Shaniz Chowdhury

2021 was a fantastic year for Hollywood as blockbuster movies, new and old TV shows, graced the screen and left the audience wanting more. Among the 39 actors and actresses nominations in various categories, we list 10 artistes who went above and beyond to embody their characters.

Oscar-winning performers Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio star as each other’s foil - DiCaprio is a timid and anxious professor while Lawrence is the egalitarian,

Like a devoted guard dog, your phone probably never leaves your side. But using  the phone before bedtime can be detrimental to your vision

Time, mysterious as it is, has multitudes of invisible threads that connect us. One such thread is the Harry Potter series. Many of the actors, including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Matthew Lewis, Tom Felton, Alfred Enoch, Helena Bonham Carter, Gary Oldman, Evanna Lynch, and Robbie Coltrane from the Harry Potter film franchise reunite in HBO Max’s “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts”.

Based on Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s stories that spawned an incredibly popular gaming franchise, Netflix’s “The Witcher” recently released its much-anticipated second season.

It goes without saying that when Stan Lee wrote your comic books in the 60s, he created something spectacularly special. As a kid in the ’00s, I was quick to jump on the Spider-Man bandwagon, never to get off. Ever since then, many superheroes and supervillains have graced the big screen but you remain my favourite of all time.

Turn Up PR is an emerging firm that has gained a foothold in the public relations (PR) market in just one year. The organisation integrates various tools that extend beyond the traditional media for publicity curation. It aims to promulgate success stories of Bangladesh, particularly about businesses that are based in the outskirts of the cities or abroad, globally.

Rumours about who will be the next James Bond begun to swirl around even before the release of “No Time To Die”. So far, the actors who have played this beloved character managed to boast diabolical charisma and exude magnetic confidence. James Bond is meant to be a hardened spy, willing to go the distance for the sake of his country. Recently, Barbara Broccoli, long-time producer of the James Bond films, revealed that the next 007 will be a British man of any ethnicity. With a legacy that spans decades, Bond needs to be played by someone who can marry Ian Fleming’s version of the iconic spy with contemporary elegance.

The IHFF Olympia Amateur Bodybuilding Championship held in Mumbai, India, welcomed 30 contenders this year. At the event, Maksuda Akhter Mou made history as Bangladesh’s first female bodybuilder to win an international medal. She bagged the bronze medal in the category, ‘Women’s Physique’.

In case you are wondering why you should continue or start watching “Money Heist”, here are five reasons to convince you.

Youth-led organisation N te Nari, N te Nirapotta (NAW) was the 2021 runner-up in the students/campaigns category for UNDP’s   Digital Khichuri Challenge (DKC), titled “The Unsafety Net: How Online Abuse is Driving Women Out of Digital Spaces”.

The nominees for the 64th Grammy Awards, which will air on January 31 in the coming New Year, were announced recently.

Ministry of Codes is a laudable initiative founded by Prapty Rahman with the aim to impart knowledge about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, especially programming and robotics, among children. It offers a wide range of products, like STEM toys, tutorials, and classes, depending on age groups.

At the turn of the 21st century, director Sam Raimi brought Spider-Man to the silver screen, starring Tobey Maguire as the titular character. It heralded one of the best comic book villains - Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin – and redefined the superhero genre into something exquisite. Without Raimi’s films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as it is today, being the most successful media franchise of all time, wouldn’t exist.

Being a fan of hip-hop for as long as I can remember, there could not have been a better song than “Sing” for me to get introduced to your oeuvre. Before I knew it, I was listening to the entire album on repeat and recommending your music to my friends. We knew the lyrics to each and every song on “Multiply (x)” like the back of our hands and jammed to it in the middle of classes, during recess and even used up our parents’ phone credit on weekends to sing duets.

Being inspired by magazine photographs, Reyad Abedin was elated to get a phone with a camera when he was just a young kid in college.

Owing to a globally challenging year, the aim was to inspire people to capture moments that reflect unity and resilience. The judges sifted through over 700 photos by 200 photographers from 74 countries. As the event is one of the most coveted competitions in the global photography space, the win is a towering achievement for Mumu.

Fantasy movies and shows are growing popular by the day because they allow us to escape into a world not bound by the laws of reality, with larger-than-life narratives of enemies to lovers, unlikely heroes, chosen ones and heroic quests, among other things.

No one does Halloween like Hollywood celebrities and this year was no different. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, they have pulled out all the stops for the spooky occasion.

Set in the year 10191, “Dune” starts off as the Padishah Emperor transfers the stewardship of Arrakis, the only planet where the supernatural spice mélange can be found, from House Harkonnen to House Atreides’ Duke Leto. What follows is an epic intergalactic chess game with parables of colonial oppression, monopolistic competitions, ecological disasters, technological advancements, and power struggles.