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Of all the dystopian young adult franchises that The Hunger Games hath wrought, The Maze Runner series has always been the one of the most forthrightly entertaining — and the sweatiest. But that sweat is evidence of what makes the trilogy work.  As directed by Wes Ball, it takes off at a full sprint and never slows down. It can be a pleasantly pummeling experience, an adrenaline-drenched ride delivered by the capable hands of Ball, with the appealingly energetic star Dylan O’Brien. In the third and ostensibly final film, The Death Cure, pushes the action so far it hits the edge of unpleasant. The franchise brings a boyish, impish energy to the teen apocalypse genre. The Hunger Games was nakedly emotional, each tragedy channeled through the primal scream of Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss. Divergent was always too fastidious, cold and remote to connect. Maze Runner brings the grime and grit to the race for survival in a dystopian post-civilisation that’s eating its own young. And as we discovered in the second film, The Scorch Trials, this apocalyptic tale is actually a zombie movie, which gives the whole enterprise that much more bite. The Maze Runner was plainly task-oriented — a bunch of teens dropped into a mysterious glade have to try and escape through a maze every day — and the series never loses sight of the ethos. The maze is metaphorical rather than physical now, as Thomas (O’Brien) tries to escape the maze of a crumbling civilisation and the evil corporation WICKED. Thomas and his young cohort have found themselves WICKED’s test subjects, as they’re immune to the Flare disease that’s turning humans into bloodthirsty “cranks.” All Thomas can do is run, and run he does, often without thinking the whole thing through. His goal to simply get out with all his friends alive proves to be difficult when he and his team of rebels hijack the wrong train car, leaving his friend Minho (Ki Hong Lee) to withstand torturous trials at WICKED headquarters while scientists try to develop a virus-fighting serum. When Thomas sets off on a rescue mission to grab Minho from the last standing city, things are complicated when he discovers his former flame Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) is one of the scientists working on the serum (the “death cure” if you will). The overall plot itself isn’t all that complex, though the path is riddled with obstacles, including a leprous Walton Goggins, leading an uprising at the walls of the city, old friends from the Glade popping up left and right and an army of cranks and super-soldiers bearing down in all directions. Ball and screenwriter T.S. Nowlin keep a tight grip on the tone and the relentless pace, but they often back the story and characters into corners that only a deus ex machina can fix. By the time the third or fourth savior swoops out of the sky, it gets to be a bit contrived. Ball embraces the maximalist approach, and as the film pushes the two-hour, 20-minute mark, it devolves into a seizure-inducing mass of strobe lighting and noise, all gunshots, crunching bone, explosions and crumbling buildings. It’s overwhelming, numbing and exhausting. In The Death Cure, the Maze Runner pushes it to the limit and ultimately ends up spent. — TNS

Earlier this week, I spent the morning listening to late Bhupen Hazarika’s compositions in Ek Pal, a film that introduced me to the wonderful directorial acumen of Kalpana Lajmi. I don’t remember who introduced us. I think it was Prakash Jha. But Kalpana was one of my first friends in the Mumbai film industry. She was feisty and knew many in the filmworld. The formidable Shyam Benegal is her uncle and so was the even more formidable Guru Dutt. Yes, she is well-connected. But when Kalpana made her first film, the underrated, hauntingly romantic Ek Pal, she sought no-one’s help. She approached the mighty trio of Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah and Farouq Sheikh and all three said yes to her, not because of who she was but because of what she had to offer. Today, I see shameless nepotism in the industry. Talentless relatives of powerfully-placed industry folks get big breaks while genuinely talented strugglers languish for want of an opportunity. In a world dominated by patriarchy and nepotism Kalpana made it on her own steam. After Ek Pal came the stunning Rudaali. I was hooked. The industry has all but forgotten her as she remains seriously ill moving in and out of the hospital. She has little hope of recovery with almost no money to pay for the hefty hospital bills. You know what they say: If the disease doesn’t kill you, the bill will. She survives on the largesse of a few industry folks who still have some core of humanism left in them. Since most charity in showbiz is done with the intention of getting attention, I am not sure how much of the financial help for Kalpana comes out of genuine concern. What the film industry needs is a solid health fund for ailing artistes so that we don’t have talented filmmakers dying for want of adequate medical care. There are chilling stories of stars falling on hard days. The legendary Meena Kumari died in the servant’s room of a bungalow purchased by her. Generous to a fault, she had gifted a bungalow to her sister Madhu and her husband, the comedian Mehmood. The couple was “kind” enough to let their benefactor spend her last days in the outhouse where they served her one meal a day. What happened to all her earnings? What happened to all of Tamil-Telugu superstar Savitri’s earnings? Like Meena Kumari, Savitri hit the bottle and... well, you only have to see her bio-pic Mahanati, to discover the similarities between the doomed lives of two legendary actresses. Meena Kumari invested in the wrong projects and people. She paid for it. Her plight was better than poor Vimi’s. Once a B.R. Chopra heroine, she fell on hard days and drank herself to death. There was no-one to claim her body when she died. Why can’t the Indian film industry take care of its own? Make sure that its denizens are looked after in their lean days. Kalpana Lajmi should be getting the best medical treatment by right. She shouldn’t have to depend on the largesse of some actors who make 65-80 crores of rupees per film and feel very good about themselves after giving a few lakhs to soldiers’ widows and colleagues who have seen better days. As Kalpana lies alone in her illness, does she regret spending all her savings looking after her mentor and beloved Bhupen Hazarika? Or does she feel happy to have touched the higher notes of love in an era of debilitating self-interest? Does Deepika Padukone know she has a relative named Kalpana Lajmi who could do with a kind touch? — IANS

Do you remember Michael Dapaah? The London-born actor and comedian featured in this column late last year when he enjoyed a massive hit single with Man’s Not Hot. He did so under the alias of Big Shaq, one of the characters Michael created to form part of his YouTube video shows. Edwin Onokhua has taken a similar route to UK chart stardom. Although Edwin was also born in London and is of African descent, there are significant differences between the two artistes.  At just 16, Edwin is ten years younger than Michael. He is also considerably less experienced having posted the first of his comedy YouTube videos barely a year ago. Another difference is that Edwin raps as himself rather than one of his characters. “I do have a character who is a rapper,” Edwin remarked. “His name is Ola. He’s a bedroom rapper who keeps getting grief from his dad, also played by me, whenever his dad hears him trying to record a song. “But I never considered myself as a potentially serious rapper. Ola was just one of my characters. So too was African Boy, another character who sometimes tries to rap. “It was my YouTube fans who kept telling me I should do a serious rap rather than just the parodies. I wasn’t too sure at first. Doing a parody is one thing, but making a real song is something else. But my followers kept getting on to me to do a proper song and I eventually decided to give it a try.” The end result, German, has propelled Edwin into the upper reaches of the UK singles chart. But don’t look for Edwin Onokhua on the credits. He is listed as EO. “My name isn’t exactly media friendly. I adopted EO for my YouTube channel. I called it a crossover because I wanted to put all kinds of comedy and music videos on there. For my song, I dropped the crossover and just called myself EO.” Considering his age, one reviewer admitted they thought German would be about something that happened during a German language lesson at school. They were surprised to find the song was about driving BMW and Mercedes motor cars. Although it was produced, mixed and mastered by UK urban and African music culture hotshot JRocs, the lyrics for German were written by Edwin. Ironically, he is too young to hold a UK driving licence. “Somebody told me I should be quite commercial. I didn’t really understand what that meant. I thought it was like adverts on TV. But that idea of being like television commercials made me think I could rap about cars. I needed a beat though and eventually found this great beat that everybody will know now. It’s the same one that Ramz used for his hit single, Barking. “I’d found the beat, recorded the song and wanted to put it out with a music video at the back end of last summer. But the team I was working with at that time were just too slow. The next thing I knew, somebody sent me the Barking song. It was basically my track with different lyrics. I wanted to cry!” This turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to Edwin. Instead of swinging for the fences with a prominent release, he just put the original version of German on his YouTube channel. It was heard by his current manager who contacted Edwin, asked if he would like to remake the song with a proper producer and hooked him up with JRocs. The finished product was so good that his manager pitched German to Columbia UK and Edwin suddenly found himself with a major label record deal. “Everything happened so quickly. The video was shot about a week and a half after I re-recorded German with JRocs. My song started getting love from some important people in the music business. I was in demand to make guest appearances on influential radio shows. I couldn’t believe what was happening. “Then came the chart listing. I’m so grateful to my management, everyone who has helped me and, of course, to all my YouTube fans. If it wasn’t for their encouragement, I’d still have been doing nothing more than parody raps.” in brief Sheku Kanneh-Mason Performing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has given a significant boost in record sales for all artists concerned. The biggest gain was made by cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016, Sheku has also performed at the British Academy of Film and Television Awards ceremony as well as the annual BBC Promenade concerts. Signed to the Decca Classics label, Sheku released his debut album, Inspiration, before his appearance at the Royal Wedding. It proved remarkably successful debuting at number 18 and making 19-year-old Sheku the youngest cellist to enter the UK Albums chart top 20 with a first album. His performances of Sicilienne, Apres Un Reve and Ave Maria for Harry and Meghan brought increased sales lifting Inspiration to number 11 on the Albums chart and returning the record to number one on the Classical Artist Albums chart.  His mainstream success has made Sheku the highest-charting cellist in the history of the U.K. Albums chart. Inspiration has surpassed the previous mark set by Julian Lloyd Webber with Lloyd Webber Plays Lloyd Webber. This album covered Julian’s reinterpretation of his brother Andrew’s songs from stage musicals. A delighted Sheku said: “I’m so happy that people are enjoying my music and really grateful for all the support I’ve received. The reaction to my performance at the wedding has been incredible and it feels amazing to have my album so high in the charts.” BTS What Psy just failed to do with Gangnam Style has now been achieved by South Korean boy band BTS. Although Gangnam Style topped singles charts throughout the world in 2012, the song was held out of pole position in America by Maroon 5’s One More Night. But if Psy stalled at number two, BTS have gone one place better. This is not on the Hot 100 singles chart but rather on the Billboard 200. Their latest full-length album, Love Yourself: Tear, has hit number one making BTS the first K-Pop artists to top America’s mainstream album chart. Their achievement comes as no great surprise to chart watchers. In 2017, BTS became the first K-Pop act to enter the Billboard 200 top ten with Love Yourself: Her. Every North American date on their upcoming world tour has sold out. This includes four consecutive nights at the 21,000 capacity Staples Centre in Los Angeles. Although much of their appeal is to the children of Korean immigrants, the BTS ARMY, as they are known, includes a good many girls who are not of Korean descent. Attracted by their music, slick dance routines and good looks, it doesn’t seem to matter that BTS do not sing more than a few words in English. Nicky Jam / Will Smith / Era Istrefi Reggaetron star Nicky Jam is joined by rapper / actor Will Smith and Kosovar singer Era Istrefi on Live It Up, the official song of the 2018 World Cup. The music video will not be available to view until June 7. But the song has already been released. It can be heard at www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFMZUxX6K6o Produced by Diplo, The Picard Brothers and Free School, Live It Up is an uptempo dance track sung principally in English but with some Spanish lyrics. Nicky Jam is listed as the main performer with Will and Era effectively being guest artists. Initial reviews have been mixed. One even described the song as “almost unlistenable.” While this may be a little harsh, it has not gone unnoticed that Live It Up is essentially a Caribbean / Latin American song. Yet the World Cup is being staged in Russia. One would have thought there might have been some sort of Russian association in the official World Cup song. Silk City In addition to co-producing the official World Cup song, Diplo has been hard at work creating new music with his friend Mark Ronson.  Calling themselves Silk City, the name of the Philadelphia diner where they first met, Diplo and Mark have made an album of songs which encompass their shared love of soul, disco and house music. “We decided to spend a week in the studio to see what came of it,” Mark stated. “I had very little idea that this would see us making some of my favourite dancefloor music that I’ve ever been part of.” Their album should be out later this year but lead single, Only Can Get Better, is available now. Featuring vocals by Daniel Merriweather, the accompanying video is posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF9LEB3-k_s

How noisy is New York City? Here’s an observation from The New Yorker magazine: “In New York, there are two kinds of noise: the sounds of this city (car horns, loud neighbours, construction equipment, barking dogs) and the sound of New Yorkers complaining about it.” Last year, more than 400,000 calls were made to the city’s ‘311’ non-emergency phone hotline - roughly one every 90 seconds - to complain about pounding jackhammers, buzzing helicopters, thundering lorries, rumbling subway trains, cars honking -and above all, noisy neighbours. Noise in New York is now the subject of a major study by New York University and Ohio State University, which have teamed up to create the ‘Sounds of New York City’ (SONYC) project, funded by the National Science Foundation. It is being led by Juan Pablo Bello, associate professor of music technology at New York University. “People in New York are exposed to drastic levels of noise that influence their daily lives, like sleep patterns,” Bello says. “Everyone here can tell stories about noise, and most of them are not very favourable.” By some estimates, nine out of ten New Yorkers are regularly exposed to noise levels that the US Environmental Protection Agency classifies as damaging. Scientists have long ago determined that noise can make people sick, increasing the risk of stress, high blood pressure and heart ailments. At Toronto University, researchers recently also determined that the noise levels that commuters experience, whether on public transport or on their bicycles, can lead to hearing damage. Under a five-year, $4.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Bello began the SONYC project two years ago to collect, for the first time ever, precise data about New York’s noise. So far, the researchers have set up around 50 small recording sensors, with an ultimate target of about 100. At regular intervals, they take in 10 seconds of noise around them and transmit the results to Bello’s laboratory. People’s conversations are not recorded, Bello insists. “SONYC is an environmental pollution platform, is not intended nor designed for surveillance, and we are taking every step necessary to keep it that way,” he says. Analysis of the data collected so far has just gotten under way, but already there are a few results. A series of complaints have recently been made by people around Washington Square Park, the cause being construction noise coming after the permitted hours. City controllers looking into the complaints could find no wrongdoing in 80 per cent of the cases. But the SONYC data told another story: in 94 per cent of the cases there had been violations. Together with the city, Bello and his team are studying how such data can best be applied in the future. The project could also be pursued in other cities and countries, Bello said. “New York is our lab, where we can play around and because it is noisy, it’s ideal for our experiments.” One aim is to make people more aware of how damaging noise can be. “Noise is pollution. We want people to think about noise the way they think about throwing out a candy wrapper.” – DPA

“A life without despair is a life without hope,” says the man at the centre of Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. That paradox embraces the world as it is, and suggests a better world for the making. The movie it belongs to is an act of spiritual inquiry, a coolly assured example of cinematic scholarship in subtly deployed motion and one of the strongest pictures of 2018. It’s also one of those third-act miracles all too rare in American filmmaking. Now 71, writer-director Schrader has remained busy across five decades. He made a name for himself when Martin Scorsese pulled a vicious American masterwork from Schrader’s screenplay Taxi Driver. A critic and essayist before (and, to a degree, concurrent with) his moviemaking career, Schrader has plowed through bowl after bowl of forbidden fruit in a variety of genres. His latest work bears little surface resemblance to the pulpy extremes of so many Schrader pictures, both early (Rolling Thunder, which he co-wrote and later disowned) and recent (Dog Eat Dog, The Canyons). Nonetheless, the extremes of temperament and the atmosphere of coiled danger are there in First Reformed, just under the surface calm. You may not appreciate the direction it goes, ultimately, or make the leap alongside the story’s protagonist, played by Ethan Hawke, at the unnerving close of a carefully calibrated crisis of faith. But it’s a beautiful crisis to witness, and to argue with internally. Schrader keeps the film, set in upstate New York, visually close to his chief inspirations. The Rev. Ernst Toller is a man at a crossroads. He tends the radically dwindling attendees of his tiny Dutch Reformed church outside Albany, down the road from its parent establishment, the thriving megachurch known as Abundant Life. Like the isolated man of faith in Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Toller has embarked on a yearlong experiment of keeping a journal for his private confessions, doubts and prayers. Early in the film Toller is visited by Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant parishioner married to a fierce environmental activist (Philip Ettinger) recently returned to town, and utterly adrift. With climate change raging, unchecked, he does not see the point of bringing a child into the world. The early, artfully sustained scene between the husband and the minister is pretty amazing, slipping in bits of exposition (we learn of Toller’s son, a casualty of the Iraq war; Toller himself is a former military chaplain) while Toller murmurs to us in voice-over about the ecstatic thrill of having his beliefs and ideology questioned, tested, probed. That storyline intersects with an imminent celebration. The church, now primarily a tourist attraction, is turning 250 years old. For its re-consecration, a parade of dignitaries is being arranged by Abundant Life’s spiritual leader (Cedric Kyles, aka Cedric the Entertainer). There’s a shadowy figure of power in the background, a petroleum executive (Michael Gaston) who donates mightily to the megachurch. In a particularly rich scene, the oil exec locks horns with Toller, and the conservative man of business reveals that he can smell a meddling liberal of conscience a mile off. I’m being evasive about narrative details, not because Schrader constructs First Reformed like a mystery, exactly, but because its very real qualities of strangeness deserve a process of discovery. Toller’s encounter with the troubled eco-activist, who turns out to be an extreme example of the breed, changes him in small and large ways. Toller, who is not a well man, has a turbulent past (Victoria Hill plays a onetime lover, a choir director at Abundant Life) bleeding into an increasingly addled and fraught present. Hawke has never been better. I’ve found much of his screen work mannered and overeager, in both drama and comedy, but here all is lean, and unvarnished, and thoughtfully compelling. Seyfried and Kyles are exemplary, maintaining a tone of quiet gentleness even when their hearts are breaking a little for the man of the cloth in their midst. Schrader freely acknowledges the forerunners of First Reformed. In Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light (1963), a pastor contends with a man tortured by visions of nuclear apocalypse. In Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (1955), religious transcendence and ordinary despair feed each other, affecting the characters in different ways. Schrader lifts from both. These are all stories of men, inhabiting stark, bare-walled rooms where they can be alone with their angst. Schrader’s very much at home in these rooms. And yet First Reformed stakes out its own obsessive path, toward an ending that is uniquely Paul Schrader. (I don’t think it’s entirely successful; by design it’s abrupt but it feels rhythmically off.) Shooting on Long Island, NY, the film’s cinematographer, Alexander Dynan, responds to Schrader’s pristine compositions with precise shades of sunlight and interior shadows. Toller is in nearly every shot, and Hawke builds his portrait of a good man, lost, piece by piece. For such a deliberate exercise in a specific, methodical style, First Reformed is oddly bracing, full of unresolved, contradictory, vital ideas. The answers it provides hardly apply to the general flock, so to speak. But a spiritual inquiry can only care so much about the general audience. It’s too busy trying to work things out for itself.                — The Chicago Tribune/TNS

Here we go again. Last week, our films and filmmakers headed to the scenic French town for a bit of sun and a lot of hype. How many of the films that we take to Cannes each year actually end up being recognised as cinema of worth in the international arena? If truth be told, Indian cinema remains a bit of a joke in the international arena. We have the regular desi festival junkies who visit Cannes, Berlin and Toronto year after year. But what happens to films that are shown, and apparently applauded, at these global film festivals (every Indian entry claims to get a standing ovation)? Well, nothing. Hansal Mehta’s Omerta, which was screened at the Toronto Film Festival last year, released in India last month to near-empty theatres and abysmal collections. Anurag Kashyap’s Mukkabaaz which opened to tremendous expectations sank without a trace. With it also sank talented actor Vineet Singh’s hope of becoming a star. Not only do films get labelled ‘festival types’, actors too get branded as festival regulars. Nawazuddin Siddiqui has rapidly become one. He was seen at Cannes again this year representing Nandita Das’s Manto. A film that won plaudits from the critics but would be largely ignored by the masses who would rather see a bio-pic on Sanjay Dutt than Sadat Hassan Manto. The sad fact of life about self-crowned cinematic masterpieces is that they amount to nothing more than self-pleasure. All those associated with a ‘festival film’ think they have a great product on their hand while audiences prefer Judwa 8 to Omerta and Golmaal 19 to Titli. That’s the sobering truth all arthouse cinema must live with. At Cannes, I saw everyone — from Manoj Bajpai to Mallika Sherawat — this year. What were they doing there? Manoj, it seems, was representing a film titled Bhosle. Like many of the films that choose to be premiered at international film festivals, this one too is likely to sink when it releases in India. At least Manoj and Nawazuddin have a reputation for being festival-friendly actors. But what is Mallika Sherawat’s credentials for going to Cannes year after year? Whom does she represent? Has she ever had a single film of hers shown at Cannes? Does she even qualify as an actor anymore? We need to seriously answer questions about Indian cinema’s presence in the international arena. Besides Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, which Indian film in recent times has made a global impact? Shekhar Kapur, who is the only Indian filmmaker to make a global impact since Satyajit Ray, thinks India has a long way to go before making a mark in the Western market. “I think a global curiosity about Bollywood in the West has existed for nearly ten years. However, that curiosity still remains unexplored by us. I think we’ve a huge amount of filmmaking talent. But they are not provided the right opportunities.” Shekhar feels it is lack of funds which is the culprit. “There is a reason why China is so far ahead. They aspire to be world class. We don’t. Someone like Anurag Kashyap is defeated by the finances here,” he said. Bandit Queen, which Shekhar made, was done on a “really measly budget”, as he says it. But according to him the problem is that too many of Indian filmmakers aspire to do genres that do not come naturally to Indians. “They got very heavily influenced by Mexican films, because Mexican filmmakers have attained a global recognition that we have not,” he says, adding that everyone in India is happy just being a small player. “When our films do 200 crores or 300 crores we are happy. Everyone congratulates one another. Slumdog Millionaire did 2,000 crores,” he points out. Shekhar agrees that the only Indian film to have a made a global impact in recent times is The Lunchbox. Now director Ritesh Batra is making films from outside India. “I believe we’ve chained ourselves by celebrating the Indian market. It is dominated by just a handful of big players. Any business that is monopolised by a few cannot grow because there isn’t much innovation or diversity,” Shekhar says. I agree, wholeheartedly.

It is little more than a year since Canadian production, songwriting and remixing duo Banx & Ranx released their major label debut single. Lit made little impact on the charts. The same was true for their second single, Time Bomb, which featured guest vocals from Lady Leshurr. But it just needed one hit single to kickstart the chart career for Montreal-based KNY Factory (Banx) and Soke (Ranx). This has now materialised in the form of their UK smash hit success with Answerphone. The boys co-wrote Answerphone with featured vocalist Ella Eyre, producer/songwriter Jacob Manson and singer/songwriter/producer Shakka Philip. English singer/rapper Yxng Bane also contributed and performed a verse on the track. “We tried to keep things pretty cool when we played the Answerphone demo to our management,” smiled KNY Factory, real name Yannick Rastorgi. “We tried to make out that it was just a cool tune but the truth is we were really excited about the song and we really couldn’t hide this from our people.” “They felt exactly the same,” recalled Soke, real name Zacharie Raymond. “Everyone thought the song had massive potential. We just didn’t know if it was going to be a Banx & Ranx track or an Ella Eyre track. “We all loved Answerphone so much that the only fair thing to do was release it as a joint track, Banx & Ranx and Ella Eyre, rather than Banx & Ranx featuring Ella Eyre. But then Bane came on board to add his extra touch of magic to the song so the final credits were Banx & Ranx and Ella Eyre featuring Yxng Bane.” Although they only teamed up in 2014, KNY and Soke have been in the music business for around 15 years. “I’ve been doing music since I was 12,” Soke stated. “It got me out of trouble a lot of the time. I grew up in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. I started out as a DJ playing electronic, dance and rave music. I also rapped and had a deal with a local label.  “But I was mainly a producer. I produced dozens of hip hop albums after I moved to Montreal. By then, my music had changed to hip hop combined with the Caribbean styles of dancehall and reggae.” KNY was the perfect partner. Although born in Paris, France, his family moved to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe when he was two. “Most of my youth was spent listening to Caribbean music,” KNY explained. “Although my musical taste widened after my family relocated to Montreal, the Caribbean rhythms were always my first love.” The boys joined forces after Soke heard KNY’s remix of Eiffel 65’s Blue (Da Ba Dee). “I didn’t realise anyone else in the city was making that kind of music,” Soke remarked. “I had to meet him. We got on great, decided to record together and we’ve never looked back.” They initially made their name as remixers. Remixed songs by artists such as Bob Marley, Sean Paul, Diplo, Wayne Wonder and Capleton are among the tracks still offered for free download at (no www.) soundcloud.com/banxnranx. The duo also created official remixes for two songs, Saturn Barz and Let Me Out, from the Gorillaz album, Humanz. They produced Fuse ODG’s song, Window Seat, co-wrote and produced Sean Paul’s Crick Neck and shared the nomination for Latin Grammy Awards Album of the Year for their co-writing and production work on Nicky Jam’s Fenix. Answerphone emerged from one of numerous songwriting camps Banx & Ranx hold in London.  “We really enjoy working in these songwriting sessions,” KNY stated. “It’s a loose collection of writers, producers, musicians and singers which usually lasts for about a week. Everyone comes in, does their thing and we end up with a bunch of songs which are distributed among A&R people. Months, or even years, later, we either have hits or not.” The fast tracking of Answerphone from writing to release was a sure indication that everyone involved believed they had a hit. “You never really know,” Soke reflected. “We treat pretty much all our songs the same whatever our expectations might be. We make sure they are written and produced in the best way. After that, it’s out of our hands and the public decide if it’s going to be a hit.” in brief Kendrick Lamar African Americans make frequent accusations about alleged acts of racism committed by white people. Many of these are fully justified. But is it actually African Americans who are possibly among the most racist people on Earth? Let’s take the N-word as a prime example. The word is supposedly so heinously offensive to African Americans that it cannot be printed in full in this newspaper. Yet recent years have seen the N-word invade rap, hip hop, soul, and R&B music all performed by African American artists. It peppers the everyday speech of so many African American people. They seem to have no problem about this incredibly offensive N-word being used to the nth degree by members of their own race. But woe betide those of any other race who use the N-word even when they do so in the act of performing a song. Rapper Kendrick Lamar played a set at the Hangout Festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama. During the show, Kendrick invited a white woman, whose name was Delaney, to join him on stage in singing M.A.A.D City. The N-word is used 15 times in the song lyrics. Delaney not only knew the lyrics but sung them as they are heard on Kendrick’s recording. The angry reaction of booing and catcalling from the predominantly African American audience was so bad that Kendrick had to stop the performance and tell Delaney; “You gotta bleep one single word.” Would the crowd have responded in a similar manner if Kendrick had chosen an African American woman to sing with him? The audience knew the N-word was used all too often in M.A.A.D City and in many of Kendrick’s other songs. They wouldn’t have gone to see his show if they were offended by this. The problem was a white woman singing this heinously offensive word. Yet it would have been fine for an African American woman to do so. And there are still those who claim it is impossible for African American people to be racist. Prose/Manchester Survivors Choir Has any song title ever been more appropriate than A City United. Written and performed by Manchester band Prose, they are joined on the recently released track by the Manchester Survivors Choir. This is a musical initiative set up as a kind of support network for those who were in attendance at the Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena on the night of last year’s terrorist attack. Some 22 people were killed by the bomb blast. Many more received life-changing injuries. Prose were in their recording studio on the day after the attack. “Like everyone else, we felt devastated by what happened,” said singer Mike Murray. “We were talking about how awful it must be for the families of the victims. At that time, there were still people searching for their loved ones desperately hoping to find them alive. “The whole city was in shock that something like this could happen at a music concert with so many young, innocent people just trying to have a good time. We felt very emotional and the song just came from our feelings. Lee (Royle) started playing the piano, I started singing and we suddenly had the basis of the song.” Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham became aware of the track and asked Prose if they might be interested in releasing it as a charity single. The Manchester Survivors Choir heard about this and contacted Prose to ask if they could become part of the song. “They were very welcome,” Mike remarked. “We were basically singing about them so it was great to have the Choir on our recording.” A City United not only says everything about how Mancunians came together in the aftermath of the Arena attack but also includes the names of Manchester’s famous football teams in the title. Every penny from the song proceeds will be donated to the Manchester Emergency Fund and Peace Foundation. The accompanying video is posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZgLoxDCs8Y. Links to videos for more Prose songs can also be found on this webpage. Arctic Monkeys Arctic Monkeys have registered their sixth consecutive number one on the UK Albums chart. But the Sheffield quartet have also set a new mark for first week vinyl sales. In general, vinyl usually accounts for relatively few sales in this era of CD and digital purchases. But Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino shifted 24,500 vinyl units during its debut week. The album became by far the fastest-selling vinyl record over the last 25 years easily surpassing the 16,000 opening week sales of Liam Gallagher’s 2017 album, As You Were.

Prernaa Arora, who spearheads production company KriArj Entertainment Pvt Ltd, and had a fallout with actor-producer John Abraham and filmmaker Abhishek Kapoor on the rights of their films Parmanu and Kedarnath, says that she has been stabbed by some people whom she trusted a lot. The company made headlines when John’s JA Entertainment broke contract with KriArj Entertainment for Parmanu. John had filed criminal cases against Arora and her company for “cheating, breach of trust, defamation” and offences committed under the Information Technology Act. The Bombay High Court ruled in favour of John’s banner, ceasing the film’s association with KriArj Entertainment. Arora has broken her silence on the issue for the first time. Excerpts. Now that Parmanu is out, what do you have to say to John Abraham? I always thought he would understand the situation as a co-producer, if ever there was problem. Instead, he turned around to accuse me of defaulting on my agreement. What was the point of turning the whole partnership into a joke? I want to ask John, did he put any money in Parmanu? Does he have that kind of money needed to produce a film? As a producer what value did he bring to the table? KriArj has lately been under a shadow. What exactly happened? Shadows are cast in lives that have meaning and relevance. I welcomed the pain that I experienced in the past few months with as much respect as I welcomed the pleasures that destiny had in store for me last year. Yes, there was a storm around me. Some people whom I trusted chose to stab me in the back. Are you talking about Abhishek Kapoor the director of Kedarnath and John Abraham? I am not naming anyone. It isn’t dignified or decent to discuss one’s disappointments with individuals. Suffice it to say that people who tried to bring disrepute to my professional conduct and who tried to influence my associates, friends and colleagues against me failed miserably. But why don’t you let the truth come out? I don’t believe in crying and trying to get sympathy in public. Today, I am in a much better, far more secure space. I am ready to announce three big projects in June. I want to go back to that state of mind that I was in when I started off as producer with that professional and sincere superstar Akshay Kumar. I want to work with people like him who know how to respect a professional and a woman. You may not find too many Akshay Kumars in this industry… Then I’d rather not work with those with whom I am not happy or comfortable. I’ve realised I am in this industry for the long haul. Storms will come and go. Why have you not spoken out against the people who have maligned you? Because my DNA is not equipped to be abusive. My best wishes to these so-called heroes of the entertainment industry who have abused my trust in them. I wonder how they look their wives, sister and mothers in their eyes. What do you think you did wrong? Not doing my paperwork properly before signing deals. Signing MoUs instead of proper contracts. I worked with some people on emotion and trust when they didn’t deserve my trust. I should have listened to my lawyers. This business doesn’t operate on emotions. At the end of the day, contracts are flashed to prove you wrong. A very big superstar had warned me against signing without reading a contract. Do you feel betrayed? I feel stupid. I never read the fine prints. Never paid attention to 1-2 crore in the deal. Yeh sab bahot bhari para mere liye (I had to pay a heavy price for all this) (she breaks down). I want people who come to work in this entertainment industry to not make the mistakes I did. Yahan emotion nahin paisa chalta hai (Not emotions, but money works here). How did you cope with the crisis? For the past month, I stayed quietly in my room waiting for the storm to pass, wondering how one individual can make so many mistakes. I should have listened to my team before getting into half-baked deals. I’d bully my team into keeping quiet because I didn’t want to annoy the people who wanted to work with me. These same people have tried to destroy me. — IANS

Vicky Donor was on sperm donation, Madras Cafe was around the Sri Lankan civil war and Parmanu - The Story of Pokhran is on India’s 1998 nuclear tests. The subjects may seem fit for documentaries, but actor John Abraham — the common factor as the producer of the films — says his motive is to make commercially entertaining, engaging and non-formulaic cinema.Parmanu, which released on Friday, tells a story around the nuclear tests conducted in 1998 at Pokhran, Rajasthan. There’s a reason why John chose the subject. “I was very influenced by Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, and by the nuclear tests. It defined the trajectory in my life because of incidents that were associated with the sanctions that followed. I was planning to go somewhere, to a college, (but I) didn’t get through. There was anger at first; then, the understanding came that this (nuclear status) can make India great... I started thinking like an Indian and started feeling like a nationalist,” John says an interview. Why is there a need to tell this story to the audience today? “I think today’s youth does not know what happened 20 years ago in May 1998,” John said. In his head, when he thinks of the most defining thing in India’s history after Independence, he feels it’s one when India had circumvented US satellites, fooled everybody and conducted nuclear tests right under their nose. “It is the biggest case of nuclear espionage in the world, and it happened on Indian soil. I thought it was a story to be told. I asked myself, ‘Is this film very difficult to pull off?’ And then I smiled because I was going to do it. And because it was difficult to pull off, and was not a formula film, I decided to do it.” To answer the question straight, John said: “When I decided to do it, I knew I wanted to make an engaging thriller like Argo, Eye In The Sky, like Zero Dark Thirty, where it doesn’t matter if the young audience cares what happened 20 years ago or not. “But the by-product, like in any of my films — be it Vicky Donor or Madras Cafe — when you walk out, you walk out feeling that ‘Wow, I am proud to be an Indian... This is cool that India did this. I didn’t know this’. That’s what I wanted to achieve with this film. “I didn’t want to make an overtly patriotic jingoistic film... I am not here to make documentaries. I am here to make commercial films which give entertainment.” Marrying commerce with content was always his mainstay as a producer. “To marry the two is the toughest thing, and I try to achieve it most of the times,” said the 45-year-old, who has clocked 15 years in the film industry, dabbling in movies as different as Water and Dhoom, No Smoking and Garam Masala or a Taxi No. 9211 with Dostana. Yet, he said he felt the need to become a producer because he didn’t get to see or act in the kind of films he wanted. Now he feels “empowered”. “Our (banner’s) content is so curated and so researched that it’s very difficult to go wrong. Yes, everybody goes wrong with their choice, but the way we curate our subjects, we reduce the risk of the probability of failure.” The business parlance in John’s conversation stems from the fact that he is an economics graduate and an MBA degree holder. “In my life, I find it very important to tell the stories I want to tell. I want people to understand that I can make a difference to cinema, and being a management student, as they say, the higher the risk, the greater the profit. I will take that risk because very clearly, I am not afraid of failure. People leverage from their successes, I learn from my failures. “I’m one of those crazy guys who really enjoy failures. I have no fear in failing, and when you don’t have that, nothing can stop you,” he asserted. Parmanu has also left him wiser as a producer as he fought a legal battle for it. “Choose your partners wisely to see where the money comes from or doesn’t come from. Just be smart about it and work with trusted people in the industry who can help you deliver,” he said. This is also why John is trying to build his own “ecosystem”. “I’m creating a self-contained model in JA Entertainment where I get the best of the best to work together, hold on to each other and we create an army. But our USP will always remain the content,” added John, whose kitty is already full of diverse projects as an actor. There’s Satyamev Jayate, Batla House and RAW. He is also looking forward to create an Attack franchise in the “real action...very Dwayne Johnson, Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal space”. As for his ambitious project 1911, about Mohun Bagan’s historic win against an English football club in 1911, the football fanatic says “it’s something close to my heart and I won’t let it go so easily”. — IANS

Much like its protagonist, Solo: A Star Wars Story has had a crazy journey. The origin story of a young Han Solo was initially directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, before Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy stepped in to replace the duo with the reliable Ron Howard, who finished shepherding the film to the screen. The result? Well it’s a Star Wars story, but that’s about it. Solo is a minor effort in the canon, a well-intentioned but undeniably troubled effort to dive into the mysterious past of everyone’s favourite space outlaw. Alden Ehrenreich takes on the unenviable task of stepping into Harrison Ford’s shoes as Han Solo, but no floppy hairpiece or amount of rakish squinting can every truly come close to capturing Ford’s inimitable vibe — a cynical, nearly languid cool. Ehrenreich is a bit too earnest and smiley and broad as Solo, but over the course of the film, we see his inherent faith in others slowly drained away. The good news is Donald Glover, as the impeccably suave smuggler, gambler, lover and cape enthusiast Lando Calrissian, downright channels Billy Dee Williams, though he grabs ahold of the role and wrestles it into submission, making it his own. A Lando spinoff will be greenlit by the end of the weekend, undoubtedly. We follow young Han as he escapes a dismal childhood of crime on Corellia, and as he promises to return for his sweetheart Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). He joins the Imperial army and is soon looking for a way out, so he scams his way, along with new sidekick Chewie (Joonas Suotamo), onto a crew of thieves led by Beckett and Val (Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton). The script, by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan, is centred around two major heists of the highly-valued, highly unstable fuel source coaxium. The universe is run by the Empire and a slew of cruel crime bosses fighting for access to this precious resource, enslaving others and draining planets dry. Rebellion? It’s barely a whisper. But in Solo, “rebellion” becomes a full-throated cry, shouted most entertainingly by the cranky droid L3 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who just about steals Han Solo’s movie right out from under him. But there’s one jarring aspect of Solo that doesn’t match its generally spritely tone: the cinematography. Shot by the talented Bradford Young, who displayed a detailed sense of tactility and practical lighting in Selma, Arrival and A Most Violent Year, he brings this approach to Solo, and the dim, dusty look just doesn’t fit. Scenes are saturated in blue or yellow, particles filtering through the air, lit by blown-out windows offering backlight to the actors to the point where it can be hard to see. It’s moody, atmospheric and textured, and the completely wrong choice for the film, especially pitched against leading man Ehrenreich’s performance, which is only a couple of notches down from his Hail, Caesar singing cowboy. Whether it’s the performances, the style or the narrative, which is light as air and frantically paced, there’s just something that doesn’t gel with Solo. It doesn’t feel like a cohesive piece, so while it’s at times charming, and does get off the ground in the last act, the getting there is extremely bumpy. Seems like that’s a theme for everyone involved. — TNS

It is five years since electronic music producer and musician Jon Hopkins released his last studio album. Immunity was nominated for the 2013 Mercury Prize but lost out to James Blake’s sophomore album, Overgrown. This was 38-year-old Jon’s second Mercury nomination. Two years earlier, Diamond Mine, his collaboration album with Scottish singer/ songwriter King Creosote, had been beaten by PJ Harvey’s eighth studio album, Let England Shake. Jon could well be in line for a third Mercury nomination with his recently released fifth studio album, Singularity. Unlike his previous albums, all of which attracted acclaim from those within the music industry, Singularity has become a massive mainstream hit. In addition to topping the Dance/ Electronic chart, it has entered the UK Albums chart at number nine. “I’m delighted that so many people are enthusiastic about the album,” smiled Kingston upon Thames-born Jon. “It’s an album I’ve wanted to make for the last 15 years. But it’s only been during the last couple of years that I’ve been able to figure out how to make it happen. “There were several things I knew in advance. These included the title; it was always going to be called Singularity. I always wanted the album to begin and end with the same simple tone and for each sound to seemingly grow out of everything else. I knew what I wanted, but I had to wait for the music technology to catch up with my ideas. The programme I use now is Ableton. This gave me the facility for one sound to gradually lead to another. One track on the album has a synth sound morphing into a choral sound. The idea of a choir developing from electronic sounds is something I’ve been looking to do for all these years.” The music on Singularity was shaped by Jon’s experiences of meditation and trance states. It is said that the tracks explore the dissonance between dystopian urbanity and the green forest from the opening note of foreboding to the final sound of acceptance. Make of that what you will. But Jon is a staunch advocate of the relaxation techniques invoked by both autogenic training and Transcendental Meditation. “It’s a way for me to get music ideas flowing which are totally uninhibited. I don’t practice those techniques for very long during my average day but it’s a state of mind I try to visit whenever possible.” Delighting in the combination of sounds dates back to Jon’s childhood. His taste could hardly be more eclectic. He was a devotee of early house music, loved synth bands such as Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys but spent five years studying classical piano in the junior department of London’s Royal College of Music. “I really started at the age of three when my parents bought me a toy xylophone. I don’t actually remember but my parents say I put the notes in the order of scale and composed a simple piece of music on it. They realised I had an aptitude for music. I played a piano at a friend’s house and showed enough ability for my parents to buy a piano for me.” Jon found himself labelled as a child prodigy, particularly after winning a competition to perform a concert of Ravel pieces with a full orchestra. But despite saying Ravel and Stravinsky are his favourite composers, Jon’s love for classical music gradually subsided as his attention turned more towards electronic sounds. “I got my first job at 17 playing keyboards in Imogen Heap’s band. Our first album, iMegaphone, was well received. I thought everything would take off and that would be my job. But songs for the second album were rejected. There were changes at the record company and Imogen was dropped. There was no money coming in and I had to do something else. “I created my first album, Opalescent, and worked as a studio session musician. This was my life for several years during which I also released my second album, Contact Note. My friend Leo Abrahams introduced me to Brian Eno and that’s when my career really started to take off.” Jon’s fruitful collaborations with Eno led to co-writing and production work with other artists. Brian also introduced Jon to Coldplay. “He was producing the songs on their Viva La Vida album and invited me to join Coldplay in the studio for a day. That day turned into a year. I co-produced several tracks, played various instruments on songs and the band used music from one of my own compositions on two of their tracks.” Jon was Coldplay’s opening act on their world tour to promote Viva La Vida. His work was also noticed by others in the entertainment world. Choreographer Wayne McGregor asked Jon to compose music for Entity, a new production by Wayne’s Random Dance group. Such was the acclaim that Entity was toured around the world for two years. Some tracks on Jon’s third album, 2009’s Insides, were based on the music he composed for Entity. “That was my first hit album. It did well on the dance charts. I also promoted it with shows across Europe and America, performed at music festivals and opened concert tours for artists such as The xx, Four Tet and Royksopp.” The following few years saw Jon involved in a variety of projects ranging from production and remixing to collaborative albums and composing film scores. His fourth LP, Immunity, was another Dance / Electronic Albums chart hit and gave him his first mainstream chart entry peaking at number 63 in the UK. “It was four years between Insides and Immunity and now five years to Singularity. I don’t deliberately leave it so long between albums. I’m in the fortunate position of being involved with so many other things. This stemmed from the work I did with Coldplay. That really raised my profile. “I also find making my albums is an all-consuming process. I tend to create tracks in phases of intense work. It will start at quite a low level with ideas which can be tweaked here and there.  “But studio work consumes all my energy. I’ll work all day and then find it difficult to sleep because I’ll still be thinking about the music. It’s an obsessive process. Luckily, this happens in bursts. I couldn’t stay healthy if it was like that all the time.” in brief Scott Hutchison Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison has become the latest prominent musician to take his own life. The 36-year-old singer, guitarist and songwriter suffered bouts of depression throughout his life. The name, Frightened Rabbit, was actually given to Scott by his mother as a child because of his chronic shyness. He initially performed under this name as a solo artist before other musicians were recruited to form the band. Their first two albums, 2007’s Sing the Greys and 2008’s The Midnight Organ Fight, made little impression on the charts. But 2010’s The Winter of Mixed Drinks hit number 61 in the UK and number 84 on the Billboard 200. 2013’s Pedestrian Verse and 2016’s Painting of a Panic Attack were both big UK hits and sold well around the world. Frightened Rabbit were definitely a band on the rise. But professional success is not always matched in someone’s personal life. Scott was staying at the Dakota Hotel in South Queensferry, near Edinburgh, when he last used his Twitter account. His tweets read: “Be so good to everyone you love. It’s not a given. I’m so annoyed that it’s not. I don’t live by that standard and it kills me. Please hug your loved ones. I’m away now. Thanks.” His body was later found by the marina in nearby Port Edgar. His bandmates had already expressed concern about Scott describing him as being in a fragile state and asking anyone who saw him to contact the police. The news of his passing elicited this message: “There are no words to describe the overwhelming sadness and pain that comes with the death of our beloved Scott, but to know he is no longer suffering brings us some comfort.” James Veteran Manchester indie band James have announced August 3 as the release date for their 15th studio album, Living in Extraordinary Times. It is the follow up to 2016’s Girl at the End of the World which hit number two on the UK chart and was only held out of top spot by Adele’s phenomenally successful 25. Two of the album tracks have already been heard on James’ recently released EP. These are Hank and the EP title-track, Better Than That. There are no official videos for either song but an official audio for Hank is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Vf8dNikAk while Better Than That can be heard at www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWji1uB-dcc The other two EP tracks can also be heard online. Busted is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dp8Vy16-og while Broken By The Hurt is posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UZHkGObAIk

STARRING: Alia Bhatt, Vickey Kaushal  DIRECTOR: Meghna Gulzar  RATING: **** Sometimes a flawed diamond can sparkle and shine brighter than a polished one. Raazi is that triumphant film which leaves you with some serious misgivings. The story, as we all know by now, is based on the real events during the eve of the 1971 Indo-Pak war when a valorous young Muslim Indian girl Sehmat decided to cross the border to become wife in a Pakistani family of army men to gather information for the Indian government. It is an audacious tale, and one waiting to be filmed, as a work of cinematic art Raazi scores very highly, almost rivalling the director Meghna Gulzar’s previous film Talvar in terms of the emotional ground the plot covers while uncovering the truth about the lies that we tell for the sake of “honour”. In Talvar it was the family honour at stake, in Raazi it is “country”. “Mulk se aage kuch bhi nahin (there’s nothing beyond the country),” is said in various permutations and combinations and you feel, Sehmat (played with an intuitive rather than an intellectual brilliance by Alia Bhatt) is trying more to convince herself than others around her. Raazi is a film that gives us true female hero of her times and our times. Sehmat puts family, personal happiness and inter-personal relations behind her country and lets the milk of human kindness flow into the spirit of nationalism. But the same dedicated fiercely patriotic child-woman happily betrays the people who trust her and take her in as the daughter-in-law of their family in spite of her being from the hostile country. Can a woman who betrays those who trust her blindly, really protect her country? Apparently, she can and this courageous but misguided woman did exactly that. I don’t know how much of the film actually happened in the real Sehmat’s life. But what transpires in the film is pretty much improbable, if not altogether bizarre, as one after the other Sehmat, the Indian spy, compromises the role of Sehmat, the Pakistani daughter-in-law. Bravely director Meghna Gulzar and her co-writer Bhavani Iyer refuse to demonise the enemy. This is, at once, the film’s biggest strength and its greatest failure. For, in humanising the Pakistani family of Sehmat’s husband Iqbal (played with unnerving quietude by Vickey Kaushal) the narrative takes the risk of seriously weakening the female hero’s patriotic fervour. Many times I was horrified by Sehmat’s abuse of her in-laws’ hospitality and trust the easy way would have been to simply show the Pakistani household as a villainous den of radical fanatics. But Sehmat’s in-laws and especially husband are suave, gentle, educated and cultured people. This adds to Sehmat’s dilemma of conscience that neither Sehmat not the film is fully able to resolve even till the end. Alia Bhatt lets her performance merge in Sehmat’s moral dilemma — we often see her break down in private. But her grief earns no sympathy from us, her imagined moral high-ground is not only patronising to the people whom she betrays it is also unconvincing to us who watch in horrified silence as she murders and double-deals with a defiant impunity. Speaking of silence there is plenty of it in the storytelling. Meghna Gulzar basks in the quietude that underscores the turmoil of a soul tormented by the guilt of her betrayal. The most memorable moments in the film are those between the Indian wife and Pakistani husband, played with an empathy and wisdom by the two lead actors that the script doesn’t always support. The supporting cast, especially Rajit Kapoor (as Alia’s father) and Shishir Mishra (as her Pakistani father-in-law) is excellent. No, I didn’t come away from Raazi convinced that country comes ahead of familial allegiance. Neither, I felt, is the protagonist fully sehmat (content in Hindi) with that line of thought. Worse still, Alia Bhatt fails to convey Sehmat’s anguished repudiation of a spy’s double life of deception in her end-speech. It is the only time Alia is unconvincing perhaps, because she is unconvinced. Finally, she also seems to question the film’s morality. Nation first is fine, but what about the people you let down as you carry that flag up that mountain that takes you to the moral high-ground? — IANS

Noted film actor Manoj Bajpayee says attacks on films and filmmakers don’t bother him as creative minds cannot be bent or broken. The spate of incidents involving protests against films and filmmakers in India doesn’t seem to have rattled Manoj, who said that filmmakers are born rebels who choose the creative line in face of stringent opposition from their families and society and hence don’t bend to protests and opposition of any kind. “I don’t think any creative person would be fearful enough to stop making films just because some hooligans have become a problem. They will not. Creative persons have chosen this field by revolting against the norms of the society. They have been rebellious since their childhood. “Their parents may have wanted them to become something else, doing a normal 9 to 5 job, but they opted for uncertain world of the cinema. So they are used to protests, they are used to obstructions, used to restrictions. They have left everything to do what they are doing now. They are creative because they are rebels,” he said. “You cannot bend or break them. I don’t know of a single film or form of art that has been abandoned due to protests or opposition,” Manoj, said whilst promoting his upcoming film Bhonsle at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival. Dressed in a jet black jacket and dark sunglasses to go with, Manoj looked dashing against the backdrop of an azure blue sea and bright skies at the Majestic Beach at Cannes where he released the first look, in the form of a poster, of Bhonsle. “We didn’t release a trailer or a teaser as our concentration here (in Cannes) is to pitch the film to the organisers and programmers of film festivals, to the journalists and to the sales and marketing persons from this industry. We want to excite them about the film and the people associated with this project as well as excite them about the intention behind this film. Cannes opens doors to all festivals and markets around the world,” he said. Manoj said Bhonsle was about an old policeman who does not want to retire from his job. But forced to retire, he goes to this place where no one knows him or about his past and he is all alone. The backdrop of the film is completely political. Yet, in the midst of all this loneliness set in a noisy background, he develops a special, but undefined, relationship with a migrant girl who lives next door to his house. This film is about this relationship. The actor said he chose to act in the independent film due to the challenges posed by the script and the role. “If there is no challenge, then, why do an independent film? Independent films have ample scope to test any great actor or test the acting skills of anyone. They push you not only to do better, but also to learn a few more skills that are needed to do those roles. These come from young film directors who have been watching these kinds of films, from all over the world, right since their childhood,” he added. Manoj is also very optimistic about the fate of independent cinema in India. “Definitely, the situation of independent cinema in India has improved a lot. You can see the presence of Indian independent filmmakers and their films all over the world in various international film festivals. It is amazing. The way it has been growing multifold and in leaps and bounds, it has been amazing,” he said. “I really feel that in a place like Cannes new filmmakers from India, from different languages, should make it a point to come here together and show their presence, show their strength. And also tell the world that the Indian film industry is not only about song and dance, it is also about very strong content and has lots of very creative young filmmakers,” he added. Manoj said that though he could not rule out directing a film at some stage, at present he was focussed on acting. “At this point of time, there are really some great characters and some good roles to be performed, so my mind is just focused on the acting.” On the question of exploitation of women in the cinema industry and the #MeToo revolution, he said women have been vulnerable all over the world. “The #MeToo movement is not the creation of India, it is an American creation. That, itself, says that women all over the world are vulnerable. Women in India have been speaking out, too. Just that you may not have heard about it.” — IANS Star wins Best Actor at NY film festival Actor Manoj Bajpayee bagged the Best Actor Award at the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) for his work in Gali Guliyan (In the Shadows). Acknowledging the praise and good wishes coming to him, Manoj posted on Twitter: ‘Gali Guliyan’ gets an honour at New York Indian Film Festival. Congratulations to the team of and the captain Dipesh Jain (director).” Jain said in a statement: “We are elated to hear about Manoj sir’s award at NYIFF. It is an acknowledgement of his stellar performance in the film. We consider ourselves very blessed to have worked with an actor like him who embraces his character so seamlessly and makes it his own. Heartiest congratulations to him once again.” Gali Guliyan is a Hindi psychological drama about a man trapped within the walls and alleys of Old Delhi and his own mind. He attempts to break free to find a human connection. The film has on board an ensemble cast including Ranvir Shorey, Neeraj Kabi and Shahana Goswami along with debutant child actor Om Singh. Produced by Shuchi Jain of Exstant Motion Pictures, Gali Guliyan will soon release worldwide. It has already travelled to over 15 international film festivals. — IANS

More than a dozen singers recorded the female vocals for Zedd’s world-wide smash hit single, The Middle. These included massively popular artistes such as Camila Cabello, Demi Lovato and Carly Rae Jepsen. But it was a rather lesser known American country singer named Maren Morris who found herself selected for the finished version. “I believe some of those other singers actually said they didn’t want to be on the song,” remarked 28-year-old Maren. “An electro-dance number is obviously not my normal musical field. Some of the reviewers mentioned this, but were generally very kind about my performance. “I loved doing the song. Zedd was great to work with and so easy-going. It felt like we’d been working together for years rather than this being the first time. “I’m always looking to push my personal musical boundaries, but I didn’t think The Middle really took me too far. It’s not a massively uptempo dance track. The song is a little bit pop, some R&B and even a little bit of country so it reflected my numerous influences as an artiste. It’s also relatable, emotional and immediately catchy. I thought there were no limits with the song and this has proved true.” Although Maren was largely unknown on the international music market, the last two years have seen her star rise dramatically on the US country music scene. She had released three previous albums all of which made no impression on the charts. But Maren’s 2016 major label debut LP, Hero, hit number one on the Top Country Albums chart and reached number five on the Billboard 200. It also spawned three big hit singles on the Hot Country Songs chart. “It probably sounds silly now, but I hadn’t intended to be an artiste. This wasn’t so when I was a child. If my parents had a karaoke machine at family parties, I’d belt out Patsy Cline or LeAnn Rimes songs all night. “My dad bought me a guitar when I was 12. I took to it immediately. I now had the means to turn the stories and poems I’d been writing into songs.  “I became a good enough guitarist to actually perform. I come from Arlington, Texas, and started playing all over the state. I’d play any bar or club that would let me in. I was the only kid in school who had a job at weekends.” Having built a solid following on the Texas country music circuit, Maren moved to Nashville, Tennessee, when she was 20. But she entered the home of country music with no aspirations to perform. Her ambition was to become a songwriter. “I wanted to work with as many co-writers as possible. Along the way, I co-wrote hundreds of songs and built lasting friendships with those co-writers who I particularly enjoyed working with.” Tim McGraw and Kelly Clarkson were among the major artistes who recorded Maren’s songs. But there was still a part of her which wanted the songs to be performed exactly as she would wish. This led to Maren playing the occasional local gig. As word about her spread, the small venues became larger and the gigs more frequent. Then came the offers to open for prominent stars. Maren was sharing the bill with artists such as Little Big Town, Sam Hunt, Loretta Lynn and Chris Stapleton. “I would have been happy to remain as a songwriter. It wasn’t really a conscious decision to perform again. There was just this voice in my head which kept telling me I had to sing my songs.” Maren’s self-titled 2015 EP paved the way for her chart-topping success with Hero. The EP reached number 22 on the Top Country Albums chart and peaked at number 96 on the Billboard 200. “I’d put out the EP on Spotify before getting my record deal with Columbia Nashville. It registered more than two and a half million streams in a month and three of the tracks made Spotify’s US and Global Viral 50 charts. This was what attracted the interest of record labels.” The success of Hero and lead single, My Church, saw Maren receive a string of prestigious award nominations. She was the most-nominated country music artist at the 2017 Grammy awards winning the Best Country Solo Performance category. Other notable triumphs were being named New Artist of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards, New Female Vocalist of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards and Best New Country Artist at the Radio Disney Music Awards. Most of last year was spent on the road either with her own Hero Tour or in partnership with Sam Hunt on his 15 in a 30 Tour. Maren also released Dear Hate, a song she wrote and recorded with Vince Gill, in response to the Las Vegas Strip shooting. All proceeds were donated to the Music City Cares Fund. But 2017 also marked Maren’s engagement to fellow country artiste Ryan Hurd. The couple were married this past March. “All the co-writing really paid off big time for me. I met Ryan in 2013 when we co-wrote Last Turn Home for Tim McGraw. This began a great writing partnership and a wonderful friendship but it was two more years before we began dating.  “There was always this amazing chemistry between us and our foundation as a couple was in writing so many songs together. We finally thought, why are we avoiding a romantic relationship? Ryan is so special. I couldn’t be happier.” in brief Gwen Stefani/Blake Shelton Although marriage may not figure in their immediate future, Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton certainly seem to be a happy couple.  The two singer/songwriters hail from very different musical backgrounds. Country star Blake didn’t even know what ska was until Gwen introduced him to her style of music. But if he was unfamiliar with her sound, Blake certainly knew Gwen’s face before they got together. “He dated a girl for three months who had pictures of me plastered all over her bedroom,” Gwen laughed. “It’s kind of weird that Blake and I should have ended up together after that. “Blake is like a musical jukebox. He likes a lot of different stuff. But the place where we really meet is at soft rock love songs from the 1970s. He was amazed to learn Bread were one of my favourite groups ever. “We have to agree to disagree on ska though. I put together a ska and reggae playlist for Valentine’s Day a couple of years ago. Blake gave it a listen but wasn’t too impressed.” Florence + The Machine Florence + The Machine’s fourth studio album, High As Hope, is set for release on June 29. Their first three albums all topped the UK chart while their last LP, 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, also hit number one on the Billboard 200. Florence issued Sky Full of Song for last month’s Record Store Day. The accompanying video can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1TSiB9OuVM But Hunger is the official lead single from High As Hope. The track is available now while the music video is posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GHXEGz3PJg “The song is deeply personal,” Florence said of Hunger. “There is just this feeling sometimes that you’re not good enough and have to be perfect. It started when I was a teenager and is still with me now.” Celine Dion Canadian superstar Celine Dion has issued her first English language single since 2016’s Recovering. The song, Ashes, is taken from the soundtrack of anti-hero movie, Deadpool 2, which goes on general release this week. It was Deadpool himself, otherwise actor Ryan Reynolds, who wrote to Celine asking if she would like to be part of his “masterpiece.” “Over the years, I’ve received incredible songs and been involved in fun projects,” Celine remarked. “Ashes is one of those songs and Deadpool 2 is off the charts.” The accompanying video was shot in The Colosseum at Caesars Palace where Celine stages her Las Vegas residency. It also features some clips from the film and sees Deadpool perform a dance around Celine. As emotive as the song may be, the end of the video shows that everything should not be taken too seriously. It can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX11yw6YL1w. Two official trailers have been released for Deadpool 2. The first is posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=D86RtevtfrA while the second is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=20bpjtCbCz0 Longer trailers can also be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGeEMTYZiZg, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g7whpsb0pk and www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhH4L7Zmack brief

The do it yourself concept is not particularly prevalent in the music industry. At least, not when it comes to anything other than writing your own songs. But American blues-rock quartet Black Stone Cherry do not buy in to that practice. As far as they are concerned, the band want to do as much as possible themselves. “This is something which has developed during the course of our career,” stated singer and lead guitarist Chris Robertson. “We didn’t have the confidence or knowhow to do anything but write our own songs back in 2006 when we recorded our first album. In fact, it took 10 years before we felt able to self-produce our own recordings. That was for our fifth album, Kentucky. In addition to self-producing the songs on Family Tree, Black Stone Cherry’s recently released UK top 10 sixth studio album, Chris was entrusted with the task of mixing them. “It’s great that Chris has the ability to mix the songs,” said guitarist Ben Wells. “We’re trying to do everything more and more in-house. That feels really good and really special. This makes us feel particularly close to our new album as we had pretty much everything to do with it from top to bottom.” The cover artwork was created by bass player Jon Lawhon. “I always enjoyed things like classic movies and the advertising posters for them. Having this kind of interest led me firstly to designing our drumheads and then to thinking I could design the Family Tree album cover. The other guys were encouraging and we were really pleased with the end result.” Hailing from Edmonton, Kentucky, Jon, Chris and drummer John Fred Young were childhood friends. They attended the same high school and began performing together as part of the drumline in their school band. “We played in the band for three years,” Jon recalled. “I think we can attribute that time in drumline to how tight we are as a band now. When you are playing percussion instruments together, you have to be one hundred percent on. It’s not like a guitar where a note can carry over. Drumming is an instantaneous beat. If you are not together, the whole thing falls apart.” The boys met Ben in 2001 when Black Stone Cherry was officially formed. “We’d been playing together since our early teens but Ben took everything to a different level,” smiled John Fred, son of The Kentucky Headhunters’ singer and rhythm guitarist Richard Young. “It got rolling when we first jammed together. We asked if Ben would like to practice with us. He came in with three guitars. The rest of us had one instrument apiece. We laughed that Ben was ready to go out on tour.” Ben is credited with Black Stone Cherry evolving into a rock band. “They were playing a lot of blues and soul stuff,” Ben remarked. “I was much more into rock so I suggested we try some rock songs. The guys were also into rock but just thought that they might stand out more as a blues band. We basically transformed into playing southern blues rock.” The fledgling band rehearsed in the same outbuilding on the Young family farm which had been used by The Kentucky Headhunters since 1968. “I owe so much of my music development to my dad but particularly to my uncle Fred,” John Fred stated. “He plays drums in The Kentucky Headhunters and gave me my first drum kit when I was five. I just beat on it then, I didn’t know what to do. “As I got older though, uncle Fred helped me a lot. He showed me the rudiments of drumming and guided me along the way as I developed my own style. The rehearsal facility was put at our disposal and we had nothing but encouragement from everyone.” Black Stone Cherry began performing at small venues in Edmonton and around Metcalfe County, Kentucky. They released their first demo CD in 2003 and recorded their self-titled debut album three years later. After doing so, they played a homecoming concert in the gym at their old high school. “That was a great experience,” Jon reflected. “Our former school principal invited us to do the gig. Edmonton only has a population of about 1,500 people and just about everyone was at the show. It’s something we’ll never forget.” Their first album peaked at number 90 on the Billboard 200. Subsequent albums have been much bigger hits. As popular as the band may be in America, they are much bigger in Europe. British fans are particularly enthusiastic. Apart from their debut album, which reached number 34, all of their other studio LPs have topped the UK rock chart. Their last three have also made the mainstream top 10. “I think the rock music TV channels and magazines have been a big help to us in the UK,” Ben suggested. “We don’t have these things in America so the word is only spread through concerts rather than the visual or written media. But the UK fans are something else. We’ve sold out arena tours and headlined music festivals. We couldn’t ask for better support.” Despite Black Stone Cherry’s extensive touring schedule, the band members all enjoy solid family lives. For Chris though, the time away from his wife and son can be particularly hard. He has been diagnosed as a manic depressive. “Depression is a disease, just like anything else,” he insisted. “But most people don’t regard it as such because it’s a mental rather than physical illness. I suffer from severe depression and anxiety but most people have the attitude of ‘you’ll get through it, you’ll be alright.’ We don’t have the same support system or help associated with other diseases. “I kept silent about my problems for years because I grew up in an area where you don’t talk about stuff like that. But with the likes of Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell taking their own lives through depression, I felt I had to speak out. I’ve been with my wife since we were 16. If it wasn’t for her and our son, I don’t think I could have made it through.” Family Tree will always be a particularly special album for Chris. His five-year-old son makes a guest appearance on You’ve Got The Blues. “I was working on stuff at the house prior to making the record and he was always running around singing that song. I thought I’d record him and tuck it in somewhere in the song. “But he sounded so cool that we put him right at the front of the song. It’s so cool and something the two of us will have forever. We can tell the story for the rest of our lives and I’m super happy we got to do that.” His son was also the inspiration behind another track, the emotive ballad My Last Breath. “We’d played a show in Spokane, Washington. I sat down afterwards, started playing my guitar and immediately sung what is now the chorus. It just kind of happened. The whole song is me talking to my son. It’s all the things I’d want to say to him in my final moments about how much he and his mother mean to me. It’s one of my favourite songs we’ve ever recorded. It really comes from the heart.” in  brief Ariana Grande American singer/ songwriter Ariana Grande has set a new Billboard chart record. Her latest release, No Tears Left To Cry, is the lead single from Ariana’s upcoming fourth studio album. It debuted at number three on the Hot 100. In so doing, she set a record as the only artist to have the lead singles from her first four albums all debut in the top ten. The Way, lead single from Ariana’s 2013 debut album, Yours Truly, opened at number ten. Problem, from 2014’s My Everything, hit number three while the title-track from 2016’s Dangerous Woman debuted at number 10. ‘N Sync The 2,636th star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame belongs to former boy band ‘N Sync. Unveiled on April 30, the ceremony shut down Hollywood Boulevard as hordes of screaming and chanting fans camped out overnight to see Justin Timberlake, Joey Fatone. J.C. Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick and Lance Bass. All this despite ‘N Sync releasing no albums of new material since 2001’s Celebrity. Their fans left the group in no doubt as to what they would like to happen. There was respectful silence as each member made a speech but these were followed by the fans all chanting Reunite. Zayn Malik Following Zayn Malik’s confession that his new single, Let Me, was written about his split from American model Gigi Hadid, it seems that her attitude towards the former One Direction star has softened. The couple had been dating since 2015. It was Gigi who ended their relationship earlier this year. But Zayn and Gigi were recently photographed in New York sharing a kiss.  Zayn said he had wanted to be with Gigi for the rest of their lives. Perhaps his hope will be realised after all.

Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra (QPO) will hold its next concert Brahms’ Second Symphony at Qatar National Convention Centre Auditorium 3 on May 5 (tomorrow) at 7:30pm. The concert will be conducted by Gianluigi Gelmetti. Anton Pavlovskiy, will play cello at the concert. Gianluigi Gelmetti is one of today’s most prestigious conductors. Since his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Italian conductor, pupil of Sergiu Celibidache, Franco Ferrara and Hans Swarowski, regularly appears on the podium of the world’s most important opera houses and festivals. He was principal conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra for ten years and music director of the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome from 2000 to 2009. Since 2004, he has been principal conductor and artistic director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He also regularly works at the Monte Carlo Opera and the Royal Opera house in Covent Garden. Cellist in the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, Anton Pavlovsky has been a veteran member at leading positions in many reputable orchestras in Russia such as the Russian National Orchestra, National Philharmonic of Russia and Svetlanov State Symphony, appearing in major concert halls of Moscow and in the Netherlands, Germany, UK, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Norway. Pavlovsky was born in 1985 in Ufa, Russia. He graduated from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and completed his postgraduate studies under Natalia Shahovskaya. In addition, he had the privilege to work with such eminent artistes as Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Shafran, Mikhail Khomitser, David Geringas, Lluis Claret and Eberhard Finke.

Few films, if any, have had a trajectory quite like Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner. Dismissed by critics, abandoned by audiences, mocked for a last-minute voice-over its credited screenwriters abhorred, its nervy mixture of science fiction and film noir was pronounced dead on arrival. Except it wasn’t. Powered by its visually intoxicating look at a dystopian future that seemed all too plausible, Blade Runner rose from the grave to become a tastemaker’s choice. So much so that it inspired a $150-million sequel, Blade Runner 2049, made by top creative people like director Denis Villeneuve and star Ryan Gosling who consider the original one of their hardcore favorites. So much for being DOA. Given all these ups and downs, what’s remarkable about Blade Runner 2049 is how good it is. You can quibble with aspects of it and people being people (as opposed to replicants) surely will. But the bottom line is indisputable: As shaped by Villeneuve and his masterful creative team, especially production designer Dennis Gassner and cinematographer Roger Deakins, this film puts you firmly, brilliantly, unassailably in another world of its own devising, and that is no small thing. As co-written by Hampton Fancher (back from the original) and Michael Green, Blade Runner 2049 is set 30 years after the first film’s enigmatic ending. It follows a next generation LAPD blade runner (Gosling) who scours Southern California for rogue replicants (machine-made humans) to destroy and stumbles on a mystery with potentially profound consequences. Strongly directed by Villeneuve, whose last film was another otherworldly epic, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 manages for the most part to pull off a very delicate dance. On the one hand, it couldn’t be more respectful of and indebted to the original. It doesn’t just use that film’s celebrated visual conceptualisation of 2019 Los Angeles as its jumping off point, it brings back star Harrison Ford and has such a multitude of references to its predecessor, including an updated version of the spinner flying car, that it’s dizzying trying to keep track of them all. Yet Blade Runner 2049 never feels like it isn’t its own film. It smartly expands on the questions of what is human and what is not that were originally contained in Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and extends its geographical reach south to San Diego and east to an eerie Las Vegas choking in red dust. Also, thanks to top casting director Francine Maisler, familiar faces like Robin Wright, Jared Leto and Dave Bautista smoothly share the screen with less-seen but completely compelling players like Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks and Carla Juri. All of this is not to say that there aren’t hiccups along the way. Overly worried, perhaps, about the shadow of its predecessor, Blade Runner 2049 feels too careful at times, and because it’s overly long at 2 hours and 43 minutes (including eleven minutes of credits) it takes longer than it should to involve us emotionally, to come into its own. As with the original, it is this film’s knockout visuals that hold us until the feelings inherent in the story kick in. In this it was a smart idea to set the story three decades down the road, both close enough to and far enough from what came before to allow for startling visual variations. Production designer Gassner and his team take full advantage of that, including the use of practical sets instead of CGI whenever possible. Suffice it to say everything you remember about the first Blade Runner world has gotten worse — gotten, in Villeneuve’s preferred language, more brutal. The weather is savage, the pollution so thick daylight is almost non-existent, the buildings more fortress-like, the polyglot crowds on the streets more hostile. Also progressing, paradoxically, is the technology for the huge billboards that dot downtown LA. In one of the film’s more bravura moments, these are now gigantic, 3-D hologram nudes that have the capacity to engage a passersby in conversation. It’s as strange and arresting as it sounds. Before the action proper begins, text on screen catches us up with what’s been happening since the last film. A global food crisis was resolved by blind and bearded scientist Niander Wallace (Leto), who shared his patents for genetically modified food with a grateful world. Wallace also takes over the bankrupt Tyrell Corporation, responsible for the original replicants, and creates a new line of androids programmed to be more docile and follow orders. The older, more obstreperous models are hunted by newer models like KD6-3-7. Everyone calls him K. With his ability to infuse emotion into an artificial being, Gosling was the consensus choice to play K, content to do his violent job and come home. The light of his life is fellow replicant Joi (an evocative De Armas), who, in an increasingly haunting riff on Pinocchio, desperately wants to be a real girl. Blade Runner 2049 has a complex and twisty plot that kicks in when K makes a disturbing discovery after confronting ornery replicant Sapper Morton (Bautista). Keeping his actions increasingly hidden from his LAPD superior Lt. Joshi (Wright), he decides to investigate. K’s explorations involve contact with strange worlds, like a Dickensian salvage operation/orphanage, and way unusual people, like Dr Ana Stelline (Juri), tasked with creating memories for replicants. Also, no surprise here, K makes a point of trying to find Rick Deckard, the original blade runner, effectively played by Ford, now looking craggy enough for a spot on Mt. Rushmore. More ominously, these investigations bring K to the attention of the powerful Wallace and his trusted right hand, the high-functioning replicant Luv (Hoeks). She looks and dresses like an angel, but nothing in this world is as it seems. Blade Runner 2049’s plot finally gets a bit too twisty for its own good, but that doesn’t matter as much as you might think. Villeneuve and company have cast a powerful and disturbing visual spell, thrusting us into a world compelling enough to get lost in. “I’ve seen some things you people wouldn’t believe,” Rutger Hauer’s renegade replicant Roy Batty famously says in the first film, and viewers of this one will feel just the same. — Los Angeles Times/TNS DVDs courtesy:  Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha

National Award-winning actress Anjali Patil has dabbled in various film industries but her aim is not to be a big Bollywood star. Anjali, also a director and writer, says Bollywood films and money are “very little” aspects of her world, in which she would also like to be a chef someday. A look at her filmography will give people an idea about her interests that go beyond Bollywood. Yes, she has done Mirzya (Hindi) and Newton (Hindi), which was India’s official entry for the Oscars’ Best Foreign Language Film category. But she has also featured in Naa Bangaaru Talli (Telugu), The Silence (Marathi), Ente (Malayalam) and the forthcoming Tamil film Kaala, starring megastar Rajinikanth. What attracts her to films in multiple languages? “My curiosity to learn. I have always had this fascination to learn things and to know the world. With each film and with each new language, you get to know other people. Even though I did a Telugu film, I had no idea about its culture earlier. “When I did Kaala in Tamil, I had a new introduction to Tamil Nadu and its language, culture and food. I want to do films as an actor, writer and director which will nurture and nourish me as an artiste. Bollywood films and money are very little aspects of my world,” Anjali, who hails from Maharashtra, said. She just has a “simple expectation” while taking up a project. “Happiness. Nobody paid me to become an artiste. I chose to be an artiste. I fought with people and got myself into a drama school. So, I don’t really have any expectations apart from enjoying and working on my skill as an actor and as a director,” said the National School of Drama alumnus. What also doesn’t matter much to her is the size of her role. On being the leading lady of Eros Now’s first original film Meri Nimmo, she said in a recorded response: “These are the things that I don’t understand somehow and I feel that it’s good that I am ignorant in these matters. “For me, the most important thing is the script and what my director is saying. It doesn’t matter if I play the title role or a character with no name,” she added. Meri Nimmo is enjoying a straight to digital release on Eros Now. The Rahul Shankalya directorial, which revolves around an eight-year-old boy who thinks he is in love with a 24-year-old girl, premiered on April 27. “Netflix and Eros Now...all these digital platforms are just entering the Indian market. When we started doing the film years ago, we thought it would get released in theatres and it (the big screen) has its own charm, for sure; but at the same time, there is this niche audience that is growing day by day, thanks to all these online platforms. So, it’s still great,” she said. She describes the film as a “very innocent love story of this eight-year-old guy”. “There is nothing controversial in it. It reminds you about your childhood sweetheart,” Anjali said about the film that had earned wide praise at the 47th International Film Festival of India and the 19th MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. “My journey (in showbiz) starts from film fests. Delhi in a Day, With You Without You were my films which went to major film festivals. It’s important because most of the people in the world in the festival circuit know me and my work. “It’s a different audience. It’s not the mass audience. Festivals are the platforms where very specific work happens. Where directors, actors and artiste strive for their individual expression. They are not catering to box office success and the money involved in it. So, I really feel honoured and blessed to be a part of that circuit,” said Anjali. What’s next? “I am working on my own script. I will be travelling for the next six months for location recce of my film. It’s a film with real people. I will be shooting in different parts of India for nine months,” she said. On life without acting, she said: “I never really planned to become an actor. Acting was just an opportunity to know the film medium more and work on my craft more. If I wasn’t an actor, I would probably be a director which I am now — or a chef. “I would like to have my own cafe. I want to specialise in different kinds of brunches,” she signed off. — IANS

Lil Xan is named after the prescription drug which he is urging people to stop using. Real name Diego Leanos, the Redlands, California-born rapper was given the nickname by a friend during the two years in which he was addicted to Xanax. “It’s prescribed for panic attacks and general anxiety problems,” explained 21-year-old Xan. “That’s why I started taking it. But Xanax has tranquilising and hypnotic effects. It’s so easy to become addicted. “I went with Lil Xan as my stage name because I was still using the drug when I began rapping. I have considered maybe changing to my real name and just calling myself Diego. But the formula is working for me as Lil Xan. I figure it’s better to stay as I am but keep speaking about the bad effects of using Xanax.” Lil Xan is not the poster child for a solid education. He dropped out of high school during his freshman year. “I had no intention of becoming a rapper. The truth is I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I just knew I couldn’t sit still for seven hours every day having someone tell me a bunch of stuff I’d never need to know.” He eventually found a job as a street sweeper. “I used to get paid $8 an hour. One day, I got my pay cheque for $400, went into a casino, lost it all and decided I wasn’t going to do that job ever again.” One thing he did have was a quality camera. It was this interest in photography which eventually led to his becoming a rapper. “I thought I might become a photographer. I’d always loved music. My dad was a big record collector. I used to listen to artistes like Arctic Monkeys, Cage The Elephant and Queens Of The Stone Age. But my dad turned me on to hip hop through the likes of N*E*R*D and Drake. I had this idea that I could maybe earn a living photographing music artists. “I started taking photographs of some local rappers. I was a massive fan of Steven Cannon and met him at a show. I stood in line for about four hours so that I could be at the front. I asked if I could take his picture. He agreed so I took some shots. I kept turning up at his shows taking pictures. After one show, Steven said I was putting in a lot of dedication and I should be their main photographer. “I started photographing and filming all of Steven’s shows. During one show, I put my camera down behind the DJ booth and someone stole it. I was devastated because it was a gift from my parents and really expensive. It would have cost around $1,200 dollars to replace. But if my camera hadn’t gotten stolen, I wouldn’t be rapping today.” Rather than buy a new camera, Xan decided to try his hand at music. “Studio time cost a lot less than a new camera. I’d written some raps and knew people who made beats so I thought I’d give it a shot. I still didn’t really think I could make a career out of rapping. It was more like a hobby for about a year before things started to get serious.” Although nominally a solo artist, Xan is accompanied by his Xanarchy crew. “I started out with a friend in Low Gang. But it wasn’t really taking off. So, from the ashes of Low Gang, I created Xanarchy. I just thought the name was a good play on words. Xanarchy are my friends, producers, beatmakers, other rappers, everyone who has helped me along the way. It took off pretty quickly. It’s ridiculous how much growth there has been in just a few months. Music, fashion, everything.” His debut five-song EP, CITGO, was released in 2016. The positive response was boosted by postings on SoundCloud and YouTube which greatly expanded Xan’s fan base. His shows sold out in minutes.  His national breakthrough came last summer through the release of Betrayed. With lyrics focusing on his addiction to Xanax, the song became Xan’s first entry on Billboard’s Hot 100. “I was with my homie Steven (Cannon) at this garage studio in the ghetto. The writing is easy there. It just comes naturally. I wrote Betrayed in about 20 minutes. I knew it was something different that people hadn’t heard from me before. Everybody thought it was insane when we recorded the song. Cole Bennett did an amazing video and I had my first mainstream hit.” The release of his debut album, Total Xanarchy, was set for April 6. It was promoted by a 29-date North American concert tour. Covering a mix of large and small venues, every ticket was sold within five hours. Fans obviously enjoyed what they heard. Total Xanarchy stormed straight into the top ten on the Billboard 200. “I really wanted the album to be something else. I feel like I’ve been able to shine with the whole creativity. It has a lot of stuff people hadn’t heard from me. It’s a very mature sound. I don’t think people really expected that.” Xan has a genuine love for his parents. His mother suffers from serious osteoporosis which may well leave her paralysed in years to come. “The money I’m making now is really nice. It means I can take care of my parents. My mom has particular needs which will become worse over time. All the money in the world couldn’t cure her but I hope I can make her life as comfortable as possible.” in Brief Avicii As might have been expected, the untimely death of Swedish DJ/ producer Avicii has sparked a surge of interest in his singles and albums. Three of each are back among the upper reaches of the UK charts.  Although his death shocked and saddened the music world, Avicii had suffered poor health for years. Real name Tim Bergling, he was hospitalised in 2012 with acute pancreatitis brought on by excessive alcohol consumption. Two years later, his appendix and gallbladder were removed. In 2016, his health had deteriorated to such an extent that he retired from live performances. A pair of autopsies conducted by authorities in Muscat, Oman, where he passed away, have ruled out foul play in Avicii’s death. But an actual cause of death was not specified. One person not surprised by Avicii’s passing was his friend and fellow DJ/ producer Laidback Luke. In 2015, Luke said Avicii would join the ‘27 Club,’ entertainment stars who have died at the age of 27, if he did not change his lifestyle. Luke’s prediction was just a few months out. Avicii died at the age of 28. Jorja Smith There were those who questioned the award of the Critics’ Choice BRIT to singer / songwriter Jorja Smith. She beat out competition from artists such as Mabel and Stefflon Don who had already proved their ability with big hit singles. But Canadian superstar Drake was a massive fan of 20-year-old Jorja. She was the support act on Drake’s UK tour and performed guest vocals on two songs from his 2017 mixtape, More Life. Jorja’s only top 40 hit in her own right was Let Me Down, which reached number 34 earlier this year. Even this song also featured lyrical contributions from Stormzy. Let Me Down is not among the 12 tracks on Jorja’s debut album, Lost & Found, which is sceduled for release on June 8. But three of her earlier singles are on the album. Videos were made to accompany all three songs. Blue Lights is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=i59Klb0S1Uw. Where Did I Go? is posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=meP1neJrguw while Teenage Fantasy can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTnWe_sMznM. Shania Twain Why is it that people cannot express a view nowadays without others jumping down their throats for holding an opinion which might be contrary to their own? Canadian superstar country singer Shania Twain is the latest artist to experience the wrath of this unholy self-righteous brigade. In a recent interview, although she was ineligible to vote, Shania said she would have supported Donald Trump in the 2016 US Presidential election. She thought even though he was offensive, he did seem honest and talked to a portion of America like an accessible person they could relate to as he was not a politician. To most people, this would be perfectly fair enough. No matter if you are for or against President Trump, Shania is entitled to her opinion. But this is not so for all too many who are aligned to the so called liberal or left. These supposedly tolerant people display nothing but intolerance for anyone whose views stray from their particular groupthink. After being bombarded with criticism and abuse on social media, Shania felt obliged to apologise via her Twitter account to anyone who had been offended by her opinion. Shania is in the process of a musical comeback. Her smash hit 2017 LP, Now, was her first album of new material for 15 years. Her world tour supporting the album kicks off in Tacoma, Washington, on May 3. She can probably expect banner-wielding protesters at every US concert. 

Saroj Khan, the choreographer, raked a can of worms when during the course of a press conference she made comments that seemed to suggest that the casting couch phenomenon in Bollywood, where sexual favours are demanded and given in return for meaty roles in movies, might actually not be a bad thing.  Saroj’s argument was that it was, after all, not rape and that if women did fall for it, then they also got a livelihood in return. She said that it had always been happening here and that many women experience it. On the other hand, it also happens everywhere else and not just in the film industry and so why target only Bollywood?  The furore against the remarks was immediate with people railing against her for endorsing such an ugly practice. She was, in fact, not really encouraging the practice as her critics were insinuating, instead it was just a realistic appraisal. The actress Richa Chadha pointed this out saying that a mountain was being made out of a molehill when Saroj clearly was only making a case for not blaming Bollywood alone. But then Richa herself became a target of online criticism.  There is, of course, a history of sexual exploitation in Bollywood by those who wield power in a film production and it has been a long-standing issue. However, it also is assumed that only women are subject to it, which is untrue. An infamous rumour is that the casting director of one of Bollywood’s biggest production houses, who is a female, made the career of numerous male stars after they slept with her. Man on a mission Aamir Khan has always been more than just your regular superstar and has had a subtle social activist side. His television talk show Satyamev Jayate had done a lot to throw light on some of the pressing issues that society was facing. But it went off air four years ago and Aamir had not been focusing much on his other persona. But that changed recently, when a social service organisation of his which promotes water conservation and rain water harvesting began to gear up its activities. Aamir is now campaigning for people to volunteer with the organisation in order to help drought stricken rural villages be self-sufficient in water. This is an apt time for such a venture because of the impending monsoon.  While other Bollywood stars also support various causes, often it is cursory. With Aamir you can expect it to be a serious initiative. He also made news on another front when he was slated to be appointed as a brand ambassador to China by the Indian government. This is obviously because of the enormous popularity he has developed in that country, where his movies have been doing astonishing business.  The Chinese government, too, professed to be very pleased with the move, saying it would encourage trade and cultural relations between the two countries.  Playing Sanju The trailer of Sanju, the biopic on Sanjay Dutt, has come out and it immediately went viral online getting millions of hits. The movie is being directed by Rajkumar Hirani, who promises that it won’t be a hagiography or paper over the controversial events in his life. And the trailer does seem to suggest that they will be there. It had Ranbir Kapoor, who is essaying the lead role in the movie, in a number of different get-ups showing different points of Sanjay’s life. In it, he talks about both Sanjay’s problem with drug addiction and the AK 56 gun whose possession had led to him being convicted and sentenced to jail. But obviously, the movie is not going to paint Sanjay in a bad light given that Hirani and Sanjay are close friends. They are also responsible for the Munnabhai movie series which took their careers to great heights. Ranbir apparently has put in enormous work to get the role correct. Since Sanjay’s life is being shown in all stages and ages, from when he was lean to bulky to flabby, Ranbir had to also get his body to match the looks. As Rishi Kapoor revealed in interviews to the media, his son took two months to get each of the look correct and that needed intense exercising, different diets, eating a lot and starving too. At a media meet, Ranbir, speaking about whether his own biopic would make for interesting viewing, gave an insight to his life and said that it was boring and that there was nothing in it besides work and going home to sleep. Of course, Sanjay’s life is many times more colourful, but then Ranbir’s own love life has plenty of masala. So it might not be all that boring either. Ms Mafia Don   After the stupendous success of Padmaavat, the question on many people’s minds is what would be next for Deepika Padukone. She was already at the top of the list among heroines, with no-one in sight for second place. Sure, there is Priyanka Chopra, whose movies are doing well, but she has decided to focus her attention to Hollywood and is something of a part-timer in the Hindi film industry now. Katrina Kaif has had just one big hit in recent times in Tiger Zinda Hai and the credit for that goes entirely to Salman Khan.  But being the uncontested number one also means that Deepika has to compete against herself in outdoing her past performance. And while it might not be necessary to clock ever greater box office numbers, at least the quality of the movies remaining constant or better would be a big consideration.  Her recent run of superhits is also not mindless entertainment flicks, but projects in which she had shown considerable acting prowess, something that critics have also appreciated. So what next?  Apparently, it might be a role in which she plays an underworld gangster, a biopic on a real lady mafia don who had carved a criminal empire a quarter century ago. The movie is said to be directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, which would certainly mean that it will have substance and story. But Bhardwaj doesn’t have a good record of delivering commercial hits in recent times, so Deepika might just have to forego box office success for critical acclaim. Her very presence however, might lead to the movie becoming a hit, given that she can manage to draw an audience on her own.  Send your feedback to [email protected]