BookTrib is proud to present to our readers the Writers, Ink podcast, a show about the business of writing.
J.K. Rowling was nearly homeless when she wrote the first Harry Potter book. Stephen King penned Carrie on a small desk wedged between a washer and dryer. James Patterson worked in advertising and famously wrote the Toys “R” Us theme song long before becoming an author.
Join New York Times bestseller J.D. Barker, and indie powerhouses J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon, as they pull back the curtain on some of the world’s most prolific authors. Where did they start? What is their process? The biggest names in publishing all have origin stories, all have a process, all have tips and secrets … What does it take to consistently top the bestseller lists? Get your notepad out. School’s in session. This is Writers, Ink.
If you were looking for an excuse to re-watch all the Star Wars movies, this is that excuse.
We’ve all seen E.T. in The Phantom Menace (if you haven’t, here you go), but that only scratches the surface of all the hidden details throughout Star Wars. The lore of this iconic galaxy far, far away has become so big that there are Star Wars scholars. And after over 50 years of Star Wars stuff, it’s safe to say there are still some Easter eggs out there no one has caught yet. But don’t worry, you don’t have to sift through all the timelines, canon, and legends to find the best hidden details in Star Wars. These are 23 of my favorites that you might not already know.
Do you rep for the House of Ravenclaw? More of a Slytherin supporter? Or are you all in for Hufflepuff or Gryffindor?
The Broadway producers who are bringing the show “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” back to San Francisco in 2022 are kicking off the Pottermania early with “Wizarding World Wednesdays” at the Safeway Holiday Ice Rink in Union Square.
Each week, fans can show up in their Hogwarts house colors, lace up their skates, take a spin around the ice and enter for a chance to win special “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” prizes, including opening night tickets for the official Feb. 9 premiere at the Curran Theater.
A different Hogwarts house will be featured at 5:30 and 7 p.m. sessions each Wednesday. On Dec. 15 it will be Ravenclaw, followed by Slytherin on Dec. 22 and Gryffindor on Dec. 29. (Alas, Hufflepuff fans are skating as we write this on Dec. 8.)
Ice rink tickets, which include skate rental, are $19. They must be purchased in advance online at unionsquareicerink.com.
Story: Pushpa Raj is a coolie who rises in the world of red sandalwood smuggling. Along the way, he doesn’t shy from making an enemy or two.
Review: With Pushpa: The Rise, Sukumar ventures into unchartered territory by making a rustic masala film filled with punch dialogues, characters that speak in a Chittoor dialect and a story that’s rooted deep in the region it’s set in. And seeing as how expectations were sky-high after Rangasthalam, what he delivers turns out to be a mixed bag that’s over-long, falters at times and delivers what it promises at others.
Pushpa Raj (Allu Arjun) is one of the many coolies in Seshachalam who chop down red sandalwood illegally and sell it by the kilo to powers-that-be. In a syndicate that consists of numerous players, Pushpa slowly learns to find his footing and rise in ranks till the man who would once chop down these trees becomes the one giving the orders. However, his Achilles heel is not his lady love Srivalli (Rashmika Mandanna), or the big-wigs Konda Reddy (Ajay Ghosh), Jolly Reddy (Dhananjay), Mangalam Srinu (Sunil) and his wife Dakshayani (Anasuya Baradwaj). It is the fact that his brother (Ajay) won’t let him claim his lineage, something that takes Pushpa from zero to hundred in no time and often becomes the reason for this laid-back, sarcastic, arrogant, even funny man to lose his cool. And right as he gets where he wants to be in life, in comes IPS Bhanwar Singh Shekawat (Fahadh Faasil) threatening to upend the carefully constructed order that Pushpa has put in place.
Pushpa: The Rise is backed by a story that’s often explored in cinema – the rise of the underdog. So Sukumar really has nothing new to explore here. What’s new is the way he chooses to expand the story and spend time on setting up Pushpa’s character for a whole film, spanning three hours, before getting into the thick of things. And this move really might not sit well with everyone because despite all the hoopla, that is essentially what this film is. Pushpa might have made foes of numerous people, but none of them seem to even remotely be a match to his unbending nature, that is, till Shekawat comes into town. Sukumar’s film fares well when it sticks to the story at hand and focuses on the nitty gritty of red sanders smuggling, Pushpa’s contribution to smoothening things out, etc. Where the film falters is when it tries to pull off an odd (and problematic) romance between him and Srivalli, this doesn’t always work or even add to the larger story at hand. Sure, Pushpa gets a chance to be her knight-in-shining-armour but it seems to move the story in a direction it would’ve gone anyway. The final confrontation between Pushpa and Shekawat also doesn’t have the desired effect, coming off as rushed and the latter’s character seeming underwhelming.
Also underwhelming are the VFX, art direction, editing and sound design in certain scenes. The team of Pushpa: The Rise did not hide the fact that they had to rush to release the film on time and it shows through the cracks. Given the run-time that seems unwarranted already, the technical glitches only make the flaws all the more glaring. Where Pushpa: The Rise shines is when it comes to the casting, direction, cinematography, costumes and music for the most part. Sure, the BGM by Devi Sri Prasad might seem underwhelming at times, but his music more than makes up for it because it blends well into the story. Cinematographer Mirosław Kuba Brożek and director Sukumar seem to have found the perfect groove for this film, complementing each other with their work. Pushpa’s character’s costumes see a change depending on his standing in this world. The supporting cast also gets a chance to shine, despite sometimes being pigeon-holed into playing characters that are nothing more than cookie-cutter. Rashmika also seems misplaced in a film that’s high on testosterone. Anasuya on the other hand gets a scene with Sunil that proves she’s a fit in this world. Samantha’s cameo in Oo Antava Oo Oo Antava elicits whistles, to no one’s surprise.
With all said and done, Pushpa: The Rise is Allu Arjun’s show all the way. He shines in playing this rustic character that is hard on the surface but vulnerable in ways that others don’t see. Allu Arjun’s fans might be happy to see him shaking a leg briefly in numbers like Saami Saami and Eyy Bidda Idhi Naa Adda but he truly shines when he’s in a tussle for power, with Peter Hein, Ram-Laxman choreographing some stunning action sequences or when he’s brushing off being called coolie oda constantly because he knows he’s too good for whatever others stereotype him as. He also gets a chance to show off his acting chops, apart from the dialect he worked hard on, when he shoulders a film as massive as this one, sometimes he even makes you laugh.
Sukumar’s Pushpa: The Rise shows promise when it wraps things up and sets up things for Pushpa 2. Despite the film being a mixed bag, it does make you curious for what’s to come. If only to see if Fahadh and Allu Arjun get to set the screen on fire.
IT MIGHT not seem that a US school’s decision to ban Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus has anything to do with us in Trinidad, but censorship anywhere in the world is something we all should condemn. The freedom to choose what we read is important, and when we turn a blind eye to censorship we risk misinformation influencing book choices in other parts of the world.
In the US, an alarming number of children’s books are banned or challenged every year. Adults seeking to protect children can actually deprive them from accessing books necessary for their self-image, as well as their social and intellectual development.
The reasons for banning books sometimes seem funny, but they prove to be petty and puzzling. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus teaches teenagers about the Holocaust, but parents had it banned because the book “had mild swearing and illustrations of naked mouse women.”
A successful trick to get a book banned has been to take a paragraph or picture out of context to present an emotionally-driven case that outweighs literary merit. Outlandish interpretations of books often get books banned too.
Dr Seuss’s picture book Hop on Pop became a banned book because it was said “to incite violence against fathers.” The picture book Skippyjon Jones, about a Siamese cat who thinks he is a chihuahua, became a banned book because the cat “stereotyped Mexican culture.”
Statistics from the US-based Office for Intellectual Freedom reported 5,099 book challenges from 2000 through 2009. Most of the challenges were for “sexually explicit material” and “offensive language.” Parents challenged books with violence, religion, homosexuality or themes they deemed “anti-family.”
The American Library Association (ALA) condemns censorship and publicises banned book lists because teachers and librarians recognise that children and teenagers need books with relevant personal and cultural issues. Books support young readers as they develop their identity and help them to articulate their feelings. But books with edgy themes often get targeted for censorship.
From 2000 through 2021, the list of banned books for US secondary school students showed an alarming upward trend for condemning themes like drugs, racism, political viewpoints and sexuality.
In 2020, the top ten list of 273 banned books included the modern civil rights classic To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The novel was “banned and challenged for racial slurs and their negative effect on students, featuring a ‘white saviour’ character, and its perception of the black experience.”
Showing racism in literature without using the language and context of prejudice that defined history is impossible. It is meant to be cringeworthy.
It’s also impossible to address violence and important social issues without good books that highlight them.
Still, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison was “banned and challenged because it was considered sexually explicit and depicts child sexual abuse.”
A recent popular book, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, got challenged for “profanity and its anti-police message.” Many teenagers use that book to understand the volatile relationship between police and the black community. It’s a teen’s entry point into understanding the Black Lives Matter movement.
No book is safe. The Harry Potter series made 2019’s top ten list, “banned and forbidden from discussion for referring to magic and witchcraft, for containing actual curses and spells, and for characters that use nefarious means to attain goals.”
A popular elementary school series, Captain Underpants, written and illustrated by Dav Pilkey, got challenged because it “encourage(d) disruptive behaviour.”
A few years ago, when Netflix made a series based on Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, the book got banned, challenged and restricted for “addressing teen suicide.”
Suicide and mental health issues must be addressed in teen literature for teenagers.
John Green is a popular author of Young Adult (YA) literature, but his book Looking for Alaska gets challenged regularly for a sexually explicit scene “that may lead a student to sexual experimentation.”
Parents pretend that teenagers are asexual.
Another popular series, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, had been banned for “religious viewpoints.” The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer introduced many students to the tradition of vampire literature, but parents had it banned for “its religious viewpoint and violence.”
None of the books mentioned above – indeed none of the books on the list – are detrimental in any way. They all have literary merit and important content for students’ personal, social and academic development.
I encourage everyone to read a banned book to support freedom of expression.
Check out the list of most banned books at this web site: https://www.playgroundequipment.com/the-most-banned-and-challenged-books-of-the-past-5-years/
And Australian audiences face their own challenge: should they snap up tickets to the original production, which ends March 27 at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre? Or take a spell and wait for the reimagined debut in May?
Over a steak frites at SoHo’s popular Balthazar’s, the show’s producer Colin Callender (a former HBO executive who began his career at London’s Royal Court Theatre) explains that the two-part version of the show was a bad fit on Broadway, where a large chunk of the audience comes in from the boroughs or further afield (70 per cent of Broadway’s box office traditionally comes from tourists).
The shorter Cursed Child is a rollercoaster with afterburners.Credit:Daniel Boud
“Now you can come into New York on a Friday night, or a Saturday night, and see [all] the show – which previously you couldn’t,” he says. “But we didn’t want to do it unless we felt we could creatively do justice to the play and protect the core of the play.”
That core is the original pitch his team used to win Rowling’s theatre rights to the first West End production. Their cue was the epilogue to the books where the hero farewells his son, Albus Severus Potter, on the train to Hogwarts. It must be tough being Harry Potter’s son, they mused. And it must be tough, too, to be Harry Potter, an orphan from a hard childhood, and navigate fatherhood.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has revealed that he’ll be starring in another movie based on a video game.
Although he didn’t confirm the game in question, Johnson told Men’s Journal that it’s based on something he’s “played for years”.
When asked about his connection with video games and whether he had plans to make any more game-related movies in the future, Johnson shared that he was a big fan of the Madden games before adding: “I can’t tell you which game in particular we’re doing, but there will be an announcement this year.
“We’re going to bring one of the biggest, most badass games to the screen – one that I’ve played for years.
“I’m really excited to bring it to fans around the world. Of course we’re going to do right by our gamer friends, but really we’re just going to make a great movie.”
Johnson is no stranger to movies about video games. One of his earlier film roles was in the 2005 movie adaptation of Doom, where he played squad leader Sarge.
More recently, he also starred in the 2018 film Rampage, which was based on the Midway arcade games of the same name.
He was also in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and its sequel Jumanji: The Next Level, in which he plays a video game character.
Johnson has also dabbled with video game appearances. The 2006 game Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run starred Johnson as the protagonist, while most recently he’s portrayed The Foundation in Fortnite, where he made an appearance during the end of Season 2.
A sequel to last year’s Mortal Kombat movie is in the works at New Line Cinema.
The Warner Bros.-owned film studio has hired Fantastic 4 and Moon Knight writer Jeremy Slater to pen the Mortal Kombat 2 script, Deadline reports.
Last year’s Mortal Kombat film was helmed by Simon McQuoid, making his feature directorial debut, and produced by James Wan (Aquaman), Todd Garner (Into the Storm), E. Bennett Walsh (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) and McQuoid.
It released in April and helped drive what was then the US box office’s biggest weekend since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Its worldwide box office gross stands at almost $84 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
The movie launched simultaneously in cinemas and on HBO Max and is reportedly one of the streaming service’s top feature titles to date.
further reading
While it was poorly received by critics, the original Mortal Kombat movie grossed over $120 million worldwide following its release in 1995. Its sequel, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, grossed $50 million.
The Mortal Kombat video game franchise launched in 1992 and had sold 73 million units as of July 2021, according to Warner, including 12 million copies of the latest series entry, 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11.
Actor Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson recently teased plans to bring “one of the biggest, most badass games” to cinema screens, with an announcement planned for later this year.
LAS CRUCES – An unassuming scooter shop has been the main film location lately for “The Locksmith,” the latest in a string of movies filmed in the Las Cruces area during November.
According to a news release from the New Mexico Film Office, “The Locksmith” follows an expert locksmith who recently returned home after being released from prison. Efforts toward making a fresh start with family take a turn when he is forced to use his skills as a locksmith.
The feature film stars Ryan Phillippe (“MacGruber,” “Big Sky”), Kate Bosworth (“The Long Road Home,” “Force of Nature”) and Ving Rhames (“Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” “Pulp Fiction”) and is directed by Nicholas Harvard (“Hell or High Water,” “Yellowstone”).
Filming began Nov. 15, according to information from Film Las Cruces, and is scheduled to continue through mid-December.
Filming will take place in numerous locations throughout Doña Ana County, but has been focused recently near Apodaca Park, on the corner of Solano Drive and Madrid Avenue. Solano Scooters, a locally-owned scooter dealership in that area, was transformed inside and out to a locksmith’s shop for filming.
Las Cruces police have been directing traffic away from the shop while filming takes place.
A crew member for the film said the streets were supposed to be fully closed to traffic, but that plan was amended to take into consideration access to the nearby businesses still operating. When cameras stop rolling, traffic is allowed through.
More:Mesilla transformed into ’90s-era Mexico for filming of Netflix’s ‘Chupa.’ Take a sneak peek at the set.
It is unclear at this point which other locations the production will be using to film the movie. However, Film Las Cruces reported that the movie will be made entirely in Doña Ana County and will “have an estimated $2 million direct spend into the local economy.”
