Chris Martin steals the show by singing 'Vande Mataram'

November 20, 2016

Mumbai, Nov 20: Coldplay's frontman Chris Martin ended the Global Citizen Festival India concert on a high note with his band this evening by singing "Vande Mataram" with the music maestro A R Rahman and also waved the national flag.

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The band performed for over an hour at the MMRDA grounds. The singer is in the country as part of the Global Citizen India initiative 2016. The British Rock band performed several memorable songs including Paradise, Viva La Vida, Yellow, Fix You.

Martin invited A R Rahman on stage and both sang "Maa tujhe salaam...Vande maatram". Martin later even waved the national flag. Initially, he also had small tricolour stuck in his back-pocket but later put it away.

Martin also enthralled everyone with his own version of song "Channa Mereya" from Karan Johar's film "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil".

During his performance, Martin said, "Namaste friends, yeh hamari khushkismati hai ki itne khoobsurat desh mein aaye hain. (We are fortunate that we have come to such beautiful country)."

At the start, Martin was introduced by superstar Shah Rukh Khan, cricket maestro Sachin Tendulkar and actress Frieda Pinto. The Global Citizen Festival India 2016 turned out to be the biggest entertainment event of the year in B-town as several Bollywood celebrities and some international artists shared the stage at the MMRDA grounds.

Among the celebrities present at the gala were Amitabh Bachchan, Alia Bhatt, Ranveer Singh, Katrina Kaif, Sonakshi Sinha, Parineeti Chopra, Monali Thakur, Arijit Singh, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Arjun Rampal, Suzanne Khan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was earlier supposed to attend, could not make it to the event. He, however, joined via a video link that was beamed live.

Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra announced the opening of the festival. Singer Arijit Singh began the musical journey by crooning his latest blockbuster track "Ae Dil hai Mushkil" and other chartbusters.

Playback singer Monali Thakur sang her award winning song "Sawaar Loon" from Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha-starrer "Lootera".

British pop rock band "The Vamps" performed their hit tracks. They also had great time working with ace choreographer Farah Khan. "It was great fun meeting Farah Khan. She taught us some cool dance moves," they said.

Arjun introduced megastar Amitabh Bachchan on stage and Big B was joined by the Shillong Chamber Choir. He recited a poem which was a tribute to Indian women and gender equality.

Actress Vidya Balan came on stage and spoke about issues like open defecation, clean water and sanitation.

Dressed in a red dress, fashionista Sonam Kapoor pledged to educate youth about sustainable development, sharing the goal of making Internet reach about 300,000 villages.

While introducing music maestro A R Rahman, Shah Rukh Khan said, "I wouldn't be what I am if it were not for Rahman's "Chaiyya Chaiyya". King Khan later returned to the stage to introduce American rapper Jay Z.

Jay Z made his India debut at the Global Citizen India concert with his hit Bounce, set against a sample of AR Rahman's tune "Chaiya Chaiya". He also crooned his hit songs 'We gonna run this town tonight', '99 Problems', 'In Paris', 'Drunk In Love' and his Panjabi MC collaboration 'Beware Of The Boyz'.

Then came the ever energetic Ranveer Singh who took to stage in his "Bajirao Mastani" costume and danced to "Malhari". Later he changed costume and got in "Befikre" mode as he danced to "Nashe Si Chad Gayi".

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Mohammed SS
 - 
Sunday, 20 Nov 2016

vande mataram or Joney walker wiskey all same for foreigners, we don't have to be much proud about Martin

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Agencies
June 6,2020

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie feels discrimination and impunity cannot be justified in any way, and says she hopes people in the US can come together to "address the deep structural wrongs in our society".

The Oscar-winning star, who turned 45 on Thursday, also donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, reports people.com.

"Rights don't belong to any one group to give to another. Discrimination and impunity cannot be tolerated, explained away or justified. I hope we can come together as Americans to address the deep structural wrongs in our society," Jolie said.

"I stand with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in their fight for racial equality, social justice, and their call for urgent legislative reform," she added.

Meanwhile, the actress celebrated her birthday amid lockdown with her six children -- Maddox, 18, Pax, 16, Zahara, 15, Shiloh, 14, and 11-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.

The actress and activist has been active since the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world and has donated to different organisations.

Jolie previously donated $1 million to No Kid Hungry, the organisation working to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I knew that there were problems in America, that there was poverty, but I could not believe when I realised how many school children in America were dependent on a meal to not go hungry. I was so disgusted that we have gotten to this point as a country and that we would let the most vulnerable be in such a state. I can't imagine what it feels like for those parents," she said while opening up about her reason to get associated with the organisation.

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News Network
May 8,2020

London, May 8: Actor Florence Pugh says the most terrifying aspect of starring in the upcoming superhero film "Black Widow" was doing the Russian accent.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe's stand-alone film, the Oscar-nominated actor plays Yelena Belova, a sister-figure to Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff/ the titular Black Widow who was trained in the Red Room.

"I was scared because my Russian accent was going to be out there and I didn't know what it sounded like.

"I'm also playing a character who no-one's seen before but they've read about her. I didn't know whether people were going to hate me!" Pugh told ELLE UK for its June issue.

The 24-year-old actor also said the idea of joining the MCU itself was quite "daunting".

"When you think of Marvel, it's big and daunting. Especially being a relatively small actor to look at it and go, 'Oh! I'm going to be a part of this', that's a big decision," she said.

"Black Widow", which was scheduled to hit the theatres on May 1, will now release on November 6 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Directed by Cate Shortland, the film also stars David Harbour and Rachel Weisz.

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News Network
February 6,2020

Los Angeles, Feb 6: U.S. silver screen legend Kirk Douglas, the son of Jewish Russian immigrants who rose through the ranks to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars, has died, his family said Wednesday. He was 103.

One of the last survivors of the golden age of cinema and the father of Oscar-winning actor and film-maker Michael Douglas, the Spartacus actor was renowned for the macho tough guy roles he took on in around 90 movies over a six-decade career.

"It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103," Michael Douglas said in a statement posted to Facebook.

"To the world he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to."

Douglas was Oscar-nominated for his roles as a double-crossing and womanizing boxer in Champion (1949), a ruthless movie producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and tortured artist Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956).

But his only Academy Award came in 1995 -- an honorary lifetime achievement statuette "for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community."

Douglas is survived by second wife Anne Buydens, 100, and three sons. A fourth child, Eric, died of a drug overdose in his 40s, in 2004.

"(To) me and my brothers Joel and Peter he was simply Dad, to Catherine (Zeta-Jones), a wonderful father-in-law, to his grandchildren and great grandchild their loving grandfather, and to his wife Anne, a wonderful husband," said Michael.

"Kirk's life was well lived, and he leaves a legacy in film that will endure for generations to come, and a history as a renowned philanthropist who worked to aid the public and bring peace to the planet."

Kirk Douglas rose to the heights of Hollywood from an impoverished childhood as the son of Jewish Russian immigrants.

He was one of the last survivors of the golden age of cinema, often portraying the macho and not-always-likeable tough guy in around 90 movies over a six-decade career.

With charming dimples and a cleft chin, Douglas was a renowned ladies' man but also admitted to being angry into adulthood because of his difficult New York childhood.

"I still have anger in me," he said in a New York Times article in 1988 after the release of his first autobiography.

"I think I'm loath to let it go because I think that anger was the fuel I used in accomplishing what I wanted to do; you see it in my films, you see it in imitations people do of me."

Screen legend

The role that perhaps immortalized him as a star was that of a rebellious Roman Empire slave turned gladiator in the 1960 epic Spartacus.

Douglas also produced the film, which took four Oscars. He won praise for listing in the credits the real name of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted for his Communist sympathies and wrote under a pen name.

There were Oscar nominations for his roles as a double-crossing and womanizing boxer in Champion (1949), a ruthless movie producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and of tortured artist Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956).

But his only Oscar came in 1995 as an honorary lifetime achievement award "for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community."

Other major acting roles were as a French private in a botched suicidal mission in World War I in Paths of Glory (1957) and American Western legend Doc Holliday in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957).

"Often cast as a villain, amoral climber or self-obsessed grabber, Kirk Douglas took care to color his hard edges with suggestions of pain, wit and sympathy," says American Film Institute, which ranks him as 17th on its list of the greatest male screen legends.

In the 1970s he stood behind the camera, directing Scalawag (1973) and Posse (1975).

He also took up writing, penning his first autobiography The Ragman's Son in 1988 and following with around 10 other titles.

In the autobiography, Douglas writes: "I always worked in the theory that when you play a weak character, find a moment when he's strong. And if you're playing a strong character, find a moment when he's weak."

Tough childhood

Douglas was born in New York on December 9, 1916 to illiterate Jewish Russian immigrants, an only boy with six sisters.

He started out as Issur Danielovitch, later Izzy Demsky. It was tough, he recounted later, with the family poor, anti-Semitism rife and his distant alcoholic father forced to earn a living as a ragman.

"In a sense, I've always felt on the outside, looking in," he said in the New York Times article.

"It's my background, damn it. My father was an illiterate Russian immigrant, a ragman, the lowest rung on the economic scale."

His dream of a way out was through acting and he started in high school, eventually entering the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and changing his name along the way.

To survive he took jobs as a waiter, labourer and porter. In 1941 he hit Broadway but his budding career was interrupted by service in the Navy. After the war, he headed for Hollywood.

His romantic conquests were many, although he once said he had never counted, and included starls such as Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Ava Gardner.

Douglas' four sons followed him into cinema.

Oscar-winning actor and producer Michael and Joel were from a marriage to actress Diana Webster, whom he divorced in 1951.

Three years later he married Belgian-American Anne Buydens, having Peter and then Eric, who died in 2004 from an accidental overdose.

Douglas has also brushed death: he survived a helicopter crash in 1991 and a massive stroke in 1996 that nearly robbed him of speech.

Around the time of his 100th birthday in 2016, he attributed his remarkable longevity to his second marriage.

"I was lucky enough to find my soulmate 63 years ago, and I believe our wonderful marriage and our nightly 'golden hour' chats have helped me survive all things," he said in celebrity magazine Closer Weekly.

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