Category: 5. Entertainment

Brad Pitt has been accused of “staging” romance with Ines de Ramon in order shift public focus away from his highly publicized divorce from Angelina Jolie.

Following the F1 star’s media tours for the promotion of his new movie, some of which Pitt attended with de Ramon, fans have been speculating that Pitt’s relationship with de Ramon may be more of a distraction tactic than a genuine romance.

The Pitt-led movie earned solid numbers at the box office during the first two weeks of its release, however, it wasn’t a smash success, leading critics to conclude it might be linked to his recent finalized divorce from ex-wife Jolie.

Some observers suggested that Pitt’s romance could be a move to distract media attention from his messy past.

As per a report by Radar Online, social media users believed that Pitt and de Ramon were acting up for the spotlight.

“Brad Pitt avoiding Ines kiss (once again) hahaha, she thought he was going to kiss her and he was just trying to cross to the other side, I just can’t,” an X user wrote as per the outlet.

“The way this relationship is so PR I just can’t,” the netzin added.

“He didn’t even want to kiss her again for the third time, he ignores her again like she doesn’t belong with him like a total stranger, it’s hilarious,” a second user noted.

While others even labelled their appearances during media tours as “staged scene(s).”

The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation is putting the program together for its upcoming gala — the Elizabeth Taylor Night of Compassion to be held at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sept. 18 — by drafting Tina Knowles to receive a marquee honor.

The business mogul, designer, best-selling author and activist has been selected to receive the Elizabeth Taylor Commitment to End AIDS Award for her ongoing support for people living with HIV and for her allyship with the LGBTQ+ community. The gala event, fronted by standout TV host Melvin Robert (who departed his post at Extra and Good Day L.A. to replace the late Sam Rubin at KTLA as entertainment anchor), will feature Cookie Johnson as ETAF’s 2025 champion. Supported by presenting sponsor Gilead Sciences, the Elizabeth Taylor Night of Compassion will include a reception, culinary experience, live performance and views of select items from the Elizabeth Taylor archive.

“This is a critical time for support to people living with HIV, and we could not be more excited to have Mrs. Cookie Johnson as our 2025 ETAF Champion. Having known and joined Elizabeth Taylor in her work, Mrs. Johnson is deeply committed to the prevention and treatment of people at risk for and living with HIV. In addition, we are thrilled to honor Ms. Tina Knowles with the Commitment to End AIDS Award for her years of dedication and advocacy on behalf of people living with HIV.  Both of these outstanding, selfless and iconic women join in our founder’s vision of an AIDS-free world,” praised Catherine Brown, executive director of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

Knowles launched her career as a makeup artist, hairstylist and owner of successful hair salon in Houston, where she made a name for herself styling what would become a blockbuster group, Destiny’s Child, featuring daughter Beyoncé. She segued to helping craft Beyoncé’s world tours, TV performances, movie roles and red-carpet appearances.

She co-founded the Knowles-Rowland Center for Youth in Houston and spearheaded the anti-hunger initiative, Miss A Meal. Knowles is credited with supporting communities through hurricane relief and COVID-19 testing. Knowles is the driving force behind the WACO Theater Center in Los Angeles, a nonprofit dedicated to uplifting and empowering artists across diverse communities.

In a corner of New Mexico’s Site Santa Fe museum—currently featuring the 12th Site Santa Fe International: Once Within a Time (until 12 January 2026)—is a display case of painted terracotta figures by the New Mexico-based artist Helen Cordero. Inspired by the folklore of her people, the Cochiti, they feature a grandfather figure, his eyes closed and mouth open, and a group of small children perched on his shoulders and arms listening to his tale.

Storytelling is at the heart of this year’s biennial, with its main display at the Site building in the Railyards section of Santa Fe and, for the first time, works of art in other locations around the city—a dozen of them, from inside museums to a former foundry and in storefronts. “I was doing a lot of research about Indigenous art, like the Pueblo artists,” Cecilia Alemani, the director of the High Line in New York and this year’s guest curator for the International, tells The Art Newspaper. “And Cordero has been so influential. She was probably the first artist I thought about including, because I knew it was going to be a show about storytelling.”

The exhibition’s title, Once Within a Time, references the opening line of many a folk story. The show features more than 70 artists and 27 “figures of interest” (both living and historical) presenting the artist as storyteller, conveyor and creator of narratives—like that of the Cochiti grandfather.

Site first launched its biennial in 1995. In 2021, after a pause in programming due to the pandemic, Louis Grachos arrived as the museum’s executive director and took time to rethink the project. He had worked at the museum previously, running it from 1996 to 2003, and knew that finding the right curator for the biennial was crucial. “I was really impressed by the Venice Biennale that Cecilia curated, The Milk of Dreams,” he says, so he invited her to do the honours at Site.

Fortunately, she accepted, and Grachos is delighted with the results. “Cecilia captured the mission beautifully in her exhibition by selecting numerous artists who live and work in New Mexico,” he says.

The International also includes artists from elsewhere around the country and the globe, all of whom have a connection to New Mexico or storytelling. For example, the Lebanese artist Ali Cherri’s elegant short film about an exhausted soldier in Cyprus, The Watchman, has been placed in the auditorium of the New Mexico Military Museum. In the film, a soldier is so exhausted that he begins to see lights moving in the distance—are they real, or just his prolonged anticipation of war?

For Alemani’s part, she wanted to work with Grachos and in New Mexico. “I think it’s an interesting moment for doing exhibitions like this in the world,” she says. “As a visitor, I want to go see a show that can only happen in that place. Even if fewer people might see it, the idea that you’re doing a show that speaks about a place, a people and a community is very relevant. I wasn’t interested in doing a show of trophies or blue-chip art that you could see everywhere.”

While there are a few blue-chip artists included here (Simone Leigh, Frederick Hammersley), most of the others are regional or under-the-radar. They employ a range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation. What is most surprising is how many creative people passed through New Mexico and made work there—such as the novelists D. H. Lawrence, with his series of blurry and erotic paintings, and Vladimir Nabokov, an avid lepidopterist who made a series of detailed butterfly drawings. These literary giants’ visual works are shown in the main exhibition.

When Alemani was appointed curator a year and a half ago, she immediately started doing research—reading what she could find, visiting local museums and meeting artists. Once Within a Time is the title of a 2022 film by Godfrey Reggio, which is on view at the biennial. As a teenager, Alemani had fallen under the spell of Reggio’s experimental Qatsi trilogy films—starting with Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (1982), which pairs a propulsive stream of images with a Philip Glass score. During Alemani’s research, she discovered that Reggio was a long-time Santa Fe resident.

Some of Alemani’s selections are clearly connected to the Southwest, such as Cordero’s figures, the etchings of M. Scott Momaday and Pablita Velarde’s paintings. The artist Will Wilson uses photography to highlight abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation’s land, built before the dangers of radiation were fully known. Meanwhile, Daisy Quezada Ureña uses conceptual modes in a historic location, the Palace of the Governors, which is part of the New Mexico History Museum.

“What do we need to be having a conversation about in this public sort of forum and space?” Quezada Ureña said during a presentation at Site. Her answer was that the conversation should “revolve around colonisation, which is sort of the basis of that building, right? It was built in 1610, when the Spanish arrived.” She has filled one room with both borrowed and created objects placed into small display cases suspended at different heights from support poles. In one, three antique pistols suggest how the Southwest was won—with violence. In another, she has placed porcelain pieces onto an antique scale, one with an image-transfer of an old person’s hand, the other a child’s hand. She was trying to convey “one needing the other, like elder and youth relationships”, she says.

Other works on view are evocative of the spirit and light of the territory—such as three paintings by Agnes Pelton and another nearby by her fellow Transcendentalist Florence Miller Pierce.

Moving pictures are an especially strong component of the International this year. One of the early favourites among Site visitors has been Compound Eye of Tropical by the Taiwanese artist Zhang Xu Zhan, who wrote and directed a stop-motion short made up of paper-mâché puppets and scenery, with a story based loosely on fables about people and animals trying to make a river crossing. It is on view in the basement of the Museum of International Folk Art; the entire space is covered with newspapers twisted into batons that create diagonal patterns across its walls and ceiling.

The film features a mouse-deer—representing the Taiwanese people, says Zhang—attempting to cross a roiling river filled with snapping crocodiles. “He’s a bit of a performer,” says the artist of the character, so the mouse-deer dances back and forth over the backs of the crocodiles to a hypnotic beat. “The music is made by drums, Indonesian gamelans and a bit of electronic music,” says Zhang, who once had a residency in Indonesia. The project took him and his team three years to complete, finished in time for inclusion both on the High Line earlier this year and in the International. In Santa Fe, the work is accompanied by a selection of figurines used by funereal and Day of the Dead celebrations in cultures around the world.

It may be surprising that Santa Fe, a small city of 90,000 people, can support an international exhibition of this scale. “I think it’s a place that attracts creative people,” Grachos says. “The great physical beauty of New Mexico, the legacy, the mythologies around Santa Fe. The quality of light in the sky is so inspirational and energising. It feeds the creative instinct. When our founders thought of Site Santa Fe, they envisioned an exhibition that would have the richness of context of place but also bring an international discourse to our community and connect artists and curators. Cecilia has done that masterfully.”

• 12th Site Santa Fe International: Once Within a Time, Site Santa Fe, New Mexico, until 12 January 2026

Drishyam 3 is set to feature Akshaye Khanna and Tabu alongside Ajay Devgn in the upcoming installment hit franchise.

The 56-year-old actor will reprise his role as Vijay Salgaonkar in the highly anticipated sequel.

A source close to the development told Pinkvilla that both Khanna and Tabu were impressed by the plot and agreed to join the cast.

Notably, the Hulchul actor portrayed the character of IG Tarun Ahlawat in the 2022 sequel, while the Crew actress played Meera Deshmukh in the previous installments.

Abhishek Pathak’s upcoming sequel reportedly centres around the confrontation between a police officer and man protecting his family.

Shriya Saran is also returning to the franchise as Nandini Salgaonkar.

The Singham star, who was last seen in Raid 2, is currently filming Dhamaal and Ranger.

Meanwhile, the 53-year-old actress has once again joined hands with Devgn for De De Pyaar De 2, while Khanna, 50, was recently seen portraying Aurangzeb in Laxman Utekar’s Chhaava.

For the unversed, Drishyam 3 is set to go on floors on October 2, 2025, and is expected to release in 2026.