A visual feast definitely not for the fainthearted
production design. You can see the stamp of the veteran British auteur (Blade Runner, Gladiator and the underrated 2012 Alien prequel, Prometheus) all over it.
It doesn’t quite match the nailbiting terror of the original though.
To be fair, the sense of extraterrestrial dread begins to build as soon as the spaceship bound for a planet on the far side of the galaxy makes a detour to explore a seemingly paradisiacal outerspace habitat.
The captain (James Franco, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo) is burnt to a cinder in his hyper-sleep pod. One by one, his crewmates are eviscerated by a host of beasties.
Intriguingly, the expedition team includes twin androids with contrasting agendas (Michael Fassbender, in a challenging dual role).
A shower sequence that turns into a bloodbath is particularly unsettling. This film is definitely not meant for the weak-hearted.
The cast, including Katherine Waterston (as the wannabe alien-slayer a la Sigourney Weaver) and Billy Crudup (the reluctant new mission commander), is uniformly efficient.
From its deceptively gentle prelude to the majestic, Wagnerian finale …Covenant infuses the long-running series with a new lease of life.
Meri Pyaari Bindu is a nostalgic tribute to the Raj Kapoor era, when the heroine’s best friend loved her but she only cherished his friendship. Well, it’s an attempt at a tribute.
Filmmaker Maneesh Sharma bet his money on nostalgia and Ayushmann Khuranna two years ago with Dum Laga Ke Haisha.
Now, director Akshay Roy does the same, adding Parineeti Chopra to the mix. Sharma has produced both films.
Abhimanyu (Khuranna) and Bindu (Chopra) have been neighbours since childhood and strike up a charming but unequal friendship — the boy adores the girl but she is focused on her singing career.
Khuranna is fairly convincing as the hapless lover and best-selling author of erotic novels hilariously titled Chudail ki Choli and Dracula’s Lover. The pair looks good on screen. They’re charming as they run around the streets of Kolkata.
Strains of Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle’s ‘Abhi na jao chhor ke’ (Hum Dono, 1961) and Aarti Mukherjee’s ‘Do naina aur ek kahaani’ (Masoom, 1960) add to the mood.
But the story lacks passion and depth. You’re not really invested in the outcome, so even at two hours, the film feels stretched. The jumping timeline is jarring too.
And Chopra never finds the spark that would have explained his undying adoration, or indeed her passion for music. We hear more about her ambitions from him than we do from her.
Where Roy excels is in recreating the everyday down to the last detail. From 1980s Kolkata with its giant Durga idols to the shifty Mumbai broker with his strange advice for single women looking to rent.
Overall, MPD makes it to see grade.
BY SWETA KAUSHAL
The Delhi police, which joined Twitter in 2015, has 117000 followers and 8738 tweets. On the other hand, the Mumbai Police, which joined much later in 2015, already has as many as 2.77 million followers and over 20000 tweets.
So far, the content on Delhi Police handle, comprises not so impressive photos of alleged criminals arrested in several cases, out of focus clicks of events being held, blurred photos of men in khaki patrolling on foot and alerts on missing persons. The content was being uploaded by inspectors and constables apart from the individual Twitter handles of senior officers. Though all tweets posted from these handles are informative, they lack spunk and have thus failed to connect with the audience.
“We are police officers, we know how to investigate, interrogate. How do we make the content witty enough? For this we need professionals who can present the information in an interesting manner. We just know how to dispense information and that is what we do. But to connect with the audience better, it will need more work,” an officer said.
These media watchers, who will soon be hired through an agency, will be asked to present the content given to them by the police in a lively form. “These people will ensure that the tweets are dynamic, vibrant, upmarket, trendy yet relevant. The content will be given by us, they will just process it. We as a law enforcement agency definitely need to be very sensitive and cautious about the content when it is put out on the social media, so we will be constantly monitoring them. So the steering of content will remain with us,” Pathak said.
The police have contacted several agencies for the job and will soon be hiring. The experts will be hired to improve the content on the Delhi Police website and Facebook, Twitter handles. “We are also looking at other states who are using these agencies for their content and will then use the best available resource,” Pathak said.
Some of the parties such as the JDU and CPI reversed their demand to switch to paper ballots. Led by the BSP and the AAP, these parties had expressed doubts about the safeguards of an EVM and were among the 13 that had petitioned the poll panel to discontinue EVM use.
But on Friday, Sanjay Jha of the JDU told reporters the party does not want reversal to paper ballots, as they had witnessed booth capturing in the past.
The election commission’s presentation on the efficacy of the EVMs failed to cut ice with the AAP, BSP, PMK and the TMC as they pressed with the demand for the paper ballot system.
Another demand that was repeated by several parties was to increase the display time on VVPAT machines from the current seven seconds.
State funding of elections was another demand raised by several parties, though there was no consensus on the EC’s suggestion to disqualify candidates after framing of charges for the offence of bribery in elections and making bribery a cognizable offence.
While the BJP said, it would wait for the government to come up with a definition of what comprises bribe; the Congress, the RLD sought more time.
Congress’s Vivek Tankha said authenticity, transparency and reliability should be the hallmarks of the electioneering system.
After the meeting, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the poll panel went back on its promise.
“Sad that EC has backed out of hackathon,” Kejriwal tweeted.
Shortly after the court’s observation on the YIL petition, the Congress accused the BJPled NDA government of spreading “misinformation” by circulating unsigned notes that give a different version of what transpired in the court. These notes, circulated on WhatsApp by some lawyers, claimed that in a setback to the Congress, the court paved the way for an I-T investigation against Young India.
“It’s a sorry state that government agencies, by proxy, are engaging in incomplete and distorted information, possibly bordering on the contempt of court… Unsigned note circulated by government proxies is using all adjectives. Some are even saying there is a direction by the court to the I-T department to investigate into the matter. Does the order say this? We will apologize if the order says this,” Singhvi, who is also a Congress spokesman, said at a press conference.
“The court recorded my statement and gave me liberty to raise all these points with the I-T department… We will now await the assessing officer’s decision in accordance with law. In those proceedings, we will raise all objections that we had in the petition. The I-T department had absolutely no reason to believe in reopening the assessment,” he said.
The Congress leader reiterated that no one from the party had financially benefited from the company.
“Has anybody benefited financially from this? Is it possible? Section 25 of the Companies Act prohibits paying of dividend? Who has gained financially? It’s section 25 company. Has there been an asset transfer?”
However, Singhvi said the Congress party is proud to be associated with the National Herald newspaper that stood up for free speech during the colonial period.
“We are proud to protect this important symbol of freedom struggle. BJP’s witch-hunt will not deter us from our fight for truth and integrity.”
Welcoming the court’s decision, Union law minister and senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said at a press conference that it would be in the Gandhis’ interest to cooperate with income tax authorities.
Pakistan-based Lashkar-eTaiba is also suspected to have a hand in the killing, described by the army as a watershed moment that would turn the tide against terrorism in the valley.
However, the United Jihad Council — a joint front of 22 outfits — said blamed “Indian agencies” for the killing.
“Our militants are not involved in murder of Lt Ummer Fayaz. Such a killing is condemnable. An officer from a pro-freedom family was murdered by the Indian agencies and militants are being accused of it to shield the real face of the Indian agencies,” the outfit’s chief Syed Salah-uddin was quoted as saying in a UJC statement emailed to a Srinagarbased media house.
Syed Salah-ud-din is based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
“The ongoing freedom struggle aimed to throw the Indian forces out of Kashmir has been started by the people themselves. There is no role of any other force including Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Taliban,” he said.