The Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie has now grossed over $400 million globally in under three months.
The live-action sequel, which was co-produced by Sega and paramount Pictures, debuted in selected markets on March 30.
The film is currently the fifth-highest grossing video game adaptation of all time, and as it’s still showing in cinemas it looks set to overtake Sony’s Uncharted movie, which was released in January.
The top-grossing video game adaptations (via Box Office Mojo):
Commenting on the success of the movies in a recent VGC interview, Sonic Team’s boss said it presented a welcome challenge for the studio because it now has a broader audience to satisfy with its game releases.
“Because of the success of the movies, we’re finding that we’re reaching into this wider audience of people who maybe never played the game before, or don’t play them that much,” Takashi Iizuka said. “It’s this wider group of fans who we need to start now making content for.
“Honestly, it makes us all very happy, because we have more people now that we can bring content to. It is a challenge though, because we have maybe new gamers or people who haven’t played previous Sonic games, so we don’t think we can go out there with on single game that will make the entire audience excited.”
“Because the movie Sonic came from where the game started, trying to take the movie qualities and stick it back into the games doesn’t really work well,” he said.
“What I want to do is stay faithful to our game Sonic and really expand on the game Sonic to incorporate new ideas that are going to get people excited about new games.”
“Capturing humans at will for their own sinister purposes!” Ignite Films has revealed a new trailer for their 4K restoration of a sci-fi classic titled Invaders from Mars, originally released in 1953. This 69-year-old film will be out on Blu-ray in September, and has been touring to restoration festivals including TCM, Fine Arts Film Festival, and the upcoming Il Cinema Ritrovato in Italy. Fans have waited for the restoration of William Cameron Menzies’ sci-fi classic Invaders from Mars. Now, finally, the wait is almost over! “Fearful memories of this timeless 1953 bone-chiller still haunt the dreams of fans who have never forgotten the story of a young boy who witnesses an alien invasion.” Ignite states: “We’re grateful to finally complete the 4K restoration of the sci-fi classic Invaders from Mars after a lengthy search for the final elements. We needed the elements to fill in the gaps in the original camera negative, which was stored with great care at the UCLA Film Television Archive.” The 1950s sci-fi film stars Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Morris Ankrum, Leif Erickson, and Hillary Brooke. This was the very first alien invasion film shot in color, following The War of the Worlds also released in 1953. Looks better than ever – have to watch.
Here’s the new 4K restoration trailer for William Cameron Menzies’ Invaders from Mars, from YouTube:
From TCM: “William Cameron Menzies had already distinguished himself as an Oscar-winning designer and the director of H.G. Wells’s visionary Things to Come (1936) when he helped turn this low-budget science-fiction movie into a cult favorite. His unique design style, marked by distorted sets and low-angle shots, sets this film apart from other 1950s fright fests. Rushed into theaters before producer George Pal’s The War of the Worlds (1953), Invaders from Mars was the first alien invasion film shot in color. Its tale of a child (Jimmy Hunt) who witnesses a flying saucer land near his home and then notices odd behavior from his parents and neighbors inspired countless other films, from Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)—another picture in which people become convinced their loved ones have been replaced by soulless lookalikes—to Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (1979) and Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant (1999), whose directors saw Invaders from Mars as children.” Invaders from Mars is one of the final films directed by William Cameron Menzies. The screenplay is by Richard Blake. The film originally opened in April of 1953, with an alternate, longer version released in the UK in 1954. Ignite Films will debut the 4K restoration of Invader from Mars on Blu-ray / dvd starting on September 26th, 2022. For more details, visit their official site.
When director Nyla Innuksuk decided what her film Slash/Back was going to be about, she knew she was going to have to do some things differently. And in a way, shaking things up was the whole point.
The film, which premiered on Friday, follows a group of teen and preteen girls in Nunavut as they grapple with the pains of growing up, reconcile their cultural identity with an adolescent pressure to conform — and single-handedly fight off an alien invasion.
“I grew up obsessed with horror movies,” Innuksuk said in explaining why she chose to make a film ultimately about identity in the horror genre.
“I was always dressing up my cousins as ghosts and dousing them in blood. And it just kind of made sense for me to be thinking that kind of route when it came to making my first feature.”
The result is a unique mix of contemporary sci-fi and traditional Inuit myth, comedy and horror that Innuksuk created by borrowing from her own past growing up in Nunavut.
But to make Slash/Back come out the way she envisioned it, she had to change how actors are cast, how crews are housed, and prove to investors that a horror movie could work in the Arctic’s 24-hour sunshine — demonstrating the lengths Indigenous filmmakers are going to to build capacity and get their stories told.
‘It was totally crazy’
Slash/Back is filmed entirely in the hamlet of Pangnirtung, on Baffin Island roughly 300 km from Iqaluit, with no roads leading in or out — the first feature-length film to shoot there.
To get investors on board, Innuksuk first started with a virtual reality proof-of-concept short film, featuring horror in that landscape, with the normal everyday realities of Inuit teens talking about boys, scrolling Instagram and dreaming about summer holidays in Winnipeg.
Since there were no casting agents in the territory, Innuksuk instead organized a series of acting workshops to simultaneously teach about 20 girls — the majority of whom had never acted before — the ins-and-outs of the craft, figure out which girls fit which part, and refine those parts to truly match the habits and personalities of Nunavut’s Gen Z.
And on top of all that, the production shipped nearly 60 beds and mattresses to two schools in the community, and the whole crew stayed there for the entirety of filming. Innuksuk says they chose to do so because, with Nunavut’s housing crisis, it would be impossible for them to highlight and champion Pangnirtung without ultimately hurting residents by doing it any other way.
“It was totally crazy — crazy way to make a movie. But that’s kind the only way that it would have been possible, is to be given that space and have everyone in the community help out and help us make it.”
Despite the lengths she had to go to, Innuksuk is far from the only filmmaker approaching filmmaking with that level of access and support in mind. For years, Indigenous filmmakers have pared filmmaking with behind-the-scenes work to support Indigenous creators and communities historically shut out from the industry.
And now, that work is beginning to see real results, Innuksuk said.
Director Nyla Innuksuk on the set of Slash/Back, shot in the hamlet of Pangnirtung, on Baffin Island about 300 km from Iqaluit. Innuksuk set up acting workshops to help cast her film. (Ksenia Stassiouk)
Training works, says director
Movies like Danis Goulet’s Night Raiders, Tracey Deer’s Beans and Kathleen Hepburn and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’s The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open by Indigenous filmmakers and starring Indigenous cast have, in the last few years, burst onto the scene as some of the best productions coming out of the country. (Hepburn is not Indigenous, though co-director and star Tailfeathers is Blackfoot and Sámi)
At the same time, like Innuksuk’s, those films oftentimes were produced with a number of programs built in to support the next generation of talent, and increase the confidence and access of other Indigenous creators.
In the case of both Night Raiders and The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open, that materialized in the form of onset mentorship programs to help give young Indigenous filmmakers a way into the industry. For Beans, which is drawn from Deer’s own traumatic experiences during the 1990 Oka Crisis, Deer had a behind-the-scenes acting coach help the film’s child stars learn how to engage with the emotionally charged aspects of the script.
Many of those children had never acted before, and Deer explained in an interview at the time with news and culture outlet Cult MTL that she similarly had to cast through an acting workshop instead of going through the normal casting process as “there aren’t a ton of Indigenous kids in that traditional system that have already been discovered.”
Writer, director and actor Jennifer Podemski explained that sort of resource building is one of the reasons we see the wave of Indigenous-led productions we have now.
Her first production was also the first Indigenous dramatic series in North America — and came to exist wholly because of a training initiative for young Indigenous artists. In 2002, Podemski and Laura J. Milliken brought a script and film crew to Regina and worked with 40 Indigenous youth to produce what would eventually morph into 2003’s Moccasin Flats TV series, which ran for three seasons.
“I know, and I’ve seen — and anyone who remembers or who was a part of that project knows — that training works and training builds capacity,” Podemski said.
“It may not be for everybody, but we do need our own communities to engage with us as content creators to help build that capacity, and also introduce these careers in the film sector to the youth.”
Two decades later, Podemski is now working on a new show, Little Bird, about an Indigenous woman looking for her birth family after being removed from them during the Sixties Scoop. That production, like so many others, also features a training program for both emerging and mid-level Indigenous filmmakers.
Jennifer Podemski says she is passionate about giving Indigenous creators chances to train, learn, share content and succeed. (Shine Network)
‘Unlimited barriers’ remain
While offering those opportunities and resources is necessary to break down the barriers facing Indigenous creators, she said, there are still “an unlimited range of barriers within the industry itself.”
The greatest barrier, said Podemski, is Indigenous people’s “ability as corporations.” Despite the proven track record of Indigenous productions, it is often difficult to secure investment, while Podemski said broadcasters often request that Indigenous creators “have partners who are non-Indigenous so that … they can feel more confident that they will get the delivery they’re looking for.”
“I’m pretty sad to see that we are still near-invisible in terms of the kind of work that we are able to do, the kind of money we are able to access, and the kind of audiences we’re able to engage,” she said. “Because we don’t have the platforms needed to bring our stories to wider audiences.”
Until that can change, Podemski said, Indigenous creators are forced to rely mostly on self-sustained training opportunities to foster young talent.
But even still, the positive effects of that training are undeniable. At 24, Harlan Blayne Kytwayhat is a younger player in the Canadian entertainment industry. He fell into acting only a few years ago after a scout noticed him working at a country club and asked him to audition.
After booking his first role in the drama series Tribal, he later landed a role in the Letterkenny spin off Shoresy, in which he plays Sanguinet, comic foil to title character and hockey player Shoresy.
Harlan Kytwayhat appears in a scene from Shoresy. (Bell Media)
Kytwayhat says growing up in Makwa Sahgaiehcan, a Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan, acting or acting classes weren’t opportunities open to him or any of his friends — which meant he never even considered a career in the film or television industry for himself.
Now, seeing where his career led him, one of his ultimate goals is to one day start an arts program in his reserve — to champion the arts as a viable career for young Indigenous kids so they can make their way into the industry the way he did.
“I really hope it progresses more here,” Kytwahat said. “And not just here, but like all small towns, small communities and other reserves.”
From Karnataka in the South to Uttar Pradesh in the north, India is witnessing a new brand of casteism patronised by the Hindu Right in power. It is backed by the ideological and organisational might of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is trying to smother the rebellious Dalit identity under its hegemonic project of “Hindu unity”. As an inevitable countercurrent, there is also a new anti-caste genre spearheaded by Dalit creative forces. They are proving second to none in developing cultural products with a universal appeal, from literary works to new cinema. They are setting a radical agenda in mass culture, challenging Hindutva hegemony and its underlying upper caste consolidation head-on. This is clearly visible in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Literary Salvo against Saffron in Karnataka
Those who love democracy and secularism have had too much bad news from Karnataka in recent times—from the hijab ban to curbs on azaan, trumped-up issues with halal meat, the communalised revision of textbooks, an anti-conversion law, and flash mobs taking out yatras to attack the shrines, shops and homes of minorities. But now there is good news.
Devanur Mahadeva, Karnataka’s prominent ideologue and Dalit movement leader, has published a book titled ‘RSS: Aala Mattu Agala—RSS: Its Depth and Width’. The publication of this book, critical of the RSS, was a mega event. Innovatively planned as a big-bang event, it had six prominent publishers come together to release it on the same day. Thanks to the still robust literary and cultural networks of the Kannada intelligentsia, word about its release spread quickly, without any stage-managed commercial promos.
‘Depth and Width’
The 64-page booklet (priced at Rs. 40) unveils a unique subaltern critique of the Sangh Parivar’s hegemony. Its critique is not limited to aspiring for conventional liberal democracy and it is premised on a quest for radical social justice. The six publishers had released 9,000 copies, but almost all sold out within a week. Reprints are on the way. The unprecedented response to the book has had taluka-level publishers publish it to cater to the growing demand. It is a rare feat for any serious non-fiction work.
Most importantly, the overwhelming number of readers signals that it is not the Dalit youth or activists alone who are reading it but people from all social backgrounds. The attraction among non-Dalits to a Dalit-centric, Ambedkar-related text is a significant development. Perhaps it means the tender shoots of a new cosmopolitanism, liberal multiculturalism, and democratic composite culture will sprout.
Dr V Laxminarayana, a comrade-in-arms of Mahadeva in the Dalit and radical movements and Karnataka convener of the All-India People’s Front, told NewsClick, “Devanur Mahadeva shows in his book that Golwalkar’s vision was based on three lethal ideas. The first is to uphold ‘Purusha Sukta’ of the Rig Veda, which laid the basis for a hierarchic and oppressive Varna system. The second is the rejection of Ambedkar’s Constitution to maintain chaturvarna, and third is the glorification of Aryan supremacy. He shows how, based on these three principles, Hindutva ideology is anti-Dalit and anti-working people to the core. Mahadeva also strategises for the defeat of the BJP in Karnataka in the next election by calling for a broad unity of anti-BJP forces.”
Other activists NewsClick spoke to in Karnataka feel the politics of Mahadeva’s book is not just resentment and protest. Instead, it is an assertion of dignity, autonomy and independence and speaks to the rise of a leadership of the most oppressed within the democratic arena. It is not a lament expressing the oppression of those excluded and marginalised. Instead, it reflects their confident claim to an independent social and political role and a direct challenge to Hindutva. The book is not confined to encounters with upper caste dominance in villages or mohallas but challenges Hindu elite caste political leadership across India.
Mahadeva pioneered Karnataka’s autonomous Dalit movement in the 1970s, just after a similar movement made its mark in neighbouring Maharashtra. Like the Dalit Panthers of Maharashtra, the new Dalit assertion in Karnataka was led by the Dalit Sangharsh Samiti or DSS, and Mahadeva is one of its founders. For more than four decades, he has been a key strategist of the Dalit movement and advocated a “third force” in Karnataka politics based on progressive movements. It would be a movement of the Dalits and include the movements of farmers, women, labour, the radical left and civil society groups.
Mahadeva has flourished as an author and literary figure and is a Padma Shree awardee for his contributions to Kannada literature. He and comrades such as late DR Nagraj have ensured that Dalit literature is more than a match to other literary genres in the vibrant Kannada literary arena. Politically, he remained an independent leftist and ardent associate of Dr Rammanohar Lohia.
While the Hindu upper caste communal moorings in Karnataka was acquiring a mass populist dimension, and the anti-Muslim bias of the Hindu middle classes was spreading like a virus, Mahadeva’s book on the RSS has landed like a bombshell. The thousands of copies it has sold within a week establish that there is a large audience for anti-saffron literature in Karnataka. It also confirms the Hindutva surge in Karnataka would not go unchallenged.
New Dalit-Centric Cinema in Tamil Nadu
While the literary arena still dominates popular mass culture in Karnataka, in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, the Tamil film industry, Kollywood, has taken its place. It is a highly politicised arena in which the histories of Dravidian politics and the film world are inseparable. A new genre of subaltern Tamil films, which many call “Dalit cinema”, is making waves. Pa. Ranjith, its forerunner, was just 29 and barely out of arts school in 2012 when he made his debut.
S. Kumaraswamy, a prominent left leader in Tamil Nadu, summarises this phenomenon for NewsClick: “Pa. Ranjith epitomises new Dalit cinema, which is not about dirt and grime or drowning in tears but about life and full of colour. It is about struggle and assertion and questioning the values of caste-ridden Hindu society. It is also about reaching out to the toiling masses of other castes.”
Still, Pa. Ranjith’s films have been huge commercial successes. His Sarpatta Parambarai was viewed in 150 countries through OTT platforms. In the film, the hero takes a heavy beating, sinks low, and rises again to touch the skies. His inspirational message to the Bahujan is ‘Neeye oli—Be your own light’, and it was acclaimed by all who saw it. The New York Times called it a “must-watch movie” on OTT. In Pa. Ranjith’s Pariyerum Perumal, a Dalit student seeks to study and succeed as a lawyer to fight for the oppressed. His Kabali and Kaala, both made with Rajinikanth, were megahits. Kaala speaks out against Hindutva, while Kabali strikes out against the oppression of Tamils in Malaysia. His Attakathi and Madras were about the throbbing urban life of Dalits and their determined assertion against politically-patronised urban mafia.
Pa. Ranjith blazed a trail in Dalit cinema, but other film-makers such as Mari Selvaraj and Vetrimaran have sustained the trend with their movies. Their stories revolve around the lives of “hidden” and “denied people”. In Vetrimaran’s Asuran, a Dalit hero leads a struggle against oppressive upper-caste kulaks and mobilises peasants from toiling castes.
“Memory cards might have replaced costly film rolls in this hi-tech age, but memories—of oppression and struggles—are retrieved and retold as powerful aesthetic stories so that society will not sink into the morass of forgetfulness. In their political message, these films are a rallying call against Hindutva, as they shake the roots of the status quo,” says Kumaraswamy.
True, there is an element of glamorisation and romanticisation of Dalit existence and resistance, which perhaps is unavoidable in film-making. But the cultural constructs of caste and anti-caste are embedded in real-life oppression and inequalities. Films with stark Dalit motifs and urban themes from Dalit lives, too, become box-office hits now. Raising the cause of Dalits is no longer a narrow voice but becoming a much larger moralist proposition with a democratic imprint. It has as much appeal among non-Dalits as among the Dalits. This is a qualitatively new element in Tamil social cinema.
Mahadeva and Pa. Ranjith have individually stormed the elite/upper caste bastions of the Kannada literary genre and the Tamil film industry, respectively. Their work does not revolve within a limited horizon but pitches into a broader horizon of socio-cultural and political democracy. Both have established their artistic supremacy in their fields. Maybe their success is nascent, but they have proven that a new generation has arrived to take the lead of the oppressed in the exclusionary cultural and literary arenas. In this sense, it is good news for all democratic and secular aspirants.
Incidentally, this new ferment in the Dalit discourse spotlights the historical challenge of democratisation (on the social plane and at the grass-roots) in plural but hierarchic and polarised societies. It marks the outbreak of popular liberalism at the social level, even if fleetingly. This is the kind of outbreak that made Barak Obama president of a racist white supremacist society.
What is happening in India is not conventional Dalitism pitted against episodic upper caste cruelty. This is a wider social-democratic and political assertion. It shows how saffron governments are doing injustice to Ambedkar by trampling his democratic values and the constitutional guidelines on liberty, freedom of expression, and the rule of law.
In recent times, economically advanced Maharashtra was the first to witness a powerful Dalit upsurge, during the Elgar Parishad episode. The rattled establishment still sees an “Urban Naxal” spectre behind it. Perhaps it is the turn of other comparable States, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, to experience popular social-democratic assertion. Will this change hold the mirror before relatively more conservative Gujarat or Madhya Pradesh or Uttar Pradesh and Bihar? Will it inspire the progressive intelligentsia in the saffronised ‘cow-belt’ regions? Will new Devanur Mahadevas and Pa. Ranjith’s rise in the not-so-vibrant cultural fields of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar? History tells us only time stands between good news from the South echoing in the West and North.
The author is a commentator. The views are personal.
A Russian arms dealer labelled the “Merchant of Death” who once inspired a Hollywood movie is back in the headlines with speculation around a return to Moscow in a prisoner exchange.
If Viktor Bout, 55, is indeed eventually freed in return for WBNA star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, as some published reports suggest, it would add to the lore around a charismatic arms dealer the U.S. has imprisoned for over a decade.
Depending on the source, Bout is a swashbuckling businessman unjustly imprisoned after an overly aggressive U.S. sting operation, or a peddler of weapons whose sales fuelled some of the world’s worst conflicts.
The 2005 Nicolas Cage movie, “Lord of War” was loosely based on Bout, a former Soviet air force officer who gained fame supposedly by supplying weapons for civil wars in South America, the Middle East and Africa. His clients were said to include Liberia’s Charles Taylor, longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and both sides in Angola’s civil war.
Shira A. Scheindlin, the former New York City federal judge who sentenced Bout before returning to private law practice, can be counted among those who would not be disappointed by Bout’s freedom in a prisoner exchange.
“He’s done enough time for what he did in this case,” Scheindlin said in an interview, noting that Bout, a vegetarian and classical music fan who is said to speak six languages, has served over 11 years in U.S. prisons.
He was convicted in 2011 on terrorism charges. Prosecutors said he was ready to sell up to US$20 million in weapons, including surface-to-air missiles to shoot down U.S. helicopters. When they made the claim at his 2012 sentencing, Bout shouted: “It’s a lie!”
Bout has steadfastly proclaimed his innocence, saying he’s a legitimate businessman and didn’t sell weapons. He’s had plenty of support from high-level Russian officials since he was first arrested. A Russian parliament member testified when Bout was fighting extradition from Thailand to the U.S.
Last year, some of his paintings were displayed in Russia’s Civic Chamber, the body that oversees draft legislation and civil rights.
Bout’s case fits well into Moscow’s narrative that Washington is lying in wait to trap and oppress innocent Russians on flimsy grounds.
“From the resonant Bout case a real ‘hunt’ by Americans for Russian citizens around the world has unfolded,” the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta wrote last year.
Increasingly, Russia has cited his case as a human rights issue. His wife and lawyer claimed his health is deteriorating in the harsh prison environment where foreigners are not always eligible for breaks that Americans might receive.
Last month, Russia’s human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said: “We very much hope that our compatriot Viktor Bout will return to his homeland.”
Moskalkova said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the General Prosecutor’s Office, and the Ministry of Justice were working to see if Bout might qualify for transfer to Russia to serve the rest of his sentence.
“We are also constantly in dialogue in order to find a compromise in resolving this issue,” she said.
Now held in a medium-security facility in Marion, Illinois, Bout is scheduled to be released in August 2029.
“If you asked me today: ‘Do you think 10 years would be a fair sentence,’ I would say ‘yes,’” Scheindlin said.
“He got a hard deal,” the retired judge said, noting the U.S. sting operatives “put words in his mouth” so he’d say he was aware Americans could die from weapons he sold in order to require a terrorism enhancement that would force a long prison sentence, if not a life term.
“The idea of trading him shouldn’t be unacceptable to our government. It wouldn’t be wrong to release him,” Scheindlin said.
Still, she said an even exchange of Griner for Bout would be “troubling.” The WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medallist was arrested in February at a Moscow airport, where police said they found cannabis oil in a vape canister in her luggage. While the U.S. government has classified her as “wrongfully detained,” Griner pleaded guilty to drug possession charges on July 7 at her trial in a Russian court. Her trial is scheduled to resume Thursday.
Scheindlin said Griner was arrested for something that “wouldn’t be five minutes in jail.”
That sentiment is shared by others. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said in a July 9 editorial that Bout illegally trafficked billions of dollars of weapons “to feed wars around the world” and has “the blood of thousands on his hands,” while Griner “made a stupid mistake with a tiny amount of cannabis. She harmed no one.”
Griner could face up to 10 years in prison. Her guilty plea was not unanticipated by those who understand that similar moves commonly precede prisoner swaps. Whelan was arrested three years ago on espionage charges that the U.S. has said were trumped up and false
In April 2012, Scheindlin imposed the mandatory minimum 25-year sentence that Bout now serves, but she said she did so only because it was required.
At the time, his defence lawyer claimed the U.S. targeted Bout vindictively because it was embarrassed that his companies helped deliver goods to American military contractors involved in the war in Iraq.
The deliveries occurred despite United Nations sanctions imposed against Bout since 2001 because of his reputation as a notorious illegal arms dealer.
Prosecutors had urged Scheindlin to impose a life sentence, saying that if Bout was right to call himself nothing more than a businessman, “he was a businessman of the most dangerous order.”
Bout was estimated to be worth about $6 billion in March 2008 when he was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand. U.S. authorities tricked him into leaving Russia for what he thought was a meeting over a business deal to ship what prosecutors described as “a breathtaking arsenal of weapons — including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, machine guns and sniper rifles — 10 million rounds of ammunition and five tons of plastic explosives.”
He was taken into custody at a Bangkok luxury hotel after conversations with the Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation’s informants who posed as officials of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as the FARC. The group had been classified by Washington as a narco-terrorist group.
He was brought to the U.S. in November 2010.
The “Merchant of Death” moniker was attached to Bout by a high-ranking minister of Britain’s Foreign Office. The nickname was included in the U.S. government’s indictment of Bout.
The painstaking work to expose Harvey Weinstein comes to the big screen in the first trailer for She Said, the film adaptation of the book by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.
The duo, who won a Pulitzer prize (along with The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow) for their 2017 investigation into the sexual predation by the formerly untouchable film producer, helped ignite the #MeToo movement and several subsequent investigations into abuses of power.
The film, from Unothordox director Maria Schrader and adapted for the screen by Ida and Colette writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, depicts the months-long investigation by Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Twohey (Carey Mulligan), who “together broke one of the most important stories in a generation”, according to the official synopsis by Universal Pictures. It tells “a story that helped propel the #MeToo movement, shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood and altered American culture forever”.
Nearly two years after the series of stories in the Times and The New Yorker were published, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison on charges of sexual assault and third-degree rape. He is set to stand trial in Los Angeles for rape and sexual assault charges in October.
The trailer depicts Kantor’s first foray into the story, her partnership with Twohey, and the reporters’ efforts to break the culture of silence around Weinstein’s victims, many bound by NDAs not to speak of their experience.
Mulligan has been nominated for two Oscars, for An Education and Promising Young Woman. She will next be seen opposite Adam Sandler in Spaceman and Bradley Cooper in the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro.
She Said also stars Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher and Samantha Morton. It will premiere on 18 November before a predicted premiere at a fall film festival.
From Karnataka in the South to Uttar Pradesh in the north, India is witnessing a new brand of casteism patronised by the Hindu Right in power. It is backed by the ideological and organisational might of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is trying to smother the rebellious Dalit identity under its hegemonic project of “Hindu unity”. As an inevitable countercurrent, there is also a new anti-caste genre spearheaded by Dalit creative forces. They are proving second to none in developing cultural products with a universal appeal, from literary works to new cinema. They are setting a radical agenda in mass culture, challenging Hindutva hegemony and its underlying upper caste consolidation head-on. This is clearly visible in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Literary Salvo against Saffron in Karnataka
Those who love democracy and secularism have had too much bad news from Karnataka in recent times—from the hijab ban to curbs on azaan, trumped-up issues with halal meat, the communalised revision of textbooks, an anti-conversion law, and flash mobs taking out yatras to attack the shrines, shops and homes of minorities. But now there is good news.
Devanur Mahadeva, Karnataka’s prominent ideologue and Dalit movement leader, has published a book titled ‘RSS: Aala Mattu Agala—RSS: Its Depth and Width’. The publication of this book, critical of the RSS, was a mega event. Innovatively planned as a big-bang event, it had six prominent publishers come together to release it on the same day. Thanks to the still robust literary and cultural networks of the Kannada intelligentsia, word about its release spread quickly, without any stage-managed commercial promos.
‘Depth and Width’
The 64-page booklet (priced at Rs. 40) unveils a unique subaltern critique of the Sangh Parivar’s hegemony. Its critique is not limited to aspiring for conventional liberal democracy and it is premised on a quest for radical social justice. The six publishers had released 9,000 copies, but almost all sold out within a week. Reprints are on the way. The unprecedented response to the book has had taluka-level publishers publish it to cater to the growing demand. It is a rare feat for any serious non-fiction work.
Most importantly, the overwhelming number of readers signals that it is not the Dalit youth or activists alone who are reading it but people from all social backgrounds. The attraction among non-Dalits to a Dalit-centric, Ambedkar-related text is a significant development. Perhaps it means the tender shoots of a new cosmopolitanism, liberal multiculturalism, and democratic composite culture will sprout.
Dr V Laxminarayana, a comrade-in-arms of Mahadeva in the Dalit and radical movements and Karnataka convener of the All-India People’s Front, told NewsClick, “Devanur Mahadeva shows in his book that Golwalkar’s vision was based on three lethal ideas. The first is to uphold ‘Purusha Sukta’ of the Rig Veda, which laid the basis for a hierarchic and oppressive Varna system. The second is the rejection of Ambedkar’s Constitution to maintain chaturvarna, and third is the glorification of Aryan supremacy. He shows how, based on these three principles, Hindutva ideology is anti-Dalit and anti-working people to the core. Mahadeva also strategises for the defeat of the BJP in Karnataka in the next election by calling for a broad unity of anti-BJP forces.”
Other activists NewsClick spoke to in Karnataka feel the politics of Mahadeva’s book is not just resentment and protest. Instead, it is an assertion of dignity, autonomy and independence and speaks to the rise of a leadership of the most oppressed within the democratic arena. It is not a lament expressing the oppression of those excluded and marginalised. Instead, it reflects their confident claim to an independent social and political role and a direct challenge to Hindutva. The book is not confined to encounters with upper caste dominance in villages or mohallas but challenges Hindu elite caste political leadership across India.
Mahadeva pioneered Karnataka’s autonomous Dalit movement in the 1970s, just after a similar movement made its mark in neighbouring Maharashtra. Like the Dalit Panthers of Maharashtra, the new Dalit assertion in Karnataka was led by the Dalit Sangharsh Samiti or DSS, and Mahadeva is one of its founders. For more than four decades, he has been a key strategist of the Dalit movement and advocated a “third force” in Karnataka politics based on progressive movements. It would be a movement of the Dalits and include the movements of farmers, women, labour, the radical left and civil society groups.
Mahadeva has flourished as an author and literary figure and is a Padma Shree awardee for his contributions to Kannada literature. He and comrades such as late DR Nagraj have ensured that Dalit literature is more than a match to other literary genres in the vibrant Kannada literary arena. Politically, he remained an independent leftist and ardent associate of Dr Rammanohar Lohia.
While the Hindu upper caste communal moorings in Karnataka was acquiring a mass populist dimension, and the anti-Muslim bias of the Hindu middle classes was spreading like a virus, Mahadeva’s book on the RSS has landed like a bombshell. The thousands of copies it has sold within a week establish that there is a large audience for anti-saffron literature in Karnataka. It also confirms the Hindutva surge in Karnataka would not go unchallenged.
New Dalit-Centric Cinema in Tamil Nadu
While the literary arena still dominates popular mass culture in Karnataka, in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, the Tamil film industry, Kollywood, has taken its place. It is a highly politicised arena in which the histories of Dravidian politics and the film world are inseparable. A new genre of subaltern Tamil films, which many call “Dalit cinema”, is making waves. Pa. Ranjith, its forerunner, was just 29 and barely out of arts school in 2012 when he made his debut.
S. Kumaraswamy, a prominent left leader in Tamil Nadu, summarises this phenomenon for NewsClick: “Pa. Ranjith epitomises new Dalit cinema, which is not about dirt and grime or drowning in tears but about life and full of colour. It is about struggle and assertion and questioning the values of caste-ridden Hindu society. It is also about reaching out to the toiling masses of other castes.”
Still, Pa. Ranjith’s films have been huge commercial successes. His Sarpatta Parambarai was viewed in 150 countries through OTT platforms. In the film, the hero takes a heavy beating, sinks low, and rises again to touch the skies. His inspirational message to the Bahujan is ‘Neeye oli—Be your own light’, and it was acclaimed by all who saw it. The New York Times called it a “must-watch movie” on OTT. In Pa. Ranjith’s Pariyerum Perumal, a Dalit student seeks to study and succeed as a lawyer to fight for the oppressed. His Kabali and Kaala, both made with Rajinikanth, were megahits. Kaala speaks out against Hindutva, while Kabali strikes out against the oppression of Tamils in Malaysia. His Attakathi and Madras were about the throbbing urban life of Dalits and their determined assertion against politically-patronised urban mafia.
Pa. Ranjith blazed a trail in Dalit cinema, but other film-makers such as Mari Selvaraj and Vetrimaran have sustained the trend with their movies. Their stories revolve around the lives of “hidden” and “denied people”. In Vetrimaran’s Asuran, a Dalit hero leads a struggle against oppressive upper-caste kulaks and mobilises peasants from toiling castes.
“Memory cards might have replaced costly film rolls in this hi-tech age, but memories—of oppression and struggles—are retrieved and retold as powerful aesthetic stories so that society will not sink into the morass of forgetfulness. In their political message, these films are a rallying call against Hindutva, as they shake the roots of the status quo,” says Kumaraswamy.
True, there is an element of glamorisation and romanticisation of Dalit existence and resistance, which perhaps is unavoidable in film-making. But the cultural constructs of caste and anti-caste are embedded in real-life oppression and inequalities. Films with stark Dalit motifs and urban themes from Dalit lives, too, become box-office hits now. Raising the cause of Dalits is no longer a narrow voice but becoming a much larger moralist proposition with a democratic imprint. It has as much appeal among non-Dalits as among the Dalits. This is a qualitatively new element in Tamil social cinema.
Mahadeva and Pa. Ranjith have individually stormed the elite/upper caste bastions of the Kannada literary genre and the Tamil film industry, respectively. Their work does not revolve within a limited horizon but pitches into a broader horizon of socio-cultural and political democracy. Both have established their artistic supremacy in their fields. Maybe their success is nascent, but they have proven that a new generation has arrived to take the lead of the oppressed in the exclusionary cultural and literary arenas. In this sense, it is good news for all democratic and secular aspirants.
Incidentally, this new ferment in the Dalit discourse spotlights the historical challenge of democratisation (on the social plane and at the grass-roots) in plural but hierarchic and polarised societies. It marks the outbreak of popular liberalism at the social level, even if fleetingly. This is the kind of outbreak that made Barak Obama president of a racist white supremacist society.
What is happening in India is not conventional Dalitism pitted against episodic upper caste cruelty. This is a wider social-democratic and political assertion. It shows how saffron governments are doing injustice to Ambedkar by trampling his democratic values and the constitutional guidelines on liberty, freedom of expression, and the rule of law.
In recent times, economically advanced Maharashtra was the first to witness a powerful Dalit upsurge, during the Elgar Parishad episode. The rattled establishment still sees an “Urban Naxal” spectre behind it. Perhaps it is the turn of other comparable States, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, to experience popular social-democratic assertion. Will this change hold the mirror before relatively more conservative Gujarat or Madhya Pradesh or Uttar Pradesh and Bihar? Will it inspire the progressive intelligentsia in the saffronised ‘cow-belt’ regions? Will new Devanur Mahadevas and Pa. Ranjith’s rise in the not-so-vibrant cultural fields of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar? History tells us only time stands between good news from the South echoing in the West and North.
The author is a commentator. The views are personal.
A new company named ‘Nintendo Studios’ has been spotted in copyright listings for the upcoming Super Mario animated movie.
Although the listings appear to have been present on the United States Copyright Office website for some time, they were only recently spotted by Twitter user MichaelO2k.
The listings show copyright records for the upcoming Mario movie, and indicate that the film’s copyrights are registered to Nintendo of America, Nintendo Co Ltd, Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures.
However, it also lists two other companies: Nintendo Studios LLC and M Brothers Productions LLC.
Although the listings don’t give any further information on these companies, it appears that Nintendo Studios may be a new subsidiary set up by Nintendo to handle future visual entertainment such as movies or TV shows.
Similar subsidiaries include Marvel Studios LLC and PlayStation Studios LLC, which are subsidiaries of Walt Disney Studios and Sony Interactive Entertainment respectively.
M Brothers Productions, meanwhile, is likely a limited-time company set up purely for the purposes of making the Super Mario movie, a practice which is common in filmmaking.
For example, Marvel Studios’ early movies also had single-film companies set up: Iron Works Productions LLC for Iron Man, and Incredible Productions LLC for The Incredible Hulk.
The fact that a company called Nintendo Studios exists, however, gives further weight to Nintendo’s claims that it plans to make more movies and/or TV shows starring its characters in the future.
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Miyamoto confirmed that Nintendo would like to make movies based on series other than Super Mario, because he said people should be experiencing the company’s franchises in a variety of ways instead of just video games.
Further reading
These movies would be tackled one by one, he added, rather than having a number of them in production simultaneously.
“I never did the work to find out who I am.” Apple has revealed the trailer for a comedy series titled Loot, starring and produced by Maya Rudolph. Loot is created, written and executive produced by TV creators / producers Yang Hubbard. Rudolph is Molly Novak, a billionaire ready to save the world. After divorcing her husband of 20 years, Molly must figure out what to do with her $87 billion settlement. She decides to reengage with her charitable foundation and reconnect with the real world—finding herself along the way. In addition to Rudolph, the Loot ensemble cast is led by stars Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Ron Funches, Nat Faxon, and Joel Kim Booster. This definitely seems inspired by the story of MacKenzie Scott, who walked away a huge billionaire after her divorce from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. As sweet and amusing as this story is, let’s not forget that no one in this world should be a billionaire and philanthropy is often branding cover-up used to make themselves look good. Which this series definitely does seem to touch upon. Enjoy.
Here’s the official trailer (+ poster) for Apple TV+’s series Loot, direct from YouTube:
In Loot, billionaire Molly Novak (Maya Rudolph) has a dream life, complete with private jets, a sprawling mansion and a gigayacht — anything her heart desires. When her husband of 20 years betrays her, she spirals publicly, becoming fuel for tabloid fodder. She’s reaching rock bottom when she learns, to her surprise, she has a charity foundation run by the no-nonsense Sofia Salinas (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez), who pleads with Molly to stop generating bad press. With her devoted assistant Nicholas (Joel Kim Booster) by her side, and with the help of Sofia and team — including mild-mannered accountant Arthur (Nat Faxon) and her optimistic, pop-culture-loving cousin Howard (Ron Funches) — Molly embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Giving back to others might be what she needs to get back to herself.Loot is created, written and executive produced by Alan Yang (“Master of None”) Matt Hubbard (“Parks and Rec”). Executive produced by Natasha Lyonne, Maya Rudolph, Danielle Renfrew Behrens, and Dave Becky. Apple debuts the Loot series streaming on Apple TV+ starting June 24th, 2022 this summer. Any good?
“How was it that he decided it was a good idea to do a great big long interview with Emily Maitlis on the BBC?” added Moffat, who worked on BBC drama Criminal Justice and its US remake The Night Of, plus Silk, Your Honor, Undercover and 61st Street.
