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Can Bollywood Be An Alternative For Hollywood?

Have you heard about Bollywood (yes, not Hollywood)? You have presumably heard Hollywood, the most significant film industry in the USA; however, Bollywood may seem relatively unfamiliar. Bollywood is a part of the Indian cinema industry and followed by many people worldwide like Hollywood despite its unpopularity. Since masses follow these two cinema industries, an important question should be asked: “Can Bollywood be an alternative for Hollywood?” A brief insight into them might help to answer this question.

238 12.07.2021 Mert Cengiz READ MORE

Why Can't Germans Read Their Grandfathers’ Gravestones?

Among the many fruitful and near-miraculous reforms of the Turkish Revolution enacted by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, none perhaps is as unjustly denounced as the alphabet reform. Many other countries too either planned to go through similar reforms(such as China and Kazakhstan) and some other countries(such as Korea and Azerbaijan) actually did. One such country that successfully changed its way of writing is ignored by most people, this country of course is Germany

234 11.05.2023 Oğuz Kaan Kömürcü READ MORE

Still There For Us: Friends Reunion

Friends is an American TV series that aired on NBC from 1994 to 2004. These ten years of journey of 6 friends, Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Chandler, Joey, and Ross, spread over the world and became legendary. It would be fair to state that it is the most famous sitcom series globally and inspired many others in the following years. Even though the show ended 17 years ago, its fame did not fade away even a little, and many fans still watch it worldwide. It was released that across all the platforms, the show was watched 100 billion times officially. Whether six friends would ever come together one day was a long-asked question and finally got its answer this year. Friends: The Reunion (also known as "The One Where They Get Back Together") was released on May 27th, 2021 on HBO and made a tremendous impact worldwide, revealing so many things about those ten years.

234 12.07.2021 Gizem Akdoğan READ MORE

Productivity & Chill

The Coronavirus crisis is probably the only crisis that has affected every single person on the planet in a long time. This means that all 7.3 Billion people are going through the same thing at the same time. However, we cannot possibly expect everyone to deal with it in the exact same way. How can we expect to have the same routine with everyone when we do not even share fingerprints with anyone else? People will try new things with this long-lost time they found and they will post about their progress if that makes them happy. But, this does not mean that you are obliged to do such tasks!

194 1.06.2020 Şebnem Yaren READ MORE

A Chess Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen

The past decade in the world of chess has been defined by the domination of Magnus Carlsen, the current World Chess Champion. Since his coronation as the youngest undisputed World Chess Champion in history in 2013, Carlsen has maintained a level of play that has kept him at the top of the chess world.

230 18.04.2023 Burak Halil İbrahim Kılıç READ MORE

The Epic of Gilgamesh: Ancient Sumerian Character Development

In the year 2022 of the common era, there are certain expectations that any act of storytelling is “supposed” to fulfill. When I say storytelling, I mean both stories passed down through oral tradition and those that were first created on paper. Common to both these forms of stories is the fact that they are surely affected by what’s come before them. As people told more and more stories with time, humanity cultivated thousands upon thousands of years of collective storytelling experience. With this experience came knowledge of what makes a story work, common errors and pitfalls in storytelling, how parts of a story come together to create a greater whole, etc... Thus, our expectations of stories created today help refine those stories beyond their predecessors, or at least we would expect them to do so.

247 23.05.2022 Boran Göher READ MORE

A Closer Look Into Cloud Atlas: Distinctive Content and Storytelling

Adapted from the 2012 novel by David Mitchell, directed by the Wachowski sisters and Tom Tykwer, Cloud Atlas consists of 6 independent but intertwined stories based on themes such as entanglement principle, uncertainty, relativity theory, and reincarnation. Although it has strong cinematography with creative imagery, metaphor, use of colour palette, and ingenious camera tricks, in this article, I would like to talk about the plot and structure of this movie that makes the audience question life and existence in almost every scene.

226 28.04.2022 Serhat Taha Korkmaz READ MORE

Everything I Learned About Letting Go, I Learned From My Dog

My dog had been dying for the past year. It is a fact now. It is just what it is. His last months had a certain rhythm. Two times a day to his vet; painkillers in the morning, cortisone in the evening. We have always hoped that the treatment would work and he would be cured. He did get better at one point. If you are not familiar with the death process, that point is your call. This is the last time he reaches for help and the last gasp for air. You know, deep down, you are heading towards the end. Moreover, you are the only one who could make this decision. But how do you abandon a pet who has already been abandoned once and still loved you?

228 5.04.2022 Öykü Efendi READ MORE

Medusa: Was She The Monster?

Mythology is a whole another world that feels both so close to and so far from reality. The human-like characteristics of the actors in mythology, specifically Greek mythology, help us understand them better. However, the situations they find themselves in are not what we would go through in our boring lives. Medusa’s story is one of these many stories.

213 14.03.2022 Zeynep Ezgi Batmaz READ MORE

Taylor Swift and Her Intellectual Property Troubles

Taylor Alison Swift was born in Pennsylvania on December 13, 1989. She is a country and pop singer-songwriter who sings tales of heartbreak, love, and relationships that are often inspired by her personal life. Swift relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, at the age of 14 to pursue a career in country music. She signed deals with two big companies, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Big Machine records. In 2006, Swift released her first album called Taylor Swift, and it peaked at number five on the U.S. Billboard 200, where it spent 157 weeks, the most prolonged stay on the chart by any release in the U.S. in the 2000s. While Swift was 17, she had managed to climb the Billboard chart like a bandit. This achievement was a sign that in the future, she would be facing some problems with the companies she signed deals with because, at first, the authorities had doubted that she would be successful in the industry.

210 31.01.2022 Lara Tali READ MORE

The Iconic Cinematography of Ingmar Bergman

Although cinema is seen chiefly as a tool of the entertainment industry, it has gained an artistic identity over time. Bergman is one of the dominant factors in the artistic institutionalization of cinema. Ingmar Bergman has added innovations to the classical cinema concept both with the themes he conveys and the way he handles them and showed how far the artistic value of cinema could go. Even though it is not thought that the subjects that literature, novel, and philosophy deal with will be handled by cinema, Bergman's films cover these philosophical and literary elements in-depth and strikingly, which plays a prominent role in the constitution of diverse branches in this sector. He became a pioneer in cinema, not only with the themes he conveyed but also with his usage of camera and light techniques, images, and metaphors.

225 27.12.2021 Serhat Taha Korkmaz READ MORE

Optimistic Comedy, Still in Trying Times

As the world goes through many changes, the world of comedy transforms as well. Abandoning the jokes made about vulnerabilities at other people’s expenses has led to a new sense of comedy. Last year’s Emmy Award Record Breaker Schitt’s Creek is the prime example of the fresh perspective of television.

202 22.11.2021 Hülya Afat READ MORE

A Beginner's Guide to Tarot: Take Control of Your Life with Cards

Ever since they were re-popularized around the beginning of the 19th century, Tarot divination has been a popular concept both in public life and popular media. You yourself have probably seen a Tarot divination scene in a TV show or a Tarot deck in a store. If that is your only exposure to Tarot cards, you might think that they seem kind of confusing. This appears to be a general phenomenon where people believe Tarot cards are more complex than they actually are. However, they are not difficult to grasp once you get to know the basics. Once you get the hang of it, you can start using your knowledge in order to attune your way of living to your spiritual energy and begin turning a new page in your life, or you could also use it to impress potential partners or whatever.

235 15.11.2021 Boran Göher READ MORE

Simple Ways of Achieving Inner Peace

Aren't you enthusiastic when you buy a new mobile phone, computer, or simply a new technological device anymore? Do you feel “strange” after having fun with your best friends? Or do you think that you are not happy despite doing your most favorite activities? If your answers are “yes,” you are not alone. You are presumably suffering from lacking inner peace. At first, it might seem horrible; however, achieving inner peace is not as complicated as initially thought to be.

208 12.07.2021 Mert Cengiz READ MORE

5 LGBTQI+ Movies That Deserve Your Attention

This is a naked and shadowy gay love story from the beautiful and talented eyes of the Chinese auteur Kar-Wai Wong, Happy Together. This aggressive and chunky film observes the relationship of two queer men Lai Yiu-Fai (Tony Leung) and Ho Po-wing (Leslie Chung), who flee from Hong Kong to Argentina, where their relationship faces many troubles.

195 7.06.2021 Şebnem Yaren READ MORE

Why Do People Listen to Trap Music?

Hip-hop is a music genre combining creative beats and influential lyrics. Therefore, it is considered to be the most powerful music genre by its addicts. Colored artists lead this genre, so they rap about life struggles as a person of color in their music. Gunfights in the back streets, challenges in their career, poverty, and racism are some of the themes of their songs. The genre has many sub-genres and one of them is trap which is the relatively happy side of hip-hop. Trap music harmonizes high and changing beats with lyrics that generally only make sense to those who have written it. But why do people listen to trap, if the lyrics are meaningless when they come together?

213 7.06.2021 Pelin Çoban READ MORE

Eurovision 2021: Stronger Than Ever

‘’Let the Eurovision Song Contest begin!’’ It had been two years since the world heard this sentence until 18 May 2021. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual song contest of Europe, the Eurovision Song Contest, was canceled for the first time since it debuted in 1956. Previous Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest Jon Ola Sand announced the cancellation on 18 March 2020 and told the contest would come back next year ‘’stronger than ever.’’ The 65th Eurovision Song Contest took place in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on 18-20-22 May 2021, thanks to the victory of Dutch singer Duncan Laurence with the song ‘’Arcade’’ in the 2019 contest.

230 7.06.2021 Gizem Akdoğan READ MORE

Déjavu, Dreams, Subconscious: Mysterious Human Mind

The human mind has been a focal point of research for many scientists throughout history. It always intrigued so many questions: How does it function? Does it have any limits? Do our dreams send messages about our future? Is déjavu a sign of past life?... Well, as humankind, we still cannot fully define and explain our conscious and subconscious minds and their concepts, but we managed to collect some useful data that might help us through our journey of interpreting the human mind.

310 3.05.2021 İdil Çakmut READ MORE

Sentimental Fiction: Women in Literature

Women have always existed in literature, although not in the foreground each time, writing for themselves or others, on napkins or in journals. The oppression and limitation on their existence, as well as the feeling of incompetence in a male-dominated society, resulted in women being outnumbered in certain areas, including literature. What helped their outburst in nineteenth-century America was mainly the Sentimentalist movement in literature, also known as “Domestic Fiction.”

217 3.05.2021 Elif Nazlıcan READ MORE

Biohackers: Science Gone Wrong

Netflix has become almost an indispensable part of our lives for watching movies, documentaries, and series with various topics. The platform also offers original shows that are produced by different countries. Biohackers is one of these original shows from Germany. The series consists of 6 episodes for now, but the second season will be available on Netflix soon. The story of this series is based on biomedicine and some possible ethical problems that can occur during biomedical studies.

220 3.05.2021 Sena Balban READ MORE

Prince Philip: 99 Years Filled with Legacy and Controversies

On the 9th of April 2021, the world was shocked by the news of Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh's death. Even though he was quite old, he had been such a big part of the Royal Family for so long that people did not expect this day to come one day. Prince Philip had been the husband of Queen Elizabeth II for 74 years, and he had an unarguably significant impact on the Royal Family history and in the world. He was "the longest-serving consort of a reigning British monarch and the longest-lived male member of the British royal family," and he had four children with Queen Elizabeth. Prince Philip had been a controversial person throughout all these years: The Prince has been loved by so many, but also, he had been the center of criticism and allegations. He had a remarkable life that was lived in front of the whole world; however, still, he had a disguised personality that made many people have dubious thoughts about him.

211 3.05.2021 Gizem Akdoğan READ MORE

May the 4th Be With You: Star Wars and the Vietnam War

Happy May 4th to all the PRESENT readers! No matter if you watched “A New Hope” in 1977 in a movie theatre or watched it on your tv, you are a part of the huge Star Wars fan community, which sprawls from generations to generations. The words “Star Wars” still stirs the blood of millions of people, no matter what age they are. And with the new movies and tv series episodes, it is getting only deeper and better day by day. And as the Star Wars universe expands more and more, we get to have a very detailed and expanded view of the events and characters it holds. From 70s to today, Star Wars has had a massive impact on the modern popular culture. But as well as affecting the modern world, it has been affected by it greatly. The battles, dramas, politics and relationships in Star Wars; may actually be depicting a much bigger and much more familiar reality.

209 4.05.2021 Ümit Altar Binici & Kaan Ertan READ MORE

Flu Season and Coronavirus: Confronting the Double Threat

In the current state of our world, one can only consider one disease when talking about health problems: the novel coronavirus. In the span of half a year, COVID-19 has pushed away all the old discourse about health and healthcare to the side and recreated it from the scratch. Nowadays, experts seem to only talk about respiratory failures, social distancing norms, the virus spread curves and ICUs. Although with a disaster of this magnitude no one can truly be blamed for forgetting other threats still exist, this still does not absolve the world of its traditional duties and responsibilities.

390 5.10.2020 Beyza Ovalıoğlu & Boran Göher READ MORE

Agenda of the Month: Yesterday and Today of the Beirut Explosions

Lebanon has always had a unique place in the Middle East, for being the most religiously diverse country in the region. It has 18 recognised religious groups. Roughly 60% of its population is Muslim, 33% is Christian and 5% is Druze. To sustain peace and provide representation in the country, Lebanon has a sectarian rule.

199 7.09.2020 Ümit Altar Binici & Kaan Ertan READ MORE

Vacation Psychology and Coronavirus

It goes without saying that the current state we are living in is an unusual time for all of us. Although we all hoped that this pandemic would be over by now, it is still going strong and infecting more people as we speak, even six months after its outbreak. If there is one thing we can be sure of in these uncertain times, it is that this summer was and still is different to any other we have experienced before.

198 7.09.2020 Şebnem Yaren READ MORE

COVID-19 Normalization Results

The times we are going through are anything but normal. Many people lost their loved ones, their health, their jobs, their freedom, and their overall well-being to the COVID-19. Everyone has a common wish to return to normalcy. In some successful -or as some may suggest lucky- countries, the normalization process is undergoing. Despite being welcomed by most people, the normalization process carries a huge risk of causing a second wave.

191 6.07.2020 Ümit Altar Binici & Kaan Ertan READ MORE

Now and Then: The Beatles' Final Bow

“One, two, three, four! Well she was just seventeen, if you know what I mean!” 60 years after Paul McCartney counted us in to a world four working-class boys from Liverpool would change forevermore, on November 2nd, 2023, he did so one last time as a final farewell in the last record The Beatles will ever release: Now and Then.

295 19.01.2024 Güneş Tuğcu READ MORE