

Lose your weight this Ramadan. Reduction of weight definitely helps in minimising bad effects of high blood pressure and diabetes – the two major reasons leading to heart attack. This was the crux of the presentation – ‘Hear Diseases and Heart Attack – Causes, Precautions for Risk Reduction and Control’– given by a cardiologist from Hamad Medical Corporation to the Pakistani community. The interactive session with Dr Tahir Hamid was recently organised by Pakistan Arts Society Qatar (PASQ) to raise awareness among the community regarding risks and prevention for heart attack at Pak Shamaa School auditorium. The community members, representatives of different community groups and families were present in large numbers. The chief guest on the occasion was Hafiz Junaid Sial, Community Welfare Attachee, Embassy of Pakistan. Dr Tahir is an assistant professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine –Qatar (WCM-Q), assistant professor of Medicine at Qatar University, College of Medicine, and Associate Program Director for Cardiology fellowship program Fellowship Training (ACGME-I, USA- Program). With the help of different slides Dr Tahir highlighted that prevention is the only best way to avoid heart attack. He noted that once the attack takes place, there can be multiple complications­­– if the patient survives. He said: “There are many reasons that can lead to the heart attack. The most significant are cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, alcohol, mental stress and physical inactivity.” The doctor said that though there are significant reductions in deaths caused by heart attacks due to the advanced technologies and treatments, the number of heart attack continue to grow across the world. The medical expert laid emphasis on prevention and said that there are many ways that one can avoid the risks of the heart attack. He said: “We should have an active life style. There should be regular exercise in our life. I would urge you to be vegetarians. Avoid oily and deep-fried food. We South Asians love oily and deep-fried food. When one is above 30-years, one needs to keep an eye on cholesterol level that should be checked after every three months. High blood pressure and diabetes are two other things that need to be kept under watch.” Dr Tahir particularly underlined the significance of Ramadan in controlling food habits and weight control. “This is the best time. Today, we should make a promise to ourselves that each one of us will lose at least six kilogram this Ramadan. If we are able to control our weight, we can maintain our blood pressure and sugar. The heart of the overweight individuals has to work extra to pump blood. Therefore, weight control is the key, and for this Ramadan is the best time.” Dr Tahir said: “We are very lucky to be in Qatar because here we have very good medical facilities. You can get ambulance in 15 minutes. If the patient reaches at the hospital in time, the survival rate is very high. We need to learn how to provide basic health support that can also help in supporting the patient who suffers from heart attack.” After his presentation, Dr Tahir took questions from the audience. Most of the questions were related to prevention of heart attack. The doctor said that there are many cases of patients who come with family history of hearth attack. He also answered different questions on post heart attack complications. Speaking on the occasion, Hafiz Junaid Sial said: “I appreciate PASQ for organising such programmes to raise health awareness.  I think we all have benefited from the presentation. I think heart problems are more linked with our lifestyle that we follow nowadays. We need to make our life simple and show contentment.” 

Anatole France, the 19th century renowned French man of letters, probably put it best when he said, “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”  The animal market at the Souq Waqif may not exactly be an embodiment of care where sellers are concerned, but it nevertheless never fails to pull in the crowds regardless of age and stage. So you will find that while some or many will frequent the old souq for its rich cultural vistas steeped in history, almost everyone, young and old, is attracted to the animal market. It’s a rich field out there; expensive at times yes, but perhaps, never too expensive if your urge to provide a caring shelter is stronger. Interest in finding an animal for domestication may vary, but it’s hard not to be floored by the beauty of it all.  No wonder, you find children pushing their parents all the way for a bargain. A meeting point may be reached often, but not always, especially if the seller senses a child is ready to drive his or her parents to the edge! Regardless, the atmosphere is one of colour, even pageantry, never mind the cacophony of man and animal at a happening rendezvous. Rich bargain or not, the hope for an animal finding a more caring hand is always evident — if not today, then another day. May be it has to do with what the soulful poet in France observed so long ago. Ready to awaken the soul? — Text by Kamran Rehmat, photos by Jayan Orma

The staunch business competitors showed real sportsmanship during the recently concluded Inter-Hotel Football Tournament (IHFT) 2019. The IHFT, organised every year, saw participation by all the major hotels in Qatar. The sixth edition of the tournament was won by Fraser Suites Doha, beating Diplomatic Club in the final with the score of 5-2. Fraser Suites, also being the winners of IHFT 2018, was the organiser for the IHFT 2019. Ten hotels took part in the tournament including Fraser Suites Doha, Four Seasons Hotel Doha, The Ritz-Carlton Doha, Mondrian Doha, The Diplomatic Club, Marriott Marquis, Hilton Hotel, Holiday Villa, Grand Hyatt Doha Hotel & Villas and Wyndham Grand Regency Doha.  The tournament lasted for 17 days and the theme for 2019 edition was ‘Sportsmanship.’ The final took place at Al Wakrah Sports Club ground. More than a sports event, the tournament went a long way to strengthen network and relationship of the hospitality community. The team members enjoyed their time together with the members of other hotels. The chief guest at the prize distribution ceremony was Madalina Dogaru, Operations Manager Fraser Suites Doha. Speaking at the occasion, she said: “We have witnessed an amazing game tonight, not to mention about the entire tournament. Congratulations to the winners, congratulations also to Diplomatic Club. Whether you have won a trophy or not, you are all winners. “It was an honour for us to host the sixth edition of IHFT and we are very grateful to all of you for participation.” She added: “My special thanks goes to the hotels which encourage their staff to engage in all kinds of sports – in the long run, your active lifestyle would pay you rich dividends in terms of fitness, well-being and happiness. “The theme of the tournament was ‘Sportsmanship’ and the spirit was excellently displayed by the players during the event. More than being a sport, this type of tournaments will help in establishing long term relationships and networking within the hotel fraternity. Hope both the teams and spectators enjoyed their time here and had made some fond memories together.” Mohammed Shaji, HR Manager of Fraser Suites Doha and the event manager, said: “The number of spectators was higher than it was last year. In the last tournament, the matches used to start at 6pm, making it tough for the staff to reach in the ground soon after the work. This year, the matches started at 8pm. The whole tournament was played under flood lights and we got very good co-operation and collaboration from Al Wakrah Sports Club.” He added: “Each side comprised of seven players. We had the ground size reduced in length. At the league level, each match was 40 minute long with one half lasting for 20 minutes. The duration of each semi-final was 50 minutes with one half lasing for 25 minutes. The time for the final match was 60 minutes with each half lasting for 30 minutes. The tournament was played in a very professional way. We have hired the services of a professional referee. Cosmin Tripsa, a Romanian national, is a professional football coach with a school.” Jonathan Edirin, Captain of the winning team and an employee of Fraser Suites Doha, is a Nigerian national and a profession football player. He said: “I moved to Doha in 2004. Before coming to Doha, I was a football player in Nigeria. In Qatar, I have played for Al Arabi Club and for Al Shamal Club. I have been associated with the hotel since 2011.” The footballer added: “I am very happy to win the tournament for my team for the second time. It is the result of a great team work. We played like a unit and every player put in his best.” Speaking about the benefits of the sport event, Jonathan said: “I am very happy to be a part of the event. It was a very friendly tournament. It was more a networking and socialising event than a competition. The staff of the hotels is often busy with the work and gets rare opportunities for sports or networking. The tournament provided us both a chance to be physically active and to know each other.” 

Avengers: Endgame actress Karen Gillan was in her trailer on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy when she heard a knock at the door. Someone was eager to see her intricate makeup as Nebula, an adopted daughter of the intergalactic warlord Thanos. A moustachioed smile greeted her. It was Stan Lee. The legendary writer, who became the guiding force behind the rise of Marvel Comics, gasped at her hours-long, cosmetic transformation into a purple-and-blue space pirate. The actress was about to film a major fight sequence, she told him as they parted ways. Lee turned around, clenched his fist close to his face and uttered, “Knock ’em dead.” “That’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Gillan shared with The Times at Monday’s Avengers: Endgame world premiere at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Lee, who died in November at age 95, was on the minds of several stars and filmmakers attending the film’s first public screening in a custom-built 2,000-seat theatre with a 70-foot screen. Anthony and Joe Russo’s movie features Lee’s final film cameo, marking the end of an era after 11 years of surprise appearances throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To commemorate the moment, the studio will release a behind-the-scenes video of the iconic cameos. Benedict Wong, who plays Doctor Strange’s sidekick Wong, described the event as bittersweet. “As much as it’s a real joyous moment, it’s obviously tinged with sadness,” said the actor, who met Lee a few times. His favourite was the first time they met, at 2016’s Doctor Strange premiere. “I just made a bee-line over to him and sort of fanboyed him,” Wong recalled. “I just said, ‘Stan you don’t know me —’ and he immediately interrupted and said, ‘You’re Wong. You’re great!’ And it was a big welling-up moment.” The actor wished he’d been among the dozens who came to the Endgame set to watch Lee perform his surprise scene. Executive producer Trinh Tran laughed as she remembered it. “People you normally wouldn’t even see on the set showed up, and you’re like, ‘Where did all these hundreds of people come from?’ “He has that impact on all of us. Not just the fans, like the crew are his fans. We love him. We wouldn’t be here without him,” she said. Co-writer Christopher Markus put it this way: “It was like Santa came to set.” Markus was “a little worried” that moviegoers would think the cameo was developed after Lee’s passing, though it was invented and shot prior to that — even before Lee’s appearance in the March release of Captain Marvel. “This is a unique cameo, and he was so in it,” writer Stephen McFeely chimed in. “He went for it. It was fantastic.” As he spoke, cries from cosplayers dressed as some of Lee’s characters were heard through the convention centre doors. “You know, you don’t give Stan Lee a page of dialogue,” McFeely said. “You give him one full thing where he can shine.” When the movie opens tomorrow, look out for Lee in a driving scene, said second unit director Sam Hargrave, who shot the sequence with Lee and a stunt double. “It was one of the most beautiful cinematic experiences I’ve had in the Marvel universe,” Hargrave remembered. “He is Marvel. Without him, I’m not standing here.” Endgame picks up where 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War left off. After acquiring six Infinity Stones and the powers that come with them, super-villain Thanos (Josh Brolin) appears to have killed half the universe’s population with a simple snap of his fingers. Chris Hemsworth and Paul Rudd, whose characters survived the snap, joined in on the collective nostalgia Monday. “I just remember the sort of childlike wonder of that guy and the love for these stories,” Hemsworth said of Lee. Rudd recalled hanging out with him on the set of 2015’s Ant-Man, when Lee expressed his excitement to see Scott Lang on the big screen. “He was going to finally see the scale of it as he always imagined,” Rudd said. “That was really thrilling.” But perhaps actor Hiroyuki Sanada, who makes a surprise appearance of his own with a fight sequence filmed in one take, said it best: He was not able to see Lee on set, but had hoped to see him at the premiere. “[It’s] so sad,” he said, shaking his head. “But I believe he’s here tonight. I believe.”                    —Los Angeles Times/TNS

Laughing is an excellent way to reduce stress in our lives, which can help cope with as well as survive a stressful lifestyle. According to experts, laughter provides a full-scale workout for your muscles and unleashes a rush of stress-busting endorphins. Anything that makes you giggle will have a positive impact. Laughing can be fun when it is done with your family and friends. A rare opportunity of laughing and enjoying a family comedy is around the corner in Doha.  Sunil Grover, a well-acclaimed Indian actor and standup comedian, will be performing for the first time live in Doha on April 26, coming Friday. The comedy show will be held at Al Dana Club’s Al Jewan Hall at 7pm onwards. The event is being organised by WiroHub events that are renowned for bringing Indian artistes to Qatar for the South Asian expatriate communities. Sunil Grover came into limelight for his portrayal as Gutthi on Comedy Nights with Kapil, a very popular comedy show in India, but gained popularity for playing the role of Dr Mashoor Gulati on The Kapil Sharma Show. Grover will next be seen in Bollywood film Bharat. He has also worked in many films and numerous TV plays. Nidhi Sharma, one of the organisers, said: “Grover will be giving us laughter therapy with all his famous characters. Prominent among of his characters are Guthi, Rinku Bhabi and Doctor Mashoor Gulati. To do justice with his character the comedy show is named ‘Dr. Mashoor Gulati Ki Clinic.’ “The opening act will be supported by Kiraak Hyderbadiz, famous Hyderabadi YouTubers’ group that is well known for their mimicry. Tickets are available at wanasatime.com This event will be the last event of the season before Ramadan and will be ideal for families to wash away their stress and laugh their hearts out.” She added: “This event will be one of a comedy drama where Sunil will play three different characters. The first one is Dr Mashoor Gulati, who is a humorous but fake doctor. The second one is Rinku Bhavi who shares her married life problem and the character of Guthi who is a unmarried woman who shares her life experiences. Kiraak Hyderabdi group will also treat people with their funny Hyderabadi accent. Mohammad Salman Khan is from Hyderabadi community in Doha. He is very excited to have the first ever Hyderabadi show in Doha by Kiraak Hyderabadi, a group that is well known for their mimicry. He said: “Grover is a very good comedian. I see him as a better comedian than Kapil Sharma in India. Though, he rose to fame from the show hosted by Kapil Sharma, I believe he is more talented than Sharma. I especially admire his character of being a funny doctor. I think people in Doha will enjoy his talent.” About the YouTube group from Hyderabad, Khan said: “The group is very talented and I am happy that I will be able to see them live in Doha. It is going to be big fun.” Lokesh Walia has been living in Qatar for 33 years. He is also keen to see the live comedy by Grover. He said: “For the Indian living in Qatar get fewer opportunities to see their beloved artistes performing alive. They visit India for a brief period of time. This show is going to be rarest opportunity where the families will enjoy live comedy.” He added that Grover is equally famous in North and South India. The audience surely is going to be enthralled by his acrobatic acts and instant jokes. Anshu Jain is an active member of the Indian community. She has been living in Qatar for seven years. She has been the compere of many community events. She said: “It is the year of culture between India and Qatar. There have been musical, artistic, dance and cultural programmes taking place in Qatar almost every week.  There has however been a dearth of comedy shows. Especially, there have been no significant comedy events that one can enjoy with one’s family. Kapil Sharma Show in general and Grover’s characters in particular have been a household name in India. The upcoming event will provide a genuine family comedy that all and sundry will enjoy.”

There are over 500 million domestic cats in the world, yet there are a few things as surprising as the number of myths surrounding cats. Often seen as disloyal, recluse and passive aggressive creatures, the number of myths about the way cats behave and survive is a little startling, given that cats and humans have been associated for nearly 10,000 years. In fact, some historians believe that cats have been around since 3600 BC, 2,000 years before Egypt’s pharaohs. The point is not that cats are antique creatures, but that they have mingled with the human kind for many centuries, co-existing in love and peace.  Perhaps the most common of these myths, and arguably a favourite of those who harbour a secret disliking of the feline pets, is that cats are not loyal. But anyone who has housed a cat even for a month would tell you that such logic holds no truth at all. Cats recognise human voice, especially that of their owner. They jump into our laps, climb on top of laptops and even our heads when they feel like it, which is typically either when they want to sleep or seek cuddle or two. They know when we address them, but usually they act too cool to care for our instructions.  But that’s the thing. Cats love humans in their own furry little mysterious ways. The question is: is it okay for us to label an animal disloyal just because they are hard to train and not the kind to be at our beck and call?

In the space of a single decade, Turkey has gone from being a country with a somewhat barren television landscape to being one of the largest exporters of soap operas and drama series in the world. Turkish television — an appealing blend of social issues and strong cultural themes — is one of the most thriving entertainment industries in the world now. In 2011, it introduced us to Muhtesem Yüzy?l (Magnificent Century), an epic historical drama launched, based on the life and court of the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, the longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and his wife Hurrem Sultan. The television series was broadcast in over 40 countries with more than 200 million viewers worldwide. Viewers watched the show, not only in Turkey but also in Pakistan, Bosnia, Croatia, China, United States and other countries, including several in the Arab world, where it was called The Sultan’s Harem and dubbed in Arabic. Muhtesem Yüzy?l introduced Meryem Uzerli, Turkish-German actress, to the world as Hurrem Sultan, the female lead of the television series.  With over 25 TV and movie awards and nominations, Meryem has climbed the ladder of fame and has become an unstoppable force. During the series, Uzerli’s role managed to develop a love-hate relationship with her audience.  Her acting prowess has placed herself on the cultural map of the world as one of the best actresses to have had come out of Turkish television industries. From Tüketici Academy Award for Best Female Lead for Muhtesem Yüzy?l in 2011 to being adjudged as the Best International Actress 2016 at 7th annual Beirut International Awards Festival, Meryem has come a long way, but her popularity has been increasing since the first episode of the television got on air.  She has captivated the audiences with her talent, warmth and natural beauty.  We’ve all gotten to know and love Meryem Uzerli as Hurrem Sultan but she’s now slowly shedding that persona and reinventing herself. Meryem was recently in Doha for the launch of a Turkish jewellery brand Atasay, a brand she represents.  Actresses worldwide are notoriously private but Community sat with Meryem Uzerli in a candid conversation where she granted permission and access to a rarely-before-seen side of herself, delving into her childhood memories including her first acting gig and shunning off rumours that surrounded her once and for all.  Meryem sounds a decade wiser, too. She talks about growing strong female characters in production and how she’s not bothered as an actress, still being associated with one character she has played; she’s deeply educated on issue of toxic relationships. Meryem might still have Hurrem Sultan’s glorious hair, but she’s developed the kind of thoughtful attitude that comes only with experience.  We’ve seen you play such a historical character, bombarded with glamour and manipulation, but who is Meryem Uzerli in personal life? Sometimes strong, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes sensitive, sometimes tired, sometimes fit and always believing in the good. Full of vision and working towards it and to give everything to be a good mother to my daughter and raise her in great love and security. Sometimes a single performance sets the standards and all subsequent performances pale in comparison no matter how hard one tries. Would you be able to outdo the Hurrem legacy? Hurrem Sultan is of course, one of the strongest female characters in history. I am very grateful and proud that I had a chance to play such a powerful character — what a gift for an actress! In general, there’s a boom in portrayal of strong female characters, which is great, but each character I played has its own strengths, weaknesses, differences. It would be boring to always embody the same dynamics. Sometimes there can be a lot of strength in a quiet character. I never compare my work. It all stands for itself and that’s a good thing.  Even after a decade of Muhtesem Yüzy?l, people worldwide recall you as Hurrem, rather than any other character you’ve played so far. Does it bother you as an actress? No, not at all! Of course, it was a huge project and very popular because it was sold to so many countries. The other characters or projects I’ve done were not so huge, I mean they were not sold to so many countries like Muhtesem Yüzy?l. It was something totally different. Ah, yes sure it was part of my life and I enjoyed it a lot and it is part of myself and that is totally nice.  Did playing Hurrem, who has a legacy of strength and influence and stepping into her shoes, changed you in any way? Every person I meet teaches me something. Sometimes it’s a simple sentence that makes you think or sometimes it’s a deeper conversation that inspires and out of which I draw something as an experience. When I play a character it’s another journey on a psychological level. I would never say that it changes me as Meryem, but I can say that it enriched me. From a girl next door to a diva sporting the cover editorials of fashion magazines, was there a moment when you actually realised that you’ve just made it as an actress and a popular celebrity? I know what you mean but I am not a diva. I was always Meryem and will always be Meryem — of course, you evolve with your experiences, grow up , changing your looks, your style depending on the projects but I am just someone who goes to work and is happy to be part of different projects. That’s all. You’ve done films, dramas and then soap opera, how would you differentiate amongst the three mediums as an actress? I’ve never been a part of soap opera, but who knows, maybe in the future. Or maybe your definition of a soap opera is different from mine in Germany. I have done lots of theatre, cinema and drama serials. Of course it’s different to perform live in front of the audience, it’s a totally different dynamic. There’s a time pressure in theatre while in cinema productions there is often more time to unfold within a project. In series also, you build a character over a long period of time, step by step. All dynamics can be different but at the end of the day you develop a character and present it no matter where. I like all of them. Was acting something you always wanted to do? When I was five, my best friend’s father owned the biggest theatrical production in my hometown. I was playing a tree, in the background of course, or something of the sort even in that young age. So yes it happened in a very natural way. His father once asked us to do a play — and that’s how it all actually started. It was a step-by-step thing. I used to go to a private art kindergarten and then a private art school. So I guess this is how it happened. And what about photography? I love photography. I actually gave my camera to somebody here. I’m sweating a bit because camera is like my baby. I love to take pictures of people, interesting faces and situations. It’s just about emotions and expressing it via photography. It’s a hobby and a passion. I like to do pictures in black and white because then it looks more artful and the focus is on the subject and situation and you’re not distracted by the colours. I like to capture weird situations but I don’t post all of them — because that’ll be weird then. I like characteristic faces.  Tell us something about your upcoming projects? I just finished a movie which I was shooting at the Turkish/Georgian border, The Hive. I was also one of the executive producers of the film. I’m more and more interested in playing a bigger role in the creative process of the projects. The movie is an intense family drama of overcoming your fears and embracing change in a lot of ways. A very artful film with deep and calm character. Apart from this, I’m also working on a series for an Internet platform. It was rumoured that you had a nervous breakdown on the night of Antalya Television Awards. Do you think that was the moment when you realised you have to take a new path in life, towards betterment? Oh, there are a lot of rumours everywhere. I’ve learned not to hear, read or get distracted by them. The media is always creating something. That’s part of the business.  What would you say to people caught up in toxic relationships and what advice would you give single moms? Unhealthy relationships, as we all know, are difficult to break. Often a different feeling like addiction is confused with love. I think it is important to look at yourself and see what exactly makes you linger in such an unhealthy combination. And as for being a single mother, there is no tip that I can share since there are so many different constellations and individual stories — I can only say I am proud of every mom in the world.  How do you find inner peace? Is there something that you do to get away from all the action in your life?  Spending time with my daughter. Just watching movies in my pyjamas at home, eating chocolates, taking a walk through nature, reading and spending time with the people I love. Well, sometimes staying alone and listening to music as well.  Are there beauty secrets lying somewhere in the corner that other aspirants could make use of? A beauty secret? Not really. I don’t know what to say here, but the question means that you find me beautiful. That flatters me. Thank you. You’re representing an heirloom brand of jewellery like Atasay; are you a jewellery person yourself? As the daughter of a Turkish father I’m very proud to be the face of a Turkish brand, which has brought together more than 110 million women worldwide with its jewellery due to the success in production since its foundation in 1937 with its superb, award-winning creations, employees, artisans, craftsmen and associates. As a woman I love jewellery as well. I’m into diamonds and gold — actually everything. It’s all about emotions for me. I’m a very emotional person. So sometimes I like something simple and sometimes more glamorous like every woman I guess. In a recent interview, you said you are looking forward to shift to Middle East. Have you given it a thought yet? Yes, absolutely. It’s in my head and it’s in my heart. Whenever I spend time in the Middle East, I feel great happiness in me which I can hardly describe. I don’t know more exactly at the moment. But it is a dream and a longing. I’m trying to make it possible but my schedule is not allowing right now to plan it properly. There are so many countries in the Middle East that are beautiful. Even Qatar, love it to the bones. Any message for your fans? I’m so happy to be here in Qatar. I’m sending greetings to everyone and whatever you’re going through in life right now, even if its sadness, happiness or you’re a bit sick, like my flu today, I’m sending prayers, hugs, kisses and love.

Stars have a reputation for making big demands. But when Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba signed on as the leads and executive producers for a new buddy-cop series, their list of requirements included some doozies: Trailers need to be outfitted as nurseries. Three-day weekends are encouraged. Whenever possible, cast and crew should be home in time for dinner. “It’s important that we set the stage for a family-friendly and feminist environment, which means that women are equal to men in this world that we’ve created,” Alba said from the set of L.A.’s Finest, premiering next month on NBC. “It’s really cool that we don’t have to compartmentalise our personal lives so much. They can bleed into what we are doing here every day.” And what’s happening on sets such as this one has a direct effect on TV viewers. Suddenly, they’re enjoying a rich array of female protagonists as dark, daring, disturbed and delicious as the characters male actors take for granted. Just in the past month, TV viewers saw the debuts of Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists, a spinoff where women still get to tell the fattest fibs; ABC’s The Fix, a courtroom drama featuring a barely fictionalised version of O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark; and Hulu’s Shrill, in which Aidy Bryant slowly realises that big is beautiful. Meanwhile, CW’s equal-opportunity novella Jane the Virgin returned for a new season, as did Netflix’s Santa Clarita Diet, with Drew Barrymore biting deeper into her role as an unapologetic cannibal. Then came the March 31 premiere of HBO’s Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ beloved take on a politician who’s more complicated than all the current presidential candidates combined. For each of those series, women held key roles beyond what we see on the screen — from commandeering the writers’ room to calling Action. “I’ve always acted in shows written by 50-year-old white men,” said The Fix star Robin Tunney. “This time, I have three women writing my character, a female producer and a female directing the pilot. I never thought I’d see that in my lifetime.” This month viewers can watch the highly anticipated Season 2 premiere of BBC America’s Killing Eve, the cat-and-mouse thriller created by Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge. There’s also the debut of ABC’s Bless This Mess, a sitcom-y version of The Newlywed Game co-developed by New Girl creator Elizabeth Meriwether and comic powerhouse Lake Bell (best known for big-screen hits such as No Strings Attached). In both cases, Hollywood women turned down opportunities in front of the camera to make a difference behind it. “As an actress, I was feeling sort of underused and that I had more to offer,” said Elizabeth Banks, who has parlayed her on-screen success into a career as an executive producer on numerous projects, including Shrill. “I just thought I didn’t need to join the train at the end. I could be in front of the train, get it moving.” ‘We’re the bricks’ According to San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, when programmes boast at least one female executive producer, women account for 42 percent of the major characters. That number drops to 33 percent when the bosses are exclusively male. “I think women are used to being the cement and men being the bricks,” said Emerald Fennell, an executive producer and lead writer for Killing Eve. “And so what we’ve done is fill in the cracks. We take up the space and try to make it work. And on shows like this, we’re the bricks. Actor Jodie Comer plays a villain on Killing Eve with as many layers as anyone who ever challenged Batman. She believes the secret to her character’s allure is the women-led writers room. “What’s so wonderful is the complexity and versatility which we’re allowed to show through these characters,” Comer said. “It’s so visible in the writing that it’s being written by women.” Working on a set dominated by women can be invigorating, even for Oscar winners with decades of experience. Female bonding was a significant reason the cast of HBO’s Big Little Lies reunited for more episodes, which will start airing in June. “When I was younger, I wouldn’t bring my children to set because it made me feel vulnerable,” said Lies star and producer Reese Witherspoon. “It would make me feel exposed and that no-one was going to be supporting me if I needed to take care of a sick child. I never felt that with this group of women. They would do everything short of putting on a blond wig and taking care of that child for me. It was an incredible experience to be able to lean on each other.” It doesn’t hurt that these women-led projects have given some performers the best reviews of their careers. Lies headliners Nicole Kidman and Laura Dern took home Emmys last year; the industry’s most revered star, Meryl Streep, signed on for the second season. Turns out, big-name women no longer hesitate when it comes to television, where richer parts await. In recent years, Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Veep all cleaned up at the Emmys. Since 2003, just one film with a woman as the lead — The Shape of Water — took home the best picture Oscar, but Sally Hawkins’ character in the Guillermo del Toro-directed movie is mute. At least on television, women are much more likely to be heard. “I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard in auditions and meetings, ‘Well, she’s only in three scenes, but she’s the heart and soul of the show,’” said Emily Browning, who plays the character Laura Moon, a former casino dealer who uses her second chance at life to double down on meanness. “Well, OK. But men have had such a broad spectrum of roles to choose from for such a long time and there have only been a few categories for women to slide into. I get a chance to play a really difficult character in this show and not once has anyone said to me, ‘She needs to look cuter; she needs to be likable.’ From the beginning, we all decided some people are going to like her and some aren’t. That gives you so much freedom to play.” After seven seasons of playing the calculating, sometimes conniving law partner on Suits, Gina Torres thought it was time to move on. But she quickly realised that roles that rich are rare in feature films. Which is why she returned for USA’s upcoming Pearson spinoff. “In film, you’re usually the woman behind the man. You come in, make whatever magic you need to make, and then you’re out,” Torres said.       “The nature of television allows for more of a protracted arc, more of an opportunity to get to know a strong woman in a more fleshed-out way.” Perfectly qualified Despite the box-office success of Patty Jenkins’ 2017 Wonder Woman and Banks’ 2015 Pitch Perfect 2, studios are reluctant to hand over feature films to women, often claiming there aren’t enough qualified candidates to head such expensive projects. That excuse doesn’t fly in TV, where diversity programmes and mentoring have been in place for more than a decade. “Every show I’ve worked on since the early 1990s has had women as the backbone of the staff,” said Caissie St. Onge, who got her start as David Letterman’s intern and now serves as executive producer on Busy Philipps’ talk show for E! “So when opportunities finally started presenting themselves in great numbers, so many seasoned and experienced women were ready to just step in and run.” The #MeToo movement deserves credit for pressuring Hollywood to create a more equal playing field. But powerhouses such as Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy), Amy Sherman-Palladino (Mrs. Maisel), Lena Dunham (Girls) and Jenji Kohan (Orange Is the New Black) went out of their way to give the next generation enough hands-on experience to become forces of their own. “It used to be sort of like woman-against-woman and everyone was in this competition,” said Kim Raver, who learned a lot from observing Rhimes during her 10 years as a Grey’s cast member. Now she’s applying those lessons to her directorial debut, the upcoming Lifetime movie Tempting Fate. Raver also acknowledges a debt of gratitude to Lifetime vice president Tanya Lopez and Tempting Fate star Alyssa Milano, a driving force behind #MeToo. “There’s now this incredible support system,” Raver added. “It’s a real shift in the workforce.” Of course, there’s still work to be done. According to the Directors Guild of America, 25 percent of TV episodes in the 2017-18 season were directed by women, up 4 percentage points from the year before, but still a far cry from parity. Women are even more underrepresented in other key crew positions, including directors of photography. Forbes reports that the 10 highest paid women on TV pull down $168.5 million a year, compared with $181 million for their male counterparts. But the TV industry is making progress, if only because it’s good business. “Television has always been a women’s medium. Films were not,” Streep said. “People are understanding that women’s voices drive the market and drive what’s available.” For decades, Comedy Central was obsessed with appealing to a young-guy audience. The success of Inside Amy Schumer and Broad City got the network to rethink its strategy. Last year, it saw viewership among women 18-49 rise by 13 percent. ABC recently hired Karey Burke as its entertainment president, the second woman in a row to hold that position at the third-place network. “It’s always been my personal goal to create the best opportunities for women in front of and behind the camera,” she said.         “I know what’s possible when women come together and share their vision. That’s a big part of what’s people along as possible.”     —Star Tribune (Minneapolis)/TNS

First published in 1983, Stephen King’s supernatural chamber tragedy Pet Sematary was a dark tale of terror that Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch both devoured growing up separately as budding filmmakers and horror fans in Long Island, NY. Like scores of King devotees around the globe, they’d read the book as youngsters and pored over the 1989 film adaptation directed by Mary Lambert, which sealed a frighteningly adorable psycho toddler and a cat named Church into the horror cinema lexicon. Kölsch remembers seeing its cult sequel Pet Sematary II in theatres in 1992, a few years before mutual friends would introduce him to Widmyer. They were the only two guys in their circle of friends so utterly obsessed with making movies, they’d type out screenplays on word processors at parties. Maybe they’d get along? Cut to a year ago this month: After making a splash with their 2014 indie thriller Starry Eyes, the directing duo had landed their first studio job — remaking Pet Sematary, based on the King classic. Naturally, they felt a mix of pressure and excitement as they headed to Montreal to scare up their own telling for Paramount, which releases the R-rated film this weekend 30 years after the first hit theatres. That’s because, in addition to being a story that horror fans already know inside and out, Pet Sematary is also — famously — the most frightening story that the bestselling author says he ever wrote. And nobody wants to let Stephen King down. “I think Stephen King likes to let people take liberties,” Kölsch said appreciatively of the author during a chat inside Burbank’s Dark Delicacies horror bookstore. “But it’s a really nerve-wracking thing to go off and make something based on somebody else’s material without them having any say, and then when you’re done, presenting it like, ‘Here’s what we did!’” He and Widmyer flashed back to the day they heard King was in the middle of watching their film, their nerves rightfully jangled. Scripted by Jeff Buhler (The Prodigy) from a screen story by Matt Greenberg, Pet Sematary closely follows King’s original novel — with a twist. The story — inspired by an incident that happened to King — begins when a doctor named Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) and his wife, Rachel (Amy Seimetz), move with their 8-year-old daughter, Ellie, and 2-year-old son, Gage, to a sleepy Maine town populated by friendly neighbours like Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) and the occasional fast-zooming semi-truck hurtling down an adjacent highway. In the woods on the edge of their property resides a makeshift pet cemetery frequented by local children, hence the Pet Sematary spelling of the title. And just beyond the cemetery lies an ancient burial ground pulsing with a terrible power, tempting lost souls to make irrevocable choices. The film follows the events of the book in similar fashion to the pared-down narrative path of the 1989 film. But Buhler, Widmyer, Kölsch and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, best known for producing Paramount’s Transformers and G.I. Joe blockbuster franchises, made the arguably risky move of changing one major plot turn, subtly altering the dynamic of how the Creed tragedy unfolds. Later that night after watching the film in a private screening in Florida, King passed along his seal of approval. “He appreciated that we kept all the family stuff and he found it really scary,” said Kölsch. “And then he tweeted about it the next day, which was really crazy.” In true King style, his tweets of support have been short but sweet: “This is a scary movie,” he posted in February. “Be warned.” A long wait The Pet Sematary remake spent nearly a decade in development before getting the studio greenlight, although Di Bonaventura estimates that they came close to getting it going twice amid various executive shuffles. The success of Warner Bros.’ record-breaking 2017 horror hit It, part of a wave of King adaptations sweeping TV and film, helped push Pet Sematary over its final hurdle, he said. “One of the things about the new Paramount management is their willingness to try ‘new,’” he said, “which I think has been sorely lacking both at Paramount and in Hollywood. And in a marketplace that is saturated with material, streaming or otherwise, one of the ways to stand out is [by being] bold and new.” In a post-It marketplace where studio horror and more mature R-rated genre fare are commercially proven, he added proudly, the Pet Sematary remake was better positioned to bring not just dark, but the darkest of subject matter to a hopefully receptive movie-going audience. The material goes beyond scares to achieve under-the-skin frights and raise troubling questions. “We never would have gotten that ending through many different incarnations of studio executives, partly because it’s the darkest version you could possibly come up with,” he said with a laugh, teasing the spoilery secrets of this latest Pet Sematary. “I guess we could have killed [character name redacted] on screen, but, you know.” Horror’s return The resurgence of the R-rated studio horror film is a boon for filmmaking, said former Warner Bros. executive Di Bonaventura, who produced Pet Sematary with Mark Vahradian and Steven Schneider and calls Hollywood’s thinking that younger viewers can’t handle more challenging fare “puritanical.” “I feel we have let down the younger audience by not making more R-rated films, period, whatever genre,” said Di Bonaventura, whose films include Constantine, Stephen King adaptation 1408, five Transformers movies and the recent hit spinoff Bumblebee. “R-rated films for whatever reason tend to be a closer approximation to life, in some respects,” he added. “Life’s tough, you know what I mean? The movies I grew up with, whether it’s French Connection or Apocalypse Now were tough movies, and you were seeing life in a very extreme way.” It was the project’s embrace of difficult themes — death, loss, grief and guilt — that drew filmmaker and actress Seimetz to the role of Rachel, who spars with Louis over how to talk to their kids about death and harbours deep traumas of her own. She’d read Pet Sematary at the age of 8, and loved Widmyer and Kölsch’s Starry Eyes, which brought to its genre thrills a sense of humour and self-awareness. “They didn’t want to ignore how gut-wrenching losing a child is,” said Seimetz. “That’s what grief looks like … and also, it doesn’t go away.” Alongside Clarke and Lithgow, Seimetz anchors the intimate ensemble drama, filmed in Canada with cinematographer Laurie Rose (Kill List) lensing the Montreal countryside for rural Maine. Production then moved to a massive soundstage that housed the mythical burial grounds where Jud shows Louis the inexplicable place that will be his undoing. On set Seimetz found herself sharpening her linguistic skills with the twin toddlers, Hugo and Lucas Lavoie, who played her son — and only spoke French. “They were 2 when we started and they turned 3 while we were shooting, so I’d do a lot of, ‘Qu’est-ce que? Le nez? Le bouche?’” she said with a laugh. “My French got really good when we had to get into emotional scenes. I would say to the crew, ‘How do you say, “Grab my neck”? Or “We’re playing!” “Je ne suis pas triste” — I’m not sad!’” “Kids are such sponges for tone and mood,” said Seimetz. “It’s chaos on set and suddenly someone goes, ‘Action!’ Try to explain that shift in energy to a kid. ‘It’s playtime!’” Portraying the other Creed sibling, meanwhile, was 11-year-old phenom Jete Laurence, whose portrayal of curious and precocious young Ellie has earned critical raves. “Everybody says never work with animals or kids, but we worked with both and we had a better experience than we thought going in,” said Kölsch. Also crucial: Finding the right Church, or, rather — multiple Churches — to play the family pet whose untimely demise is central to the events of Pet Sematary. “They say you can’t train a cat, I’ve got two and Dennis has three and we thought that to be true, because look at my furniture,” joked Kölsch. Modelling their Church after the cat on the novel’s book cover, one of their many nods to the source material woven into the new film, the directors cast two Maine coon cats named Tonic and Leo, respectively, as pre- and post-transformation Church. All members of the Creed family, including its beloved four-legged member, play a crucial part in the events that transpire. King’s metaphor for what happens when we suppress and deny grief — and his terrible, personal meditation on the lengths we all might go to save the ones we love — are what the filmmakers ultimately hope follow their audiences home. “The theme of the film was communication,” said Widmyer of the Big Talks the main characters are constantly putting off. “Everything has a chain reaction. Everyone continually pushes the conversation away, and it just grows into its own beast. … There’s something almost Shakespearean about Pet Sematary, and it’s kind of an ageless theme.” To that end the Pet Sematary remake remains true to the lessons and tragedy of King’s story, even if Widmyer and Kölsch’s approach and changes from previous iterations lend this version a different flavour from that of the book, the 1989 film and its sequel. Thursday night, another tweet from the King of Horror himself underscored that truth: “Pet Sematary opens tonight. They don’t come back the same.”                         —Los Angeles Times/TN

Seasonal changes have a strong impact on our moods, attitudes, and as some experts would argue— even our physical well-being. Then there is the symbolic significance of seasons as well. If winter symbolises death, spring symbolises new life and rejuvenation. Trees, plants, fields turn green and then there is a significant increase in rainfall as well. Given that dynamic, if you have spent the last two months in Qatar, you would know that the one thing that has taken the country by a storm is the Spring fever. This fever itself is essentially a feeling of restlessness and excitement felt at the beginning of spring, and one sure shot reason everyone in the country felt it strongly was because of the frequent rainfall that just doesn’t seem to stop! Apart from the rain and blooming vegetation, festivals and events surged as people marched outdoors to breathe fresh air in a pleasant weather. For tourists and residents of Qatar, Souq Waqif is the go-to place to frequent whenever there is a change in season. Most recently, visitors of Souq Waqif were able to enjoy a series of events, including the African circus shows in the West Square, in addition to amazing performances for pedestrians during the on-going ‘April Festival’. The seven-day festival began on April 5 and you are encouraged to visit Souq if you haven’t already this week because it has something to offer for everyone— kids and adults alike. Text by