Latest news with #Death
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Hindustan Times
Young couple found hanging from tree near Ambernath
THANE: A 25-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman were found hanging from a tree near farmland close to Kushivli village in Ambernath taluka on Thursday morning. The Hill Line police in Ulhasnagar, under whose jurisdiction the area falls, have registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR) and initiated a detailed investigation into the incident. According to officials, both individuals were residents of the Chinchpada area in Kalyan East and worked as clerks at a private firm. On Wednesday evening, they left work as usual but failed to return home, prompting concern among their families. The bodies were discovered early the next morning by local residents in a secluded stretch of farmland. 'I was walking through the fields when I saw both of them hanging from a tree, back-to-back. It was a horrifying sight,' said Jagannath Pawar, a local villager who raised the alarm. Police personnel from Hill Line station reached the spot soon after receiving information and sent the bodies to Central Hospital in Ulhasnagar for postmortem examination. Senior police inspector Anil Jagtap confirmed the registration of an ADR and said the investigation is ongoing. 'We have not received any formal complaint so far, but all possible angles are being examined,' he said. While no suicide note was recovered at the scene, initial inquiries suggest that the two were in a relationship and had expressed a desire to marry. According to police sources, their families had reportedly advised them to wait for a year before making a decision, which the couple may have interpreted as disapproval. Officers are currently recording statements from family members and colleagues to piece together the events leading up to the incident. Investigators are also examining phone records and other electronic communications for further clues.
Daily Maverick
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Final Destination: Bloodlines – A gleefully gory good time
Considering it's been almost a decade since the last Final Destination film released, you may need reminding about the nuts and bolts that hold together this now 25-year-old horror franchise. In every Final Destination instalment, someone experiences a premonition of a fatal accident, at which point they act on their vision and save a group of people, including themselves. Except, that's against Death's plan, and the universe sets out to course correct, taking those lives via a new set of incidents. Featuring a cast of unknowns (Resident Evil actress Ali Larter is probably the most famous face associated with the series), Final Destination has no identifiable boogeyman; no masked, knife-wielding murderer. Its signature kills are styled after a Rube Goldberg Machine, where a water glass placed too close to the edge of a table, or even something as innocuous as a lone penny, can trigger a chain of cause-and-effect actions that culminate in death. It's unusually creative for the horror genre. It's also undeniably silly. And just released Final Destination: Bloodlines, the sixth film in the series, embraces that to its benefit. It's been a hot minute since most people last watched a Final Destination film (this writer included), but it doesn't feel like a stretch to say that Bloodlines, which can be watched with no previous universe knowledge, is immediately one of the best entries, if not thee best film, in the franchise. This is achieved through an excellent balance of tension, gore, and humour, while still also finding space for a sliver of relatable heart. That relatability stems from the fact that Final Destination: Bloodlines shifts the focus from a group of teen friends to an ordinary suburban family. It all starts when university student Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) finds herself on the brink of losing her scholarship due to debilitating nightmares where she sees her grandparents die in a horrific disaster during the 1960s. To work out the cause of her dream, Stefani must track down her estranged grandmother Iris (Gabrielle Rose), who insists that Death is coming for their family after she thwarted its intentions decades previously. Armed with Iris's research, it's up to Stefani to sate the Reaper in a way that also breaks the vengeance cycle and saves her loved ones, which include standout Richard Harmon as Stef's rebellious oldest cousin. The Final Destination films have never had much thematic depth, but by shifting from friends to a family unit, the film does have a bit more meat to work with. More specifically, it makes a point about parental anxieties over their children; how fear can lead to toxic obsession and over-protection. No one is watching a Final Destination movie for thought-provoking commentary on human existence, though. They're there for over-the-top deaths while they munch on their popcorn and sip their watered-down Coke. Bloodlines goes out of its way to deliver on that front, with co-directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (who previously made Freaks and the Kim Possible movie) and the film's team of writers demonstrating a playful attitude to the carnage. Playing off character and viewer paranoia – the infamous log truck from Final Destination 2 even gets a revisit – they bait the audience, dodge the expected payoff time and time again, before finally springing a grisly demise when and where you least expect it. Read more: Havoc on Netflix: Gritty action can't save this overloaded crime thriller A warning is that Final Destination: Bloodlines is age rated 18 for good reason, as the camera refuses to veer away from the various impalings, dismemberments, immolations, squashings and so on. And yet it's still kind of fun. Bloodlines isn't alone in recent times in depicting graphic accidental deaths – last year saw the release of The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix, and goofy The Monkey hit the big screen this February – yet it's Bloodlines that really hits the sweet, and simultaneously shocking spot. It's ideal as a cinema outing so you can watch it alongside like-minded people gasping and giggling in illicit delight. Enjoy every minute left to you. DM
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Final Destination' Franchise Should Be the Next One Brutally Killed
The Final Destination franchise has always demanded tremendous suspension of disbelief. It asks viewers to accept that Death is not just an invisible force (versus a physical entity), but one that can kill its prey solely through elaborate Rube Goldberg-like cause-and-effect accidents—rather than by, say, immediately striking them down with lightning or having the ground beneath their feet give way. It imagines the Grim Reaper as a clownishly powerless specter that can only do its job via the most convoluted means conceivable, and that tack continues with Final Destination Bloodlines, a sixth installment, now in theaters, that concerns doomed kids trying to escape overly complicated plans whose prime inspiration seems to be the classic board game Mouse Trap. Few horror series boast less internal logic than Final Destination, whose rules don't hold up to the slightest scrutiny, and that remains true with Bloodlines. As befitting its predecessors' lack of attention to detail, Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein's sequel opens in an unspecified 1960s locale where Iris (Brec Bassinger) and Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) attend the grand opening of the Skyview Tower, whose restaurant provides a vertiginous view of the surrounding area. Iris reacts nervously to every little thing that happens around her, all of which is depicted with italicized ominousness. It's not long before random incidents—a penny caught in a ventilator fan; a glass dance floor cracking under the weight of revelers; bolts flying out of support beams—conspire to create catastrophe, with everyone ultimately plummeting to their deaths, including Iris and Paul, who moments earlier had gotten engaged after Iris revealed that she was pregnant. Bloodlines' opener strives for cleverness but its deadly domino-effect structure is so tired that it fails to surprise. There's similarly no shock to learn that it's not real; instead, it's a recurring dream that's plaguing college student Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana). Since Iris is the name of Stefani's estranged grandmother, she heads home to research the woman. There, she's greeted warmly by dad Marty (Tinpo Lee) and given the cold shoulder by brother Charlie (Teo Briones), who blames her for ignoring him in the same way that their mom Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt) abandoned them years earlier. Pressing her uncle Howard (Alex Zahara) doesn't get her anywhere, although her aunt Brenda (April Telek) tips her off to Iris' location—a remote woodland cabin that, Stefani discovers, is shielded by castle-like defenses. After cautiously letting Stefani into her makeshift fortress, Iris (Gabrielle Rose) relays that Stefani's dream is actually the exact same premonition she had all those many years ago—a vision that allowed her to save the Skyview gala's attendees from their dire fate. Bloodlines never explains why Iris received this magical forewarning, nor why Stefani would begin experiencing it once Iris heard that she was dying of cancer; it's just one of many plot points that Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor's script (based on a story by Jon Watts) expects audiences to accept without a thought. Iris tells Stefani that, for the past six decades, Death has killed everyone who was supposed to perish in the Skyview calamity, as well as their offspring. Recognizing that Stefani is next on the kill list (apparently, Death works slowly when it comes to make-up slayings), the grandma gives the girl a handy manual on avoiding Death before suffering a predictably gruesome end. Stefani thus endeavors to protect her loved ones, who naturally don't buy what she's selling—at least until Howard gets a lawnmower to the face in a sequence that has plentiful complications and fake-outs but little invention. Worse, Bloodlines doesn't have the courage of its own ghastly convictions, cutting away swiftly from Howard's fate and setting up a should-be gnarly scene—in which cousin Erik (Richard Harmon), at his tattoo parlor, gets his nose ring caught in a chain that's coiling around a ceiling fan—and then skirting the teased payoff. The rest of the film's fatalities are of a ho-hum variety, orchestrated with by-the-numbers cheekiness and undercut by annoying characters who aren't missed once they're gone. Stefani eventually tracks down Iris' foreboding buddy William Bludworth (Tony Todd), who fills in the requisite procedural gaps for the heroine, making clear that cheating Death is doable by either killing someone (which grants the murderer their victims' remaining years) or dying and being resuscitated, which breaks the cursed chain. Doing the latter is the lone legitimate option for these goody-goodies, and harder than it sounds, as proven by a prolonged bit in a hospital where nut allergy-afflicted cousin Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) tries to end his life and, for his troubles, winds up suffering nastiness in a magnetized MRI room. In this and other set pieces, Lipovsky and Stein's attempts at misdirection fall flat, both because they're obvious and because the franchise dictates that, at best, merely one or two fortunate souls will survive. 'When you f--- with Death, things get messy,' intones Bludworth, and that notion extends to Final Destination Bloodlines itself, whose every perilous step is sloppy. Lipovsky and Stein elicit not a single solid performance from their cast, and their tale's twists are illogical even by the material's established guidelines. Stefani sees the future when it's narratively convenient and is blind to what's coming when it's not, and the proceedings' shortcuts progressively mount until everything feels as shaky as the giant backyard Jenga game enjoyed by Stefani's barbequing family. In his portentous cameo, the late Todd reminds viewers why he was a genre icon. Otherwise, though, the film is inert, regardless of the fact that it's chockablock with crises initiated by items falling down, tipping over, and bumping into each other. From the start, the Final Destination movies have been a cute idea incapable of supporting a feature-long story, much less an extended mythology, and Bloodlines is no different. Stefani's quest to maintain her (and her relatives') pulse is marked by the usual array of near misses and splattery casualties, all of them the result of intricate ruses that make Death come across as a feeble lame-o that smites through silliness. Uninterested in being scary, it's just a cartoonish rollercoaster ride devoid of a genuinely sick sense of humor.
New York Times
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Essential Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett spent more than half of his six decades on Earth writing Discworld, a sprawling fantasy series where, among many other threads, Death begins as a villain, drifts into heroism and ends as something very near to a friend. This is not because Pratchett was insensitive to the tragedy of death. He coined the term 'Embuggerance' to describe his own diagnosis of posterior cortical atrophy (a rare form of Alzheimer's), and lobbied for death with dignity as a way of wresting control from the macabre final phases of terminal illness. But Pratchett's great strength as a writer — and as a human being — was empathy. More than his humor, although he's hands down one of the funniest authors to ever do it, empathy is the beating heart of his work: Even when depicting the grim and inescapable terminus of all life, he couldn't resist making Death feel human. To fans of his books, the striking thing about Pratchett's biography is how familiar so much of it sounds. The only child of an engineer and a secretary, he grew up in a rural English village digging holes for the privy (Granny Weatherwax!) and walking above ancient fossils in the chalk (Tiffany Aching!). He met and married a girl a few rungs up the social ladder (Vimes and Lady Sybil!) when he was just 20, and thereafter became 'the most married person you were ever likely to meet,' according to his biographer and longtime assistant, Rob Wilkins. He went to sci-fi conventions in the 1960s, dabbled in early computers and accumulated a gaggle of the kind of mismatched jobs many writers inhabit before they get down to novelisting full time: newspaperman, interviewer, press agent for a nuclear power station. A series of utterly ordinary events — except that they happened to a mind we know dreamed up extraordinary things. A few precociously early short-story sales eventually gave way to larger works, including the first Discworld books, and some enthusiastic press. Then, around the time the fourth Discworld novel, 'Mort,' was released in 1987 — after years of writing, multiple publishers and a bit of old-fashioned, right-time-right-place luck with a BBC radio serialization of the first two books — something clicked. Discworld took off, and pretty much never stopped: The series eventually ran to 41 full-length novels, plus an assortment of companion volumes, graphic novels, film and television adaptations, and the children's book 'Where's My Cow?' And while Pratchett occasionally tried on other worlds and genres — plays, alternate history, dialogue for a fan-made 'Elder Scrolls: Oblivion' mod — it's this fantasy realm that remains his most enduring masterpiece. Discworld is a flat planet that sits on top of four elephants on top of a tortoise. There are gods and tentacular temples; a teeming, grimy city called Ankh-Morpork; and arcane rules governing magic. At first, the series is a slapstick adventure story about a cowardly wizard, in which Pratchett takes well-aimed shots at J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft and Anne McCaffrey (to name just a few). But around Book 3 he starts opening things up. This is where the fan-made flow charts come in, explaining which books to read for the witches arc, which ones are the Sam Vimes novels, which ones follow Death and his granddaughter, Susan Sto Helit. Book by book, Discworld expands and deepens, pulling in elements from our world that Pratchett tempers in surprising ways: Shakespeare, vampires, police procedurals, musicals, Australia, high finance. Then come even bigger ideas: war, revolution, justice. By the time we reach Book 29, 'Night Watch,' Pratchett is writing comic fantasy the way Martin Luther offered theological critique to the Catholic Church: sharp and tough as nails, with a hammering moral force. Not all the jokes have aged well, and the final books are a bit haunting — more sketches than full-color paintings, as the progression of Pratchett's disease took its cruel toll. But the overwhelming sense, even in the posthumously published 'The Shepherd's Crown,' is of a man rushing to tell us something vital — about ourselves, about one another. Discworld is not about how to be good, but about how to do good, and why even the smallest acts of kindness matter. Empathy — like humor or creativity or hope — is a muscle. You don't train for a marathon by running around the world: You start with small distances and work your way up. It's cringe, as the kids say, to talk seriously about funny books. It makes me the wettest of blankets to say we're starving right now for virtue, for everyday goodness, for people who care about one another. But 10 years after Pratchett's passing — announced in the all-caps voice of Death himself — his clarity of vision may be what our world needs most: Vimes observing, 'As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.' Granny Weatherwax reminding us, 'Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things.' And Death, of course, having the last word: 'THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US.' Where do I start? If you find the flow charts daunting — and who could blame you? — 'Monstrous Regiment' (2003) is your best bet for a stand-alone, as it happens far away from Ankh-Morpork or the witchy Ramtop Mountains. We meet young Polly Perks, from a small country forever at war with its neighbors, as she cuts her hair, dons trousers and joins the army in hopes of finding her missing brother. The troops are untrained, the fields are barren, and the government insists it's treasonous to even ask which side is winning the war. The only authority is Sgt. Jack Jackrum, a jovial nightmare in a coat 'the red of dying stars and dying soldiers' — as if Falstaff were reborn as a god of war. Polly soon discovers she's not the only soldier in disguise. Everyone has their reasons for fighting, and they're being tracked by more enemies than they know. It's trench humor at its blackest, and burns like a wound being cauterized. Take me directly to his greatest hit 'Night Watch' (2002) is not only a great Discworld novel: It is one of the greatest fantasy novels of all time. Sam Vimes, a former drunken street cop who has become a sober and reluctant duke, is the commander of the City Watch — until he gets caught in a lightning storm and finds himself magically transported 30 years back in time. He quickly assumes the identity of a police sergeant in charge of training and mentoring his 16-year-old self, on the eve of a famous late-May rebellion that Vimes knows the sergeant does not survive. (Astute readers will have noted the glorious, and specific, publication date of this article: not accidental.) This salty, poignant and brilliantly strange novel is 'Terminator 2' meets 'Les Misérables.' It also retcons a lot of familiar Discworld characters — Lord Vetinari, Sergeant Colon, Nobby Nobbs, the zombie Reg Shoe — so before you pick it up, you should read 'Guards! Guards!' (1989) to learn your way around the city and its inhabitants. Vimes's arc from a hopeless drunk to an honorable civic leader is one of Pratchett's greatest literary triumphs, turning his gift for reinvention onto one of his own comic creations and effecting something remarkably tender in the process. I like sexy, sinister elves and women saving the day The author's note for 'Lords and Ladies' (1992), Pratchett's riff on 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' warns that this is the first Discworld book to build episodically on what came before … and then immediately gives you all the important context you need, in brief, with no homework necessary. A coven of witches return to their small mountain kingdom, Lancre, to discover that some glamorous elves with a taste for magical manipulation have invaded. But the trio — the dreamy Magrat Garlick, the meddling Nanny Ogg and the formidable Granny Weatherwax (maiden, mother and … the other one) — are not going down without a fight. Magrat is also shocked to learn that, in her absence, Lancre's king has been busy planning their wedding. Pratchett never wrote what I would call a romance, but this is one of his best romance-adjacent works (2001's 'Thief of Time' is another). Enough fantasy. Got any science fiction? Although I am fond of some of Pratchett's early science fiction, such as 'Only You Can Save Mankind' (1992), his best sci-fi is a Discworld book, where the science is garbed in fantasy cosplay. 'Going Postal' (2004) is the story of a con artist, Moist von Lipwig, who is reluctantly redeemed as he takes charge of the failing Ankh-Morpork postal service. The book is unusual for Pratchett in that most of the plot revolves not around magic, or even around magically inflected technology (as in 1990's 'Moving Pictures' or 2000's 'The Truth'), but around ordinary mechanical innovation. Moist and the mail must compete with the clacks network — a code-based semaphore communication system — and the clash upends social patterns and leads to political upheaval in ways fans of hard sci-fi will find gratifying. There are also plenty of references and fun Easter eggs for old-school coding nerds. I'm more of a horror reader 'Carpe Jugulum' (1998) nails the true creep factor of the vampire genre. It's not the blood-drinking: It's the way they mess with your mind. Another Lancre witches book, and one of the best, this story begins with King Verence (now married to Magrat) accidentally inviting a family of modern-sounding vampires to his daughter's christening. Once there, the hypnotically powered creatures are quick to insist they should be running things. Our witches have to fight them off while figuring out their own changing roles: The newcomer Agnes Nitt assumes the position of the maiden, Queen Magrat is now the mother, and Nanny Ogg is being pushed unwillingly into Granny Weatherwax's spot as Granny herself begins to physically fade. Luckily, witches are most dangerous when cornered, and Granny has at least one more trick up her sleeve. Got any deep cuts? 'A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction' (2012) is full of bite-size gems from Pratchett's prodigious, sometimes meandering career. Longtime readers will find plenty to enjoy here, including glimmerings of future stories and several unlikely surprises (one story includes a particularly delightful illustration of a 'large, fat, ugly brown bird with big eyebrows'). The illuminating and conversational introductions to each piece — where Pratchett adds context, memories and, sometimes, self-deprecating disclaimers ('I was playing with the words to see what happens. It's a thing that authors do sometimes.') — make it feel as though the writer is right there with you, reading over your shoulder. Time was I would have included 'Good Omens' (1990) on this list: It's an excellent first approach to Pratchett's work and a personal favorite. But considering the sexual assault allegations against Pratchett's co-author, Neil Gaiman, I'm not interested in sending new fans down that road. (Gaiman has denied the allegations.) Instead, I'd recommend one of the many angel-and-demon stories haloed by its influence, such as 'When the Angels Left the Old Country,' by Sacha Lamb; 'The City in Glass,' by Nghi Vo; or the whimsical 'Small Miracles,' by Olivia Atwater.
Time of India
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Final Destination Bloodlines box office cllection Day 8: Horror film ends week 1 with Rs 32 crore haul; creator Jeffrey Reddick thanks Indian fans for support
Final Destination Bloodlines, the latest instalment in the long-running horror franchise, has wrapped up its first week at the Indian box office with an impressive Rs 32.24 crore haul. The film, which hit theatres to much anticipation from horror fans, has enjoyed a steady run despite competition from domestic releases and the Hollywood action film Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. According to trade reports on the eighth day saw the film add approximately Rs 2.1 crore to its total, a 0.48% drop in numbers from Wednesday's total of Rs 2.9 crore. The film opened to positive numbers and maintained momentum throughout the week, bolstered by solid first weekend collection of Rs 22.45 crore and consistent weekday footfalls in metro cities. The film's creator, Jeffrey Reddick, took to social media on Friday to express gratitude to Indian audiences. In a heartfelt post, Reddick wrote: 'Thank you to all the wonderful fans in India. Your support keeps the franchise alive.' Directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein , Final Destination Bloodlines continues the horror series, blending new characters with the franchise's signature death-defying suspense. The film follows a group of strangers haunted by a terrifying vision and explores the sinister mythology of Death's design in a darker, more psychological tone. Indian audiences have responded well to the film's chilling visuals, suspenseful storytelling, and the return of the iconic, unseen antagonist — Death itself. After holding its ground against the Tom Cruise action film, the movie will now have to fight off additional competition from the children's live-action movie Lilo and Stitch, which also hits screens today. It will also face off against some new and other older domestic releases. Meanwhile, the film's global box office numbers are also tracking well with the film scoring an estimated $102 million opening which put it comfortably at the top spot of the worldwide box office, beating out Marvel's Thunderbolts and Sinners. Check out our list of the latest Hindi , English , Tamil , Telugu , Malayalam , and Kannada movies . Don't miss our picks for the best Hindi movies , best Tamil movies, and best Telugu films .
