Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

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Q+A AMARA KARAN

Text Matt Bochenski
Images Rex Features, Corbis

Amara Karan is the break-out star of Wes Anderson’s off-beat Indian road movie The Darjeeling Limited. She talked exclusively to b.there!

The Darjeeling Limited
Director Wes Anderson
Starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Amara Karan

When did you first meet Wes Anderson?

I was taken by Eurostar to Paris to have lunch with him and it was just magical. It was like a dream – like being in a Wes Anderson film.

What was the hardest bit about filming your role?

Learning to smoke! It’s like something’s on fire – I thought I was going to singe someone. And it’s obviously horrible and smelly and tastes disgusting.

In the film, you play an Indian woman called Rita, but you’re not actually of Indian descent are you?

No – I’m Sri Lanka Tamil and I went to school in London, so doing the accent was really difficult.

What has the best bit about being a movie star?

Being sent clothes by Matthew Williamson was exciting. And going to my first premiere in New York. It was really hard work. Honest!

Things We Lost In The Fire
Director Susanne Bier
Starring Halle Berry, Benicio
Del Toro, David Duchovny

Danish director Susanne Bier has been seduced by the starry promise of Hollywood. The result is Things We Lost In The Fire, an occasionally wrought, often moving melodrama about loss, grief and redemption.

Halle Berry is Audrey Burke, wealthy wife of Steven (David Duchovny) and the mother of two children. She lives in a big house, in a comfortable bubble, blithely enjoying the easy life of the American dream. But her world is brought crashing down by an act of random brutality and, before she knows it, Audrey has hit rock bottom.

Enter Steven’s best friend Jerry, brilliantly played by Benicio Del Toro. He’s a junkie and a loser, only taken in by Audrey in an act of desperate self-preservation. They reach out to each other in their loneliness – Jerry from the isolation of addiction and Audrey from the paralysing effects of grief. The film takes on an uncomfortable, almost kinky, edge fuelled by lustrous close-ups and lingering camera work.

Although it settles down into a more conventional story as Jerry connects with the children and battles his demons, the European edge Bier brings ensures it’s never less than enthralling.

Book club

The Day Watch
by Sergei Lukyanenko

The second novel in a vampire series by an obscure Russian fantasy writer might not be an obvious recommendation, but The Night Watch trilogy by Sergei Lukyanenko is different.

That’s because the books are being developed alongside Timur Bekmambetov’s film versions. These have been huge hits in Russia, and cult smashes around the rest of Europe, and are stunning examples of post-Matrix science-fiction. Unfortunately, Bekmambetov is a terrible director, incapable of telling a story without jerking the camera in an insufferably intrusive way. So it’s nice to be able to sit down with the source material and find out just what the heck is actually going on.

The story is pretty convoluted, involving forces of light and dark, vampires, mages, powerful magic and parallel universes. But Lukyanenko has a clear and compelling vision of this other world, creating powerful characters etched in vivid – and often violent – detail.

It’s an acquired taste, but one worth making the effort for.

Nicole Scherzinger
Her Name Is Nicole

You know her as the only Pussycat Doll you actually recognise – the one who annoyed girls the world over by telling their boyfriends she was much fitter than them. Now she has ditched the other girls in a mad grab for solo glory, and just to make sure people don’t call her new album The One From That Pussycat Hussy, it’s helpfully titled Her Name Is Nicole.

Nicole Scherzinger to be exact, and if this debut doesn’t quite announce to the world that there’s a new Beyoncé in the offing, it’s still an accomplished collection of mainstream R’n’B tunes.

Lead single ‘Baby Love’ is indicative of the album – a kind of time capsule of contemporary American music. It may make vague references to Diana Ross, but it’s got none of the vocal or lyrical power of The Supremes, replacing real ambition with a perfectly pleasant if ultimately forgettable soundscape.

Nicole herself needs to develop more vocal authority, although for the time being she can coast along on the back of a series of videos that answer one crucial question: yes, it is possible to wear even fewer items of clothes than the Pussycat Dolls without actually being naked.

Pink Floyd
Oh By The Way

Just in case you were feeling flush with Christmas present cash, EMI has released this €200 Pink Floyd extravaganza to celebrate the British band’s 40th year with the record company.

The elaborate box set contains enough material to send even the most hardcore Floyd obsessives into a coma. You get all 14 of their studio albums in collectable vinyl sleeve packaging as well as a 40th anniversary poster and exclusive artwork from longtime collaborator Storm Thorgerson.

And the music? Well, it’s only some of the most revolutionary prog rock ever committed to CD, including ‘Comfortably Numb’, ‘Echoes’ and tub-thumping anthem ‘Another Brick in the Wall’.

This collection might not be quite as over-the-top as their lights-and-lasers live shows, but it’s definitely the next best thing.

Book club

Airman by Eoin Colfer

Everybody knows the first flight took place in 1903 with Wilbur Wright at the controls.

Right? Wrong! According to Eoin Colfer’s Airman, that distinction belongs to an Irish boy called Conor, and it was a matter of life and death.

Best known for his iconic Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer’s latest marks something of a departure. Airman is still, broadly speaking, a children’s book, but when you’ve got the kind of eye for spectacular derring-do that Colfer possesses, you’re writing for everybody.

In the 1890s on a desolate crag off the southern coast of Ireland, Conor Broekhart is just one of thousands of enthusiasts around the world trying to conquer the mysteries of flight. But when he witnesses the murder of a king and is imprisoned in a dungeon, flight becomes Conor’s only hope of survival.

Although heavily indebted to Katsuhiro Otomo’s steampunk sci-fi, Colfer has created something joyfully original in Airman. Funny, fast-paced and accessible, it’s the perfect on-board read.

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