The Best Movie Posters of All Time

1.

Who wouldn't want to look at BOTH George Clooney and Ryan Gosling's faces in one morphed picture? No one, that's who. 

2.

First thought that comes to mind: trippy. For sure. 

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3.

With an amazing poster like this, I don't think any fans will be letting it go any time soon. 

4.

Every second counts: except the one where he drinks bodily fluids. I kinda wish that second didn't have to count. 

5.

The guy has the same expression on his face that I have when I hear someone say something stupid. 

6.

Listen, the line 'he's pulling out all the stops' is scary enough for me to not even want to watch the movie. 

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7.

Reminding you that Nicholas Cage wasn't always the internet meme people have made him out to be. 

8.

TWO cool movie posters for ONE movie? Above and beyond, obviously. 

9.

"Mooooooom, I don't want to clean my room!" Said the mummy on the movie poster. 

10. 

To be honest, the poster was better than the movie. 

 By: Muneeb Khan (Captions by Sarah Quraishi) 

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TOP 5 BOLLYWOOD SONGS YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS OUT ON

This post goes out to all those Bollywood fans out there, and to those of us that love the occasional catchy tune that may not always make complete sense. These are the top 5 songs that have been burning the charts recently: 

1.  Lovely- Happy New Year 

This song will get you moving as soon as you play it. Let’s not forget that Deepika Padukone looks breathtaking throughout. If that doesn't help, it’s sung by Kanika Singh who may have sung a previous hit about a certain children’s toy. A definite party number, make sure you warn the neighbors before turning up the volume. 

2.Mitti Di Khushboo- Ayushmann Khurrana

The ‘Vicki Donor’ star is back with another soft pop number that shows off his extraordinary musical talent. I’m head over heels for his voice in the song, and it especially works for those of us who might be missing a certain someone. The song will make you feel nostalgic, so next time you want some background music to accompany you in those i-miss-you-loads moments, then this track is one to look out for.

3.Bang Bang- Bang Bang 

Okay, this one will take you back to the 80’s during the Michael Jackson’s reign because of the beat which is quite similar to Thiller. The song features at the end of the movie suggestively called ‘Bang Bang!, which is the Bollywood version of Hollywood film ‘Knight and Day’. Hritik Roshan pays tribute to MJ with his incredible dance moves that leave the audience, and also Katrina, mesmerized.  

  

4. Love Dose- Yo Yo Honey Singh

As cheesy as the title, it’s a pretty catchy hip hop song by India’s very own Punjabi rapper and singer, it's Yo Yo Honey Singh. Considering the number of hits he has delivered in the last year, this one too received just as much love from fans. This one is likely to get stuck in your head for days, maybe even weeks.  The video might not be very family friendly so enjoy this picture of Honey Singh with his breakfast instead. 

5. Sajde- Kil Dil 

Guys, it's Arjit Singh, what more could you possibly ask for? The song is just as heartfelt as the title suggests with excellent vocals provided by Arjit and Nihira Joshi. The song is included in the official soundtrack of the film “Kill/Dil” starring Ranvir Singh, Parineeti Chopra and Ali Zafar in lead roles, which does sound like a bunch of awesome people put together in one movie. This song is probably going to stick with me for a while.


 By Nida Zehra 

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Of Honey Vocals, Flashy Outfits, and Oddly Lit Boxes

Deep down the dark streets of Seoul in  big entertainment companies, lived the uncountable number of Korean bands. Every now and then they would come out with addictive, upbeat songs, dressed in the trendiest of outfits, dancing perfectly in oddly lit boxes. Grabbing a few awards once in a while, this bunch of hard-working teenagers worked even harder to come back with crisp and  flawless dance moves and songs to make all the fangirls swoon.

WHO ARE THEY? HOW ARE THEY SO PERFECT? WHAT DO THEY WANT?

Before these questions could be answered, a crazy old man came in their way.

'Dress classy, dance cheesy' he said.

'Oppa Gangnam Style' he said.

Stealing away the spotlight,he galloped to yet another oddly lit stadium claiming himself a 'Gentleman'  By the name of Park Jaesang he goes. As a Korean phenomenon he's known. But what if I tell you, there's more to the genre known as Korean pop than just the famous (or infamous?) Gangnam style?

 In an industry where fame comes quickly and fades just as rapidly, Korean pop has been on a major roll ever since the decade started. After years of intense training, Korean entertainment companies form bands with the best of talents which can feature as many as 17 members. Not only  do singing skills matter but so does the ability to be a powerful dancer. Later come the artsy music videos. These ever-growing bands are creating a frenzy among their fans by selling out concerts within minutes and breaking through billboard music charts. Every once in a while these girl and boy bands come back with new singles or full albums. What is unique is the fact that their new acts are further promoted through music shows where all these bands compete against each other and show strong live performances with some high notes here and there, and impressive but tough, well synchronized choreography.

 Immensely dedicated fandoms are another special factor of Korean bands. Having a group filled with different personalities, these bands manage to attract a large audiences. International awards are more like a battlefield and boy can things get ugly. Fans even buy the CDs, which no one in this generation seems to do. Never underestimate the power of a fangirl. They can even get their oppas a mansion in Gangnam, a Taj Mahal and Beyonce. Thats right! The key word here is 'Obsession!'

Riddled with idol groups after idol groups, the magical genre of K-pop has painted a picture of loud, crazy and colourful worlds with songs like Go crazy, Gee, Like This and many more. However it also  knows just when to step back and slow it down with melodious ballads like Blue, and 0330. But things do not end here. In the last few years, many east meets west collaborations have been seen. From Kanye West to Diplo, K-pop is slowly entering the American market and gaining a lot of interest. K-pop is all but usual- a mix of expected and unexpected.

All in all, my life being in this K-ingdom has been more of a roller coaster ride. With its crazy dance moves to major outfit fails where you just want to burn the stylist to bits of broken english (see; nonsense) to the pride it gives you when you see your favorite bands taking away worldwide awards. Korean bands not only taught me how practice makes  perfect but also the fact that music has no language. Mad props to these people for changing my life's motto which now goes as

YOLO- You Only Love Oppas!

By: Fizzah Riaz Sheikh 

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Indie, what?

Going through my old MySpace list, I realized how different my taste in music has become through the years. I started off with Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers, and now listen to a whole new brand of music known as “indie”.  It seems to be the choice of a new generation- A generation which I come from. I slowly found myself moving away from the sugar pop music and more towards the “alternative/alt-rock” bands, which were still pretty mainstream but had a sort of electric weirdness to them covered in noisy out-of-tune synthesizers. Coldplay, for example. Their songs like “Charlie Brown” and “Violet Hill” are examples of somewhat unconventional music coming from a popular band.

Earlier before, “indie rock” was the proud successor of “punk rock”. It was defined to oppose the music that was made to appeal to the masses. It was for people who were fed up with  what they heard on their TV and radio. However soon enough, we saw bands like Sonic Youth and Joy Division go commercial. Many of these underground bands started signing with major record labels. Indie had expanded its territory and somewhat dropped its image of ‘weird’ and became more common.  The definition of "indie" remains constantly in flux. Are bands on independent labels the only ones righteous enough to have a illicit claim to the "indie" spirit? Or is indie an aesthetic that belongs to any artist who is willing to be creative or showcase their idiosyncrasies, without caring about the commercial success?

I feel as though anything that can be described as ‘quirky’ or ‘quaint’ now comes under the indie umbrella, and there are more things under it than it can actually take. As indie enters the second decade of the 21st century, its definition has never been less clear. Hipsters that see their favorite bands appearing on popular late night shows and treacherous label signings experience a lot of hurt. On various social networks (i.e Tumblr) I see them lashing out and talking about the good old days of a band before it became mainstream.  It seems hard for people to digest that there can be an in-between. I love listening to Ariel Pink, John Maus, Mac DeMarco and other such not so popular indie artists. But I can’t like listening to Beyonce or Adele without being judged for crossing the other side, even if it is for a little while.

 There seems to be a sense of betrayal in all of this; the movement that had begun to defy conventional pop/rock now seems to become it.

By: Sana Ahmad 

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The Lost Gems of the Pakistani Music Scene

Like any other country, Pakistan too, has produced several geniuses in various fields- most importantly, the music industry. It is, however, quite ironic and sad at the same time, that the same industry which produced legends like Nusrat Fateh Ali khan and Noor Jehan, now bemoans the dearth of talented, if not legendary, individuals who can at least breathe new life into its on-the-verge-of-dying soul.

This article is to throw light on some of the musical gems of Pakistan who revolutionized and dominated the music scene through out the world with their unprecedented talent and unchallenged skills.

Aziz Mian

The period 1970-1988 is often regarded as the "Golden Age Of Qawwali Music In Pakistan". Contrary to the popular belief, it was not Nusrat Fateh Ali who brought Pakistan on the forefront as the soil for best qawwals or qawwalis, but a little known gem known as, 'Aziz Mian'. 

Remember the sultry and sizzling song, "Mein Sharaabi", from the Indian flick, Cocktail, a song which we all went crazy for? Well, the man behind the song was none other than Aziz Mian who rocked the music scene with it when it was released in 1973. Surprisingly enough, it was not the song but the uniqueness of the style in which he sang and his powerful vocals that had an intoxicating effect on his audiences. A testing evidence to this is the fact that a cultural writer reviewing one such Aziz Mian concert in Karachi in 1975 described him as being ‘the Nietzschean Sufi!’ He is not just remembered as a qawwal but as a man who had enough guts to talk about his love for alcohol, which he believed to be a metaphor for the state and the love God had for him, even in the times of the reactionary military dictator Zia-ul-Haq, who had come with the mission of imposing his Islam, which included a complete prohibition of alcohol. His concerts were often raided by the police during the dictator's regime for finding people in a state of unconsciousness, to the extent that Aziz, given his witty and stubborn nature, began making a joke out of this by telling the audiences to remain calm as the police would arrest him and not them, when he wrapped up his concerts with the ever popular, Mein Sharaabi. Ironically, yet sadly, it was his immense love for alcohol that eventually took his own life when he died in 2000 as a result of liver cancer, caused by excessive drinking.

Nazia Hassan

In 1979, a fifteen year old, extremely young and talented, British born Pakistani became the youngest and the first ever Pakistani to win the Indian equivalent of the Oscar- A Filmfare Award. It was the one and only Nazia Hassan, who had rocked the Indian music industry with her song, Aap Jaisa Koi,  a track pictured by the alluring and highly popular film actress, Parveen Babi. 'She came, she saw, she conquered' is what perfectly describes Nazia Hassan when she arrived in the music scene in early 1980's. She left her Indian fans craving for more with Aap Jaisa Koi, until she came back with a bang in 1982, with the release of her album, Star, the songs of which were used in an Indian movie with the same name. The chartbuster of this album was 'Boom Boom' , that was recently remade by Nescafe Basement as well. With just one single and and album down the lane, Nazia had already rocked the world with her melodious voice. She was the one who gave birth to pop music in South Asia with her songs. Disco Deewaane (1983), Young Tarang (1984) and Hotline (1987) , were all the albums she released in the following years. Ankhein Milaane Waale, Disco Dewaane, Dum Dum Dee Dee, Telehone piyar were all big hits off of these albums. Surprisingly they topped the charts in Russia, Poland, Latin America and West Indies as well! Such was the precedent of the popularity and fame of Nazia! Sadly, she left the music world in 1991 with the release of her last album Camera. Just two years later she was diagnosed with cancer, that eventually took her life and the graceful soul departed from this world on 15 August 1997.

Junaid Jamshed

Now this is one individual who is very much alive and still enjoys the same status and popularity that he did two decades ago, but he is a lost musical gem in a sense that he isolated himself from the glamorous world of music and shifted to being a business man and religious scholar ( a job he has so far done very carelessly indeed).

JJ joined the Vital Signs in 1987 when he was still an engineering student at a college in Lahore. His voice and sense of melody were two of the leading reasons behind the Signs' meteoritic rise between 1988 till the group’s demise in 1997. He was also an incurable romantic. Though most of his band mates had a series of flings with a host of women, in 1989 Junaid got embroiled in a torrid affair that pushed him on the brink of suffering a nervous breakdown. Though not noticed much at the time, even during the height of the Signs’ fame in 1994-95, JJ had already started his gradual flip towards a state of mind that would eventually land him as becoming the puritanical Tableeghi Jamaat’s poster boy. 

Soon after the release of the Signs’ fourth album, Hum Tum, in 1995, Junaid started to mail letters to various newspapers complaining that their music pages were promoting and glorifying “druggie music” and bands whose members were “Satan worshippers.” Though by then his two closest allies in the music business, Rohail and Shoaib, had become aware of the growing conservatism in the religious and social ideas held by Junaid, they still couldn’t see through the obvious fact that in front of them was a man spiralling downwards towards a situation in which he would ultimately start questioning their faith! The mid and late 1990s was also a time when a number of Islamic evangelical outfits had begun to mushroom in all the major cities of Pakistan. They almost squarely targeted young middle-class urbanites as recruits and for this they began to ‘covert’ and conscript famous personalities from the Pakistan cricket team and the show-biz scene. Though the Tableeghi Jamaat was far more established, it was in the 1990s that they began to approach young urbanites that were associated with cricket, show business and the military. J

unaid’s conversion into becoming a Tableeghi Jamaat man was not sudden. It was a gradual, slow and rather painful process, unfolding piece by piece. He was the hungriest for success and stardom in the band, not only in pop music but also in film and television. He is on record saying that music was his life as he went on to release two impressive post-Signs' solo albums.  This made him one of the hardest working members of the group and he actually wanted to continue recording with the band beyond Hum Tum (the Signs’ last album). But more and more he was falling prey (rather willingly) to his frustrations, as his desire to work again with the Signs got no serious response from Rohail and his dream to star in a Shoaib Manoor film only got him lazy chuckles from the director.

 In spite of the fact that Rohail’s liberal mindset, tastes and lifestyle always clashed with Junaid’s idea of being an artiste (even though he himself was leading a rather posh and lavish life), this undercurrent eventually turned into open resentment by the time Rohail did come around and agreed to reform the band in 2002 for a special Nazia Hassan tribute concert. It was interesting to note how Junaid responded to Rohail’s call. Only a few days prior to the concert, Junaid had already announced to the press that he was joining the Jamaat full time and would quit making music. In fact he had been spending his time preaching and being preached at a congregation in Raiwind when he suddenly reappeared on the day of the concert flanked by two members of the Jamaat but with his long, flowing beard (that he had begun to sport from 2001 onwards) now trimmed into a neat, stylish goatee. When asked by the press about his earlier statement regarding his retirement from music (and that ‘music was unIslamic’), Junaid said that after consulting with some elders in the Jamaat, he has been assured that there was nothing wrong with playing music. Wearing a T-shirt, denims and with a stylised goatee, Junaid played an excellent set with Rohail, Shahzad and the original VS guitarist, Salman Ahmed. However, at the end of the concert he looked anguished as he started making his way towards his two Tableeghi comrades waiting in the wings to gather him back. Then he refused the lead role in Shoaib Mansoor’s 2007 film, ‘Khuda Kay Leeay.’ He publicly criticised the way Mansoor portrayed jihadis and Islamic evangelists in the film, saying that it is Shoaib who is confusing the youth about Islam and not him. 

But, of course, Junaid’s own confusion regarding the subject is now well documented and his lectures and statements never fail to sound contradictory as he goes about denouncing the material and the ungodly nature of music and showbiz, but continues his long-standing stint as an expensive clothes’ designer and a naat-reciter. He released his naat albums through exactly the same immoral promotional and distribution channels used by his pop music counterparts. After finally deciding to let go of his need for fame and attention through music, he has ironically found almost an equal amount of fame and fortune as a naatkhuaan, televangelist and designer.

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