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Hollywood has become ‘completely dysfunctional’: Shyamalan

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Hollywood has become 'completely dysfunctional': Shyamalan

From “The Sixth Sense” to “Old”, director M. Night Shyamalan has had a unique string of hits, but these days he works outside the Hollywood studio system, which he says has grown “sick”.

Balancing art and commerce has always been the great game of Hollywood and few have played it as well as Shyamalan, who returns to cinemas next week with the apocalyptic horror tale, “Knock at the Cabin”.

Still just 52, he has been cranking out box office hits every couple of years since the iconic “The Sixth Sense” in 1999, through “Unbreakable”, “Signs”, “Split” and many more.

They have been almost entirely original, rarely based on pre-existing franchises or superhero characters that the major studios now rely upon.

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Watching how Hollywood has evolved in that time has left him deeply disillusioned.

“If you look at the industry right now… there are movies that feel incestuous, they re just masturbatory… It s just Hollywood talking to themselves,” he told AFP.

“And then there are movies where they re saying: the audience is dumb so we re going to take all the soul out and we re just going to do it by numbers,” he said.

“These are signs of complete dysfunction.”

He looks back in wonder at his breakthrough year in 1999, when studios backed several highly original films such as “American Beauty”, “Magnolia”, “Being John Malkovich” and “The Insider”.

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“The industry was different then. It was aimed at — how do you get the best storytellers to tell stories for the widest audience? That s not the case now,” Shyamalan said.

 Huge risks 

His response has been to go it alone, even if that means giving up on big budgets.

“I found the only way is to leave the system and pay for it myself… to make small movies but take huge risks — not having to ask whether they like having a gay couple at the centre, or whether I should hire a wrestler…” he said.

“This is my way of staying healthy after spending a long time in a kind of sick industry,” he added.

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“Knock at the Cabin” stars former wrestler Dave Bautista in the story of a family isolated in the woods who are taken hostage by an armed group and told they must sacrifice one of their own to avert the apocalypse.

At the core, said Shyamalan, is a question that resonates in our “post-truth era”: do we trust each other?

“Does the husband believe in the other husband? Do they believe what the strangers are saying? Do we believe in our society and what we re seeing?”

And of course, being a Shyamalan film, there are plenty of twists, which he still loves to write.

“That s the fun part!” he said. “Even until late in the writing of the movie I was like, how many times can I flip you back and forth? Because I had thought of another way, and I was worried the audience are going to get whiplash if I do one more,” he said. 

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Noorul Hassan joins star cast of Selahaddin Eyyubi

Noorul Hassan joins star cast of Selahaddin Eyyubi

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Noorul Hassan joins star cast of Selahaddin Eyyubi

Noorul Hassan, a popular TV show host and a veteran TV actor known for his versatile roles in several drama serials over the last two decades, has joined the star cast of the Turkish drama serial Selahaddin Eyyubi, which is a combination of action, historical drama and adventure.

A private TV channel will soon telecast Selahaddin Eyyubi in the Urdu language. 

Previously, this drama serial is being telecast by a Turkish TV channel at 9pm every Monday.

This drama serial is based on the life of the inspiring Muslim ruler and military commander Sultan Selahaddin Eyyubi.

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Turkish actor Ugur Gunes is playing the role of Sultan Selahaddin Eyyubi in the drama serial also featuring Pakistani actors Adnan Siddiqui, Humayun Saeed, Kashif Ansari, Junaid Ali Shah and others.

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Aamir Khan to appear on ‘Kapil Sharma Show’ for 1st time

Aamir Khan to appear on ‘Kapil Sharma Show’ for 1st time

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Aamir Khan to appear on 'Kapil Sharma Show' for 1st time

Bollywood icon Aamir Khan will make his debut appearance in an interview with comedian Kapil Sharma.

He recently filmed an episode for Netflix’s upcoming series, “The Great Indian Kapil Show,” as teased in a newly released promo.

Despite having shared public interactions previously, this marks the first time the two stars have collaborated professionally.

According to NDTV’s report last year, during the trailer launch event of “Carry on Jatta 3,” Aamir Khan questioned why he hadn’t been invited to Kapil’s show yet.

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In response, Kapil innocently stated, “I’ve always approached him amidst crowds and requested him to join our show. However, he often mentioned being occupied with other engagements.”

Aamir, the lead actor of “Ghajini,” then assured, “I’ll definitely make it, but please avoid calling me around my movie releases. I prefer not to promote them and would rather entertain.”

Nearly a year later, he has fulfilled his promise.

This is a significant gesture from Aamir, who typically refrains from interview appearances unless it’s for promotional purposes.

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US artist Richard Serra, known for enormous steel sculptures, dead at 85

US artist Richard Serra, known for enormous steel sculptures, dead at 85

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US artist Richard Serra, known for enormous steel sculptures, dead at 85

American artist Richard Serra, whose enormous steel sculptures coated with a fine patina of rust decorated landscapes and dominated oversized galleries in the world’s finest museums, died on Tuesday, the New York Times reported. He was 85.

The artist died at his home on New York’s Long Island of pneumonia, the Times reported, citing his lawyer, John Silberman.

Born in San Francisco in 1938 to a Spanish father and Russian mother, Serra grew up visiting marine shipyards where his father worked and also labored in steel mills to support himself in his youth, according to his San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum biographies.

Despite the large scale of his works, artistically he was considered a minimalist, letting the dimensions of his art relative to the viewer, rather than elaborate imagery, make its point.

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After studying at the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University, he moved to New York in 1966 where he began making art from industrial materials such as metal, fiberglass and rubber.

Though he would later become quite popular, one of his 1981 works was so poorly received that it was removed from public view in Lower Manhattan, ARTnews said.

“Tilted Arc,” a 120-foot (36-meter) bar of steel, is today “remembered as one of the most reviled works of public art in the city’s history. It was ultimately taken away because people hated it so much,” ARTnews said.

He made a breakthrough in 1969 when he was included in “Nine Young Artists: Theodoron Awards” at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

After traveling to Spain to study Mozarabic architecture in the early 1980s, his work gained renowned in Europe and with solo exhibitions at major museums in Germany and France.

Serra’s work was especially appreciated in his father’s native Spain, where the Reina Sofia museum offered a 1992 retrospective of his work and he had an exhibit dedicated exclusively to his work at the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.

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A 2002 New Yorker magazine profile entitled “Man of Steel” described him as a “stocky, powerful-looking man with a large head, a fringe of close-cropped gray hair, and black eyes whose intense stare reminds you of Picasso’s.”

That same piece told of Serra’s self-realisation that he was not a painter, after seeing Diego Velazquez’s 1656 work “Las Meninas” in the Prado museum in Madrid.

“It pretty much stopped me,” Serra said. “Cezanne hadn’t stopped me, de Kooning and Pollack hadn’t stopped me, but Velazquez seemed like a bigger thing to deal with. That sort of nailed the coffin on painting for me.”

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