WHAT DOES THE STEAMPUNK GENRE IN MOVIES MEAN? S teampunk movies are set in alternative reality, where humankind didn’t invent electricity. Most movies are set in the 19th century, the British Victo- rian Era style or Wild West in the United States. As such, steam-powered machines rule the world. Listed below are the best Steampunk movies of all times – the ones you should watch as soon as possible. Wild Wild West This science-fiction/comedy, released in 1999, is considered to be a parody and is one of the best movies to watch if you are interested in al- ternative history and steam-powered machines. The protagonists are Will Smith and Salma Hayek. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow This film was released in 2011 and is set in 1939, in an al- ternative reality where scientists have been taken to work for Dr Totenkopf. He wants to create a futuristic world. Developed by Kerry Conran, the movie is actually a part of diesel-punk genre, and is one of a kind. SHARANYA PATNAIK, CLASS IX, MOTHER’S INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, DELHI ENTERTAINMENT 03 Ask Me Anything ■ PREDATOR LAND, NAT GEO WILD, 3.00 PM: Experts provide an insight into the lives of predatory animals in Africa, focusing on their be- haviour, physical facets, survival tactics and hunting strategies. ■ EARTH FILES, DISCOVERY SCIENCE, 5.00 PM: The host follows a team of experts as they seek to unravel some of the biggest mysteries on Earth. ■ BEST CAKE WINS, FYI TV18, 7.00 PM: Top bakers from across the United States create birthday cakes and compete against each other to impress the judges and win the bake-off. ■ THE DAREDEVILS, ANIMAL PLANET, 8.00 PM: The host travels across the globe to find deadliest creatures by invading their environment and trying to learn about their behav- iour. ■ JOHN CARTER, MNX, 3.20 PM: Civ- il War veteran John’s resistance to join the army leads him to trouble. He eventually finds himself in a situation where he has superhu- man capabilities. Soon, he discov- ers that he is on Mars. ■ IRON MAN 2, STAR MOVIES, 6.18 PM: Tony Stark is under pressure from various sources, including the gov- ernment, to share his technology with the world. He must find a way to fight them while also tackling his other enemies. ■ GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE, MOVIES NOW HD, 7.05 PM: Baby George is the lone survivor of a plane crash and is raise by a wise gorilla in the jungle. One day, he saves Ursula and moves from his sweet jungle life in Africa to San Francisco. MOVIES ON TV TELEVISION MUST DO MUST SEE DECEMBER 06, 2019 1768: First edition of “Encyclopedia Britannica” published in Scotland. 1774: Austria became first nation to introduce a state education system. 1849: Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland for the 2nd and final time. 1877: Thomas Edison demonstrated the first gramo- phone, with a recording of himself reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb. 1956: Bhimrao Ambedkar, India’s first law minister, passed away. 1957: America's first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed when the satellite blew up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, FL. 1992: Babri mosque at Ayodhya was demolished. The following two months of Hindu-Muslim rioting resulted in death of 2,000 people. 1998: Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour connected the first two building blocks of the international space station in the shuttle cargo bay. 2018: Luxembourg became first nation to make all public transport free. THIS DAY THAT YEAR IN FOCUS: AAMIR KHAN I have to keep HONING MY SKILLS Q How have these years in the industry gone by? Are you in your happy space? I am happy no mat- ter what. But it really feels like yesterday. It just doesn’t feel like three decades have passed. Time has that quality where it passes like a flash. Q When your film is releasing, the audience has immense trust in it. Was it a strategy to get such a reputation? I wouldn’t exactly call it a well- thought- out strategy. But I have worked hard to build that reputation. What I have followed through my career is that I have been very demanding with myself. The work that I do has to stand up to my own standards. What’s important for me is: am I happy with a role/film? I want to do good work and be happy with it. What I keep doing is a quality check on my work. I want to do good work and I have been striving for it. Perhaps, that has resulted in the trust between me and the audience. Q How would you define yourself — a method actor or a born actor? Most times, I question myself as an actor... When I see actors like Naseeruddin Shah, Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan — I feel I haven’t achieved anything at all. They are the real powerhouse of tal- ent. When they give a shot, there is so much belief. It comes out organically. I feel I don’t have that gift. I have to work myself up to that level. I enjoy acting and that’s all I do. EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW When I came into the industry, I was a lone ranger, trying to do films that I believed in, says actor Aamir Khan. There are days when the actor questions his skills... read on to find out why Superhero movies dominated the box office in the last decade. Plenty of these films shaped and defined the genre, and made their mark on the larger world of entertainment. From ‘Avengers’ to ‘Joker’, Times NIE selected some of the most significant and talked-about movies that won the audience’s hearts and set the box office cash registers ringing – all over the world T he Avengers ar- rived in the summer of 2012 to critical acclaim – and a then-record $207 million US domestic opening weekend. It eventually grossed $1.5 billion worldwide. That seems like child’s play now considering that ‘Avengers: Endgame’ is the highest-gross- ing movie ever. But at the time, ‘The Avengers’ was a Marvel-lous achievement. It laid the foundation for what would be domi- nant property in pop culture for the rest of the decade, and probably the next one, too. S nyder’s take on Superman — seemingly inspired by the success of the ‘Dark Knight’ movies (director Christopher Nolan is credited as a producer on ‘Man of Steel’) — left fans and critics divided. It earned a decent $668 million worldwide and received a 56% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Sny- der’s most affectionate fans still swear by it, and their emotions were only heightened by his even more brooding follow-up, ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ in 2016. Depend- ing on who you ask, with ‘Man Of Steel’, Su- perman’s legacy is set in stone. A battle over franchises defined the later part of the decade and no superhero better represented it than Spider-Man. Sony owns the film rights to the character, but after the disappointing ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ movies, it struck a deal with Disney in 2015 for the character to appear in the MCU. Marvel Studios co-produced ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ with Sony, which retained distribution rights while Disney got a percentage of box-office gross revenue. The brief squabble showcased how important superheroes are to studios in general, and Spider-Man in particular for Sony. Holland will reprise his role for a third MCU movie in 2021. Beyond that, the character’s movie future is uncertain, but the box-office hit ‘Venom’ and the Os- car-winning ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider- Verse’ certainly gave Sony more confi- dence in its own Spider-Man movies. T en years ago, if you had asked fans who they thought would be leading the franchise into this new decade, they probably wouldn’t have said Chris Hemsworth’s Thor. The future of Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk is up in the air. Chris Evans’ Captain America has passed the mantle, and Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man met his end in ‘Avengers Endgame.’ Now, Thor is the most promi- nent superhero left standing – from the original ‘Avengers’ movie thanks to a total overhaul in ‘Thor: Ragnarok,’ which finally figured out that Hemsworth is pretty darn funny. THE AVENGERS (2012) Director: Joss Whedon WONDER WOMAN (2017) Director: Patty Jenkins W onder Woman’ stands out as the sole pre- ‘Justice League,’ DC Extended Universe movie that garnered both financial success and critical acclaim. And it’s considered the first female-led superhero movie to ever achieve this feat. The film earned $822 million worldwide and received a 93% Rot- ten Tomatoes critic score. After ‘Justice League’ bombed, Warner Bros. shifted its strategy for its DC movies. Rather than focusing on a con- nected universe, it would focus on standalone stories that were more fun, like ‘Aqua- man’, rather than ‘Batman v Superman’. ‘Won- der Woman’ not only paved the way for other DC Extended single heroes to shine, but for studios to take chances on women- led superhero movies. Marvel Studios’ ‘Captain Marvel’, two years later, would accentuate the trend. Up next from the DC film universe: ‘Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipa- tion of One Harley Quinn)’, which looks to be a wacky en- semble movie led by Margot Rob- bie’s Quinn. THOR: RAGNAROK (2017) Director: Taika Waititi MAN OF STEEL (2013) Director: Zack Snyder MOVIES SUPERHERO ‘Joker’, an ultra- violent take on Batman’s greatest foe, recently became the first R-rated movie to reach $1 billion at the box office. Superhero movies dominated the 2010s. Will supervillain movies dominate the 2020s? Probably not, but ‘Joker’s’ influ- ence will still be felt, especially, if it goes beyond box-office gold and snags some Oscar gold in February. JOKER (2019) Director: Todd Phillips O nce upon a time in 1976, Melvin Lindsey, a student at Howard University, Washington DC, was filling in at the local radio station for an employee who failed to show up. It was a late night show, so Lindsey played soul music such as ‘A Quiet Storm’ by Smokey Robinson. The response to the show was positive and Lindsey got his own show. Soon the term ‘quiet storm’ was used to define a sound that was rooted in soul, R&B and smooth jazz, and performed most- ly by African American groups. In 2019, this genre made a comeback with hip-hop infused tracks, and is performed by Mary J Blige, Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill, John Legend and Alicia Keys (left). QUIET STORM VAPORWAVE R emember your computer-game menu with 8-bit tunes? Now add some groovy beats to it, throw in a little 1980s pop and you get Vaporwave! Blank Banshee, a 25-year- old from Vancouver, Canada, has found fame online by doing just that in 2019. It is easily confused with Seapunk, which might as well be the same thing! SOPHISTI-POP It’s a sub-genre of pop, in UK, that exten- sively uses electronic keyboards, elabo- rate arrangements and borrowed ele- ments from soul music. Bands such as Swing Out Sister were popular in the 1980s. The genre has recently seen a revival, thanks to artistes such as Jessie Ware (in pic). NERD CORE N erds rapping about Star Wars, galaxies, computer games etc make up this new genre. When he’s not work- ing for Google, Monzy (in pic) is busy rapping. He has 13 million students as followers. FUTURE GARAGE D o you like jazz and electronic music? A little dubstep? But you want it to be melodic, too, right? If yes, then future garage or post-dubstep is where your kind of sound is... James Blake and Flying Lotus have got your preferences cov- ered. Discover this new sound on their albums in Youtube. In the Internet era, music genres are constantly mingling. New sounds are discovered but soon they fade away till they are rediscovered again by music junkies. So, do you listen to Vaporwave? What about Nerd Core? Read on... MUSIC GENRES in the internet age It earned a decent $668 million worldwide and received a 56% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. With this film Superman’s legacy is set in stone SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017) Director: Jon Watts DECADE OF THE Movies! Movies! Movies! There is no end to entertainment. All you need to do is cut through the lights, the camera and the action. So simply tune in...