Maisha Islam Monamee

"Brand New Day" succeeds for a different reason. Beneath the web-slinging and skyline chases lies a story that feels surprisingly familiar to the generation filling the theatres.

Like many people working close to technology, I believed AI would become the defining aspect for our generation.

Every colour, typeface and composition is ultimately expected to solve a problem. “Beyond the Brief”, currently underway at Bengal Shilpalay in Dhanmondi, asks a deceptively simple question: what happens when those problems disappear?

It is an adaptation of one of humanity’s oldest stories, an epic that has shaped the language of adventure, heroism and homecoming for nearly three millennia.

Sometimes I find myself wondering what it must feel like to have July arrive without something tightening in one’s chest.

The scenery still takes my breath away, the playlist still makes me want to pack a bag, and Farhan Akhtar’s poetry still lands exactly where it should. Yet every rewatch feels like a different film.

Art has always found ways to document cities through the rhythms, fractures and quiet resilience that define urban life. Veteran artist Kazi Salahuddin Ahmed’s latest solo exhibition, “Urban Images”, does exactly that. Yet beyond the abstract compositions and layered cityscapes lies another, more immediate story—one of artists standing beside one another when it matters most.

Then someone inevitably resurrects Mr Darcy, Jim Halpert or Aditya Kashyap to remind everyone that the blueprint existed long before TikTok edits.