Latest news with #TheReturn
Observer
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Observer
Dhofar Municipality promises unforgettable Khareef 2025 with world-class shows and interactive experiences
Salalah: Dhofar Municipality has unveiled an ambitious programme for Khareef Dhofar 2025, offering visitors an exceptional mix of culture, entertainment and innovation, alongside first-time international performances and record-breaking attractions. Ammar bin Obeid Ghawas, Director of Events and Awareness at Dhofar Municipality, said the season was carefully designed to cater to visitors of all ages and backgrounds, combining modern interactive experiences with authentic Omani traditions. 'We are committed to delivering a season that blends culture, entertainment and innovation in a way that meets the expectations of our diverse audience,' Ghawas told the Oman Observer. 'This year, we are introducing attractions never before seen in Oman — and some of them on a global scale.'Ittin Square, the season's central hub, will host the world's largest inflatable amusement park and the largest stage of its kind, equipped with cutting-edge sound and lighting systems. Visitors can look forward to eco-friendly fireworks and daily drone shows over 47 days, folklore performances from 18 countries, and vibrant Omani markets showcasing products from small and medium enterprises. A dedicated area will promote local brands led by Omani modern promenade at Ittin Plain will feature a walking track, 'World Stations' for children, a Princesses' Palace attraction, and a variety of restaurants and food trucks — creating a complete leisure and learning destination for families. Heritage enthusiasts can explore 'Awda' (The Return), a live re-creation of traditional Omani life featuring folk arts, heritage souqs and handicrafts, while Awqad Park (Kids' Time) will offer creative learning zones and interactive play areas in a safe and engaging and wellness will also take centre stage at Salalah Park (the Health Park), which includes running tracks and activity zones designed to promote an active lifestyle. Beyond Salalah, the programme includes events such as Ausara, Avicennia, Al-Gharf, the Frankincense Market, and the Al Haffa Beach Market, along with activities in Taqah, Mirbat and Sadah. Major international sporting events — including the Salalah International Cycling Tour, the Sand Drag Race Championship, and the Khareef Dhofar Traditional Shooting Competition — will also be part of the line-up. Ghawas emphasised that the season is designed to showcase Omani identity, with more than 1,000 Omani home-based businesses and entrepreneurs participating. All events will be managed and operated by Omani-owned companies, reflecting the Municipality's commitment to supporting national projects, empowering youth, and turning Khareef Dhofar into a genuine platform for sustainable development.
San Francisco Chronicle
a day ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘The Return' asks whether an Israeli and a Palestinian can rewrite their script
He's learned to bear his life; she means trouble. He knows the Orwellian rules of their police state, including that there are probably new dicta he doesn't yet know about; she's been gone long enough to be horrified on his behalf. When this unnamed duo meet in an auto body shop in Israel, there's a template they're expected to follow. He, the Arab mechanic, must be accommodating and subservient, even if she, the Jewish customer, takes conversational liberties. He can't risk otherwise; she could report him or even be an official herself. But in 'The Return,' which opened Sunday, Aug. 10, at the Garret at ACT's Toni Rembe Theater, she (Elissa Beth Stebbins) goes way too far immediately. She marvels at the fact he (Nick Musleh) is allowed to work on army jeeps, given his background, and asks if he gets treated and paid the same as his Jewish coworkers. It's like she wants to break him, but not for the usual reasons. Stebbins plays her as someone who knows she has all the power but hates that fact, and has to learn she can't do anything about it. In the two-hander, mounted by Golden Thread Productions in partnership with Art2Action, Inc., the surface-level mysteries are whether these two apparent strangers already know each other and what agenda could spur her to keep asking him questions that hint at a criminal history and make them both so uncomfortable. But the deeper question of Hanna Eady and Edward Mast's play is whether the pair can deviate from the rulebook history has handed them. No impetuous escape from it all or sunshine-and-rainbows cross-cultural reconciliation is possible. The forces against them are too great. But can one small human gesture break through? And if so, dare they — and we — hope for a better world? As she keeps flinging herself against his weathered defenses, Eady (who also directs) hits a few false notes. Restrained naturalism, where both actors thrive, keeps ratcheting into hysterical pitches. A scream of frustration bleeds into a sad string instrument sound cue, cutting off a scene. It's like the theater equivalent of an author triple-underlining his text instead of finding the right words. Still, at least most of the time, the first-rate performers make their credulity-straining premise (which I won't spoil here) and occasional clichés downright plausible. Stebbins, among the region's most incisive parsers of subtext, finds secret doors to the unknown within her lines. Her eyes are agonized then haunted, melting then teasing. At one point, when she says goodbye, you can tell that what her character really wants to say is, 'But why does it have to be over?' Musleh is a study in understatement. His character's open yet subdued mien communicates a lifetime spent appeasing an abusive authority, and he always juggles just enough possibilities to keep the show's mystery aloft. For the longest time, you can't entirely tell whether his character really believes the self-negating propaganda he's spouting, per Israeli brainwashing, or he's just that adroit in doublespeak. But then, when he finally allows himself something real and human, Musleh's whole being seems to shine. Connection is doomed in the world of 'The Return.' It can't last. Yet these two still manage one defiant Hollywood-perfect final gesture. It didn't have to end that way. A clumsy attempt at goodness has probably ruined at least one life, so recrimination — or worse — would be understandable. But people still reach out for each other. That, Eady and Mast insist, has to mean something.
San Francisco Chronicle
03-08-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
For two Palestinian artists, making S.F. theater is resistance
Hend Ayoub and Hanna Eady's plays might not seem to have much in common. Ayoub's 'Home? A Palestinian Woman's Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness' is an autobiographical solo show about becoming an actor in a world where you're always too Arab, too Israeli or just simply too foreign. Eady and Edward Mast's 'The Return' is a mysterious two-hander set in an auto body shop in which an Israeli Jewish customer keeps peppering a Palestinian mechanic with intrusive questions most of us wouldn't ask strangers. But when two Palestinian Israeli artists make theater in San Francisco in the same month, as mass starvation threatens Gaza, perhaps it's inevitable that commonalities emerge. San Francisco Playhouse's 'Home?' runs through Aug. 16, at Z Below, and Golden Thread Productions and Art2Action Inc.'s 'The Return' begins performances Aug. 7 at the Garret at ACT's Toni Rembe Theater. In advance of both runs, the Chronicle spoke to Ayoub and Eady about their relationship to the news, their homeland and their art. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Eady: Where we are in the north, in the Galilee — Gaza is in the south — we could hear the ground rumbling and the air force 24 hours a day in the skies. When they started the war against Iran, a siren would go, and you have to find a bomb shelter. Most people in Palestinian villages don't have bomb shelters, and we'd just sit and say, 'Well, let's hope it's not going to land on my house.' Q: Hend, 'home' is a loaded term for you, since it's the title of your play, but when's the last time you were back in your native Haifa? Ayoub: A few months ago. Actually, I was in shelters as well — not this time, a few months before, when Hezbollah was still in play. Over there, there are apps (where) you get the sirens. You just hear that sound, and you just start running. For me, I felt better being there with my family instead of being here worrying about them. More Information 'Home? A Palestinian Woman's Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness': Written and performed by Hend Ayoub. Directed by Carey Perloff. Through Aug. 16. $40. Z Below, 470 Florida St., S.F. 415-677-9596. 'The Return': Written by Hanna Eady and Edward Mast. Directed by Eady. Performances start Aug. 7. Through Aug. 24. $20-$130. The Garret at ACT's Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., S.F. 415-626-4061. Ayoub: To me, the news was very different after Oct. 7 happened. In the beginning, I was watching the news and just crying for the Israelis because I was in shock. Like, how could they do this? But then when Gaza happened, and it shifted, and you see the number of deaths, and you're crying for Palestinians in Gaza, but you're not seeing any of it on the news. It explains, I think, why Israelis don't care for the people in Gaza, because they don't see any of the images at all. Eady: I'm going to say the forbidden word: It's a genocide. And if you're not watching it and not seeing the images, it's still faraway land. Even if it's on the news, it's their news. And it might not be true, because they lie. Ayoub: When you're saying (Americans and Israelis) don't see images, they don't get exposed to other stories, other narratives, how are they going to know the other? In Israel, they don't know any Arabs. We don't even mix. Eady: You're back to back. Ayoub: Arabs go to Arab schools. Jews go to Jewish schools. All they see is awful coverage in TV and film, the way we're portrayed as the enemy, the villain, the terrorist. Eady: On Oct. 7, 2023, I was supposed to go to D.C. to work with Ari Roth, (the Jewish artistic director of Voices Festival Productions), on a play that I wrote before Oct. 7, called 'Almonds Blossom in Deir Yassin.' Deir Yassin is the site of the first massacre in 1948. (Roth) called. He said, 'What do you think? Should we do it?' I said, 'There is no better time.' If the war is going to stop us from creating and putting (on) this kind of important work, then we would never do theater. There's always a war. 'Deir Yassin' is a forbidden word to utter, but if we don't, then what? It's a wound that never healed. Q: Do you feel you have certain expectations placed on you as Palestinian artists about what kind of art you're allowed to or supposed to make? Ayoub: We have so many different Palestinians. You have the Palestinians who stayed on the land in 1948 and became Israeli citizens and didn't flee. You have the Palestinians that fled at gunpoint and stayed out when Israel closed the borders. You have Palestinians who you see here in America, the Palestinians who got stuck in Lebanon and Jordan refugee camps and in the West Bank and Gaza. Because we have so many stories and perspectives, some might say, 'Why aren't you writing about what's happening in Gaza and the occupation?' For me, I'm just writing my personal story and my perspective as someone who was born and raised there. Eady: A lot of the stories were not told to us because there's so much shame. It's not a heroic story. We ran away. We didn't put (up) a good fight in 1948. My job, to tell the story, it's an obligation. It's part of who I am. I have to continue to bang at the door until my story is heard. Q: For the Arab characters in your plays, what is home? Eady: (In 'The Return'), for him (an unnamed character played by Nick Musleh) to free himself from the oppressive system and the racism, it's going to require a full expression of who he is. For a long time in the play, he's having a hard time to say, 'I'm a Palestinian.' We grew up brainwashed by the Israeli system to say we're Israelis. The word 'Palestine' was never uttered in my house. Ayoub: It wasn't allowed. Eady: In (my) play, home for him is really (that) first he has to say who he is and then be able to have enough courage, although he's going to be punished, to say 'I'm going home,' and his home (is) most likely a destroyed village. Home is to be able, not that they have to live in Palestine, but to have the right to come. Just like any Jewish American, they have this birthright. Some of them go; some of them don't. They choose. We don't. Ayoub: Home is something that most people, I think, take for granted because they were born in a place where they belong, where they're part of the whole. For us, we don't really belong anywhere. If we're talking specifically about people like us, Palestinian Israelis, home is taken away from you, even if you want to claim it. Even if you want to see yourself as Israeli, you can't, because you're reminded every time that you're not one of us: 'This is the land of the Jews, and you're not Jewish. You're a second-class citizen.' Home is like when you belong, you're embraced, you're welcomed, you don't have to whisper your language in Arabic.
San Francisco Chronicle
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Dave Franco reflects on Palo Alto roots, marriage with Alison Brie and their new film ‘Together'
Dave Franco has been in the acting game for two decades, but he was once a sports-obsessed kid growing up in Palo Alto, with posters of heroes such as Giants slugger Barry Bonds and NBA star Vince Carter affixed to his walls. He's reminded of that whenever he visits his mother, author Betsy Franco, and sleeps in his old room. 'She hasn't touched my room since I left,' Franco told the Chronicle during a video interview. 'I still have a bookshelf with my old sports trophies and some of my stuff.' 'And sports cards,' chimed in actress Alison Brie, Franco's wife. 'I can confirm this, as I've spent many nights in Dave's childhood bedroom.' Franco, 40, has left childhood far behind. He and Brie, 42, have been significant others for 13 years and married for eight, and they have put that relationship to the test in ' Together,' a most unusual horror film about a couple whose decade-long relationship is disintegrating — until a spectral force physically propels them together. Michael Shanks' feature directorial debut fits in the body horror genre, but it is a sly commentary on the ups and downs of relationships, dysfunctional and otherwise. In praising the film for the Chronicle, critic Bob Strauss likened it to 'an Ingmar Bergman scenario directed by Sam Raimi.' 'The monster in this movie, if you will, is an internal force,' Brie observed. 'It's not the type of horror movie where we're running away from an axe murderer. It's a push-and-pull within our own bodies. 'So many of the scenes,' she continued, 'the physical side of it for us was creating that internal tension and that pull, and some of it was established by actually tying ropes and wires around our waists or ankles and pulling us.' 'Together,' which Brie and Franco also produced, is the pair's fifth collaboration. They acted together in the 2017 comedies 'The Little Hours' and ' The Disaster Artist,' and Franco directed Brie in the horror film ' The Return ' (2020) and the rom-com ' Somebody I Used to Know ' (2023). In a separate interview, Shanks said the couple's 'passion and enthusiasm' was crucial to keeping the low-budget shoot on track during the 21-day production schedule in Melbourne, Australia, helping him realize a lifelong dream of making feature films. (The filmmaker previously spoke up to blast a copyright infringement lawsuit surrounding the film last month.) 'It's not just what they bring to the table as actors, but also as producers and as champions of independent filmmaking,' Shanks observed. 'Every single day on set, we were torturing them, having them do this intense physical stuff throughout this film, and they just never complained. We had somebody on the crew who's been working in the film industry for 40 years lugging lights around, this crusty old Aussie guy, and he came up to me and said, 'I've never worked with better actors than these guys.' 'If we were running late, struggling to get shots in, and something needed to be moved, like a light or a prop, you'd turn around and Dave would be there lugging one of the lights around, just totally collaborative like that,' he added. Franco's passion for movies began during a stint at a video store in Palo Alto at age 14 while he was a student at Palo Alto High School. The working age in California at the time was 16, so he toiled for free. 'They essentially paid me by allowing me to take home as many movies as I wanted,' Franco recalled fondly. 'It was the year 1999, which is now regarded as one of the best movie years ever. So I was taking home classic films, as well as very seminal films like 'The Matrix,' 'Fight Club,' ' American Beauty,' ' American Pie,' ' Being John Malkovich,' ' The Blair Witch Project.' It was my initial film school.' Around that time, his older brother James Franco was knocking on doors in Hollywood. A few years later, Dave Franco decided to become an actor while at USC. (Another older brother, Tom Franco, has dabbled in acting but is mainly known as the artist founder of Berkeley's Firehouse Art Collective.) Dave Franco had small roles in films such as ' Superbad ' (2007) and 'Milk' (2008) before breaking through with key supporting roles in ' 21 Jump Street ' (2013) and 'Now You See Me' (2013), which launched a pair of sequels (the third film, 'Now You See Me: Now You Don't,' is due in theaters on Nov. 14.). He met Brie at a Mardi Gras party in New Orleans in 2011 when the actor was in the middle of her run as part of the cast of ' Mad Men ' (2007-15), and they have been inseparable ever since — well, not as inseparable as their characters in 'Together.' 'We're very happy to say that our relationship is nothing like the relationship in the movie,' Brie said with a laugh. 'But just having been together over 13 years, having that shared history, being in love, we knew that would naturally find its way into the script. 'I realized afterward that this shoot made us possibly more codependent than we had been going into it.' Franco agreed. 'Yeah, the whole experience has made us analyze our own levels of codependency, which are probably pretty high,' Franco said. 'I think this movie has a way of really holding a mirror up to the audience and reflecting back to them their feelings about relationships,' Brie added. 'It's already been exciting to see audience reactions. They're all walking out with something different depending on how they feel about monogamy.'
Tokyo Weekender
18-06-2025
- Business
- Tokyo Weekender
Shinjiro Koizumi Tops Poll for Japan's Next Prime Minister
According to a joint opinion poll conducted by the Sankei Shimbun and FNN (Fuji News Network) on June 14 and 15, Shinjiro Koizumi is the people's choice to be Japan's next prime minister. The current Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister finished at the top of the poll with 20.7% of the vote, 4.3% ahead of the former Minister of State for Economic Security Sanae Takaichi . Koizumi finished behind Takaichi in May's poll. List of Contents: The Return of Shinjiro Koizumi Falling Rice Prices Related Posts The Return of Shinjiro Koizumi It's been quite a turnaround for the 44-year-old son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. After finishing third in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership race last September, some wrote off his prospects. He was seen as too inexperienced; a politician who spoke a good game, but lacked substance. Following last year's disappointing election result, he was appointed the LDP's election chief, but resigned when the party suffered a significant loss in October's Lower House election. Away from the political spotlight for several months, Koizumi made his return in May. Taku Eto's position as Agriculture Minister became untenable after he said that he 'never had to buy rice' as he got it free from supporters. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba subsequently replaced him with Koizumi. 'I was instructed to put rice before anything. At this difficult time, I will do my utmost to address the high rice prices that people are struggling with daily,' the former Environment Minister told reporters. Falling Rice Prices The appointment brought immediate results. The average price of rice has been steadily decreasing nationwide. On Monday, the Agricultural Ministry announced that it fell ¥48 from the previous week to ¥4,176 per 5 kilograms. That's the third consecutive week it has decreased. In late May, stockpiled rice harvested in 2021 and 2022 was put on sale through no-bid contracts. Supplies quickly sold out as long lines of customers waited to buy the cheaper grain. Commenting on Koizumi's policies, Hiroshi Shiratori, a professor of political science at Hosei University, said , 'He's been more effective at capturing the public imagination than the LDP expected. If the LDP can win the elections, lawmakers may begin to see him as their best option as leader.' Koizumi certainly appears to be a lot more popular with the public than the current prime minister. Ishiba finished third in the Sankei Shimbun and FNN poll with 7.9% of the votes. Constitutional Democratic Party leader Yoshihiko Noda came fourth with 6.8%, ahead of former Foreign Minister Taro Kono (4.2%), Democratic Party for the People leader Yuichiro Tamaki (4.1%) and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi (2.4%). Related Posts Introducing the Nine Candidates Vying To Become Japan's Next Prime Minister Fumio Kishida To Resign As Japan's Prime Minister Taro Kono Declares Victory in 'War' on Floppy Disks
