Fox friends

Megan Fox social media is making fans think she has parted ways from Machine Gun Kelly.

The Transformers star, who is an avid social media user, often turns to her Instagram to share photos of herself with her beau.

However, recently, things seem suspicious to hawk-eyed fans who note the lack of presence of the rapper on his fiancée photo-sharing app.

Instead, Megan, according to her fans, is posting ‘single girl content’ on Instagram.

“Looks like Megan finally dropped MGK. They haven’t posted about one another in what seems forever,” wrote one user on Twitter

“Megan and MGK are no more my friends,” another added.

Someone else suggested: “As weird as they were, I loved them together. They seems to fit perfectly together. Looks like they’re over for good sadly.”

“Yesssss! So you’re all telling me Megan Fox is single again? Life made,” added a third.

From donning nothing but bucket hats and baggy clothes to breaking the internet with her Vogue photoshoot look inspired by Betty Brosmer, Billie Eilish has come a long way in her fashion choices. The youngest Grammy winner (for Album of the Year), at the age of 20, is also an Oscar winner; represents in many ways Gen Z’s eclectic, mix-and-match approach to style.

In a video posted on Vogue, the Bad Guy singer says that it wasn’t until she was a preteen that Eilish started caring about her skin. She adds that her brother, Finneas O’Connell, suggested she take better care of her skin.

” I have had a skincare routine since I was 12-ish. Before that, I never thought about it,” Eilish said . “It was my brother that told me to care about it .”

Check out Billie Eilish Skincare Routine here.

Billie Eilish’s Skincare Routine: From Eco-friendly Wipes To Cold Water Cleansing

” I have to do a skin-care routine every night ,” says Billie Eilish.

Step 1 : Billie starts by pulling her hair back using a headband, so the hair doesn’t fall on her face or forehead during the skincare routine. This helps with the even application of products on your face.

Step 2 : The next step is removing the makeup. She uses a face wipe for this and thoroughly wipes the makeup, focusing on all corners around the neck, eyes and chin.

Step 3 : Billie moves on to her face mask- a combination of zinc and sulphur.

Step 4 : The next step is cleanser – a cleanser can assist in clearing up any build-up resulting in healthier and smoother skin.

As well as keeping your skin hydrated, soft, smooth, and removing dead skin cells, it also promotes a natural glow by removing dry and dead skin cells. Additionally, it stimulates blood circulation, which contributes to glowing skin by increasing blood flow to the face [1] .

Step 5 : She advises everyone to use cold water while washing their face, especially during their daily skincare routine.

According to experts, the best way to wash your face is with lukewarm water, which is suitable for all skin types. Hot water strips your skin of the protective oils that help retain moisture. Regularly washing your face with cold water may slow ageing and reduce wrinkles. It also helps you get rid of the harmful effects of the sun. This is because cold water tightens and protects the pores on the skin that are opened up when exposed to the sun’s rays [2] .

Step 6 : For cleansing, she doesn’t use cotton pads/wipes but instead uses an eco-friendly reusable pad. In the video, Billie asks everyone to transition to reusable cotton pads by using old t-shirts. All you need to do is to cut them out in small circles and use them in place of cotton wipes. Then, after a week’s use, just throw it all in the washing machine, and you are good to go.

Step 7 : The next step is moisturiser. You need a daily moisturiser to keep your skin moisturised and prevent environmental damage. You can reduce the chance of extreme dryness and oiliness by moisturising daily.

Step 8 : After moisturiser, she opts for a face cream to give her skin a glow.

Step 9 : The final step in her skincare routine is toner. Using a toner after cleansing reduces the penetration of impurities and environmental contaminants into the skin by closing pores and tightening cell gaps. In addition, it can be used to protect and remove chlorine from tap water and minerals. In a sense, it acts as a moisturiser [3] .

[image source: Instagram]

I t has happened so many times. A long-awaited movie adaptation of a beloved classic is finally made, and the cynics who thought the book was unfilmable are proved right.

It happened a few years ago with Gabriel Maria Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera . It happened again when the adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children was unveiled at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, and soon after at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The story about the intertwined fate of two young men, who were exchanged at birth, unfolds against some of the most tumultuous events of the last century in the subcontinent. The winner of two Booker Prizes, the novel that has been translated into more than two dozen languages was finally made into a film thanks to the friendship between author Rushdie and Toronto-based filmmaker Deepa Mehta.

Rushdie, who also serves as the film’s narrator, is one of the executive producers and wrote the screenplay while giving Mehta a free hand in visualizing his script.

The film almost soars in the first half. But as we meet Salim Sinai, one of the exchanged boys who hears ‘voices’ and talks to other children born the time of India’s Independence, it begins to lose momentum.

Mehta, maker of the Oscar-nominated Water, is a courageous filmmaker. She has set some of her films against calamitous events, but in this case, the stories that play in the middle of momentous events, including the birth of Bangladesh and internal Emergency in India, come out as bloodless and without passion.

Perhaps Rushdie knew what was coming. At last year’s TIFF during a well-attended work in progress discussion with Mehta, he said talking to the audience that whatever would be the fate of the film, people would at least appreciate the performances.

And wonderful performances are plenty in the film. Whether it is veteran Shabana Azmi as the matriarch or Shahana Goswami as the dutiful mother who seeks to rebel when a terrible family secret is revealed, there is no shortage of telling performances.

But Satya Baba, a Yale acting grad who began with the experimental theatre in New York a few years ago, is a major let down. He is wooden for most of the time. Whether he is betraying a deep secret to his sister (Soha Ali Khan) or wonders loud on the futility of war between Pakistan and India, he remains unimpressive. Having come to know his character through the sonorous and witty narration by Rushdie, we are disappointed when we see Salim Sinai in flesh and blood.

The cast includes Anupam Kher, Seema Biswas, Rahul Bose, Charles Dance, Shriya Saran and Siddharth.

At the public conversation between Mehta and Rushdie at last year’s TIFF, the two discussed the difficulty in getting stars for the film. It was believed that Rani Mukerji was approached, but backed out when she realised she had to play a younger woman and take her journey in her older years.

“It didn’t work out, so we opted to cast actors that were right rather than those that were big,” Mehta said.

Uneven pacing and passionless narration could be the two most important reasons the film remained unsold to America at TIFF. Though it is being released in Canada in November after it travels to a handful of Canadian film festivals, without a good American release, it may find it difficult to recoup its $12 million production cost. Mehta’s Water was released in America by Fox and went on to earn a commendable $3.5 million (for a low budget film).

Most of the reviews at TIFF were not helpful to the new Mehta saga.

‘Thanks to Rushdie’s own screenplay, and Deepa Mehta’s direction, Midnight ‘s Children is now a film — it’s just not an especially good film,’ The Globe and Mail wrote.

The Hollywood Reporter didn’t find it ‘dramatically satisfying.’

The film got a warm applause at the public screening, but many times films applauded by festival audience, who are often star struck, fizzle out when they go wide.

A few years ago What Is My Rashee? got a houseful welcome at TIFF and received applause from over 1,000 people. Released within a month, the film mimicked its fate in India and flopped big time in Canada and America. But at least that film had a distributor.

Fight to film

Deepa Mehta and Salman Rushdie flare up controversies in India, albeit from different quarters. When she was forced to abandon the Water shoot in India by Hindu fundamentalists, she waited for a year or two and quietly shot the film in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka was also the locale for Midnight’s Children , though the story is set in undivided India, and then the emerging Pakistan and India.

Rushdie has written over two dozen novels, many of them well acclaimed, but none is as popular, as well regarded and as mesmerizing as Midnight’s Children , one of his earliest books . There are reports that Iran, the country that put the infamous fatwa against Rushdie for writing the ‘blasphemous’ Satanic Verses , sought to stop the shoot of Midnight’s Children — the first Rushdie novel to be filmed — even though it has nothing obviously controversial about Islam.

Mehta said she had heard but was not sure if it was true that the Iranian foreign minister had called the Sri Lankan ambassador to stop the filming.

But unlike in the 1990s, there were no impediments this time. Then the British Broadcasting Corporation had to abandon a five-part miniseries out of Midnight’s Children when the Sri Lankan government sought changes in the script and finally revoked permission to shoot.

In a way, it was a blessing, Rushdie has said, for the script he wrote for Mehta is definitely better and distills the book’s essential themes and plots.

The two, friends for nearly two decades, did not interfere in each other’s work, though a few jungle scenes in the script that Rushdie loved, reportedly had to be removed from the shooting schedule due to escalating costs.

Admirers of the book, who may want to go back and enjoy it for its beautiful plot and ironic plot twists, might wish there were some real fights between the author and the director resulting in a more pulsating, vivid and stirring film.