English Entertainment
Zee Studio follows ‘The Path to 9/11’ with five hour miniseries
MUMBAI: To acknowledge the fifth anniversary of the
9/11 events Zee Studio will air the five hour miniseries The Path to 9/11 on 10 September from 9-12 pm and on 11 September from 9-11 pm. In the US the show will air on ABC on the same days.
The miniseries is based on the 9/11 commission report.
The report documents the trail from the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 to 9/11 in 2001. The miniseries has been shot in Toronto, New York, Washington and Morocco.
The show takes viewers inside the world of the FBI, CIA, White House and into the world of the likes of Dick Cheney, CIA director George Tenet played by Dan Lauria, Condeleeza Rice, Madeleine Albright. Also playing an important role is veteran actor Harvey Keitel as FBI agent John O ‘ Neill who spent years chasing Bin Laden.
The miniseries starts on 11 September 2001 showing teams of hijackers boarding four American airliners.
Using mobile phones they keep in touch with each other for a progress update prior to the hijacking. The miniseries then goes back to 1993. On a similarly ordinary day, New York was shocked by a deadly bombing at the World Trade Center. The miniseries reveals the fact that the bombing could have been stopped. Unfortunately the authorities did not take seriously the warning of an informant Emad Salem.
“They did not think you’ll were clever enough to do something like this” he is told by CIA analyst Patricia Carver played by Amy Madigan. In fact Salem was dropped by the agency after asking for $500 a week only to be reinstated after the bombing. Madigan’s character keeps asking her bosses to take stronger action against terrorism. America was very complacent regardless of whether the Republicans or the democrats were in power. In that and other respects the miniseries tries to be fair.
Later on it also shows how the Clinton administration messed up capturing Bin Laden and not just once. For instance later on in the miniseries when the CIA surrounds Bin Laden’s house in Afghanistan they are unable to get authorisation to capture him for fear of a political repercussion should civilians get harmed. Political decorum it would seem is an ally of terrorism. Another strong point is that a lot of the sequences like the bombing have visual panache. The viewer gets disoriented at such moments as he/she should be.
It is also unfortunate that there seemed to be perhaps too much awareness of jurisdiction which could prevent initiative. For instance when two NYPD officers take evidence from the World Trade center site in 1993 as they feel that it will damaged by rubble they are fired by their superior as it is then FBI’s case. Also the democrats apparently put up a wall that prevented the agencies from sharing information with each other. How is one supposed to tackle a threat if the left hand does not know what the right one is doing?
A big plus is that the miniseries also focusses for a little bit at least on the terrorists. That way the viewer is able to see two sides of a coin. In fact the terrorists view the 1993 bombing as a failure. The aim at that time was to bring down the twin towers which was what they managed to do in 2001. In a telling scene in a nightclub they brag about how what they are doing will force America to change its policies. One member talks about having invented a small bomb that can be pieced together on a plane and then detonated using a Casio watch.
Actor Nabile Elouahbi registers strongly as Ramzi Yousef who masterminded the 1993 bombing. Sometime later he had tested a small bomb on a plane that killed a passenger and nearly brought the plane down.
In Manila there is a fire at his lab and the efforts of an alert policewoman lead to the discovery of his laptop, which show that he had planned to take terror to another level by using a dozen airliners in the US. He also planned to assasinate Clinton when he visied philipines by using a truck. The American officials look on in disbelief when they learn of this. It seems incompreghensible that anyone would have the audacity to plan such a complex attack.
Yousef is eventually brought down in Pakistan after managing to evade the Philippines authorities and by doing that Keitel’s character is put on Bin Laden’ trail. Yousef was in fact told that Bin Laden was a wealthy man who could provide finance.
It is to the credit of actors like Elouahbi that the depiction of terrorists is not one dimentional. The show also earns points for being as realistic as possible. This writer saw the first hour of the show and it should be more intriguing and complex as it goes along. It should be well worth watching for those who want to know not just about how 9/11 happened but also why and the circumstances around it.
English Entertainment
Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approve Paramount deal
Investors wave through a $111 billion megamerger but deliver a stinging, if toothless, rebuke over half-a-billion-dollar goodbye packages
NEW YORK: The shareholders said yes to the deal. They said no to the cheque. At a virtual special meeting on Thursday that lasted barely ten minutes, Warner Bros. Discovery investors voted overwhelmingly to approve Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of the company — and then turned around and voted against the lavish exit pay packages lined up for chief executive David Zaslav and his fellow outgoing executives.
Not that it will make much difference. The compensation vote is purely advisory and non-binding. The Warner Bros. Discovery board can, and almost certainly will, pay out as planned.
But the symbolism stings. It is the second consecutive year that WBD shareholders have voted against the executive compensation packages, and this time they had good reason. Zaslav’s exit deal is, by any measure, extraordinary. Under the terms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he is set to receive $34.2 million in cash severance, $517.2 million in equity in the combined company, and $44,195 in continued health coverage — a total of at least $550 million. On top of that, Warner Bros. Discovery has agreed to reimburse Zaslav up to $335 million for taxes assessed by the Internal Revenue Service on his accelerated stock vesting, though the company says that figure will decline depending on when the deal closes. As of March 11, Zaslav also held $115.85 million in vested WBD stock awards — and last month sold a further $114 million worth of WBD shares.
Shareholder advisory firm ISS recommended voting against the compensation measure, citing “problematic” tax reimbursements to Zaslav and the full vesting of his stock awards.
Zaslav will be bound by a two-year non-competition covenant and a two-year non-solicitation of customers and employees after the deal closes.
His lieutenants are not walking away empty-handed either. J.B. Perrette, chief executive and president of global streaming and games, is in line for $142 million, comprising $18.2 million in cash severance and $123.9 million in equity. Bruce Campbell, chief revenue and strategy officer, will receive an estimated $121.5 million, including $18.8 million in severance and $102.7 million in equity. Chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels is set for $120 million, made up of $6.6 million in cash severance and $113.1 million in equity. Gerhard Zeiler, president of international, will get $82.6 million, including $11.9 million in severance and $70.7 million in equity.
The deal itself, clinched in February after Netflix declined to raise its bid for Warner Bros., still needs regulatory clearance from the Justice Department and European authorities. Several state attorneys general are also weighing legal action to block it.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, was unsparing. “The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger isn’t a done deal,” she said after the shareholder vote. “State attorneys general across the country are stepping up to stop this antitrust disaster. We need to keep up this fight.”
If it does go through, the combined entity would be a formidable beast, bringing together Paramount Skydance’s stable — CBS, CBS News, Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, BET, MTV and Nickelodeon — with WBD’s portfolio of HBO, Max, Warner Bros. film and TV studios, DC, CNN, TBS, TNT, HGTV and Discovery+. Paramount has said it expects $6 billion in cost savings from the merger, which is Wall Street shorthand for mass layoffs on a significant scale.
The ten-minute meeting was presided over by chairman Samuel Di Piazza Jr., with Zaslav, Campbell, Wiedenfels and chief communications officer Robert Gibbs in virtual attendance. Di Piazza was bullish. “We appreciate the support and confidence our stockholders have placed in us to unlock the full value of our world-class entertainment portfolio,” he said. “With Paramount, we look forward to creating an exceptional combined company that will expand consumer choice and benefit the global creative talent community.”
Zaslav echoed the sentiment. “Over the past four years, our teams have transformed Warner Bros. Discovery and returned the company to industry leadership,” he said. “Today’s stockholder approval is another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction that will deliver exceptional value to our stockholders.”
Paramount Skydance struck a similar note. “Shareholder approval marks another important milestone towards completing our acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery,” it said in a statement, adding that it looked forward to “closing the transaction in the coming months.”
The shareholders have spoken on the merger. On the pay, they were ignored before the vote was even counted.
