Congress leaders Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala were quick to say that Balashankar’s revelations indicated a CPI(M)-BJP deal to defeat the United Democratic Front(UDF) in Kerala. The revelations have given a shot in the arm of the UDF. Balashankar’s angry outburst has certainly spoiled BJP’s party. BJP leaders of the State will have to do a lot of explaining to rebut the allegations.
Meanwhile, the BJP has come out with its list of 115 candidates for the assembly election. The ‘highlight’ of the list is the decision of BJP state president K. Surendran to contest from two seats, Manjeswaram, where he lost by a slender margin of 89 votes in the 2016 assembly election, and Konni, the epicentre of the Sabarimala agitation.
While former Mizoram Governor and former state president Kummanam Rajasekharan will be the candidate from the party’s lone sitting seat of Nemom, Metroman E Sreedharan will contest from Palakkad. Super star Suresh Gopi will try his luck from Thrissur. Another senior BJP leader, former state chief P K Krishnadas, has been fielded from Kattakkada, a constituency where the BJP has considerable influence. Former union minister Alphons Kannamthanam has entered the fray from Kanjirappalli constituency in Kottayam district.
The suspense over the candidature of senior leader Sobha Surendran, who is not on good terms with the state BJP leadership, ended with she being given the ticket from Kazhakkoottam. This is one of the high-profile constituencies which Union Minister V Muraleedharan had set his sights on. The State leadership had tried its level best to deny her the ticket, and had at one stage tried to enlist Thushar Vellappally, president of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)’s ally, Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS). But he refused to contest. It may be mentioned that the BJP had come second in Kazhakkootam in the 2016 assembly polls. Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran is seeking a second term from the constituency.
As in West Bengal, BJP has also faced protests over the candidates list. The candidature of Pathanamthitta district president Ashokan Kulanada had sparked off widespread protests, with as many as 10 panchayat presidents resigning from their posts. The BJP also faced acute embarrassment as many candidates announced by the leadership decided against contesting. Some of them said their candidature was announced unilaterally and without obtaining their consent.
Observers believe it won’t be easy for the BJP to dismiss the allegations made by Balashankar as the ravings of a person denied a ticket to contest the election. He is too important a leader and the RSS ideologue is known to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
L’affaire Balashankar will not die down easily. The next episode could, in all probability, unfold after the elections, deepening the BJP’s blue mood.
Internal medicine physician Dr. Roshini Raj provides insight into weather delaying coronavirus vaccine shipments on ‘CAVUTO Live.’
Good news, glasses wearers: Your spectacles may offer you some extra protection from the novel coronavirus, according to the findings of a new study.
In a report published earlier this month on the pre-print site medRxiv, researchers said that those who wear glasses at least eight hours during the day are less likely to contract the novel disease because they touch their eyes less frequently than those who do not wear glasses.
In a report published earlier this month on the pre-print site medRxiv, researchers said that those who wear glasses at least eight hours during the day are less likely to contract the novel disease because they touch their eyes less frequently than those who do not wear glasses. (iStock)
COVID-19 mainly spreads when a sick person coughs, sneezes, or even talks, with the infectious particles posing a risk to healthy persons should they breathe those infectious particles in (hence the importance of mask-wearing and social distancing measures). However, the virus can also spread through the membranes protecting your eyes, namely the conjunctiva.
Indeed, “touching and rubbing of the eyes with contaminated hands may be a significant route of infection for SARS-CoV-2 virus,” the researchers wrote.
For the study, the researchers surveyed just over 300 people who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 in India. The patients, who ranged in age from 10 to 80, were asked about their glasses-wearing habits. About 60 patients were identified as “long-time glasses-wearers,” per the report.
By the end, the researchers concluded that those who wear glasses were two to three less likely to contract COVID-19 compared to those who do not wear glasses.
“This present study showed that the risk of COVID-19 was 2-3 times less in spectacles-wearing population than the population not using spectacles. [The] protective role of the spectacles was found statistically significant if those were used for [a] long period of the day,” or more than eight hours, they concluded.
The findings bolster previous research done on this topic. In a study published in JAMA Ophthalmology in September, for instance, Chinese researchers also found those who wear eyeglasses for extended daily periods may be less susceptible to COVID-19.
“According to reports published in recent years, the prevalence of myopia [or nearsightedness] in China is now more than 80% of the population,” study authors wrote at the time. “Wearing of eyeglasses is common among Chinese individuals of all ages. However, since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan in December 2019, we observed that few patients with eyeglasses were admitted in the hospital ward.”
HOUSTON, Aug. 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — In theaters starting on Friday, August 14th, 2020, American Deep State Movie examines Conspiracies, Crimes, Collusion and Corruption within the U.S. Government and its Spy Agencies.
American Deep State
After several delays, American Deep State Movie will be released in theatres for the first time This Friday August 14-2020. The Two-in-one film is one of the most popular independent films on Facebook and social media. The film examines the role of rogue intelligence officials during President John Kennedy’s Assassination in 1963. It also exposes rogue intelligence officials who started secret societies within various U.S. intelligence agencies and their efforts to stop one U.S. presidential candidate in 2016.
American Deep State Movie was rated PG -13 on August -10-2020 by Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). We expect to expand our theatrical release regionally, nationwide and then reach international film markets within the next few weeks.
For the first time, American people see the possibility that elected governments have to follow rules set by Washington D.C.’s bureaucratic institutions. The film is about two dozen Intelligence, FBI and US Justice Department officials who were engaged in a criminal conspiracy to undermine American Democracy during 2016’s presidential elections by helping a candidate and attempting to overthrow the duly elected president after the 2016’s elections. These Actions have surfaced for the first time since JFK, Robert Kennedy, MLK and other high profile assassinations during the 1960s.
The Strasson Group and award winning filmmaker Bernie Olaf are passionate about educating the public about the Deep State’s existence in America in 2016 and solving mysteries surrounding the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. Most Americans want Justice For JFK which means telling the truth about who killed JFK.
Referencing early online support, box office analysts expect this film to perform extremely well once released in theatres. We thank the over 100,000 fans who support American Deep State Movie on Facebook.
Describing the assault, Ms Homer, 37, said: “I often ask myself if the impact of the attack would have been so severe if my assailant was not a police officer.
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Vision Films Inc. (“Vision”) announces the VOD and dvd release of My Secret Billionaire on March 9, 2021. The film is from Director/Writer Fraydun Manocherian and produced by Faryar Mansuri for Fraydun Productions. It will be available on streaming and cable platforms everywhere in the US and Canada, and dvd at major online retailers. With a cast of familiar favorites, My Secret Billionaire is a fresh take on finding true love and the timeless adage that money can‘t buy happiness.
Vision Films Inc Film Distribution Company Logo
My Secret Billionaire Rom-Com Movie Poster
Synopsis: To satisfy his father‘s wish, a handsome and powerful billionaire travels alone, without money, and without using his real name to New York City. When the former playboy meets an attractive and down-to-earth real estate agent, the reason behind his father‘s wish becomes apparent and they both discover that true love is something that money just can‘t buy.
Starring: Victor Alfieri (Angels Demons), Ione Skye (Say Anything), Sarah Steele (The To Do List, Spanglish), and Talia Shire (The Godfather, Rocky).
Lise Romanoff, CEO and Managing Director of Vision Films says, “My Secret Billionaire is the ultimate escape into a world of decadent romance. It‘s every girl‘s fantasy to fall in love with the perfect man she‘s dreamed of, only to find out that he happens to be a billionaire also in search of true love.”
Producer Faryar Mansuri shares, “The essence of the film is about how coincidences can transform one with true love. We are thrilled to share this film with the world.”
My Secret Billionaire will be available on: iTunes, Amazon Instant, GooglePlay, Vudu, FandangoNow, Hoopla, Vimeo, and across hundreds of U.S. cable providers including Comcast, Spectrum, Charter, Cox, Dish, DirecTV and more. dvd retailers will include Amazon and all other major online retailers.
About Vision Films
Vision Films is a leading independent sales and VOD aggregator specializing in the licensing, marketing, and distribution of over 800 feature films, documentaries, and series from some of the most prolific independent film producers in the world. Led by Lise Romanoff, Managing Director/CEO Worldwide Distribution, Vision Films releases 2-4 films a month across Theatrical, VOD, dvd, and television platforms. visionfilms.net
Media Contact Andrea McKinnon 818-415-9442 [email protected]
(From left) Mithun Chakraborty, Sourav Ganguly and Prosenjit Chatterjee | Illustration: Soham Sen
Kolkata: From a point where it failed to attract big Bengali names, the BJP has now been able to reach out to three of West Bengal’s biggest icons — actors Prosenjit Chatterjee and Mithun Chakraborty, and former Indian cricket skipper and current BCCI president Sourav Ganguly.
Even though none of these stars have joined the BJP or made any speech supporting the party or its ideology, the BJP has been strategically using their presence in central government programmes and meetings with top leaders or ideologues of the BJP-RSS front.
Over the past few weeks, photos of Prosenjit Chatterjee attending the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-headed event to celebrate Subhash Chandra Bose’s 125th birth anniversary on 23 January surfaced on social media, and they were later followed by another photo of him with Anirban Ganguly the chief of the BJP-affiliated Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation and a member of the party’s West Bengal core committee.
The photo shows Anirban Ganguly handing over a book on Amit Shah to Prosenjit.
Similarly, a picture of actor Mithun Chakraborty with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat went viral on social media on 17 February.
Chakraborty, a former Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP, had met Bhagwat at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur last year. He then invited Bhagwat for breakfast at his residence in Mumbai on 17 February.
Bengal goes Bhagwa way when Dancing legend Mithun da join hand with Most respectable RSS Pramukh Mohan Bhagwat ji pic.twitter.com/ST0fZAYcWF
For Sourav Ganguly, people’s perception about his supposed association with the party is even stronger than the others.
Ganguly is the president of BCCI and Jay Shah, Amit Shah’s son, is the secretary of the organisation. Ganguly, who suffered a mild stroke a few days ago, received calls from the home minister and the prime minister inquiring about his health.
West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar also met Ganguly at Raj Bhavan for the first time, in the over two years he has spent in office, on 27 December last year. Pictures of the meeting had also gone viral on all social platforms.
The ruling Trinamool Congress, however, said that this is a BJP strategy “to confuse people”.
“By clicking pictures with Sourav Ganguly or Bumba Da (Prosenjit) or Mithun Da, who are immensely popular among Bengalis, BJP is trying to create confusion. Like every other false agenda they bring, this is another fake narrative,” the Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha MP and theatre director Arpita Ghosh said.
“They want to portray that such personalities are with them. But it is not true. None of them ever spoke in support of their ideology or expressed faith in their communal agenda. All of them are our icons and we believe in them. They will not fall prey to such political strategy of BJP.
“People of Bengal are intelligent and aware enough to understand such propaganda politics. These strategies will not fetch them more votes,” she added.
In the run-up to assembly polls in the state, the BJP has managed to induct a host of smaller stars while some others are regularly seen in the party’s outreach programmes.
Last week, Bengali cinema star Yash Dasgupta joined the BJP.
Then, on 23 February, Union IB Minister Prakash Javadekar’s outreach programme for Bengali intellectuals at a Kolkata hotel saw a good number of senior members of Bengal’s film industry, also known as Tollywood, attend the programme.
They included actors Rituparna Sengupta, Paoli Dam, Abir Chatterjee and others such as Mamata Shankar, Churni Ganguly, film-makers Gautam Ghosh, Anik Dutta, producers Mahendra Soni and Nispal Singh and renowned classical singer Ustad Rashid Khan.
Veteran actor Biswajit Chatterjee, who was initially associated with the Trinamool Congress was present at the event, while Prosenjit, his son, skipped it.
Political analyst, Prof. Samir Das, however, feels that none of this will make a difference unless one of the big guns join the party.
“The BJP is surely trying to make inroads, but I am not sure how much it will help them. Had they been successful in bringing Sourav Ganguly to their political platform, it would have been a real breakthrough,” he said.
“But he has very carefully managed to stay away from any political event or association. Despite being BCCI president, he never came out explicitly in BJP’s support. It is the same with Prosenjit. Mithun Chakraborty calls his association with RSS as spiritual.
“But, the party is trying to create a perception and somehow managed to get hold of three most important personalities of Bengal,” he added.
Inroads in Trinamool’s fort
After at least three years of making several attempts, the BJP finally seems to make inroads into Tollywood.
“We are organising our sampark programmes regularly among Bengal’s elite intellectuals. They appreciate Modiji’s development work and reforms,” Anirban Ganguly told The Print. “But meeting any celebrity does not mean that we want them to join our political party; it is our outreach programme, we take their suggestions and recommendation to build a Sonar Bangla.”
Rantideb Sengupta, a senior columnist and convenor of BJP’s intellectual cell, said the celebrities are finally giving the party a chance. “We are trying to reach out to them, who despite having different political faith or a neutral thinking, gave us a chance to present our case,” he said.
The Trinamool Congress, however, continues to lead in this field. Over the past 10 years, the Trinamool has enjoyed a monopoly and controlled the industry.
The party has at least 12 present or former MPs and MLAs, who are Tollywood celebrities. The list includes Satabdi Roy, Tapas Pal, Munmun Sen, Dipak Adhikari aka Dev, Mimi Chakrabarti, Nusrat Jahan and Arpita Ghosh as MPs and Bratya Bose, Debosree Roy, Chiranjeet Chakraborty, Indranil Sen as MLAs.
Bratya Bose and Indranil Sen are Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet colleagues.
Among sports personalities, Trinamool had football icon Baichung Bhutia as an MP and Dipendu Biswas as an MLA.
The party continues to attract celebrities. In the past month alone, at least two dozen theatre and movie actors have joined Trinamool Congress. Cricketer Manoj Tiwary, along with a group of actors, joined the party in presence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Thursday.
India needs free, fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism even more as it faces multiple crises.
But the news media is in a crisis of its own. There have been brutal layoffs and pay-cuts. The best of journalism is shrinking, yielding to crude prime-time spectacle.
ThePrint has the finest young reporters, columnists and editors working for it. Sustaining journalism of this quality needs smart and thinking people like you to pay for it. Whether you live in India or overseas, you can do it here.
But many of the predicted nominees missed out, including Viola Davis, Carey Mulligan, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, Olivia Colman, Glenn Close and Gary Oldman.
Tom Hanks stars as Civil War veteran Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd in “News of the World.”
Companion viewing
“The Searchers” (1956)
“True Grit” (1969)
“Smoke Signals” (1998)
“Reel Injun” (2009 documentary)
“Captain Phillips” (2013)
“News of the World” stars Tom Hanks as a Civil War veteran. The film arrives for Christmas and is being packaged as an Oscar hopeful in this pandemic awards season.
“News of the World” is set five years after the Civil War has ended. Hanks plays Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a veteran of three wars. With no wars to fight now, he has taken to traveling through Texas and reading newspapers to crowds of people who will pay a dime each to listen.
Aired 12/14/20
on KPBS News
Listen to this story by Beth Accomando.
But during his travels, he is asked to deliver a 10-year-old girl called Cicada, but whose birth name is Johanna Leonberger (Helena Zengel). She had been taken in by the Kiowa tribe six years earlier and raised as one of their own after they apparently killed her immediate family. But Johanna has no interest in being returned to her biological aunt. Reluctantly, Kidd accepts the task and heads out on the road with his equally reluctant ward.
Directed and co-written by Paul Greengrass, “News of the World” is not a bad film but it is a film of missed opportunities and a kind of ho-hum familiarity.
The film is based on Paulette Jiles‘ novel of the same name. Although I have not read the book, I do know that her story focused on two things the film chooses to almost completely ignore. First, it is the winter of 1870, and Kidd is sharing the news that the 15th Amendment has been ratified and will extend the right to vote to all men and he explains to the crowd in the book, “That means colored gentlemen, he said. Let us have no vaporings or girlish shrieks. He turned his head to search the crowd of faces turned up to him. I can hear you muttering, he said. Stop it. I hate muttering.” He sees spreading this news as a duty that is being interrupted by his need to deliver a hellion child to her relatives. And second, the book explores what it was like for children raised by Native Americans and then returned to white civilization.
These are elements that could have resonated in interesting ways today.
Kidd traveling through an America that’s still painfully divided in the aftermath of war and trying to raise awareness of voting rights feels timely as we look back to Reconstruction and try to understand some of the roots of what we now see as systemic racism. He sometimes crosses paths with people who don’t want to hear enlightening news from other places but rather only news from their own insular community that reaffirms their own narrow beliefs.
It’s also interesting to have someone reading newspapers and holding listeners rapt with news presented as engaging stories.
But instead of focusing on these aspects, Greengrass focuses on Kidd’s task of delivering Johanna and the predictable action involving nefarious sorts trying to steal the girl from him and wicked relatives who want nothing to do with her. The film, as well as the book, recalls “True Grit” in its pairing of an old man and spirited young girl, and “The Searchers,” in its journey of a man trying to return a girl to white society. But sadly Greengrass misses the elements that made those stories work so well and only seems to keep the formulaic plot points. We don’t get the larger than life characters of “True Grit” nor do we get the complex emotional nuance of “The Searchers.”
In the book, Kidd derived pleasure from culling through stories to pick the ones to share and we get none of that sense in the film. Exploring what news was like at a time when many could not read or could not access papers could have been both interesting and fun. Kidd’s relationship with Johanna goes through a familiar kind of Helen Keller-Annie Sullivan’s battle of anger and mistrust ultimately leading to a genuine bond of friendship.
A film like “News of the World” just makes me wonder why Greengrass wanted to adapt this book now. Why adapt a book and leave out its most fascinating and complex ideas? And why adapt a book like this at this particular moment in time? A film looking to a Civil War vet traveling through the South with a white girl teaching us lessons about Native Americans just feels a bit out of touch especially when the writing is so mundane and the plot so blandly formulaic.
Greengrass and Hanks partnered more successfully on the film “Captain Phillips,” which was inspired by a true story of modern-day pirates taking over a ship. But here Greengrass fails to build the intensity of action as he did in “Captain Phillips” nor does he give us the kind of narrative depth that makes us feel like the time we have spent with the film was worthwhile. Greengrass taps into Hanks’ on-screen and off-screen persona as a nice guy and hopes that we’ll just enjoy his company.
As a film planned for Christmas release it also tries to tap into a sentimentality that it doesn’t fully earn and an ending that seems to ignore the challenges both these characters were facing in their lives.
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Beth Accomando
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The former Oasis bandmates and estranged siblings have secretly registered a new joint company called Kosmic Kyte on Companies House, which is for “motion picture production activities’, The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre column reports.
It’s now rumoured that the rival brothers, who have been at loggerheads ever since Oasis split following a backstage bust-up between the pair at their final concert in Paris in 2009, could be eyeing up a biopic following the success of Sir Elton John’s ‘Rocketman’ and the Freddie Mercury film, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
No further information is known as this time, however, the Britpop group’s former frontman, Liam, has taken to Twitter to address the news, teasing: “There gonna put in the movies there gonna make a big star out of me c’mon you know LG x (sic)”
The 48-year-old rocker – who often uses Twitter to insult Noel – previously joked that Rowan Atkinson’s alter ego Mr Bean would be a good choice to play his brother in a film about the ‘Stand By Me’ band, while he’d love to see ‘Notting Hill’ star Rhys Ifans portray himself.
He said: “Mr Bean for Noel, because he’s annoying, isn’t he?
“You just want to punch his f****** head in. Rhys Ifans for me.”
Liam took to the micro-blogging this week to declare himself the only frontman of Oasis in a dig at his 53-year-old sibling.
He wrote: “Only time there was ever 2 front men in oasis was when my shadow was lit up by the lights THE END (sic)”
Fans are hopeful that an Oasis reunion will happen one day, though Noel has been adamant that no amount of money would persuade him to get back on stage with his arch-nemesis brother.
In the meantime, Oasis fans have an upcoming biopic about Creation Records boss Alan McGee – who signed the ‘Supersonic’ hitmakers – to look forward to.
‘Trainspotting’ star Ewen Bremner plays the music mogul in ‘Creation Stories’, which “tells the unforgettable tale of infamous Creation Records label head Alan McGee; and of how one written-off young Glaswegian upstart rose to irrevocably change the face of British culture.”
