Tue, 23 Sep 2025, 10:03 am
Literature

Veteran journalist Gaffar Chowdhury hospitalised in UK

The veteran journalist Abdul Gaffar Choudhury was admitted to a hospital in UK on Saturday evening. The 87-year-old Bangladeshi born British writer, journalist, columnist, political analyst and poet was suffering from

read more

The Bangabandhu-Bapu Digital Exhibition is now open at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy

The Bangabandhu-Bapu Digital Exhibition was opened for public viewing at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy on Saturday. Education Minister Dipu Moni, H.E KM Khalid, State Minister for Culture and High Commissioner of

read more

Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay wins Sahitya Akademi Fellowship

Renowned Bengali writer Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay (85) has been selected for the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, 33 years after he won the Sahitya Akademi award for his novel ‘Manabjamin’. Mukhopadhyay, who is

read more

Gold mask among 3,000-year-old relics unearthed in southwest China

Agold mask dating back over 3,000 years is among hundreds of relics uncovered from a series of sacrificial pits in southwest China, according to the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Heritage Administration.

read more

Sculpture ‘Shikor Theke Shikore’ depicts history of Bangabandhu and Bangla

A sculpture named ‘Shikor Theke Shikhore’ (From Root to Peak) has been built in Pabna based on the history of Bangabandhu and Bangla. There are three pillars on each side

read more

Gen. Lee statue comes down in former Confederate capital

A statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee that towered over Richmond for generations was taken down, cut into pieces and hauled away Wednesday, as the former capital of the Confederacy

read more

Writer Hasan Azizul Haque being taken to Rajshahi

Renowned fiction writer Hasan Azizul Haque is being taken to Rajshahi from Dhaka on Thursday. An ambulance with intensive care facilities carrying the 83-year-old writer started for Rajshahi on doctors’

read more

Mexico to replace Columbus statue with indigenous woman

A statue of Christopher Columbus in the heart of Mexico City will be replaced by one of an indigenous woman, authorities said Monday, days before the country’s 200th independence anniversary.

read more

Trove of ancient Mesopotamian artefacts seized in Norway

Norwegian police say they have seized nearly 100 Mesopotamian archaeological artefacts, claimed by Iraq, from a collector. “The seizure involves what are presumed to be cuneiform tablets and other archaeological

read more

Vivid portraits shine light on Tahiti’s ‘third gender’

On the Polynesian island of Tahiti, there is said to be something akin to a sixth sense — one that belongs to neither men nor women. Instead, it is the

read more

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.

© All rights reserved © 2019 WeeklyBangladeshNY.Net
Theme Dwonload From ThemesBazar.Com