Five Movie/Shows To Watch And A Cat That Was Lost And Found From 1300 Miles Away After Many Months!
Along with how healthy elephants are ending up at Reliance's Jamnagar park putting their lives at risk.
Don’t know about parasites and amputations but Monkey Man is indeed brilliant. It is a fantastically made film by Dev Patel wherein the Boy Wonder not only acted in the film but also directed it along with writing the story of the film. I do get the panic and worry of exhibitors but their bone of contention or beef should be with CBFC, a government body that is sitting on the film’s clearance. Not viewers. Without the criticism of the body, lashing out squarely at viewers feels like an easy way out to let your frustrations at the weak.
Patel, who directed the movie from a script written by him, Paul Angunawela and John Collee, is an appealing screen presence and you’re rooting for him — both as a character and as a filmmaker — right from the start. As an actor, he was built for empathy, with a slender frame and melting eyes that he can light up or expressively dim to create a sense of vulnerability. His performance in “Monkey Man” requires a lot from him below the neck — he has sculpted his body into stunt-ready shape, as a bit of striptease shows — but it’s his beseeching eyes that draw you to him.
— NYT
Oh! The movie has mostly Indian actors. There is Sobhita Dhulipala, Ashwini Kalsekar, Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, and Sikandar Kher but the one I was absolutely surprised and abundantly charmed to find was tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. What a film this one is.
Ted Lasso
If you love sports, especially football, you will adore this one. But even if you don’t, but like comedy and British humour, you will still like this one.
Charles the Cat has always craved adventure.
"He loved to ride in the car," says his owner Robin Alex. "I took him on all my vacations."
But eight months ago, this tabby feline from Albuquerque, N.M., put his nine lives to the test. After Alex went out of town to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and left him with a friend, Charles vanished.
Summer ended, autumn passed, and winter came and went with no sign of Charles.But earlier this week, he was found by animal control officials in Chicago. That's right, Chicago. Somehow, Charles had managed to travel 1,300 miles from Albuquerque to the Windy City.
Officials said if he walked the whole way, his paws don't show it.
"He's in good condition," said Cherie Travis, executive director of Chicago Animal Care and Control. "He's got a little bit of a cold, a little bit of an upper respiratory infection, but otherwise he's in great condition."Officials found an ID tracking microchip embedded in Charles' back and contacted Alex. She didn't have the money for a plane ticket and feared Charles might be euthanized in Chicago, but good Samaritan Lucien Sims, a fellow cat owner from New Mexico, stepped in and agreed to arrange a flight as she was flying back home to Albuquerque from Chicago.
But the mystery remains. Exactly where he's been and how he got there, nobody knows.
And Charles isn't talking.
Scoop from BBC
I liked this one for its pace, the way cameras moved, the characters and of course the insider’s view of how media offices work.
It’s no great slight to “Scoop” to say that it’s no more compelling than the real-life news broadcast on which it pivots. It’s also no less compelling than said broadcast, which was, after all, a doozy: the 2019 episode of “BBC Newsnight” in which anchor Emily Maitlis interviewed Prince Andrew about his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It was a coup that saw the Duke of York roundly convicted in the court of public opinion, and led to him being stripped of his royal titles. But Philip Martin‘s slick, pacy Netflix film isn’t especially interested in the fallout, or indeed in the Prince’s experience at all — instead procedurally tracing the media machinations and negotiations that enabled the interview in the first place, and pointedly centering the newswomen, on screen and off, who made it all happen.
— Variety
The Chestnut Man
This is good in a lot different way than the usual mystery viewing we do. And the locations add more to its charm.
The bleak beauty and macabre appeal of Nordic Noir is nothing new for long-time crime drama fans, so the arrival of another new thriller is always something of a big deal among the right crowd. The Chestnut Man, a six-episode Danish offering adapted from the novel by Søren Sveistrup by the author himself alongside Dorte W. Høgh, seems finely calibrated for just that crowd. It’s a grim affair, a story of missing arms and dead bodies and ominous children’s figurines, but it’s rich with character, beauty, and depth; an entry into the subgenre that is as well-paced and engaging as any other you can think of.
— Ready Steady Cut
Mohammad Farhan, a 30-year-old from Kolkata, left his embroidery business four years ago, to test a new way of working. He started to drive and registered himself on cab aggregator platforms such as Uber. In short, he became a gig worker, or a worker who is not an employee but an independent contractor.
Few months ago, he accepted a ride request from a lady customer. She had to be picked from Kolkata’s Central Avenue but his map showed the pickup location on a parallel lane, 70 meters away. “I could not move ahead because the road was dug up and I requested her to walk towards the car," Farhan recalls.
And then, all hell broke loose.
“She started yelling at me and threatened to complain. I still picked her up and drove her to the destination. She gave me a low rating, which brought down my overall grade from 4.88 to 4.75," Farhan says.
— App alert: Did you scream at your gig worker?
The Indian government recently brought in an amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act with regard to captive elephants. This amendment, the rules for which came in last month, regulates the transfer or transport of captive elephants, and has sparked an outcry from animal rights activists. Elephants are, according to the Wildlife Protection Act, a Schedule 1 species – offered the highest protection under the law. Captive elephants however, because of their historical role in India where they have been part of royal estates, used in timber logging and still used in temples for religious festivals, come under a special category, but there were still strict rules governing their transfer. Now however, with this new amendment, the transfer of elephants is allowed for ‘religious or any other purposes’ – this vague definition, researchers say can revive illegal commercial trade and trafficking of elephants, something the country has been trying to curb for decades. Concerns have also been raised about Vantara, Anant Ambani’s rehabilitation centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat, which has come under criticism for its housing of a large number of elephants.
— The Hindu Podcast
Mrs Harris Goes To Paris
Watching Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is like stepping through a portal in time—not back to the 1950s, the movie’s setting, but to the 1990s, when sweet-natured, visually resplendent pictures like this were plentiful. This adaptation of a popular 1958 novel by Paul Gallico, […] is a story about following one’s dreams and then learning there’s a lesson attached to those dreams—you might catch more than a perfume whiff of sanctimoniousness here. But it’s rare to find movies that value the mere idea of beauty, and this one—directed by Anthony Fabian—does so unapologetically. For some of us, the words 1950s couture fashion show are tantamount to summoning a cat with “Here, kitty-kitty,” and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris does not disappoint: the film was made with Dior’s cooperation, and the featured garments are so gorgeously detailed, you might wish to examine them at close range.
— The Time
House MD is streaming now on Netflix, Don’t Miss This Gem!
You really want to read this one
The scale of it left reporters grasping for words. Vantara is home to over 200 elephants; over 300 large cats, including leopards, tigers, lions and jaguars; over 3000 herbivores, such as deer; over 1200 reptiles, including crocodiles, snakes and turtles; and a huge number of birds to boot. It occupies 3000 acres inside Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery complex, and is exceptionally well-provisioned to treat ailing animals. Reporters who got to tour the facility marvelled at an operation theatre and specially-designed ambulances, hydro-therapy pools, an ayurvedic massage centre and kitchen, all created especially for the elephants. “‘Rescue Prince’ Makes India Proud,” Ahmedabad Mirror gushed.
Were all 4700 birds and animals now at Vantara really in need of rescue? Rescue centres are meant to rehabilitate injured and abused birds and animals, including those abused in captivity, and provide lifelong care if they cannot be returned to the wild. As I learnt in my reporting, however, the Trust is also taking in healthy animals.
A senior forest officer in eastern Assam asked why even healthy elephants from the area were being sent to Jamnagar, well over 3000 kilometres away by road. “Even if elephants have to be removed from logging camps, they should come to the forest department, where they are needed for patrolling,” he said. “Captives will have a better life with us. They are kept in semi-wild conditions, not in sheds but out in the open. They forage. They are better socialised. They even mate with wild elephants.”
Second is the question of whether Jamnagar, even with all its sparkling animal-care facilities, is actually a suitable place for all the animals it holds, including numerous critically endangered species. For one thing, Gujarat is hotter than many parts of India and the world, making it potentially unsuitable for many species from more temperate climates. For another, Greens has been set up on land abutting Reliance’s mammoth petrochemical complex, and the Trust, as the HPC report noted, actually houses elephants inside it. In the words of the HPC, “The [elephant] Camp is located within the green belt of the precincts of the campus of Reliance Industries Limited’s Jamnagar Refinery.”
The Jamnagar complex, stretching across 7500 acres of land, houses a petroleum refinery, a power plant, a butyl rubber plant and many other petrochemical facilities. According to a 2016 circular from the Central Pollution Control Board, both oil refining and petrochemical manufacturing are highly polluting industries. An older CPCB report, from 2000, says that green belts near such industries can mitigate environmental damage by acting as sinks for pollutants. What is more, besides the dangers of pollution, there is also the risk of industrial accidents – such as flash fires.
Third, there is the sheer scale and speed at which Vantara has accumulated animals. As a Goa-based conservationist said, “There is a lot of red tape for wildlife transfers, a lot of conditions that the destination must comply with. How did they source so many animals so quickly?”
— The costs of Reliance’s wildlife ambitions
That’s all for this one. There’s lot of heat these days. Many places are clocking record temperatures. Do keep yourself hydrated on regular basis.