Movies & Books
Disney Delivers a Truly Bizarre Sleeping Beauty Sequel
The first Maleficent film, released in 2014, offered a storytelling twist on the Disney classic Sleeping Beauty. Like many a live-action remake from the studio (think Alice in Wonderland or Dumbo), it viewed its animated forebear as a jumping-off point, turning the cold-blooded villainess Maleficent (played by Angelina Jolie) into a misunderstood antihero; she was rewritten [...]
Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo joint winners of Booker Prize
Judges tore up the rule book on Monday, awarding the prestigious Booker Prize for Fiction jointly to Canadian author Margaret Atwood for "The Testaments" and Anglo-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo for "Girl, Woman, Other". Atwood becomes only the second female author to win the award twice, sharing the £50,000 ($62,800, 60,000 euros) prize [...]
Peter Handke: Avant-garde writer, Nobel critic
Peter Handke, one of the most original German-language writers alive, once used his famously sharp tongue to call for the Nobel Prize in Literature to be abolished. The prize brings its winner "false canonisation" along with "one moment of attention (and) six pages in the newspaper," the novelist, playwright, poet [...]
A master of the short story finds humor in the darkest places
Mastering the short story is no easy feat. An engaging one shines with the lyricism of poetry and the deliberate action of a play shuttling from scene to scene. Every line is critical. Israeli author Etgar Keret doesn’t just produce memorable short stories but short short stories. Some are no longer than [...]
MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Abominable’ is splendid fun
A far cry from other spooky depictions of Abominable Snowman-like beasts, Everest is a sweet, perpetually smiling yeti that possesses the ability to teach humans the importance of teamwork. Young at heart and kind of large in size, the blue-eyed Everest is one of two central figures in the PG-rated [...]
Review: ‘Joker’: Brilliant performance nails the character
For those unaware of the DC comic universe, the Joker is the supervillain who appeared in Christopher Nolan's 2008 superhero film the Dark Knight. He gave the superhero Batman a tough time. Director Todd Phillips' film, Joker is the origin story of this fictionalised character. This neo-noir film, designed as [...]