I don’t often recommend double-features: But the aforementioned “Time to Hunt” and the director Adrian Teh’s Malaysian fighting film “Wira” would make a great pairing. They both equally blend savage action with brutal social commentary.

With a script by Anwari Ashraf, “Wira” follows Hassan (Hairul Azreen), a prodigal son returning to his dead-end village to help his stubborn father (Hilal Azman) and headstrong brawling sister (Fify Azmi). Returning from a seven-year stint in the army, Hassan finds his family in debt to Raja (Dain Said), a local meth-dealing mob boss. Years ago, the corrupt Raja squeezed the town into poverty, pushing its native residents into a crime-riddled high-rise. Hassan also once worked for Raja, fighting for bloodthirsty attendees in the drug lord’s gladiatorial boxing ring. Hassan must team with Zain to battle Raja if they want a better future.

Resembling “John Wick,” “Wira” features full-shots (by the cinematographer Yong Choon Lin) and minimum cuts (by the editor Lee Pai Seang) for fluid hand-to-hand sequences. The film’s high point comes in a slashing, careening tussle wherein Hassan takes on a horde of Raja’s goons on his own.

The ongoing Movie Artists Association Elections 2021 is taking place at Jubilee Hills Public School in the city, on Sunday. The polling commenced at 8 am and is likely to end by 2 pm and counting of votes will begin from 4pm. Results are likely to be declared by 8 pm.

The main contenders Manchu Vishnu and Prakash Raj have announced their manifestos, and after a lot of drama and trading of allegations against each other, have now got together and urged the MAA artists to exercise their voting rights. There are around 900 members in the MAA body where 863 members are going to exercise their franchise.

MAA elections that have turned into a prestigious affair are no longer linked to just the film fraternity.  A political overtone of sorts has also set in with people associated with political parties also getting involved in the elections. Advocate-turned actor CVL Narasimha Rao who quit the race is openly associated with the Saffron party.

In the latest speculation, there is news that that the Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organization RSS, is also keenly observing the MAA Elections outcome. If sources are to be believed the main reason why they are awaiting the outcome is that they don’t want Prakash Raj, a contender for MAA presidency post to win the MAA elections. It is known that Prakash Raj openly criticizes the BJP-led Government through his social media platforms. His infamous ‘ just asking’ hashtag where he targets  Narendra Modi and his anti- Hindu comments have earned the ire of the Hindu nationalist outfit.

RSS which apparently also has connections with several persons in the Telugu film industry is trying to leverage these contacts and allegedly try and influence the MAA voters by explaining Prakash Raj’s political leanings.  It is known that senior actor Kota Srinivasa Rao and CVL Narasimha Rao came out openly against Prakash Raj only and refrained from commenting on others. Both of them are associated with the BJP, where Kota Srinivasa Rao was once elected as MLA from Vijayawada-East in 1999-2004, as a BJP candidate.

Also Read: MAA Elections 2021, The Story So Far

Pedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers” moves both forward and backward, with love and politics on its mind. It follows the entwined lives of its two main characters, women (played by Milena Smit and Penélope Cruz) who give birth in the same hospital, over a period of several years. Their fates unfold under the shadow, at times imperceptible, at times unavoidable, of the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship that followed. The intersection of historical trauma and individual destiny isn’t an uncommon theme in contemporary cinema, but Almodóvar handles it with characteristic elegance and a profoundly melancholy humanism.

Almodóvar, the avatar of Spain’s youthful post-Franco awakening, is now in his early 70s. His film will close the festival this weekend, bookending a triptych of major work by his generational cohort. Joel Coen, born in 1954, and Jane Campion, born in 1957, both came on the scene, like Almodóvar, in the 1980s, and are both asserting their seniority by breaking out in new directions: Coen with his swift-moving, stirring “The Tragedy of Macbeth” (his first film without his brother, Ethan) and Campion with the tragic “Power of the Dog.” These movies look like throwbacks — “Macbeth” to the black-and-white Shakespeare of Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier; “Power” to sprawling color epics like “Giant” — but they are also signs of life. And portents, maybe, of the future.

Bond has given a meaningful boost to the industry — in one weekend it eclipsed the total box office earnings for the previously highest-grossing film of the pandemic, “Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway” — but “No Time to Die” is still just one film. The theater industry’s credit ratings and outlook are “very unlikely to change based on the great success of any particular movie release,” said Abigail Klimovich, a credit analyst at SP Global. There is still an uncertain path to recovery for movie theater earnings, she said.

Among the hurdles is the virus itself, which is especially troubling as the days get colder and it gets harder to keep physically distant. Britain has a high vaccination rate, but daily case numbers are averaging more than 30,000. At the same time, many households are expected to face a squeeze on their incomes from high energy prices, rising inflation and cuts to benefits and other income support.

For Philip Knatchbull, the chief executive of Curzon, change in the industry couldn’t come soon enough. “There’s an existential threat to cinema generally, as we know it,” he said.

For one, independent cinema has long been pushed out of many large movie theaters that had to make room for the long releases of big-budget films, Knatchbull said.

Curzon has a different model, in which 14 plush movie theaters are just one of three strands of the business. It’s also a film distributor, releasing a catalog of predominantly independent and foreign language films, including Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” in Britain. And for the past decade, it has embraced streaming with its own on-demand service.

Soon Knatchbull hopes to be offering movies on the Curzon on-demand service from other distributors like Sony, paramount and Universal.

Exclusive:

BlacKkKlansman star John David Washington, Luther’s Idris Elba and Star Wars actor John Boyega are all names in the running for the movie set to follow in the footsteps of real life war epics Hacksaw Ridge and Saving Private Ryan

At the party level efforts are being made to counter criticism of the Centre’s handling of the crisis.

New Delhi:

Amid massive national and international criticism of the Narendra Modi government’s handling of the Covid second wave, a big concerted push for positivity has been planned, sources said. A three-pronged strategy seems to have been initiated by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the central government and even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological mentor of the BJP.

Last week, central government officials including some joint secretary rank officials, were made to attend a workshop, sources said. Its focus reportedly was better communication and highlighting of the positive work being done by the government to negate any criticism of the handling of the Covid crisis.

The official Twitter handle for the Prime Minister’s monthly radio address Mann Ki Baat also mentions that the powerful message of positivity needs to be communicated.

Union ministers, too, have been tweeting efforts like the movement of Oxygen Express and stories and articles on the government’s outreach at the time of the pandemic.

At the party level too, efforts are being made to write off or counter any criticism of the Central government’s handling of the crisis.

In the most recent example, Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi’s criticism in the Congress working committee met with a sharply worded letter by the BJP president Jagat Prakash Nadda.

In his four-page letter, Mr Nadda listed how the government had distributed ventilators procured under the PM Cares fund and how concerted efforts are being made to handle this crisis. The letter came with a strong counter-attack on Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.

The RSS is not far behind. It is learnt that the RSS is going to organise an online event called ‘positivity unlimited’.

This event is going to include lectures and speeches by top motivators, religious gurus and even prominent industrialists. The theme will be on spreading positivity.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat is also expected to address the nation as part of this positivity drive.

Stone’s co-star Lea Seydoux was unable to attend because she contracted Covid, so Stone, a veteran of the Cannes red carpet, having attended for Basic Instinct in 1992, made the most of the limelight. She was variously described as stunning, dazzling and stealing the show in the most beautiful dress at Cannes.

The Bombay High Court on Monday dismissed a petition filed against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi by a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker Rajesh Kunte challenging an order of a Thane Court in pending criminal defamation proceedings against Gandhi (Rajesh Kunte v, Rahul Gandhi Ors.)

Scotland’s new vaccine passport app is now functioning well, says deputy first minister John Swinney, despite the nightclub industry calling it a “shambles”. The scheme to allow only fully vaccinated people to attend some large events has suffered teething problems, with some in the nightclub sector calling it confusing. Many venues did not ask for proof of vaccination over the weekend because of the bugs in the app, while others reported low numbers of people with the new vaccine passport on their phones. Mr Swinney said 280,000 QR codes for the scheme had been downloaded by Sunday. But he acknowledged there was still a “very small number of cases” of people being unable to download a QR code as proof of vaccination.