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US prepares to sign agreement with Taliban Saturday

US President Donald Trump has called on Afghans to embrace prospects for peace, as the US prepares to sign an agreement with the Taliban on Saturday, reports BBC. Secretary of

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While India seems to love Trump, the reality isn’t so simple

Looking out over the world’s largest cricket stadium, the seats jammed with more than 100,000 people, India’s prime minister heaped praise on his American visitor. “The leadership of President Trump

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Britain starts hearing US case for extraditing Assange

Britain on Monday starts hearing Washington’s extradition request for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a test case of media freedoms in the digital age and the limits of US justice.

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UK to start issuing post-Brexit blue passports

Britain will issue blue passports next month for the first time in almost three decades following its departure from the European Union, the government said on Saturday, reports AFP. The

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Bangladesh rejects US senator Chuck Grassley’s remark on religious persecution

Bangladesh Embassy in Washington DC has strongly protested and categorically rejected the remarks on religious freedom in Bangladesh made by US Senator Chuck Grassley. In a statement, the Embassy said

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US President Trump and first lady Melania to visit Delhi February 24

US first lady Melania Trump will visit a Delhi government school in Nanakpura of South Delhi, on Tuesday (February 25) to interact with students who are being taught the ‘happiness

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Coronavirus: First passengers disembark from Diamond Princess in Japan

The first passengers have begun disembarking from the virus-hit cruise ship moored off Yokohama, Japan after 14 days of quarantine, reports BBC. An outbreak of the Covid-19 virus has seen

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14 killed in bus-truck collision in Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad

Fourteen people were killed and several others injured when a private bus in which they were travelling rammed a stationary truck on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway late on Wednesday night, the

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New Hampshire primary: Bernie Sanders narrowly beats Pete Buttigieg

Bernie Sanders has won the New Hampshire Democratic primary contest, on a terrible night for former vice-president Joe Biden, reports BBC. The left-wing senator took a tight victory over centrist

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Iranians rally, mark anniversary of 1979 Islamic Revolution

Iranians were taking to the streets of Tehran and other cities and towns across the country on Tuesday for rallies and nationwide celebrations marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic

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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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