A review of the film everyone is talking about Project Hail Mary starring Ryan Gosling. Is it the film that is bringing people back to the cinema? And what does that even mean?

On the 49th anniversary of his death, I celebrate and breakdown the life and career of the great Egyptian singer and actor Abdel Halim Hafez.

I particularly discuss one of his most powerful songs Qariat al Fingan (The Fortune Teller) and why it feels resonante to Arab people in 1976 as it does today in 2026.

I also look at his film Yom Min Omri the Arab reimagining of Roman Holiday and how Hafez’s version depicts masculinity in a very different way that goes against mainstream ideas of Arab maleness.

And of course, I dedicate time to his rumoured (though I totally believe it) marriage to the incredible Soad Hosny and how that made him more than icon on our screens but a real person.

Don’t forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe.

Enjoy,

Maan

My thoughts on the trailer for the new Harry Potter HBO series trailer (and why this adaptation makes perfect sense)

The crazy Dwayne Johnson wig from the Moana trailer (omg)

The problem with Disney Live Actions (there are plenty)

Announcement of another Lord of the Rings film (and how / why Stephen Colbert is involved - random but interesting)

And voice fillers!

Enjoy,

Maan

Bridgerton Season 4 review

Wuthering Heights review (yes, I finally got around to it)

Can we talk about Gone with the Wind for a split second

Margot Robbie, Kylie Minougue, and the Chanel collab we needed

Enjoy

Timothée Chalamet’s comments on ballet and opera (I know I’m a bit late on that but I have a lot of thoughts and I’m glad I waited to share them until AFTER the Oscars)

Jake Shane’s Oscars red carpet interviews - Yikes but also oh… interesting.

Justin Timberlake’s arrest footage was… not bad, bad, but an absolute cringe fest and got me thinking about mugshots

Also, the Oscars never fail to be uninteresting.

Enjoy

I attempted to climb it – well, attempting to figure out how to climb it. And while I can blame my blazer for restricting my physical agency, that would be a massive lie.

You’re probably thinking, why am I trying to climb this beautiful sculpture in the first place?

Well as El Seed sees it, sometimes, that’s the point of public installations – to touch, interact with, to climb works of art that sit in the public sphere. This is his hope for the site specific piece he unveiled last week in collaboration with Tashkeel, the visual art and design studio incubator in the UAE.

It’s a colossal and stunning installation that sits right in front of the Tashkeel building, which is currently under renovations.

This commission and collaboration is part of the Dubai Public Art initiative launched by Dubai Culture with the aim to transform Dubai into an open-air museum.

It’s such an imperative initiative that will make art accessible to all. And you all know how I feel about making art accessible – it’s incredibly important.

The commission is entitled Takhayyal the Arabic word for imagine, which El Seed told me is a concept that, “allows you to break barriers and imagine beyond limits.”

The name and concept of the work came from his conversations with Sheikha Lateefa bint Maktoum, the founder of Tashkeel, whom El Seed says has always helped him to push his work and concepts further.

El Seed is a French-Tunisian artist who has gained attention around the world for his calligraphy and murals that reimagine Arabic script through graffiti and contemporary concepts.

His practice has developed into sculptural forms that fuse the same ideas of heritage, language, form, and contemporary aesthetics.

El Seed is really one of the pioneers who brought Arabic calligraphy to a main stream audience, showcasing it on the global stage though his fusion of street and pop art.

Not only did he make Arabic calligraphy accessible to a diverse number of people but he also made it, for a lack of a better word cool.

El Seed was also an artist-in-residence at Tashkeel in 2013 and had his first solo exhibition entitled Declaration at their gallery space.

I was really excited to speak to El Seed about Takhayyal on the day of its unveiling. We discussed the importance of constructive criticism for artists, how creating this work feels like a full circle moment for his practice and how he hopes people will interact with his public sculptures when they encounter them.

You can watch our video interview above or read the text transcript below. Enjoy.

Please note: some of the text below has been edited for readability.

Maan Jalal: How are you?

El Seed: I'm good and you?

Maan Jalal: I'm good, Al Hamdulila. Mabrook about this amazing work.

El Seed: Allah Yebarick feek man.

Maan Jalal: So I'm gonna ask you the same question I ask every artist about a piece of work- which was more challenging, starting or finishing this piece?

El Seed: I think this piece was not the start. It was like the process of something that started almost 10 years ago here, in Tashkeel, exactly where I start moving from 2D to 3D. So I think this is, I don't want to say the end of the process, but one point in this long process.

Maan Jalal: Does it feel like a full circle moment in a way?

El Seed: Yeah, definitely because I started working with 3D when I was doing my art residency in Tashkeel in 2013. And now Tashkeel is being renovated and so there is a new Tashkeel coming up and with a new sculpture here. I feel this is a homage to the spirit of Tashkeel about what it is and what it represents to me - this place where you can just think beyond the box - to imagine.

That's why like the word, the calligraphy says Takhayal - imagine. It allows you to break all these barriers and to imagine beyond any limit.

Maan Jalal: Tell me more a little bit about that collaborative process working with Tashkeel on the sculpture. Did they give you for reign? Did you do whatever you want, or was there a bit of back and forth and discussing?

El Seed: It was a back and forth with Shiekha Lateefa - she's a very good friend, she's a kind of sister to me. She's very critical of my work and that's what I appreciate about her. I think it's interesting as an artist to sometimes remove your ego and accept criticism from people who want you to to do well and to move forward and in a good way.

Maan Jalal: It's a critical thing for an artist - it's very important

“It's important for artists to speak with other people. Because sometimes somebody will guide you toward a path that you wouldn't take it,” El Seed

El Seed: Yeah and I appreciate that because she knows how to do it in the in the right way - not in an aggressive way. We know each other for more than 15 years now - so it was a back and forth. And the idea was really to create the word as if it was coming out of the ground, kind of a flame going up, a seed that you planted that goes up.

Maan Jalal: And do you think that kind of dialog, conversation, and critical appraisal of your work, does it also improve the work? When you look at the first designs of this wonderful sculpture, do you now see it and think it's so much different from my first idea?

El Seed: Actually, yesterday, I was speaking with her about this and I didn't even remember the first sketches. That's the funny thing. I went back to the archive, and I was like, ah, actually, this now definitely works better.

It's important for artists to speak to other people. Because sometimes somebody will guide you toward a path that you wouldn't take it. So I don't mind having people tell me, hey, what don't you think of this?

Maan Jalal: So you think also, for artists, it's important to doubt yourself sometimes?

El Seed: Yeah, definitely you have to do this otherwise it's an ego thing - you believe that you have the best opinion. I think it's always great sometimes to speak to people, people who are close to you, people who understand your practice, so they can tell you, actually, maybe, why didn't you think of this? And then on the other side, the person has to also find the right way to tell you. So it has to be conversation.

Maan Jalal: You said you started off 2D - now you're doing more 3D - when your work is coming off the page, or off the screen to become 3D, are there ever moments where you're like, 'oh, no, stop, I need to go back, something does not look right in the physical piece.’

El Seed: There's always tweaking but when I work with 3D I usually see the piece in my head. I draw it on paper and then these people in my team help me to make it as a 3D piece. It's a process.

The most difficult thing at the beginning was really to manage to explain to people who do modelization to make it as I saw it. There is a guy called the Bahar al Bahar, who's actually is the first guy who managed to understand. And I met him in Tashkeel. Because for a year I was making some tests and experiments and it didn't work. And Bahar, the funny party, was that he had a studio here. And then he managed, really, to help me to make it really concrete.

Maan Jalal: That's the point of places like Tashkeel, these spaces where you meet people and make these connections, right? I know that you really focus on the meanings of words and how they look. So how did you - I mean, it's a perfect word, really, for this, for this project - so I'm wondering how you came to it.

El Seed: Shiekha Lateefa she told me, I would love to have a sculpture that says takhayal - imagine. And I think this is definitely, like the spirit of Tashkeel. And since she told me this, I noticed that a lot of time when she speaks, she says, 'takhayal' alot. That's a beautiful way to start a sentence with that word. When you start a phrase with the word imagine, you allow yourself to expand the scope of possibility.

Maan Jalal: And when do you know when to stop designing how you're going to stylize the word? Like you said before, this great thing, it looks like it's coming out from the ground. But I always wonder when is too much? When is the word not a word anymore? And when is it still a word? Where is that balance?

El Seed: I don't see as a word. When I work with 3D I really see it as shapes and then I try to bring the letters or the shape of the letters to match the shape that I want to do. I build something as mostly like a shape, like a shakil - tashkeel- and then the word comes. So that's the challenge to have a piece that represents something, in a way, but still, something that you can still decipher.

Maan Jalal: What I loved before is that you were jumping up on the sculpture. I don't think you recommend for people to do that generally.

El Seed: I do.

“I really want people to stop, come and take picture, climb on it and and hopefully feel inspired,” El Seed

Maan Jalal: Oh, you do? That's interesting, because I was gonna ask, when you have an artwork that's in the public sphere you kind of can't control who touches it, who doesn't touch it. So were you imagining people getting on there, touching it, getting on top?

El Seed: That's the point of it. If you create a piece in the public space and you don't allow people to interact with it, I think it's boring.

Most of the public arts pieces in the Arab world, unfortunately, were put on roundabouts, so you never interact with them. You see them, you turn around them, but you never get the chance to touch them.

And for me, this is the point of pieces like even the one I did in front of Dubai Opera, I want people to climb on it. So even sometimes I go there and I climb and then the security come they're like, 'no, no, you get down. You're not allowed' and I'm like, 'I'm allowing people to do this.'

That's the point, that's the beauty of it, to allow people to to interact with it, to climb it, and then for me, that's the best thing when people see something that I didn't intend.

Maan Jalal: Can you tell me about the colour choice? Because it's a great color choice for the landscape here and for the building behind us. I'm wondering why you chose specific colour.

El Seed: Pink is actually a colour that I use in a lot of my work. It became like a signature. Even somebody told me I want to register the Panton 219C pink under your name. But actually Barbie, she did is before me so I'm pissed.

Maan Jalal: She got there before you.

El Seed: Yes, so sad (laughs). But, you know, when you look at classical calligraphy, the use of colour was not something that was really there. In calligraphy the mostly use gold and black and for me, using pink was a way of clashing with this, but also a way of expressing the one part of my identity, which is the graffiti culture, where you like, super flashy colour. And the piece in Tashkeel, when I did my first show, was pink - it was this first exhibition of sculpture that I did.

Maan Jalal: Again a full circle moment you’re coming back. The last question I wanted to ask you was, what do you hope people will feel or think when they first drive by here and see this work, when they first experience it?

El Seed: I think for surprise because that's the first thing you see. The first day I turned and I saw the piece… you don't expect to see that here. And then interaction. I really people to interact with it. I really want people to stop, come and take picture, climb on it and and hopefully feel inspired.

After years of poorly disguised enthusiastic “let me guess, you got me a book for Christmas?” I was curious to know what book had got him as hooked as The Hungry Caterpillar did when he was a toddler.

He wasn’t wrong – the book I took from him that day was indeed a delightful page turner.

The Beast and the Bethany by Jack Meggitt-Phillips, while aimed for the 8–12-year-old demographic is a brilliant read for any age especially if you love sharply funny, dark, interesting, and thoughtful stories with fleshed out, nuanced characters.

It was one of the best books I read last year in the children’s middle grade fantasy horror space and it’s definitely a series – which there are five books all together – that I plan to finish.

The story follows Ebenezer Tweezer, who at 511 is youthful, beautiful, and incredibly stylish. His secret has nothing to do with a 12-step skin care routine but a beast he feeds in the attic of his mansion, who in return for absolutely outrages cravings keeps Ebenezer young and Facetuned.

But things take a turn when the beast announces that he’d like to eat a child. In his panic, Ebenezer finds the worst child he can to feed the beast. To be fair to him, it’s not a bad plan.

Bethany, the child, is a lot more than she seems. Sure she’s rude, naughty and incredibly unpleasant – but there’s something else about her that’s making Ebenezer rethink his plan. Oh no, are they friends now?!

I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Jack Meggitt-Phillips recently at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature and we got to talk about my favourite topics - the power of storytelling, the darkness in children’s literature, the brilliant Hugh Grant and how to keep a reader engaged on every page.

Enjoy our chat in the video above or read the transcript below.

Please note: some of the text below has been edited for readability.

Maan: So I want to ask start off by asking you a very simple question, potentially, what is more difficult, starting or finishing?

Jack: Oh, definitely finishing. It is starting. I That's always the most exciting part. I mean, whenever I'm writing a book, I always start because normally with the first sentence, yeah. And so a first sentence would intrigue me. So for the beast of the Bethany, I had this sort of sentence rattling around my head for a bit, which was Ebenezer tweezer was a terrible man with a wonderful life, and that that sort of intrigued me.

Maan: So that sentence was just there.

Jack: It was just there, and then I was just thinking, I wonder who this Ebenezer tweezer is. And it sort of went from there.

It's very exciting when you're writing the first draft and sort of racing to the end, but when you're actually working on editing it and sort of making it, giving it the polish that it needs to be a good book. That's always a part where you want to sort of tear your hair out of it.

Maan: Be a bit of a perfectionist with it.

Jack: Definitely plays into my perfectionist tendencies, that last editing stage where I get very obsessed about commas and what sort of thing.

Maan: So you start - no spoilers - you start the first chapter of the first book with what I would say, and I mean this in the greatest compliment - a dark scene. I wonder. Why do you think children love the dark?

Jack: That's a good question. I think that one of the great sort of joys and benefits of children's literature is it gives children a way to experience some of the sort of darker aspects of life in a sort of controlled way.

Quite often if there's a terribly bad villain in a children's story, they're vanquished by the end. It's not there to show you that darkness exists, but it's that darkness can be defeated.

And I think why children enjoy it… I think when they're reading something and they feel like they're getting away with it, they are reading something that's entertaining rather than informative.

It makes reading feel like more of a pleasure than something they've been told to do.

Maan: You’ve been a Roald Dahl fan growing up. His stories are very dark, and some people feel like they're too dark for these days, right? So I wonder for you, as a writer who's writing a story that has some fun, dark scenes, when do you know when to pull back the darkness? Do you ever feel like, as a writer, like, oh, this has been exciting to get really, really like deep with this. When do you know what to pull back, or do you pull back?

Jack: My first draft of a book will go way too dark, and it'll be almost like a Quentin Tarantino-esque version. And then normally, I notice it myself, and I pull back.

But what I found is that quite often - let's say, you have a scene where someone gets their head chopped off by a pair of scissors, and that's sort of quite dark, and then you think, ‘oh, I better make it into something different,’ and you end up coming up with something more fantastical. Quite often, the fantastical version is actually scarier and better because it uses the imagination more.

I think what you write is what your influenced by as a reader. And I loved reading books where you felt that sort of slight shiver of terror, and then the next moment you're reading a scene that's hopefully funny.

I think comedy and horror work together very well. Because both of them are sort of designed to do something. If you're writing a good comedy and no one laughs, well, it's not a good comedy. If you're writing a horror and no one screams,it's not a good horror.

Maan: So, you want them laughing and screaming is what you’re saying.

Jack: Exactly every page I need laugh, scream, laugh, scream, laugh, scream, and then everything that isn't doing that you just got to cut it.

Maan: So we were talking about my Godson before. I have to say that I'm always buying my God children books. Yes, every Christmas they're like, Oh, we know what you're getting us.

Jack: You’re Us very good godfather. Well done.

Maan: You would think, right? I try and wrap it up to be like, to hide the illusion of it's a book. But they always know it's a book.

And he's like, a nine year old loves cricket, loves be outdoors. He's very active. And he came to me one day and he was like, ‘Uncle Maan, this book’ and I quote, ‘is a page turner.’ And I think that is the highest form of compliment a children’s author can get.

Jack: I mean, to be honest, it's so surreal even now, and I’ve been doing it for a few years - when you whenever you see a children's sort of reading your book somewhere that you're not expecting it, and you see them sort of tearing to the pages. It just makes everything worthwhile. And that's just such a wonderful experience. I'm going to have to take that quote and put on the next book - ‘Adam says it's a page turner,’ that's good.

Maan: My question from that is like, especially, you know, these days, you want to keep the reader’s attention from every page. Particularly for children, who are, I think the biggest critics like if you cannot capture a child's attention, you know, that story is not great.

So I'm wondering, from my godson's very wonderful compliment and review of the book - how do you as a writer really try and think about, how do I keep that kid who, competing with a PlayStation or the phone or whatever - engaged in every page, every word.

Jack: There are lots of authors who sort of plot their books quite meticulously. I'm very much someone who just writes and sees where the story goes. If I'm writing a chapter and I'm enjoying writing it, when I read it back later on, I can see, oh, this is going to be enjoyable to read, because I was writing it so quickly.

It's a sort of similar experience me writing and reading. It's just sort of following the story. That's the exciting part.

In terms of how to sort of write those sort of page turning things, I think the quicker you can get into the story… quite often you'll read books, and there'll be this big, sort of long introduction, and then the story begins.

If you can jump into the most interesting part of your story immediately, that's how to hopefully encapsulate their attention.

Maan: I think it's really interesting what you that you are not a writer story who plots are you discovering the story as you go? Is what you're saying?

Jack: Yes, which when it goes well, it feels like flying. It's wonderful. You think, oh, I didn't realize this was going to happen, but it fits in perfectly. But then quite often, because I don't plot books, I'll get about a third of the way through and think, Oh, yes, this isn't very good - this has no story that I can do.

Sometimes sometimes I feel a bit like a mad scientist sort of mooching potions together And then sometimes it accidentally comes off and it's the book, whereas other times you think, Oh, I've made some sort of strange omelet.

Maan: This is one of five books, the first of five so does that mean that you didn't know you were going to have five? Did you know what the end was the end? Did you have to plot or plan how many books when you wrote the first book?

Jack: It sounds, you know, a bit cliche but when I wrote the first book I was generally writing it for my own enjoyment, and then when it had the interest of publishers wanting to actually publish it, it felt like such a wonderful surprise, I never thought that much ahead about whether there'd be a sequel.

And then when we talk about the next book, I kept on thinking about these characters, and I missed them and I want to spend more time with them.

And then in terms of when you write a series, there are certain scenes I've had in my head that I thought I would like to write, like the ending of the whole series that's been in my head for a few years.

Maan: Must have been very satisfying.

Jack: It was. It was such a strange experience writing it when you've been thinking about something for so long. So I had sort of rough ideas of where the story was going to go. But when you actually come to write it, you don't know whether those ideas are going to fit or not.

Maan: Is it more difficult to be nuanced when you're talking and writing about evil and the dark side, as opposed to making it very black and white? Because the way we can get black and white might be much more palatable for younger readers.

Jack: It might be more palatable. The books that I loved reading when I grew up, as well as the Roald Dahl ones, were the Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events series. What I love about that series is, towards the end of the series, the heroes, the Baudelaires, start doing unspeakable things. The boundaries between the heroes and the villains are blurred.

When I was writing The Beast and the Bethany, I thought it would be interesting if the reader didn't know whose side they were on. So at the beginning, we meet three terrible characters - we've got the beast who likes eating everything from King cobras to crown jewels, we've got its butler, Ebenezer, who is an incredibly vain man who loves his own reflection more than anything else. And then you've got the beast’s next meal, Bethany, who's the worst behaved child in the world. And I thought it would just be so much more interesting for the reader if you weren't quite sure where you wanted to go.

If I've written it right, hopefully, when you meet Bethany for the first time, you sort of think, actually, I wouldn't mind if she gets fed to the beast. And as the book goes on you learn more about all of them.

I'm really glad that the sort of friendship has come through as a theme, because those are some of the most relationships in my life.

I think by the end… sort of this question of whether two bad people - really, if you got two bad people together in most stories, they would become super villains - but seeing them change each other just because of their friendship, that was one of the things that surprised me as I was writing it, and something I'm really proud of, how that sort of thread came through.

Maan: Have you ever read Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones?

Jack: I'm reading a lot of Diana Wynne Jones at the moment.

Maan: I love her, she’s brilliant.

Jack: The book I've just read The Chrestomanci series those are a similar in that there's a sort of blurring of the sort of the good and the bad. And I think those sorts of children's books, I'd love to see a lot more of.

I think it's more true to children's own experiences. They see adults being good and bad, and they see their friends are a mixture of the two. And I think if there were more books which actually showed that there aren't heroes, there aren’t villains, they were all a sort of weird hodgepodge of the two, then it becomes more interesting. Hopefully.

Maan: I would suggest you read house Moving Castle, if you have the time, and also watch the animated film. Have you ever watched any Studio Ghibli films? You know Spirited Away? Yeah, he did the house Moving Castle. It's like a brilliant adaptation. It's like its own beast. It's wonderful.

Jack: It's based a bit in Wales. Yes, I definitely need to read it as a Welshman.

Maan: So speaking of books that we like reading? Is there a book that you always come back to and read?

Jack: I think the perfect book is Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Maan: I love it's on my list, my list of one of those books that I always go back and read or listen to, actually, now audible Hugh Grant has done that. Have you heard it?

Jack: my job at Christmas is to peel the chestnuts. And every year I listen to Hugh Grant while peeling them.

Maan: He’s great.

Jack: Well, I might be getting too sort of philosophical about it, but I think that plots and the book is, made out of plot or story. Plot is what happens, and story is why it happens. I think A Christmas Carol is a perfect example of that.

The plot is the fun stuff of the sort of ghosts coming and visiting and the story is seeing this man re evaluate his whole life. The flow of the story is so fantastic. Whenever I go back to it, there's always something new.

There's a quote about how a classic is a book that's never quite finished what it's trying to say. And I think that's very much the case for A Christmas Carol.