P19 Layout 1

Thur Established 1961 Lifestyle TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2019 US singer-songwriter Billie Eilish performs at the Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festival at Zilker Park in Austin, Texas. — AFP Animated ﬁlm ‘Abominable’ pulled Atwood, Rushdie in Vietnam over S China Sea map vie for Britain’s ietnam has pulled the animated film “Abominable” crossed out with a red “X” along with angry comments. from theatres over a scene featuring a map of the “Please sack the person in charge of censorship for this South China Sea showing Beijing’s claims in the movie,” said Facebook user Pham Tan Phong. Another 50th Booker Prize flashpoint waterway, state media reported yester- said: “We cannot accept these blatant acts, especially V ritain’s storied Booker Prize will pit literary day. China has long used its so-called nine-dash line to regarding sensitive things like the current sea disputes”. justify its jurisdiction over most of the resource-rich sea, Vietnam’s censorship department refused to comment giants Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie often to the displeasure of Hanoi which also claims parts on the issue Yesterday, and DreamWorks did not respond Bagainst four emerging stars when it unveils of the waterway. to a request for comment. China claims the majority of the the winner on its 50th anniversary award. The title The U-shaped line appears on a map of the South South China Sea, often invoking its so-called nine-dash of best work of English-language fiction published China Sea in a scene in the film-released as “Everest: The line as a supposed historical justification to the waters, in the United Kingdom and Ireland has launched Little Snowman” in Vietnam-which is about a Chinese which are a key global shipping route. Though some films careers and courted controversy since its creation teenager helping a yeti return to his home on Mount are barred from viewing in Vietnam where free speech is in 1969. Past laureates have ranged from celebrated Everest. State media said the movie-a joint production tightly controlled, others are approved for screening with writers such as Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes to from DreamWorks and China’s Pearl Studio-would no significant edits. Kazuo Ishiguro and Roddy Doyle. longer be shown in Vietnam, where it was released on The popular 2018 romantic comedy “Crazy Rich Paul Beatty became the first American winner October 4. Asians” saw a few snips. One of the cut scenes featured a when the Booker bowed to pressure and began “I will claim responsibility” for the mistake, said designer bag with a map of the world showing disputed including authors from outside the British common- Nguyen Thu Ha, the head of Vietnam’s Cinema South China Sea islands under Beijing’s control. This year’s wealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe in 2013. This year’s Department, according to Thanh Nien newspaper. All films hit “Joker”, starring Joaquin Phoenix, was also trimmed to shortlist features six novelists-four of them women- Canadian author Margaret Atwood poses with her in the one-party state must be approved by communist exclude a scene of supporters rallying around the DC born across four continents. It is also no longer book ‘The Testaments’ during the photo call for the censors who screen for gratuitous violence, suggestive sex Comics villain-possibly to avoid any suggestion of a pop- called the Man Booker because of a sponsorship authors shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize for scenes or politically-sensitive material. Ha said she would ular uprising or personality cult.—AFP change. The five-judge panel includes the writer- Fiction at Southbank Centre in London. — AFP remind her department “to be very vigilant... to be more broadcaster Afua Hirsch and the British-Chinese novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo. prudent” in the future. in Nigeria-the author’s homeland-and Cyprus, it is Photos of the faux pas circulated on social media 1,000-page sentence a tragic love story with a strong sense of forebod- Monday, showing the scene featuring the nine-dash line Canadian author Atwood’s sixth Booker nomina- ing throughout. tion comes for “The Testaments”, a best-selling Narrated by the main character’s chi spirit, it is sequel to her 1985 dystopian classic “The richly poetic and deeply anchored in the mysticism Handmaid’s Tale”. The Guardian said the book, of Nigeria’s Igbo people. Lucy Ellmann challenges which picks up the tale of three women 15 years on, readers with “Ducks, Newburyport”-a story made presents “Atwood at her best”. “It’s a question of up almost entirely of one sentence that absorbs things escaping from a book to the real world and readers and is occasionally funny. It is a stream of the author has zero control,” the 79-year-old said thoughts from a woman making pies in her home in upon its release last month. Ohio. The musings weave between her family, US Nominated for the 1986 prize, “The Handmaid’s politics, her dead parents and pets, pollution in Tale” became an award-winning TV series in 2017, rivers, and are interspersed with references to pop- and sales of the English-language edition have ular culture. topped eight million copies worldwide. Rushdie, Anglo-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo is whose contender is called “Quichotte”, won the shortlisted for “Girl, Woman, Other”-about the Booker Prize in 1981 for “Midnight’s Children”. His lives of black British families with roots across the tragicomedy this year, inspired by the classic “Don country, Africa and the Caribbean. It tells the tale Quixote”, is the story of an ageing travelling sales- of 12 women that “brims with vitality,” according man who falls in love with a TV star and sets off to to the Financial Times. Elif Shafak, the most wide- drive across America on a quest to prove himself ly read female author in Turkey, brings Istanbul’s worthy of her hand. underworld to life through the recollections of sex Rushdie told HBO last month that he researched worker Tequila Leila in “10 Minutes 38 Seconds in the book by “watching all this reality TV, which (the This Strange World”. The entire work describes protagonist) loves. I began to understand that it the last 10 minutes of conscious thought of a could drive a person crazy”. Nigerian author dying prostitute that The Times calls “surprisingly Chigozie Obioma made the shortlist for “An uplifting”.—AFP Orchestra of Minorities”-his second novel after A boy looks at a poster for the animated movie ‘Everest Nguoi Tuyet Be Nho’, also known as ‘Abominable’, at a movie “The Fishermen”, which was shortlisted in 2015. Set theatre in Hanoi. — AFP.

Load more