Brittany Murphy, the actress who got her start in the sleeper hit Clueless and rose to stardom in 8 Mile before her movie roles declined in recent years, died Sunday in Los Angeles of what appeared to be natural causes, a Los Angeles County coroner s official said. She was 32. Murphy was pronounced dead …
CAIRO: Egypt s antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Sunday that Cairo will demand the return of a 3,400 year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, accusing Germany of fraudulently acquiring it. Hawass, who heads the Supreme Council of Antiquities, made the announcement after talks in Cairo with Friederike Seyfried, director of the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus …
Adham Lutfi’s black-and-white caricatures of leading personalities and Mohsen Abul Azm’s vignettes of social and cultural life are currently shown in comparison at the Maulana Azad Center for Indian Culture (MACIC), depicting an India the artists know intimately, but have never visited. Titled “India-Egypt: A Humorous Perspective of the Ordinary and Extraordinary, the exhibition was …
What first signaled to a young, eager-to-please James Cameron he’d make movie history with Sigourney Weaver? Her heels. More than two decades ago, the director was waiting to meet her in a Santa Barbara hotel to pitch his ideas for the film “Aliens – the sequel to “Alien. “I knew she was a tall girl, …
What are human rights? is a question that the Cairo Human Rights Film Festival attempts to answer, hoping also to provoke a dialogue on human rights within Egypt. The gross violations of human rights during the Second World War served as the springboard for the enactment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the …
The Townhouse Gallery is currently hosting a group show titled “Assume the Position, carefully translated into Arabic as “Khaly Balak (be careful or take care). Hosting the work of nine different artists from around the world, the show attempts to steadily redefine first impressions. It takes various situations, from everyday encounters to more large-scale events, …
CAIRO: The Egyptian Museum has received five ancient fresco pieces that France s Louvre Museum returned under the threat of a boycott, Egypt s antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Wednesday. The fragments, taken from the tomb of an ancient Egyptian noble, arrived in the museum on Tuesday as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met his …
Jennifer Jones, the beautiful, raven-haired actress who was nominated for Academy Awards five times, winning in 1943 for her portrayal of a saintly nun in The Song of Bernadette, died Thursday. She was 90. Jones, who in later years was a leader of the Norton Simon Museum, died at her home in Malibu of natural …
The Golden Globes nominations didn t include any fall-out-of-your-seat shockers, but they did – as always – feature some surprises and the inevitable snubs. Though the Globes bestowed six nominations on one of the awards season favorite s, Jason Reitman s Up in the Air, they also spread the love around – especially to a …
A fter a successful first edition, the second installment of “2 B Continued, a festival and dance lab organized by Studio Emad Eddin Foundation, returns this week to the American University in Cairo’s Falaki Theater in downtown Cairo. The first edition spawned three plays by three new directors last January. This week, the studio is …
Swiss authorities said Wednesday they would announce a decision in January on whether to extradite Roman Polanski to the United States over a 30-year-old child sex case. The 76-year-old Oscar winning film director has been living under house arrest at his chalet in the Swiss Alpine resort of Gstaad after being released on bail on …
Pakistani artist Rashid Rana wants us to look at his country and see the Islamic conservatism, fervent patriotism, postcard mountain landscapes. And then he wants us to stop and look again. A massive canvas depicting an oriental rug is on closer inspection made from tiny photos of carnage at an abattoir; panels of veiled women …
PARIS: France s President Nicolas Sarkozy handed his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak a stolen ancient relic on Monday, ending a row between France and Egypt over artifacts taken from a Luxor tomb. Thank you very much, Mubarak said as Sarkozy presented the painted wall fragment to him, following a formal lunch at the Elysee presidential …
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. So remarked Oscar Wilde, a century before the emergence of a split second consumer culture that renders computers and clothing obsolete almost immediately after production. And yet the clothing line we see modeled at the end of the …
The Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker added to its award-season momentum, winning best film from the New York Film Critics Circle. The group, which announced its selections Monday, also awarded best director to Kathryn Bigelow of The Hurt Locker. Those choices mirrored the selections of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, which were announced …
The Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker was chosen as the year s best picture Sunday by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. The film also won the group s best-director honor for Kathryn Bigelow. The group named Jeff Bridges as best actor for the country-music tale Crazy Heart and Yolande Moreau as best actress …
Syrian writer Khalil Sweileh received this year’s Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for his novel “Warrak Al-Hub (The Scribe of Love) in an awards ceremony at the American University in Cairo in the presence of the jury, AUC Press President Mark Linz, the AUC Provost and an audience of journalists, writers and artists. Sweileh was …
Independence was the key word at the Arabshorts.net Independent Film Festival last week, showcasing over 67 productions from the Arab world. Marking the launch of the website, Arabshorts.net, where these films will be hosted, the films were screened in a three-day stint at the Tahrir branch of the Goethe Institute starting Dec 10. A variety …
“The White Ribbon, Austrian auteur Michael Haneke’s austere black-and-white examination of malice in a pre-World War I German village dominated the 22nd European Film Awards held in Bochum, Germany on Saturday, winning the awards for best European film, best director and best screenwriter. “The White Ribbon also won the coveted Palme d Or at this …
A definitive standout at this week’s European Film Panorama is Jacques Audiard’s prison drama, “Un prophète, winner of this year’s Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival. Audiard’s fifth feature, which also won the best feature at the London Film Festival and the prestigious Louis Delluc prize, is a perfect genre film; a gritty, …
RIYADH: Global media giant News Corp is close to buying 10 percent of Saudi tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Rotana entertainment group, a senior company official has said. Rotana Media Services president Nezar Nagro made the remarks as he announced a 100-million-riyal ($26.7 million) distribution deal between Rotana Media Group and the Walt Disney Co. …
PARIS: France will hand back to Egypt five stolen relics on Monday when President Hosni Mubarak visits Paris, ending a row over the wall fragments sold to the Louvre. President Nicolas Sarkozy will confirm during his luncheon with Mubarak at the Elysee palace on Monday the decision to return the 3,000-year-old relics from Luxor s …
Along with Elia Suleiman’s “The Time That Remains and Alejandro Amenábar’s “Agora, the two other highlights of this week’s European Film Panorama, which kicks off on Wednesday, are Pedro Almodóvar’s latest picture “Broken Embraces and Jacques Audiard’s “Un prophète, winner of Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix award. Of the two, Audiard’s fifth feature is the …
It seems that the Cairo Opera House in the east and the western Broadway spectacles in the west are two worlds never meant to cross paths. For the second time this year, avid lovers of musicals were let down by a performance sold as a ‘Broadway-inspired’ show, a keyword that sent audience anticipation and sales …
Espionage and intelligence have always had a special appeal on screen where mystery and thrill are placed in a larger-than-life context along with the compulsory notions of nationalism and patriotism. The genre has proven specifically popular in Egypt, manifested in the millions of teenagers who bought Nabil Farouk’s pulp series “Ragol El-Mostaheel (Man of Impossible) …
I’m not a man of fashion. For as long as I can remember, I’ve never developed any interest in fashion, never comprehended women’s fervor for clothes. I’ve never watched a fashion show, never read any fashion articles and up until a few years ago, I had no idea who Yves Saint Laurent and Tom Ford …
