Daily Archives: November 29, 2020

As a young man in Kolkata in the late 1980s, my friends and I managed to get our hands on a videotape of Hero, the official film of the 1986 World Cup. Diego Maradona's complexity as a man was yet to fully emerge and we were novice writers bewitched by this booted man. We watched him so often that we wore out the videotape. But memory of magic is always beyond erasure.

If we didn't have time for the whole film, we pressed forward wind till we came to the goal. That goal. The one which is an 11-second hymn to skill and a roughly 60m run into immortality. The goal that comes four minutes after the Hand of God and is the Left Foot of Genius. Sometimes you wish the ball could tell the full story of every spin, nudge, idea and caress.

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Maradona flew and fell. It is why we loved him - The Straits Times

Nick Fury is the thread that holds the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) together. After all, he is the one who started the Avengers initiative in MCU.

However, his story is a bit different in comics. For starters, there are different versions of Nick Fury in the multiverse.

To know the origin of the character, we will begin with the original- Nick Fury Sr.

The original Nick Fury was Caucasian and made his debut in the WWII comic called Sgt. Fury. He later fought in the war alongside Captain America while leading the legendary Howling Commandos.

Working with the CIA in the 60s, Fury later became the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. to fight evil organizations like Hydra and A.I.M.

This version was retired by Marvel.

The Ultimate Marvel Universe is the Marvel Universe in an alternate timeline. Nick Fury in this Universe was also a WWII veteran and Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, but with a complicated personality.

Interestingly, here Fury is Black, and his design was inspired by Samuel L. Jackson, who went on to become the onscreen Nick Fury, five years after the comic series was released.

After the immense popularity of the Ultimate and MCU version, Marvel brought in the original Nick Fury's secret son, Nick Fury Jr. or Marcus Johnson.

A former Army Ranger, Johnson discovered his true identity and joined the S.H.I.E.L.D to carry on his father's name and legacy.

He is currently a top operative in the organization, alongside his best friend Phil "Cheese" Coulson.

In Captain Marvel, Goose The Flerken snatched out Fury's eye. But in the comic versions Fury Sr. loses his eye to a Nazi grenade blast, Ultimate Fury loses it in an explosion during the Gulf War and Fury Jr. had his eye cut out.

They also got limited immortality from the Infinity formula (super-soldier serum in the Ultimate version).

As mentioned before, Marvel has retired Nick Fury Sr. to pave way for his son. The Ultimate version also doesn't exist anymore as this Universe disappeared after the Secret Wars.

Nick Fury Jr. might be the only Fury in the current continuity, but he represents the previous Furys in terms of being a badass, a great strategist, and an important part of S.H.I.E.L.D.

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#ComicBytes: The comic book origin of Nick Fury | NewsBytes - NewsBytes

Lovers of Middle-earth rejoice, because next year there may be more to read of the magical land that has become beloved internationally by so many. This new collection explores the heart of the land filled with elves, dwarves, hobbits and magic in only the way Tolkien can satisfy.

The collection, titled The Nature of Middle-earth, covers themes including Elvish immortality and reincarnation as well as the geography of places where some of Tolkiens most famous epic fantasies were set.

Which is no surprise considering how much thought he put into the description of every path and woodland mystery in the Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo and gang leave the Shire for the first time.

Not only will this collection give more depth to the already considerable Middle-earth legendarium, but it may also even settle the long-running debate among readers about whether dwarf women had beards. Which will hopefully quell the debate thats been raging on Reddit for years.

Considered one of the founding fathers of modern fantasy, Tolkien is best known for his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, published in 1937 and 1954-1955. Translated in over 70 languages, the books are international bestsellers made even more famous by the well-received Hollywood trilogies directed by Peter Jackson.

The British author didnt stop there, he continued to write about Middle-earth in the following decades, right up until the years preceding his death in 1973. Tolkiens love for developing the land and its lore is obvious to anyone who delves into his literature.

For him, Middle-earth was part of an entire world to be explored, and the writings in The Nature of Middle-earthreveal the journeys that he took as he sought to better understand his unique creation, Deb Brody, vice-president of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt explains.

After his death, his son Christopher Tolkien worked on editing and putting together many of his unpublished works as his literary executor. Much of his writing was in pen and on scraps of paper, some drafts written over other drafts. From the manuscripts, he managed to publish various works such as The Silmarillion, The Children of Hrin andmore recently The Fall of Gondolin.

With Christopher having passed away earlier this year, The Nature of Middle-earth has been edited by Carl F. Hostetter, one of the worlds leading Tolkien experts and respected head of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship. This international organisation, founded in 1988, studies the fictitious languages imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien.

To get ready for the new information, take a little journey through Middle-earth with this extensive interactive map created by chemical engineer Emil Johansson here.The book itself is due out 24 June 24 2021, and is published by HarperCollins in the UK and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in North America.

Source: AFP Relax News

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Never Seen Before Tolkien Works Will Be Published In 2021 - Unreserved Media

A new book feature the unpublished writings of Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien is coming in 2021. Harper Collins has announced "The Nature of Middle-earth," and it will shed light on a number of particulars about Middle-earth and its inhabitants.

Specifically, the book will provide more details on the creatures who live in Numenor, Elvish immortality and reincarnation, and the powers of the Valar. But all of this pales in comparison to the most important fact that the book will confirm: who can grow beards.

Harper Collins said the book represents a "veritable treasure-trove offering readers a chance to peer over Professor Tolkien's shoulder at the very moment of discovery: and on every page, Middle-earth is once again brought to extraordinary life."

The Nature of Middle-earth is edited by Tolkien scholar Carl Hostetter and it's due for release on June 24, 2021.

This will be just the latest book that dives deep into the extended lore of Middle-earth. Some of Tolkien's previous writings were published in books such as Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, and Beren and Luthien, among others. These were all edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher, who passed away in January this year.

The Lord of the Rings remains very popular today. Amazon is currently filming a very expensive TV show based on the fantasy series in New Zealand, while there are multiple Lord of the Rings video games in the works, including an MMO and a title featuring Gollum.

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New Lord Of The Rings Book Announced, Will Reveal Who Can Grow Beards - GameSpot

If there is something that is common to a big number of people right now is fear. Fear is always there, of course, and it is part of our existence. But usually, fear is accompanied by the object of fear. I am afraid of The more specific the object of our fear, the more we could rationalize and gather strength to combat it. The less specific it is, the more difficult it becomes for us to organize ourselves to fight it.

For example, my grandmother was very practical about it. She was always religious, attending mass when she should and when her neighbors would see that she did. As a widow for over forty years, with two living children of the three that she brought to the world, she had to care for her social integrity as well as fending for her family. So, for most of her life, her relationship with God, death, afterlife, and all the rest, was more let us say, practical. She attended all the rites she had to, lit candles for her lost third child who died at the age of five of meningitis, for her husband and her in-laws. She fasted throughout the 40 days of Lent before the Orthodox Easter and never missed weddings, baptisms and funerals.

When she stepped into her 80s, she became more philosophical. Having attended only the first three years in a primary school, her reading capacity was limited. Yet, like all women of her age in their 80s, they know the New Testament almost by heart and there is nothing more that they need. The rest of her intellectual needs was fulfilled by her enormous capacity to recite rhyming proverbs and fairy tales full of poetic imagery and philosophical perceptions. It was during that period, the last decade of her life when she took death seriously. I mean as a logical possibility. And she devised a daily method of dealing with it, a method which was connected with the time factor. So, she started a ritual of daily prayers of thanks that she would do twice a day - one after waking up every morning to thank God for she is alive, and the second before she went to bed for having lived one more day. Even at her very end, she kept at least part of this ritual alive although her brain had already abandoned her.

Why did I think of her? Obviously, because of our current relationship with the fear of COVID-19, a constant underlying fear of being the next victim of this creature, which looks like a surreal colorful sea urchin, and can choose any of us at any moment to put an end to our life. And it is not a real fear that we feel. It is also not a deep feeling of the unavoidable human fate like the one that my grandmother felt and tried to exorcize through her daily prayers of thanks.

The worst is that we are not even afraid of being the next victim; we are in that middle-of-the-road situation where we cannot organize our psychology. We have become desensitized to it but are sure of our self-importance and immortality in this world, unlike my grandmother, who thought that every extra day in her life was a gift.

coronavirus,

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Reminiscing grandmother during days of coronavirus - Hurriyet Daily News

HE seemed like a demented ogre, massive and dangerous, looming over his hapless, emotionally battered wife. Talking through clenched teeth, his body about to burst forth in uncontrollable violence as insanity takes over completely, he growls: Ill make you happy, you said. You bloody didnt. The pitiless brutality, anger and madness in that little domestic scene is the terrifying and disturbing portrayal of an honest but flawed mans dark descent into insanity. This balding, middle-aged, slightly overweight man whom Sean Connery played with frightening authenticity in Sydney Lumets The Offence (1973) proved to be a turning point in the actors career.

It was hard to visualise that this same man had played the dapper, deadly British spy James Bond in the film just before this for the sixth time, the colossal hit Diamonds are Forever (1971). But he had had enough of the role. At the height of his popularity as Bond, with multimillion-dollar contracts for two more films awaiting his signature, he walked away and sought to shatter the typecast by playing a role like the one in The Offence. His abilities were never in doubt, but Lumets film put him firmly on the road to celluloid immortality. He had cast away James Bond just like the toupee he had been wearing for the part and was now ready for any role of his choosing.

But for many, Connery will always be the first and the definitive James Bond. His passing away on October 31 brought to an end an era he defined by his overtly masculine presence, impeccable style, prodigious talent and magnificently expressive eyebrows. He was 90 and is survived by his wife, Micheline Roquebrune, and son, Jason. Bond may have catapulted Connery into international stardom, but he was much more than that. He was a consummate artist who played a wide range of characters and established himself as one of the finest actors of his generation. As a superstar, he was second to none.

Born Thomas Sean Connery on August 25, 1930, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Connery spent his childhood in abject poverty. As an infant, his crib was the bottom drawer of a wardrobe, and before he was 10, he was already an important earner for his family. In the mornings he would deliver milk and in the evenings he worked as an assistant to a butcher. School meant little to him in his situation. He joined the navy when he was around 16, learnt to box and was honourably discharged by the time he was 19 after being diagnosed with a stomach ulcer. By that time, he was an able-bodied young man, standing 62, with irresistible dark gypsy features. He flitted from job to job, working as a coal delivery man, a road construction worker, and a French polisher. At the same time, he took up bodybuilding in a serious way, which facilitated his first foray into the world of acting. Initially, he served as a muscular prop standing in the background and from there went on to get bigger roles.

His stage career may not have been much of a success, but it paid the bills and paved the way for bit parts in television series. One of his notable roles during this period of obscurity was that of the over-the-hill boxer Mountain McClintock in the play Requiem for a Heavyweight for the BBCs Saturday Night Theatre in 1957. This was the same role that Anthony Quinn would immortalise in the film version five years later, with the character renamed Mountain Rivera. Connery was no Quinn, but he was still good enough to be noticed and remembered. The performance did not yield immediate results as far as his acting career was concerned. He played whatever part came his way, including one of the villains in a 1959 Tarzan film who died ingloriously with an arrow pierced through his stomach.

After languishing in celluloid obscurity for several years, he got his big break when the producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli saw in him the James Bond of their vision. Interestingly, after Saltzman and Broccoli selected him to play Bond in the first movie of the franchise, Dr. No (1962), and sent some footage of Connery to United Artists, the production house got back to them with a terse cable that said: SEE IF YOU CAN DO BETTER. Even Connerys good friend Michael Caine was surprised at the choice. I was sure theyd give it to Rex Harrison because he was your living image of upper-crust good-living, Caine had said. But Saltzman and Broccoli had already made up their minds. They just loved the way Connery moved. United Artists precept was ignored, and almost from the very moment in the film when Bond introduces himself in a bored, deadpan tone, almost imperceptibly raising an eyebrow, a cigarette dangling laconically from his sardonic lips as Bond, James Bond, Connery as Bond became a worldwide sensation. If the author Ian Fleming created the character, Connery created the cult.

There have been other starsRoger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craigwho interpreted the role of Bond in their own way and to huge box-office success, but Connery remained the benchmark to judge all future Bonds. He was after all the first, the one who set the standard. He was also, arguably, the finest actor to play Bond. Connery was to play Bond seven times to huge popular acclaim. After Dr. No came From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965) and You Only Live Twice (1967).

After playing the role in five consecutive films, Connery sought something different, and the part went to the Australian actor George Lazenby for On Her Majestys Secret Service (1969). Although the film was a hit, it was Connery that the public wanted as Bond again, and in 1971, he returned for the sixth time, in Diamonds are Forever. It would be another 12 years before a middle-aged Connery would reprise his role as the super spy for the final time, in Never Say Never Again (1983). It was a monster hit, earning $10,958,157 in the first four days itself, a record at that time for Bond films. Connery, then 52, showed that he could still teach the newer, younger audience a thing or two about old-school machismo.

But the interesting thing about Connerys Bond was that he was not just a macho action man. Although darker and more violent than Flemings creation, Connerys representation was also subtle, with an underlying sense of comic irony. At one level, it may even seem that Bond was mocking his own image. Lumet, with whom Connery did five movies, once said of his acting as Bond: Non-professionals just didnt realise what superb high-comedy acting that Bond role was.

Connerys Bond was also the hero at a time when unapologetic chauvinism on the screen was not unfashionable. Angry young men of literature such as Alan Sillitoe and John Osborne were creating unrepentant angry young men in the pages of books and for the stage: for example, the scornful, misogynistic Jimmy Porter in Osbornes Look Back in Anger (published and staged in 1956 and made into a movie starring Richard Burton in 1969), or the philandering, rebellious young Arthur Seaton in Sillitoes first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (published in 1958 and made into a film starring Albert Finney in 1960). In the given cultural scenario, nobody defined over-the-top masculine chauvinism more blatantly (sometimes, quite embarrassingly) than Connerys Bond. In You only Live Twice, when the Japanese character Tanaka informs him that the women in the spa (in the scene) were fascinated by his chest hair, Connerys Bond quips with a smirk: Japanese proverb say bird never make nest in bare tree.

Neither Connery nor his Bond was particularly known for political correctness. In an interview Connery gave in the 1960s in the midst of Bond mania, he said: I dont think there is anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman, although I dont recommend doing it in the same way that youd hit a man. Even some 20 years later, when the world had changed, Connery remained steadfast in his point of view. I havent changed my opinion, he told Barbara Walters in an interview in 1987. Finally, after another 20 years, Connery put an end to the controversy by saying: My view is I dont believe that any level of abuse against women is ever justified under any circumstances. Full stop. Perhaps because it was Connery who made those comments, the public never made too much of them. Other stars would not have gotten away with it so easily.

After the success of the first Bond, it would have been easy for Connery to have gotten typecast. However, the actor in him could never be satisfied with stardom alone. In 1962, when he signed a five-year contract to star as James Bond, he was allowed to make one non-Bond movie a year. Connerys choice of films during that period demonstrated his need to expand his creative boundaries and challenge himself. In between the Bond movies, he played the scheming Anthony Richmond in The Woman of Straw (1964), the considerate and intuitive husband to Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcocks underrated classic Marnie (1964), the rebellious Joe Roberts in Lumets war drama The Hill (1965), and the gifted but psychologically disturbed poet Samson Shillitoe in A Fine Madness (1966). He also did a Western, Shalako (1969) with the French siren Brigitte Bardot. When Connery walked out of the Bond franchise after Diamonds are Forever, it shocked moviegoers of the time as the screen character was at the height of his popularity. However, it was only after he quit Bond that Connery came into his own as a multifaceted actor.

His first post-Bond movie, Lumets dark neo-noir crime drama The Offence, was a calculated risk that paid off. It was not a role bankable leading men of Hollywood would have chosen, but it established Connery as an acting powerhouse as well as a huge box-office draw. This was his third movie with Lumet. After making The Hill, he acted in The Anderson Tapes (1971) and went on to act in two more Lumet films: Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and the comedy Family Business (1989), where he played the loveable rogue Jessie McMullen trying to tempt his grandson into a life of crime.

Connery was one of a rare breed of actors whose star never showed any signs of setting. In the 1970s, he went on to act in such classics as John Hustons The Man who would be King (1975) and Richard Lesters Cuba (1979). He played an aging Robin Hood opposite the ever-elegant Audrey Hepburn in the unlikely hit Robin and Marian (1976) and Raisuli, the Arab chief of a group of insurrectionists, in the epic adventure movie The Wind and the Lion (1975) opposite Candice Bergen.

As he grew older, besides playing the lead, he comfortably shifted into doing important supporting roles. Just as he was brilliant as Father William of Baskerville, the detective priest in The Name of the Rose (1986)for which he won a BAFTA (the British Academy for Film and Television Arts) for Best Actorhe was equally great in his supporting role as Jim Malone in Brian De Palmas The Untouchables (1989). As Malone, he was tough, funny, sentimental and fiercely loyal. No one but Connery, with his gigantic frame and a sly humorous glint behind those honest eyes, could have done justice to the role. He won his first and only Academy Award (for Best Supporting Actor) for it.

Even in his sixties, he continued to deliver hit movies such as The Hunt for Red October (1990), Rising Sun (1993) and The Rock (1996). He could hold his own in action movies with contemporary stars such as Wesley Snipes and Alec Baldwin, and he could also steal the show with his inimitable comic technique as he did in Steven Spielbergs Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), in which he played Harrison Fords father. That same year, the 59-year-old Connery was voted The Sexiest Man Alive in People magazine, making him the oldest Sexiest Man Alive ever.

For all his fame and the accolades he received (an Oscar, a BAFTA, two Golden Globes, the Cecil B. DeMille Award and the AFI (American Film Institute) Life Achievement Award), he often took a pragmatic and professional approach to accepting roles. He did not immediately agree to acting in Dr. No as he was also contemplating a long-term contract for a television series at that time. The years of deprivation had taught him the value of money, and throughout his life he was careful in his investments and was never reckless. He even used to joke about his alleged money-mindedness. While accepting his Oscar, he said: I had decidedif I had the good fortune to winto give it [the Oscar statuette] to my wife but this evening I discovered backstage that there was $15,000, and now Im not so sure. From a nine-year-old boy earning money for his family in the slums of Edinburgh to being knighted and hailed as one of the greatest cinema stars of all time, the proud Scotsman had indeed come a long way.

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Sean Connery: Bond and superstar - Frontline