P28-32 Layout 1

lifestyle TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2017 MUSIC & MOVIES Lebanese film director briefly detained over Israel visit ebanese film director Ziad Doueiri, through art, Doueiri responded angrily “I strug- detained briefly for previous visits to Israel, gled for the Palestinian cause before you were Lblasted yesterday people who accused him born.” He then told the journalist that he will not of normalization with the Jewish state saying his respond to his questions. Joelle Touma, Doueiri’s work is for the good of Lebanon and the ex-wife and co-writer of “The Insult,” told Palestinian cause. It was not clear why the Paris- reporters there that he had come to Beirut for the based Doueiri, director of the award-winning civ- film’s opening. She said he was stopped at the air- il war film “West Beirut,” was detained Sunday port, where he was questioned for about 90 min- night, as he has visited Lebanon several times utes before authorities confiscated his Lebanese since traveling to Israel. Lebanon and Israel are in and French passports. He was allowed to leave on a state of war and Beirut bans its citizens from the condition that he appears before a military visiting Israel or having business dealings with court the following day for further questioning, Israelis. she said. Doueiri told reporters after three hours of Culture Minister Ghattas Khoury tweeted in questioning at a military court in Beirut yesterday Arabic that “Ziad Doueiri is a great Lebanese direc- that authorities found that he has “no criminal tor who has been honored around the world. intentions against the Palestinian cause.” Doueiri’s Respecting and honoring him is a must #Lebanon.” latest film, “The Insult,” opens in Lebanon this Lebanese film director Ziad Doueiri, holds up his Lebanese and French In this Dec 8, 2012 file photo, Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri poses for Doueiri’s lawyer, Njaib Lyan, told reporters that week, after winning the best actor award at the Passports as he speaks to journalists after being released by a military photographers after receiving The Golden Star award, for his film “The after three hours at the military court his client was Venice Film Festival earlier this month. Doueiri court, in Beirut, Lebanon yesterday. — AP photos Attack” during the 12th Marrakech International Film Festival in released without any charges. He said some peo- said that Kamel El Basha, the Palestinian awarded Marrakech, Morocco. ple envy Doueiri’s international fame. He added best actor at the Venice Film Festival, spent two that inside the court Doueiri was told that he visit- years in Israeli jails. He said some journalists are ed Israel without permission from Lebanese trying to undermine him ahead of the film show- Abi Saab, who is opposed to any dealings with to carry him on our shoulders and welcome him “dirty words against some people and accused authorities. Lyan said Doueiri had told authorities ing in Beirut, which begins on Thursday. Israel, wrote a column in the daily Al-Akhbar last as a conqueror,” Abi Saab wrote. “We will not them of being Zionists.” at the time that he planned to visit Israel for a Doueiri’s previous film, “The Attack,” was week titled “Ziad Doeiri, apologize for your Israeli accept that the crime be covered,” he wrote, refer- movie he is working on but never got a response. banned in Lebanon and most Arab countries. The slip.” He said that Doueiri spent months in Israel to ring to Doueiri’s visits to Israel. Speaking to A great Lebanese director “The Insult is the pride of Lebanon’s industry. We in movie is about a Palestinian surgeon living in Tel film “The Attack,” spending money there and reporters outside the military court, Doueiri said “My mother breastfed me Palestinian milk and Lebanon do Hummus and Shawerma well, and we Aviv who discovers that a suicide attack in the speaking to Israeli media defending his movie he was well treated by Lebanese security agen- the Palestinian cause. Members of my family were do very good movies as well,” Doueiri said referring city that killed 17 people was carried out by his amid criticism in Lebanon. cies during his brief detention but blasted jour- killed while fighting with the Palestinians,” Doueiri to national dishes. — AP wife. The movie was filmed in Israel and featured “Today, Ziad Doueiri is coming on a white nalists he refused to name “that are fabricating said. When a journalist asked him a question several Israeli actors. Lebanese journalist Pierre horse from Venice with a new movie expecting us things to block the new movie.” He said they used about normalization of relations with Israel Russian ﬁlm turns classic author into sexy supersleuth new Russian film aimed at a youth audience whose most famous work was the novel “Dead being released in two versions, one with a 16+ reinvents classic novelist Nikolai Gogol as a Souls” published in 1842 — grew up in today’s certificate and another more graphic one with an Agothic-style detective who battles dark Ukraine and was inspired by its folk traditions. 18+ age limit. supernatural forces to solve a series of ritual murders. Critics have queried the lashings of eyeliner, Compulsory reading Silicone lips plumped-up lips and lack of historical rigour, while “We made up the possible circumstances in Played in the film by 28-year-old actor the makers say the film will breathe new life into which Gogol wrote ‘Evenings on a Farm Near Alexander Petrov, Gogol is pale and brooding the 19th-century writer’s works for today’s school Dykanka’,” said producer Alexander Tsekalo. “We with dark-rimmed eyes. He periodically falls into pupils. Mist swirls, black horses gallop through linked up all the scary incidents into a sequence epileptic fits, waking up with the latest clue to the murders. “You see what other people can’t see!” says one of the characters. He also enjoys lusty encounters with beautiful young women, some of (from left) Actor Benedict Cumberbatch, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Michael whom have suspiciously plumped-up lips. “I don’t Shannon, Nicholas Hoult and executive producer Michael Mitnick attend ‘The Current think they brought silicone to Dykanka in Gogol’s War’ press conference during the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell day. I also don’t think Gogol wore eye makeup,” Lightbox on September 10, 2017 in Toronto, Canada. — AFP photos complained a reviewer in Vokrug TV entertainment website. Interfax news agency in turn slammed the dialogue as lacking in historic accu- racy, saying characters “talk like salespeople in a mobile phone store.” But the makers stress the film isn’t meant to be taken too seriously. At a presentation of the film in Moscow, they wore T-shirts with the slogan “Sorry Gogol”. A promotional clip for the film shows an actor playing a flustered school teacher, who laments: “I never in my life expected to see Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol without his trousers on.” “The slight trashiness is intentional,” director Yegor Baranov told Momenty, a regional entertainment A man walks past posters of the “Gogol. The Start” film as he enters a cinema in Moscow.—AFP site. The film’s poster shows Gogol holding a blood- stained quill, with the cutline: “The darkest hour comes before dawn.” dark forests and naked witches leap over bonfires and gave them a single perpetrator, a serial killer, Although the film’s playing fast and loose with in the first film in a planned series of four, called you could say,” Tsekalo said at a press conference. the classics outraged some, critics generally said “Gogol. The Start,” which opened in cinemas on “Gogol, as he awaits a new investigator, is forced to the film worked on its own terms. The reviewer August 31 and will also be shown in an eight- investigate these crimes himself.” “All the rest is for Vokrug TV concedes that if the series contin- episode television version. Gogol, and even the fact that he worked as a scribe ues on the same level “young people could get a The film is based partly on the author’s real life, in the Third Department (political police), and nice locally made horror flick.” “As a horror B- with references to his epileptic fits and a brief job came to Dykanka in this job-all that happened in movie, it’s not bad,” wrote Rossiiskaya Gazeta as a clerk for the tsarist political police-as well as to real life.” Gogol’s works are compulsory reading in government newspaper, citing the “nudity and his fear of being buried alive. In the film, Gogol Russian schools. One of the film’s scenarists disembowelling.” — AFP Benedict Cumberbatch interacts with fans as he attends “The Current War” premiere. works alongside a famed tsarist investigator, who is Natalya Merkulova praised the film as “a giant step sent to rural Ukraine to probe a series of murders of forward” for giving Gogol “new life”. young women. The plot references Gogol’s works, He and other classic writers “hang in class- especially the spooky tales of peasant life collected rooms in big dusty portraits-and everyone is sick Edison, Westinghouse row in “Evenings on a Farm Near Dykanka.” Gogol- to the back teeth of them,” she claimed. The film is electrifies Toronto film fest scar nominees Benedict Cumberbatch who had achieved a great deal from humble Carey’s rap collaborations and Michael Shannon electrified audi- beginnings, who felt assailed in the world. I Oences at the Toronto film festival don’t think that ever left him.” Sunday with their portrayals of Thomas Edison Edison, he said, was “someone who chose to be honored at VH1 event and his rival in the race for marketable elec- really not to hear repeated truth..

Load more