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Spanish Judge Marco Juberías, investigating the alleged tax fraud by Colombian musician Shakira, recommended on Thursday that the case go to trial, after concluding there is evidence that the pop star could have avoided her fiscal obligations to the state. He wrote that his three-year probe found there existed “sufficient evidence of criminality” for the case to go to a trial judge. The decision can be appealed. Shakira faces a possible fine and even jail time if found guilty of tax evasion. However, a judge can waive prison time for first-time offenders if they are sentenced to less than two years behind bars. Prosecutors charged the singer in December 2019 with not paying 14.5 million euros ($16.4 million) in taxes in Spain between 2012 and 2014, when she lived mostly in the country despite having an official residence in Panama. Shakira’s public relations firm has stated that she had immediately paid what she owed once she was informed of the debt by the Tax Office. She denied an

It’s almost as if Prince knew what lay ahead. In 2010, Prince recorded but then shelved a finished album, Welcome 2 America , which was full of bleak reflections on the state of the nation. It arrives 30 July as the Prince estate continues to open up Prince’s vault of unreleased music since his death in 2016. Unlike much of what has emerged so far, it’s a complete, stand-alone album — a disillusioned statement that sounds all too fitting in 2021. Welcome 2 America was made two years into the Obama administration, and Prince didn’t see much progress. In the title track, women sing, “Hope and change”; then Prince dryly observes, “Everything takes forever / The truth is a new minority.” The songs take on racism, exploitation, disinformation, celebrity, faith and capitalism: “21st century, it’s still about greed and fame,” Prince sings in Running Game (Son of a Slave Master) . Eleven years after the album was recorded — as the 2020s have brought bitter divisiveness, blatant racism, bat

Actors Vikrant Massey and Bobby Deol on Saturday said they have finished the filming for their upcoming movie Love Hostel. The two actors, who star alongside Sanya Malhotra in the crime thriller, shared the news on their respective social media accounts. Sharing a photo with Deol, Malhotra and director Shanker Raman, Massey wrote on Instagram, "What a beautiful journey it has been so far, can't wait to unfold what lies ahead. It's a wrap! #LoveHostel" Check out the post View this post on Instagram A post shared by Vikrant Massey (@vikrantmassey) Deol shared the same photo and said the film is a "gift" to the audience. Love Hostel is produced by Gauri Khan and Gaurav Verma of Red Chillies Entertainment along with Manish Mundra of Drishyam Films. Raman, best known for making Pankaj Tripathi-starrer Gurgaon , has written and directed the movie. It is set against the backdrop of rustic North India and traces the volatile journey of a young c

Actor Kartik Aaryan has been tapped to play the lead role in director Shashanka Ghosh's romantic thriller movie Freddy. The film will be produced by Ekta Kapoor's Balaji Telefilms and Jay Shewakramani's banner Northern Lights Films. Aaryan, 30, said as an artiste he aims to explore different genres and Freddy provided him that opportunity. Check out the post here KARTIK AARYAN IN EKTA KAPOOR FILM... #KartikAaryan to star in romantic-thriller #Freddy ... Shashanka Ghosh - who directed #VeereDiWedding - will direct... Produced by #EktaKapoor and Jay Shewakramani... Starts 1 Aug 2021 in #Mumbai . pic.twitter.com/Ldbo1yVw4t — taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) July 31, 2021 I'm venturing into an uncharted territory that is both exciting and intriguing in equal measures. I look forward to dwell in the world of Freddy and bring alive this dark romantic thriller, the actor said in a statement. Freddy  marks the Luka Chuppi actor's first collaboration with Kapoor

Actor Kiara Advani has been roped in to feature opposite South star Ram Charan in acclaimed director Shankar's pan-India film, the makers announced on Saturday. The project will mark the second collaboration between Advani and Charan after their 2019 Telugu action movie Vinaya Vidheya Rama. Producer Sri Venkateswara Creations announced Advani's casting on the occasion of her 29th birthday. Check out the announcement here KIARA ADVANI OPP RAM CHARAN IN SHANKAR FILM... #KiaraAdvani to star opposite #RamCharan in #Shankar 's next directorial [ #RC15 ]... The PAN- #India film is produced by #DilRaju . #SVC50 pic.twitter.com/30NKS0ElEY — taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) July 31, 2021 The actor, whose next release is the biographical drama Shershaah, said she is both excited and nervous to work with the experienced artists from the Indian film industry. "I am excited as well as nervous to work with renowned and experienced names of our film fraternity. I am eager

If the battle lines were drawn in the first season of City of Dreams (Disney+ Hotstar, 2019), in the second season, the political drama within and around the Gaekwad family expands from being just a battle of the sexes to a battle of the exes as well. After eliminating her brother from her path and her father recovering from an assassination attempt, Poornima Gaekwad (Priya Bapat) is now the interim Chief Minister of Maharashtra. She’s troubled by visions of her murdered brother Ashish and occupied the chair for three months. With elections imminent, it’s time for her father Ameya Rao Gaekwad (Atul Kulkarni) to pull out every dirty trick he has up his sleeve. This includes releasing ghosts of Poornima’s past romantic affairs. Another power broker, the ‘ruthless' Ramnik bhai (Shishir Sharma) is ready to use Poornima’s bisexuality to land the lucrative Mumbai Metro railway contract. Some of the old players return – such as the loyal accountant Purushottam (Sandeep Kulkarni), the

Language: Hindi The intrigue around Rahat Kazmi's Lihaaf  has been running high ever since its poster reveal at Cannes Film Festival last year. Who wouldn't want to watch Ismat Chugtai's incendiary piece of literature come to life on the big screen? The film looks appropriately opulent, yes, but tendentious? Not so much, as is revealed at its screening in the recently concluded 25th Kolkata International Film Festival. What Chugtai's short story had in abundance — a pressing need to reveal difficult truths through beautifully crafted metaphors — is what Kazmi's one-hour, 25 minute-long adaptation falls short of, despite staying ardently faithful to the source material. The film alternates between two parallel tracks, one of Ismat Chugtai's (played by Tannishtha Chatterjee) court hearings in Lahore on being charged with obscenity for writing  Lihaaf , and the second being the dramatisation of the short story itself. The weight of telling the former falls squar

Movies and shows, old and new, have helped us to live vicariously through them. They have allowed us to travel far and wide at a time borders are shut and people are restricted to homes. In our new column What's In A Setting, we explore the inseparable association of a story with its setting, how the location complements the narrative, and how these cultural windows to the world have helped broaden our imagination. * On the face of it, Schitt’s Creek – the fictional North American small town created for the Canadian TV series of the same name – is as bland as it gets. It is not noticeably pretty. It is not swathed in a blanket of gloom, intrigue and tragedy that has come to mark the suburban locations of many criminal investigations on US TV programmes such as the recent Kate Winslet-starrer Mare of Easttown . No one here comes across as adventurous. No resident of Schitt’s Creek seems to have done anything dramatic with their lives. In short, the place is little, non-descript a

Days ahead of James Gunn's Suicide Squad reboot release, the director of the original film, David Ayer, has revealed certain details about the much-awaited Warner Bros film. What did David Ayer say about Suicide Squad? In a lengthy Twitter post, Ayer shot back at the production house saying he "put his life" into Suicide Squad . "My cut is intricate and emotional journey with some bad people who are shit on and discarded (a theme that resonates in my soul). The studio cut is not my movie. Read that again. And my cut is not the 10-week director’s cut — it’s a fully mature edit by Lee Smith standing on the incredible work by John Gilroy," Ayer's Twitter post read. Why did Ayer not speak about it before? Ayer mentioned that he had not mentioned "his side of the story" and would generally keep mum about it since he considered himself "old school." In fact, Ayer added that this would be the last time he'd talk on the subject on a pub

For a certain subset of Britney Spears fans, who call themselves her “Army,” there is no cause greater than emancipating Spears from the conservatorship that controls her life and finances. Thirteen years into the legal arrangement, which Spears recently described as “abusive,” her devotees are watching a movement that was once on the fringes of pop culture turn into one of the year’s biggest news stories. Even politicians are paying attention: “I am squarely and unequivocally in the camp of FreeBritney,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on his podcast this month. The growing support for Spears speaks to the power of fan devotion, unleashed in the modern age through social media. The celebrity may be the famous one, but her followers, or stans (see: Nicki Minaj’s Barbz, Beyoncé’s BeyHive, Rihanna’s Navy), have the power to mobilize thousands of people online to support a cause. Some of Spears’ most visible supporters have shown up for protests in Los Angeles, but plenty more have been

The Bombay High Court has directed certain videos be removed from media and news channels, that are "prima facie defamatory" against actor Shilpa Shetty Kundra. The actress had filed a defamation suit against 29 media personnel and publications in the Bombay High Court accusing them of "false reporting and maligning her image" in the Raj Kundra pornography case. The court also said that while the line between freedom of press and right to privacy will have to be balanced, "it is not possible to ignore the constitutional pinning of privacy nor to say that if a person is a public figure, that person is deemed to have sacrificed his right to privacy." In her lawsuit, the actress has sought an unconditional apology, deletion of all defamatory content and Rs 25 crore in damages. Read the news below Breaking- The Line Between Freedom Of Press & Right To Privacy Has To Be Balanced: Bombay HC Directs Take Down Of Certain Content Against Shilpa Shetty @Co

Language: English, Hindi "I never understood why she left me after everything I did for her," thinks Lexi Makhija (Kaneez Surkha) to herself upon discovering that her live-in domestic help, Lakshmi (Suman Patel), had left her apartment without intimation. It's an oft-repeated statement at home (mine, yours, everyone's), one made without realising that no one ever desires a life of servitude and submission. Lexi acutely lacks this awareness. She is consumed by a singular, albeit trivial desire to host the best, most lavish tea party in her social circle. She waxes eloquent about the opulence she has experienced at every friend's house. One throws a party with an expensive tea set, another with flower bouquets made entirely out of Rs 2,000 bills, and one friend has "not two, not three, not four, but five maids to one teacup." The visuals of these situations are amusing, though not entirely unlikely. Never underestimate the eccentricities of wealthy peop

With the pandemic restrictions starting to ease at different parts of the country, the entertainment industry has been dishing out various films and TV shows. Here is a round-up of the latest announcements Akshay Kumar's Bellbottom to release theatrically on 19 August Mission: To Entertain you on the BIG SCREEN Date: August 19, 2021 Announcing the arrival of #BellBottom ! #BellBottomInCinemasAug19 @vashubhagnani @humasqureshi @LaraDutta @ranjit_tiwari @jackkybhagnani @honeybhagnani @monishaadvani @madhubhojwani @nikkhiladvani @EmmayEntertain pic.twitter.com/4z9jCdmJj3 — Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) July 30, 2021 Superstar Akshay Kumar on Friday announced that his much-anticipated movie Bell Bottom will arrive in cinemas on 19 August. The espionage thriller was originally scheduled to release in April this year, but was postponed to 27 July due to the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in India. Directed by Ranjit M Tewari, Bell Bottom is set in the 1980s a

A complaint has been filed against filmmaker Anurag Kashyap's short film in  Ghost Stories which streams on Netflix India. The streaming giant received a complaint against a particular scene questioning actor Sobhita Dhulipala’s character where she is captured consuming a foetus after suffering a miscarriage. The complaint was registered on Tuesday (27 July) and it is among the first objections to be listed after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting formulated the Information Technology in February (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. As per the new set of rules, social media platforms and streaming services are r equested to set up redressal mechanisms to address viewers’ grievances. When the new rules were declared, many condemned it calling it an attack against artistic freedom and freedom of expression. According to reports, the complainant has raised objections to the particular scene featuring Dhulipala. “The scene is not requ

Language: English The thriller genre has always had a cultural appreciation for suburbia. Though the suburbs were designed to make families feel safe and secure, the isolation and homogeneity have always made it a perfect setting for strange, sinister occurrences to unfold. So, filmmakers have often looked to capture the devilish underbelly hiding behind the tree-lined streets, white picket fences and cookie-cutter houses. Lorcan Finnegan’s Vivarium , which premiered at Cannes 2019 as part of the Critics' Week sidebar, turns suburbia into a Kafkaesque nightmare. Taking existential cues from Black Mirror and its spiritual predecessor The Twilight Zone , the Irish filmmaker delivers a bracingly original, thought-provoking sci-fi thriller. The film opens with a shot of a cuckoo bird pushing another bird's newborn chicks out of the nest, in an attempt to trick the host bird to raise its offspring. A young girl finds one of the dead newborn chicks lying on the ground outside he

Multiplex chain PVR Cinemas on Thursday announced that its theatres will be reopening from 30 July with all of its staff fully vaccinated against COVID-19. In a statement, PVR said that its cinemas will resume operations from 30 July in states and union territories that have allowed theatres to reopen. How will the reopening of theatres go about? As the country witnesses a steady decline in the number of COVID-19 cases, states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have permitted the resumption of operations in cinema halls. In Delhi, theatres were allowed to reopen from Monday at 50 per cent occupancy. What is the JAB offer?  To encourage and thank people who got vaccinated during the nationwide vaccination drive, PVR has introduced a ''JAB Offer'' for the customers. As part of the scheme, one vaccinated guest can get another ticket free on select content as well as one F&B Combo free with the purchase of anoth