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By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD “The sooner we admit our capacity for evil the less apt we are to destroy each other. … People love seeing violence and horrible things. The human being is bad and he can’t stand more than five minutes of happiness. Put him in a dark …

“How on earth do you get to the point where somebody like Carlos (Ghosn) has to hang out with shadowy figures to smuggle him out across an international border, halfway across the world, safely?” Nick Green, the director of an upcoming documentary about the former Nissan chairman called “The Last …

President Donald Trump released his farewell speech on Tuesday afternoon, saying he will pray for the success of the forthcoming administration. “We are -and must always be – a land of hope, of light, and of glory to all the world. This week we inaugurate a new administration and pray …

In 2017, Emmy-winning actor and activist Riz Ahmed gave a speech in Parliament about diversity on screen. “Representation is not an added thrill [because] what people are looking for is a message that they belong,” he said. Soon after, the Riz test – the equivalent of the Bechdel test for the representation of Muslims in …

I’ve been struggling to write a review of this little sci-fi action masterpiece Tenet (2020) for quite some time now if only because it’s such a hard movie to understand. And I’m saying this as a sci-fi buff whose watched and read his fair share of reverse flow time travel …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   CONTINUED from yesterday…   A Parting of Genders, a Meeting of Minds? When I began to dream up this article some time ago I’d stumbled onto a fan of MD’s on Twitter, a fellow Arab, Nayli Yasmeen (@nayli_yasmeen), and we got to talking about …

 By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   CONTINUED from yesterday…   Everybody’s ‘Bestest’ Big Sister Now Christian Papierniak’s little masterpiece Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town (2017), which he also wrote. I could write a whole book about the movie and still not get completely to the bottom of it. I …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD       “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.” — Rebecca West   “The more identities …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD     “An artist should be as impartial as God.” — Wyndham Lewis   “The summary of the advice of all prophets is this; Find yourself a mirror.” — Shams Tabrizi   Well, as luck would have it, some time ago I’d written a review …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD     “With most people, not describable as artists, all the finer part of their vitality goes into sex. They become third-rate poets during their courtship. All their instincts of drama come out freshly with their wives. The artist is he in whom this emotionality …

A Turkish jet executive on trial over Carlos Ghosn’s dramatic escape from Japan told a court on Friday that the former Nissan (7201.T) boss spoke about Hollywood making a movie of his getaway as he flew in a private jet to Beirut. Ghosn, once a leading light of the global …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD I have written an article a long time ago about a horror-SF movie I watched largely against my will, Dark Skies (2013), which fits into my longstanding research on sexual anxieties and alien abduction scenarios. I’d been thinking of writing a follow-up for some time …

Residents of the Pakistani city of Lahore have erected statues to commemorate a medieval Turkish leader, a sign of the growing popularity, and cultural impact, of a television series imported from Turkey depicting the origins of the Ottoman Empire. The series, Ertugrul Gazi, which ran in Turkey until 2019, is …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD     “It is very true that one cannot always go by the principles of Marxism in deciding whether to reject or to accept a work of art. A work of art should, in the first place, be judged by its own law, that is, …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   I’ve steadfastly avoided watching any of the Batman and Batman-related movies after The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which was incredible, but I’d heard that there were security procedures being taken against Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker in the US itself, so I simply had to go!! …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD     I haven’t been to a movie theatre for quite a while now, let alone to watch an Arabic movie. But, I couldn’t resist this time, with Sherif Arafa’s Al-Mamar (or The Passage) portraying one of those sadly forgotten battles during the war of …

By Gouthama Siddarthan*   If a debate is initiated on the art of histrionics in the world cinema, it will pivot on German personality Klaus Kinski. Shunning the acting style born out of a director’s dictation, scenes which break out from the inner inspiration can be seen in the film, “Aguirre, the …

 By Gouthama Siddarthan*   The famous school of post-modernist art and literary thought enjoins one to study a work of art not only from just an artistic perspective but also from a multi-dimensional viewpoint which will ferret out the subtle features of the work. We are living in a critics’ …

By Gouthama Siddarthan*   My recent article about Washerman community had got more attention. Following that, whether the washerman people around the world will come under in ‘Community’? What is their life condition? In the context of which the answers are not available, it is a small Anthropology walk. About …

By Gouthama Siddarthan* —     Speculative fiction has, of late, been catching up in the world of writing which is highly enamoured of it.  But there is a great danger of this fascination falling into the groove of popular legal thriller. The danger bristles with the risky possibility of …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   Typically for me, after watching and debunking The Angel (2018), I couldn’t help but watch 7 Days in Entebbe (2018) by a director I really do not like, José Padilha, on account of the mess he made with the Robocop (2014) remake. I thought, …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD*   Just watched The Angel (2018), the so-called Ashraf Marwan story (President Abdel Nasser’s son-in-law), purely out of curiosity. And I’m glad to say I did not like it. That’s not just on account of my personal and political biases. Marwan Kenzari, playing the aforementioned son …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD*   Just got invited to watch a wonderful little movie at the Cairo Cinema Days festival. The invite came from the Palestinian Women’s Union no less, and quite a lot of the organiser at the event were from BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions]. As you can …

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-41727495/why-does-the-us-have-so-many-child-brides Angel was 13 when her mother forced her to marry and start a family. “I felt like a slave,” she says of her childhood. While countries like Zimbabwe, Malawi and El Salvador have recently banned child marriage, it remains legal in the US – and half of states have …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD Well, I can’t say that I was surprised that I didn’t like Blade Runner 2049. I’d sussed its weak points out early on whilst watching the trailer. And if a trailer can’t make something look good – and trailers can make anything look good – …

The United Nations has blacklisted the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition in Yemen for killing or injuring 683 children, and attacking dozens of schools and hospitals. The coalition had been briefly added to last year’s blacklist, and then removed by then-UN chief Ban Ki-moon pending review. At the time, Mr Ban accused …

By Emad El-Din Aysha   I watched 6 Days initially with some hesitation since it was about a hostage situation involving Muslim terrorists. It tells the true story, the untold story, of the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London and the technically brilliant SAS operation that saved the day. The …

Palestine has picked Annemarie Jacir’s Wajib as its official contender for the 2018 Oscars in the foreign-language category. The film, which premiered in Locarno’s official competition, where it won three independent prizes, pairs father and son Mohammad Bakri and Saleh Bakri for the first time, teaming the celebrated Palestinian actors …

VIDEO: Hezbollah on the roll in eastern Lebanon, ISIS expelled from a number of hills

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD      Finally forced myself to watch Alien Convent (2017). I wasn’t impressed by the ‘content’ of the trailers for the movie (see below) with the cute cast and the apparent rehash of the original horror format (with the unsuspecting ‘dope’ getting impregnated by the …