Latest news with #LawrenceofArabia
Scotsman
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
I was one of the first back inside Edinburgh's Filmhouse
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... I fell in love with the Filmhouse as a student, fresh-faced and new to Edinburgh. It was everything I wanted in a cinema and more. Over the years, I've seen countless movies within its walls, from the latest releases to cult classics and undisputed masterpieces. It's hard to pick a single highlight, but I'll never forget experiencing Lawrence of Arabia on 70mm. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In 2012, I volunteered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, helping to man the small, dark room within the building where critics and others could catch any films they might have missed. Cinema One in the Filmhouse | Kat Gollock I probably saw more movies that summer than was physically good for me. It was glorious. The following year, I wrote a piece for The Guardian's 'cine-files' series, which allowed readers to wax lyrical about cinemas close to their hearts. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Filmhouse, I insisted, was 'something increasingly precious' - a cinema that catered shamelessly for cinephiles and wasn't afraid to take risks. 'Upstairs, Cinema One boasts one of the best screens in all of Edinburgh, with a red-curtained cosiness harking back to a lost age of cinematic glamour and old-fashioned, starry-eyed movie mystery,' I wrote, in slightly overenthusiastic student prose. (L-R) Filmhouse programme director Rod White and executive director Andrew Simpson inside cinema one. Picture: Andrew O'Brien/The Scotsman | Andrew O'Brien All this is to say I was devastated when it shut in October 2022. It felt like a body blow, and a depressing sign of the times. I was lucky enough to be in a position to contribute some money to the fundraiser, and the decision to do so was a no-brainer. That the Filmhouse is now re-opening on Friday after more than two-and-a-half years feels like something close to a miracle. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad On Wednesday evening, I attended one of the first screenings in the newly refurbished venue, for those who had donated a certain amount. It was very special to be back in Cinema One, among all that red-curtained cosiness and starry-eyed movie mystery. The film on the big screen? Cinema Paradiso. For those who love the Filmhouse, it is mostly just as you remember it, but more modern and with comfier seats. Andrew O'Brien The cafe and bar area remains the kind of place you can lose an afternoon in. My only plea is that they bring back the DVDs and Blu-rays for sale at the front.
The Advertiser
26-06-2025
- The Advertiser
These northern Australian cities have it all for a warm winter getaway
Broome is also a gateway - to the vast, incomparable Kimberley region - but in the town itself, you are never far from your next attraction, adventure or camel. Incorporating all three, the evening dromedary jaunt on Cable Beach is a Kimberley classic. As the twilight skies tint to harmonise with the intense ochres, the dying sun throws the long shadows of your camel conga line onto the shore, setting the scene for the archetypal Aussie sunset selfie. It's up to you if you want to twist your beach towel into a keffiyeh, hum the theme from Lawrence of Arabia and scream "NO PRISONERS!" but don't be surprised if your camel turns around and bites you on the Aqaba.
Mint
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Why countries are suddenly broadcasting their spies' exploits
Israel's airstrikes on Iran exploded across the world's screens as a public display of military firepower. Underpinning that was a less visible but equally vital Israeli covert operation that pinpointed targets, guided the attacks and struck Iran from within. Agents from Israel's spy agency, Mossad, operated inside Iran before and during the initial attacks earlier this month, Israeli officials said. The disclosure was itself an act of psychological warfare—a boast of Israel's ability to act with impunity inside Iran's borders and Tehran's failure to stop it. Israel flaunted its tactical success by releasing grainy video emblazoned with Mossad's seal that it said showed operatives and drone strikes inside Iran. Not long ago, such covert operations stayed secret. Today, belligerents from Ukraine to the U.S. increasingly broadcast their triumphs, with messages amplified in real time by social-media networks. When T.E. Lawrence wanted to publicize his World War I secret forays deep into Ottoman territory, he wrote a book and articles. Nobody saw those commando raids for half a century until the blockbuster film 'Lawrence of Arabia" recreated his exploits. T.E. Lawrence played a clandestine role in the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule during World War I. These days, barely hours pass before the world sees action footage of Ukraine's latest drone attacks on Russian military targets. Israel's detonation of explosives hidden inside Hezbollah militants' pagers played out in almost real time across the internet. The U.S. repeatedly fed social media the details—and sometimes imagery—of its special-operations strikes on Islamic State leaders in recent years. The result is a major shift in warfare: Call it the battle of timelines. Spying and clandestine operations, in the traditional sense, have never been so difficult. Biometric data makes document forgery obsolete. Billions of cameras, attached to phones, rearview mirrors and doorbells, stand ready to capture the movements of any operative hoping to lurk invisibly. In seconds, artificial intelligence can rifle through millions of photos to identify the faces of foreign spies operating in the wild. Instead, fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East is bringing a new doctrine to spycraft stemming from changes in both what their organizers seek to achieve and how information spreads. Operations that would have once been designed to remain under wraps are now meant to be seen, to produce spectacular optics. They play out not just on the battlefield, but also on social media, boosting morale at home while demoralizing the enemy watching from the other side of the screen. 'A major goal of covert operations is often to show an adversary's leadership that we have identified and can damage elements involved in lethal activity," said Norman Roule, a former senior U.S. intelligence officer. 'Demonstrating this capability is hoped to act as a deterrent and even to encourage an adversary to seek diplomatic solutions." Such operations aren't done lightly, because they are dangerous and risk exposure of sensitive sources and methods that once compromised can't be used in the future, he added. 'You don't waste such critical capabilities for a cheap political win," Roule said. 'That said, in addition to the operational impact, you can exploit such operations for propaganda, psychological impact or diplomatic gain." Covert operations once remained secret long after they wrapped up, or they were revealed by chance. Allied World War II code-breaking efforts stayed largely unknown for three decades. Countless Cold War-era espionage operations gained public attention only after the Soviet Union collapsed. Central Intelligence Agency efforts to raise a sunken Soviet submarine went public accidentally, following an office burglary in Los Angeles. Exploits dubbed black ops—because the operations stay in the dark—traditionally fed into a quiet game of signaling and deception. One reason the release of the Pentagon Papers alarmed the White House in 1971 was that some information in them could have only come from a U.S. bug planted in Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's car, former President Richard Nixon said in 1984. Fast forward to 2021, when President Joe Biden took the exceptional step of going public with highly sensitive intelligence about Moscow's plans to attack Ukraine. The pre-emptive disclosure of hard-won secrets didn't stop the invasion, but it did restore allies' perception of the U.S.—and American spycraft—which had been tarnished by the warnings of weapons of mass destruction that led to the Iraq War. These days, secrecy is often beside the point. Almost weekly, Ukrainian drone attacks deep in Russia's interior play out to the same script: An ordinary bystander whips out a phone to capture the flicker of a Ukrainian drone against the night sky, seconds before it reduces some strategic target—an oil refinery, an air base or a rail depot—into a fiery ball. Soon, the footage circulates on social media. In come amateur war analysts posting commercial satellite photos of the damage, followed by declarations of responsibility from the Ukrainian special services eager to demonstrate their capabilities to ordinary Russians scrolling at home. 'Ukraine does an excellent job in planning out these operations, and they know that in this day and age every attack is going to be filmed," said Samuel Bendett, a Russian-studies adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Va., a federally funded nonprofit research organization. 'They're trying to design their attacks so that more and more Russians are aware of the war and are impacted by the war." Kyiv feels obliged to wage a public propaganda war against Moscow because it isn't winning the shooting war. Israel goes public with results of its espionage and covert operations against Iran and its proxies to convince foreign governments and populations that Tehran is both dangerous and vulnerable. The communication war is raging in an information free-for-all. Governments and elites that until the middle of the 20th century controlled their information environment are today trying just to navigate it, said Ofer Fridman, a former Israeli officer and a scholar of war studies at King's College London. 'Now they're struggling to communicate with their target audience through overwhelming noise," he said. Compounding that is the digitization of almost all information—both new memos and dusty archives—meaning that no event is guaranteed to remain secret from hackers or publicity-minded politicians with access to files. The impact of data leakers including the National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and the National Guard airman Jack Teixeira weighs heavily on intelligence officials. Russia is still adjusting to this new form of warfare. The country has made filming or posting sensitive details about military attacks a crime in its front-line regions, punishable by fines. Not even the country's police and special services have been able to discourage civilians who, almost by instinct, take out their phones when Ukrainian saboteurs strike. Soldiers on the front lines, disobeying their own codes of conduct, regularly capture battlefield operations. For its part, Russia has made minimal effort to cover its own tracks in its barely disguised spree of covert operations in Europe. The GRU, the Russian military-intelligence organization, has repeatedly hired European civilians over social media, paying them to burn down a shopping mall in Warsaw, or an IKEA in Lithuania, according to Western officials. When a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine was shot dead in Spain last year, Russia's spy chiefs didn't deny involvement—they all but boasted of it. 'This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment he was planning his dirty and terrible crime," Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, told state media. Write to Daniel Michaels at and Drew Hinshaw at
UPI
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- UPI
Movie review: 'Life of Chuck' affirms joy in dark times
1 of 5 | Tom Hiddleston and Annalise Basso dance in "The Life of Chuck," in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Neon LOS ANGELES, June 2 (UPI) -- The Life of Chuck, in theaters Friday, is a surreal and beautiful portrait of a life well lived. The film, adapted by Mike Flanagan from the Stephen King novella, portrays the life of Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) in three chapters in reverse order. Near the end of his life, Charles appears on billboards that read "39 Great Years! Thanks Chuck." Schoolteacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) sees those ads and wonders who Charles is and what happened in those 39 years. The ads escalate before Charles actually appears; not since Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia has a movie character made such a grand entrance. For a while, Charles becomes a mysterious figure in a world in crisis. But the film focuses on how regular people cope with their limited knowledge of world events. Marty's ex-wife, Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan) is a nurse trying to hold a hospital down and reaches out to reconnect with her ex-husband. Marty also makes friends with a stranger, Sam Yabrough (Carl Lumbly), walking from place to place. What people talk about during political and environmental upheaval is poignant. They wonder whether the chaos has led to more marriages or divorces, because they're considering if more people pursue love or give up on commitments. Other people are just too dazed to have a deep conversation. Earlier in Charles' life, on a lunch break on a business trip, he stopped for street drummer Taylor Frank (The Pocket Queen) and started dancing. Though the choreography is enhanced by dance legend Mandy Moore, the scene represents a sincere moment between strangers. The pair are both doing what comes naturally and they happen to complement each other. They need not speak for Taylor to guide Charles, or for Charles to inspire a new beat. As a child, young Charles (Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Tremblay) goes to live with his grandparents (Mark Hamill, Mia Sara) after his parents die in an automobile accident. As an adult, he's already thought about his grandmother dancing in the kitchen, giving context in this segment. By sixth grade, Charles is old enough to start asking questions. He's experienced the fragility of mortality earlier than most and is inevitably going to experience more before his own. He is living with an elderly couple, and even if he wasn't, death touches all of our lives. There are several motifs that recur in each chapter: Dancing, the cosmic calendar representing all of existence as if it were months of the year, Walt Whitman poems and a locked room upstairs all appear in some way. These give specificity to patterns that recur at various stages of life. Some of Charles' adult motivations are explained in childhood, but other feelings are not impacted so linearly. There is a supernatural element to the story, but it is subtle and does not overshadow the film's celebration of real life. The mysterious aspect is unveiled at the end, more as a garnish to the human story than a twist ending. Although Charles' life has specific circumstances, they are universal enough that the film serves as a Rorschach test for any viewer. Different aspects of The Life of Chuck will resonate with different people, and the film potentially gives peace and healing, if not definitive answers. Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
A sprinkling of sublime for TE Lawrence's grave
There is that 'great man' moment in David Lean's cinematic masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia when Peter O'Toole's Lawrence is trying to persuade his sceptical Bedouin lieutenant (Omar Sharif) that it is indeed possible to cross hundreds of miles of waterless desert and take the fortified port of Aqaba, held by the Turks, from the landward side. 'Aqaba is over there,' he says, pointing into the furnace. 'It's only a matter of going.' That journey in 1917, the crossing of the uncrossable, of what Sharif's character calls the 'Devil's Anvil', was the defining moment for Thomas Edward Lawrence. His legend grew from life ended not with a Turkish bullet or a last drop of stagnant water but at the age of 46 with a
