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Protesters announce to continue movement over govt service ordinance until its withdrawal

The movement at the Secretariat will continue until the government service ordinance is completely withdrawn, said Md Badiul Kabir, president of the Secretariat Officers and Employees Unity Forum on Tuesday.

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Cricketer Shakib, 14 others face travel ban

A Dhaka court on Monday issued a travel ban on 15 individuals, including star Bangladeshi cricketer and former MP Shakib Al Hasan, who is staying abroad now. Judge Md Zakir

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A swift return to poll is vital for restoring democracy: Amir Khashru

BNP Standing Committee Member Amir Khashru Mahmud Chowdhury has said that his party wants a swift national election to take the country to the right path of democratic governance. He

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New record in defaulted loans

The burden of defaulted loans continues to swell amid a lack of discipline in the financial sector and weak regulatory oversight. As of the end of March this year, defaulted

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Israel army says destroyed ‘one third’ of Iran missile sites

Israel’s military on Monday said that it had destroyed one third of Iran’s surface-to-surface missile launchers, as strikes between the two arch foes raged for a fourth day. Since the

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ICT orders newspaper notice for Hasina, Kamal to appear before tribunal in 7 days

The International Crimes Tribunal on Monday ordered the publication of notices in two national newspapers asking deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina and former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan to appear before

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Employees resume protest at Secretariat demanding repeal of govt service ordinance

Government employees resumed their protest at the Secretariat on Monday, demanding the immediate repeal of the recently promulgated Public Service (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025. After the end of a 10-day Eid

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BMD predicts rains, thundershowers across Bangladesh

Bangladesh Meteorological Department has predicted rains in seven divisions of the country including in Dhaka in 24 hours commencing 9:00am on Monday. ‘Light to moderate rain or thunder showers with

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Road accidents kill 390 people across Bangladesh during Eid-ul-Azha vacation

At least 390 people were killed and 1,182 more were injured in 379 road accidents across Bangladesh during the holidays for Eid-ul-Azha, said a Passenger Welfare Association of Bangladesh report

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Three people killed, seven injured in Cox’s Bazar road accident

Three people were killed and seven others injured in a head-on collision between a bus and a covered van on Chattogram-Cox’s Bazar Highway in Ramu upazila of Cox’s Bazar district

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The megastar plays a philosophy professor shaken by a student’s sexual assault allegation against a colleague in Luca Guadagnino’s new film – and she’s easily the best thing about it. Julia Roberts doesn’t make many films these days. She was in Leave the World Behind in 2023; in 2022, there was her tropical romantic comedy with George Clooney, Ticket to Paradise; and then we have to jump all the way back to 2018 for her previous turn in Ben Is Back. But you can see why she chose to star in After the Hunt, a contentious campus drama directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers). Roberts is on screen for almost every one of its 139 minutes, and she is the monumental centre around which its chaos and controversy swirl. It’s the kind of heavyweight role that gets awards nominations if it goes to the right person – and Roberts is definitely the right person. Her character is Alma, a philosophy professor at Yale University. Striding regally around its leafy quadrangles in a chic white suit that matches her blonde hair, this combatively intelligent alpha female is adored by everyone who knows her. Her husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is resigned to the fact that he loves her more than she loves him, and is willing to make whimsical jokes about the imbalance; Hank (Andrew Garfield), a would-be rebellious friend and colleague, is even more flirtatious with her than he is with everyone else; and her favourite PhD student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), worships her – which could explain why she is Alma’s favourite PhD student. It seems as if the status quo might soon be upset, though, as either Alma or Hank – or perhaps both – is expected to be granted permanent tenure. But then something far more drastic happens. The day after a boozy party in Alma and Frederik’s book-lined flat, Maggie tells Alma that Hank walked her home and then “crossed a line”. Alma is sympathetic – but only up to a point. There is no evidence of assault, so she isn’t sure whether to trust the word of a new friend over an old one, especially at such a critical moment in her career. And maybe, her thinking goes, lines were crossed at the party anyway, considering that teachers and students were hugging each other while knocking back expensive wine. “Roberts’ Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful” It’s refreshing to see a grown-up Hollywood film that takes on contemporary issues: feminism, cancel culture, identity politics, and the generation gap. But After the Hunt is more of an admirable project than an engaging drama, because it never stops reminding you of how clever it wants to be. Guadagnino keeps showing off his quirky camera angles and intrusive music choices. The screenplay, by Nora Garrett, squeezes too much philosophical jargon into the dialogue, and too many tangential scenes and subplots into the structure. You might think that the alleged assault would be a big enough deal for any film, but Alma is given mysterious abdominal pains and guilty secrets, and Maggie is overloaded with significance as a queer, black, plagiarism-prone young woman with a non-binary partner and rich parents who are major donors to the university. In theory, viewers of After the Hunt should leave the cinema arguing about its subject matter. In practice, they’re more likely to be asking each other what was going on and what it meant. It’s all a bit much, basically. Garfield, miscast as a denim-clad dude who is, it is implied, roughly the same age as Roberts’ character, shouts and swears and waves his arms with a quantity-over-quality approach to acting. Stuhlbarg’s flouncing and sing-song delivery are presumably meant to be irritating, but perhaps not as irritating as they actually are. At the heart of it all, though, Roberts is a different matter. She understands that less can be more. Her Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful and her pain all the more intense. Her muttering is scarier than Garfield’s yelling, and when she glares at someone, they stay glared at. It’s an expertly controlled performance which demonstrates why Roberts has been a Hollywood icon for so long, and why she could well be in line for her second Oscar, 25 years after Erin Brockovich. After the Hunt would have been better if everyone else involved had had some of that control, too.

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