Random Citizen

The Aviator

The Aviator is a 2004 American epic biographical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, and Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner. The supporting cast features Ian Holm, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Gwen Stefani, Matt Ross, Willem Dafoe, Alan Alda, and Edward Herrmann. The film grossed $214 million on a budget of $110 million and received many accolades. In 1913, Howard Hughes’ mother warns him about the recent cholera outbreak in Houston.

Fourteen years later, in 1927, he begins to direct his film Hell’s Angels, and hires Noah Dietrich to manage his day-to-day operations. After the release of The Jazz Singer, Hughes becomes obsessed with shooting his film realistically, and decides to convert the movie to sound. He becomes romantically involved with actress Katharine Hepburn, who helps to ease the symptoms of his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In 1935, Hughes test flies the H-1 Racer, pushing it to a new speed record, despite having to crash-land into a beet field when the aircraft runs out of fuel. In 1947, with the H-4 Hercules flying boat still in construction, Hughes finishes the XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft and takes it for a test flight.

One of the engines fail midflight, and the aircraft crashes in Beverly Hills, with Hughes getting severely injured. As his OCD worsens, Hughes becomes increasingly paranoid, planting microphones and tapping Gardner’s phone lines to keep track of her. The FBI searches his home for incriminating evidence of war profiteering, searching his possessions and, to his horror, tracking dirt through his house.

Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened

Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is out now. Fyre Festival took place on an island in the Bahamas over a ­weekend in April 2017. Luxury lodgings and the finest ­cuisine was also pledged. But the Bahamian locals who built the site were never paid. And one restaurant owner claims she spent about $50,000 (Dh184,000) on paying staff.

Billy McFarland was working with rapper Ja Rule on an app called Fyre. It was designed to let ordinary people book talent. Within 48 hours, 95 per cent of tickets had sold. He decided to host the festival on the same weekend as a popular sailing regatta. The tents, which are supposed to be luxury, are left-over hurricane tents.

Even when the money runs out and the lie begins to be exposed, he insists the festival must go ahead. For all its intrigue, Fyre Festival is really just an extreme example of the lie we are sold when we start scrolling. It promised guests happiness and then made them miserable. The Fyre Festival conman, Billy McFarland, was sentenced in October to six years in prison for fraud. Maryann Rolle lost $50,000 and Ja Rule claimed he was “scammed, hustled, scammed, bamboozled, ­hoodwinked, led astray”.

An online fund has already reached $160,000 for the restaurant owner whose business was wiped out by the festival’s organisers. It wasn’t long before they were trying to sell tickets to other exclusive events – depressingly, with some success.