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Tag: Netflix

  • Riz Ahmed’s ‘Nimona’ hailed by critics as a unique queer fantasy

    Riz Ahmed’s ‘Nimona’ hailed by critics as a unique queer fantasy

    On Friday, Netflix dropped the highly anticipated animated fantasy film ‘Nimona’ which stars Pakistani-British actor Riz Ahmed, Chloe Grace Montez, Eugene Lee Yang as the main leads, and is adapted from the comics of the same name by ‘She-Ra’ creator ND Stevenson.

    Since its release, critics have hailed the film as a gorgeous queer fantasy that calls for acceptance and equality for the LGBTQ+ community, but mostly critics have hailed Ahmed’s and Mortez’s performances, as Entertainment Weekly praised it for the casual queer representation as the main lead Nimona is a gender non-conforming being, and the romantic relationship between two male knights.

    Speaking on the queer representation, Ahmed had said:

    “I understand this is a big win and a big moment representation-wise, and we’re all so proud of that. But I think those moments only feel like real wins when they’re not tokenized, when they are actually there because of the emotional truth of the character. When we are honoring these characters as human, that’s when it feels real, you know?”  

    Writing on the powerful vocal performance by Mortez as Nimona, Polygon hailed her for creating the duality between the rebellious side of the vibrant shape shifter, but also exploring her vulnerable side as an outcast who doesn’t feel like she can belong anywhere.

    Coming on the themes of queer representation, Mashable praised Nimona for being speaking on empowering the queer community:

    “Along with its unique animation and rollicking action sequences, Nimona digs into themes of individuality, identity, and acceptance that aim to speak directly and warmly to the queer community. At a time when LGBTQ rights and spaces continue to come under attack from bigoted legislation(opens in a new tab), Nimona cements itself not just as a great fantasy film, but as an important one as well.”

    Calling it a film that takes aim at the post 9/11 surveillance state, IGN praised Nimona for being “a tender and bold tale about challenging institutions, being a good ally, and the need to live as your true self.”

    Nimona takes place in a science fantasy world where Ballister Boldheart (played by Riz) is the first commoner to be enlisted in the presitigous Institute of Elite Knights, when an accident takes place during the knighting ceremony after which he is forced to flee for his life. Partnered with the rebellious Nimona (voiced by Chloe Grace Montez) a shape-shifter who has a desire to do something evil, they team up to clear his name and investigate the perpetuators behind the accident.

  • Pemra to take action against Netflix and other streaming platforms after Eid holidays

    Pemra to take action against Netflix and other streaming platforms after Eid holidays

    Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) is reportedly preparing to take action against over-the-top (OTT) platforms such as Netflix after the conclusion of Eid-ul-Azha, according to Khalid Arain, Chairman of the Cable Operators Association of Pakistan.

    Khalid disclosed that a productive dialogue had taken place between cable operators and senior officials from Pemra, during which the concerns of the cable operators were effectively communicated. He expressed the cable operators’ predicament, stating that they operate under broadcasting restrictions and are limited in the number of channels they can offer. In contrast, OTT platforms enjoy the freedom to stream popular channels.

    Khalid’s reference to OTT platforms pertains to online streaming services that deliver content via the internet. He further stressed the cable operators’ request for regulatory measures concerning operators that offer both internet and cable services.

    He said that the regulatory body has responded positively to the demands of cable operators. Pemra will establish a committee to address the issuance of licenses to cable operators and undertake a crackdown on OTT platforms following the conclusion of Eidul Azha.

    According to ProPakistani, the chairman also advocated for tax exemptions in the cable sector, drawing a parallel to the solar power industry and suggesting that taxes on cable operators should be alleviated. However, he did not provide a specific explanation or justification for this request.

    Additionally, he highlighted an inequity where the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) collects Local Loop license fees from cable operators in US dollars, while subscribers make payments to cable operators in the local currency. Arain deemed this situation unfair, citing the existing rupee-dollar exchange rate as a contributing factor.

  • ‘Dissapointing’: Netflix’s The Archies trailer has divided Twitter

    ‘Dissapointing’: Netflix’s The Archies trailer has divided Twitter

    Yesterday, Netflix debuted the trailer of the Zoya Akhtar venture ‘The Archies’ which is adapted from the popular comic series Archie, with Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter Suhana Khan, Khushi Kapoor and Agastya Nanda making their debut.

    Although the trailer has already received praise from King Khan, who gushed about seeing his daughter’s debut on screen, not a lot of fans agree with him.

    The internet is divided with some slamming Zoya Akhtar for white washing Indian history and choosing to make a film with actors who have nepotism connections, and others actually looking forward to Zoya’s take on the beloved comic.

    Some users were criticising the film, comparing Zoya Akhtar to Karan Johar for picking people with no talent instead of actors who were struggling to find roles in the industry today.

    Others had to draw out how unrealistic the portrayal of the 60s was in the film, pointing out that India in this era had a completely different style and aesthetic than what the film was portraying.

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    Some slammed the film for being completely white washed and not being adapted as an Indian interpretation.

    A few fans were enthusiastic for another film by Zoya Akhtar, and said they were set to watch the film

  • AI, robot alter-egos: fans hail ‘Black Mirror’s new season as its best ever

    AI, robot alter-egos: fans hail ‘Black Mirror’s new season as its best ever

    Warning: spoilers

    Netflix’s thriller series ‘Black Mirror’ set hearts racing with the trailer for its latest season, revealing that the dystopian series was about to provide an even more grim experience. Popular actors like Annie Murphy, Salma Hayek and Aaron Paul star in the episodes.

    The show had been on a break since 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, as series creator Charlie Brooker explained to Entertainment Weekly that in dystopian times, humanity could do with a break.

    The show previously broken records with critically acclaimed episodes like ‘The Entire History Of You’, ‘San Junipero” and even “White Bear” all of them discussed the dangers of depending on tech, and how it breeds the corrupt nature of humans. This time, fans were wondering if the show would be able to surpass its own expectations and deliver an outstanding season after three long years of waiting.

    And it was worth the wait.

    This season delved into the rise of AI generated images and videos, which would soon make deep-fake videos of other people without their consent, how the obsession with murder documentaries leads to a man exploiting his own family, and another episode starring Aaron Paul exploring a new invention in the 1960s that makes robot replicas of two astronauts who are completing a six year mission up in space.

    And twitter users ate them all up.

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  • Vampires, office romance: K-dramas we’re looking forward to watch

    Vampires, office romance: K-dramas we’re looking forward to watch

    Was it a charming male lead Choi Chi Yeol (played by Jung Kyung-ho) who falls for a single mom, that drove people to watch ‘Crash Course in Romance’? Or the fact that a show went into minute details about the pressures of high school, the cut-throat competition surrounding college applications and how it damages the mental health of students? Whatever it was, the Korean rom-com ‘Crash Course In Romance’ had aired only two episodes when it lead the polls in the list of dramas that are generating the most buzz.

    Aside from this show, and the critically acclaimed thriller ‘The Glory’ that was among the top ten most watched dramas around the world, this is the perfect time to get into Korean dramas, especially if you’re from Pakistan and dying to watch something other than a toxic romance going round and round like a jalebi. From the list of K-dramas set to arrive on Netflix, the shows range from a wholesome office romances to an unlikely encounter between a vampire and a human and a bored housewife taking charge of her fate and deciding to become a doctor.

    2023 has only reached its middle and this lineup of dramas has us excited. Check out some amazing options.

    1 See you in my 19th life

    Time travelling lovers who recognise each other in their next lives? Sign us up immediately. Ban Ji Eum has an extraordinary trait: she can remember everything from her 18 past lives. But when her life is cut short tragically and Ji Eum is reborn in her 19th life, she is determined to reconnect with all the people she lost, and in the process she comes across Mono Seo Ha, a man whom she met in her previous life.

    2 My Heart Is Beating

    Missing your Vampire Diaries, Twilight era? K-dramas have got you covered. Remember the heartthrob villain Jang Jun-Woo from Vincenzo? The actor who played him, Ok Taec-Yeon, is now the lead in this drama, as a vampire who desperately wants to become a human being, but he misses his chance because of one day out of a 100 years. He starts living in a guest house run by Joo In-Hae (Won Ji-An), a cold-hearted nurse who does several jobs. As the two get closer, both start getting feelings for each other.

    3 King The Land

    If you missed witty office romances like Ankahi, or quite recently ‘Fairytale’ and need something to fill the hole in your heart left by Farjaad as you wait for Season 2, check out this one. Gu Won is the son of a chaebol family, who is caught in an inheritance war with the rest of his siblings over the control of his company. Although he is successful in his business, his work-a-holic attitude makes him bad at dating, until he meets Cheong Sa-Ra, an employee at his hotel, and immediately falls for her.

    4 Doctor Cha

    Cha Jeung-Suk graduated medical school with aspirations to become a doctor, but resigns to becoming a housewife to the Chief Surgeon at a university hospital. Twenty years later, Jeong-Suk decides to start her medical career despite resistance from her husband.

  • Netflix subscriptions jump after password sharing crackdown

    Netflix subscriptions jump after password sharing crackdown

    Netflix subscriptions have registered a spike in daily sign-ups after the streaming giant launched a crackdown on password sharing on May 23, data from research firm Antenna has shown.

    The news sent shares of the company up 2.3 per cent to US$418.92 in early trading.

    Looking for new ways to make money in a saturatwd market and a tough economy, Netflix moved to regulate the sharing of account passwords with friends and family- a drastic turnaround for a company that had once tweeted “Love is sharing a password”.

    Netflix added 100,000 new accounts on both May 26 and May 27, shortly after the crackdown went into effect, Antenna’s data found. In the following days, Netflix has seen a more than 100% increase in sign-ups from the prior 60-day average.

    “These exceed the spikes in sign-ups Antenna observed during the initial US Covid-19 lockdowns in March and April 2020,” the firm said in a report. It also noted that “cancels also increased during this period, but not as much as sign-ups.”

    Netflix (NFLX) shares popped on the news, rising nearly 2% in early trading Friday. Shares have climbed over 27%, to about $415, over the last month.
    Last month, the service alerted US subscribers that if they share passwords with people outside of their household, they would have to add an extra member to their account for an additional $7.99 monthly fee or sign up for a new account. It also plans to block users with unauthorized passwords.
    The streaming video pioneer saw its four largest days of U.S. user acquisition after the change came into effect in the 4-1/2 years that Antenna has been covering the company.

  • ‘The audacity’: Never Have I Ever’s finale divides audience

    ‘The audacity’: Never Have I Ever’s finale divides audience

    Warning: spoilers

    The series finale for ‘Never Have I Ever’ aired yesterday, bringing fans to a conclusion that divided opinions. Devi finally graduated high school, resolving the mystery about who is the man she will end up with.

    The series revolved around a messy kid Devi, who navigates love, peer pressure from belonging to an Indian family, and deals with the death of her father.

    From Season 1, there were two men in Devi’s life, Paxton Hall-Yoshida and Ben Gross. We were led through a four season long will-they-won’t-they as Devi made her way through misunderstandings, hurried confessions and miscommunication to now finally watching a grown and less-chaotic Devi who finally chooses…

    Ben!

    How did we get to this conclusion? Devi and Ben got intimate in the last season after which, the two remain awkward, drifting off, but eventually ending back together as friends. Devi ends up getting in to the college of her dreams: Princeton, with Ben’s help.

    While packing for college, Devi misses Ben, who is in New York for a law internship. However, during her friend Nirmala’s wedding, Ben shows up at the last minute, with both deciding to give their relationship a shot.

    Needless to say, this outcome did not sit well with a lot of fans, who criticised creator Mindy Kailing for hyping mediocre looking white men, and routinely depicting brown women who indulge in self-critical commentary and consistently put down their own culture and heritage in the shows.

    Many pointed out that Devi’s conclusion with Ben was another domino in the long line of Kailing’s female leads hyping bare-minimum men, and putting down south asian men for the sake of appealing to a white audience.

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    But other users felt that the conclusion was satisfying and were happy that Ben and Devi went from being enemies to close friends and finally falling in love with each other.

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    What did you think of the finale? Let us know in the comments!

  • Gong Yoo, Lee Min-Ho named among ‘world’s most favourite Korean actors’ list

    Gong Yoo, Lee Min-Ho named among ‘world’s most favourite Korean actors’ list

    A survey conducted by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE) ran a survey to determine the most popular Korean entertainers, with 25,000 participants of ages 15 to 59 from 26 different countries taking part in it.

    According to Next Shark, the results showed that actors Lee Min-Ho and Gong Yoo were the top five most popular Korean actors globally.

    Gong Yoo rose to international fame with romantic comedy ‘Coffee Prince’ in 2007, in which he played a playboy bachelor who falls in love with a boy who is actually a girl.

    Lee Min-Ho rose to fame for his dramas ‘The Legend of the Blue Sea’, ‘The King: Eternal Monarch’ and ‘Pachinko’ which released in 2022.

    Another actor included in the top five list was Song Hye-Kyo, whose Netflix drama ‘The Glory’ is currently among the top ten most popular dramas worldwide, and had also received praises for her other dramas like ‘Descendants of the Sun’ and ‘Encounter’.

    Among the most popular musical groups, it was BTS and ‘Black Pink’ that were the most common answers, according to the survey.

    The all-girl Kpop band Black Pink was recently named by Time Magazine as the “Entertainer Of The Year”

    Among the most popular musical groups, it was BTS and ‘Black Pink’ that were the most common answers, according to the survey.

    The all-girl Kpop band Black Pink was recently named by Time Magazine as the “Entertainer Of The Year”

    Among the most popular Korean dramas, the most popular answer was the thriller series ‘Squid Games’ which was about contestants competing in a dangerous game to win a large cash prize.

  • Chris Rock sparks controversy after comments about Meghan Markle, Will Smith in Netflix special

    Chris Rock has sparked outrage on social media after making controversial comments about fellow actor Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinket Smith, as well as the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

    Will Smith got universally slammed last year after hitting Rock the Oscars after the comedian cracked a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith’s, baldness.

    “Jada, I love you. G.I Jane 2, can’t wait to see it, all right?” said Rock.

    Smith went on stage, slapped Rock and bellowed “Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth!”

    At the Netflix special, Rock addressed the controversy for the first time:

    “Y’all know what happened to me, getting smacked by Shug Smith. Everybody knows. Everybody f*ing knows. Yes. It happened: Like a year ago, I got smacked at the fing Oscars by this motherf*ker.”

    Rock then said he saw Smith’s new film ‘Emancipation’ to watch him getting beaten up. Smith plays a former slave who fights to seek his freedom:

    “I loved Will Smith, my whole life I loved him. I saw him open for Run DMC … he has made some great movies. I have rooted for Will Smith my whole life. And now I watch Emancipation just to see him get whooped.”

    This comment has sparked outrage on Twitter, as users called Rock insensitive for mocking a film about slavery

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    Rock also didn’t hold back from trolling about Pinkett-Smith’s affair with rapper August Alsina, which she had confessed to at the Red Table Talk:

    “Will Smith practices selective outrage. Everybody knows what the fk happened. And everybody really knows I had nothing to do with that shit. I didn’t have any ‘entanglements’…His wife was fking his son’s friend, OK? I normally would not talk about this shit, but for some reason … [they] put that shit on the internet. I have no idea why two talented people would do something that lowdown. What the fk?”

    Rock also talked about Meghan Markle and the interview with Oprah where she had opened up about experiencing racism when she had married Prince Harry and became the Duchess of Sussex:

    “It’s the royal family! You didn’t Google these motherfers? What the fk is she talking about, ‘she didn’t know’? They’re the original racists. They invented colonialism. They’re the OGs of racism. They’re the Sugar Hill Gang of racism.”

  • Customers express frustration over inability to pay for Netflix with Islamic Cards while being charged Sood for late payments

    Customers express frustration over inability to pay for Netflix with Islamic Cards while being charged Sood for late payments

    A Faysal Bank customer expressed his discontent with the bank on Facebook after his credit card was converted into a shariah-compliant card called “Noor Islamic Card”. The customer complained that he is unable to make transactions with Netflix or use the card for any “unislamic” purposes.

    He posted on Facebook, saying, “Just converted my Faysal Bank Credit into Noor Islamic Card. Now I can’t use the card on Netflix, bcoz they have become Islamic, and they cannot allow their customers to use their card on any unislamic things.”

    Other users also commented on the post, with one user pointing out that the bank still charges interest, which they refer to as Musawah payment, if a bill is not paid on time. Another user claimed that their conventional credit card was converted into a Noor Islamic Card without their consent and the bank’s response to their complaint was unsatisfactory.

    Many users expressed their frustration with the bank’s service, with some even stating that they would be closing their Faysal Islamic Card account due to the Netflix payment issue. One user also pointed out that Meezan Bank has the same policy regarding Netflix transactions.

    Another user shared their experience, stating that their Faysal Bank card did not work when they tried to buy movie tickets and food at the bank’s food court on the same day that their card was converted from a conventional card to an Islamic one. It was only then that they realized that their card had been converted.

    The conversion of conventional credit cards into shariah-compliant cards is a growing trend in Pakistan’s banking sector. While this is seen as a positive move by some customers, others are skeptical of the benefits and limitations of shariah compliant cards.