Author Archives: Omi Azad

Born with Gravitas — Controversy and Legacy

06 Saturday Jun 2026

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I absolutely love Kevin Spacey. It feels as though the man was born with gravitas. Hollywood may have unofficially boycotted him, but you simply cannot help admiring his work. There was a time when I didn’t know Spacey; I started watching House of Cards and was blown away by the performance. Later, checking my IMDb history, I discovered I’d given top ratings to The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, The Negotiator, The Life of David Gale, Se7en and Horrible Bosses.

Where it began: a brief biography

Kevin Spacey Fowler was born on 26 July 1959 in New Jersey. His father was a technical writer, his mother a secretary. Obsessed with theatre from childhood, he trained at Juilliard and made his Broadway debut in 1981. After spending the 1980s on stage, he broke into film in 1990 with a small part in Glengarry Glen Ross. From there, there was no looking back.

The roles that made him an icon

  • The Usual Suspects (1995) – Verbal Kint. Limping, meek, stuttering. In the final five minutes he delivers one of the greatest twists in Hollywood history. Oscar – Best Supporting Actor. This role proved that “gravitas” isn’t shouting; it’s control.
  • Se7en (1995) – John Doe. Twenty minutes of screen time, yet the theological engine behind seven murders. Reciting the Bible in that cold voice still chills the spine.
  • L.A. Confidential (1997) – Det. Jack Vincennes. A corrupt Hollywood cop who smiles for the cameras and cuts deals in the shadows. The most stylish role in neo-noir.
  • American Beauty (1999) – Lester Burnham. A father in mid-life crisis. Satire, sorrow and liberation all at once. Oscar – Best Actor. The tagline “Look closer” sums up Spacey’s career.
  • The Negotiator (1998) – Hostage negotiator Danny Roman. A dialogue duel with Samuel L. Jackson. A masterclass in sustaining tension.
  • The Life of David Gale (2003) – A philosophy professor on death row. Ideology versus reality — no one but Spacey could carry the part.
  • House of Cards (2013–2017) – Frank Underwood. “Democracy is so overrated,” he tells us, breaking the fourth wall and locking eyes with the audience. The role that put Netflix on the prestige-TV map, and the one that introduced him to a new generation.
  • Horrible Bosses (2011) – Dave Harken. Equally adept at comedy. As the psychotic boss who makes Steve Carell’s life hell, we laugh until it hurts.

The boycott: why did Hollywood turn away?

In October 2017, during MeToo, actor Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey sexually harassed him in 1986 when Rapp was 14. More than 15 others in the US and UK later made similar allegations of misconduct and inappropriate behaviour. Some incidents allegedly involved minors.

The fallout: Within 24 hours Netflix sacked him from House of Cards and rewrote Season 6. Ridley Scott cut all of Spacey’s scenes from All the Money in the World and reshot them with Christopher Plummer in nine days. Agencies and publicists severed ties. That is the “unofficial boycott”.

Legal outcomes: In 2022 a New York civil jury found Spacey not liable in Rapp’s case. In 2023, Southwark Crown Court in London acquitted him of nine criminal charges. So there is no criminal conviction. Nevertheless, the industry has not welcomed him back to the mainstream. Since 2023 he has appeared only in small indie films such as Control and Peter Five Eight.

Artist versus the man: the audience’s dilemma

Spacey’s case is the classic “separate art from artist” debate. The allegations are serious, and the victims’ trauma is real. Yet in the eyes of the law he has not been found guilty. What should viewers do? John Doe in Se7en still gives us goosebumps; we still quote Lester’s monologues from American Beauty. Those performances haven’t been erased.

Spacey once said, “I have a lot of respect for actors who keep their personal lives personal.” Ironically, his private life derailed his career. The man born with gravitas showed god-level control on camera, but allegedly lost control off camera.

Final word

Hollywood may boycott him, but IMDb won’t delete his page. The limp in Usual Suspects, the Southern drawl in House of Cards, the ice-cold sermon in Se7en — these will be taught in film schools. You can hate him, love him, or ignore him. But for 22 years, from 1995 to 2017, Spacey was Hollywood’s most reliable “intelligent villain”.

The boycott is unwritten, but the legacy is written. To borrow a line from The Life of David Gale: “Fantasy is an exercise for the brain.” Spacey’s filmography is that exercise. Let the courtroom debate the man; the film room will debate the artist for another fifty years.

Who Killed Bangladeshi Music Industry!

08 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by in Bangladesh, Comments, Songs and Music

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The Bangladeshi music industry is, quite literally, dead. There are no new blockbuster albums, no grand concert spectacles, and as far as I can tell, the entire scene has ground to a halt.

Last week, whilst wandering around Bashundhara City, it suddenly dawned on me that I had never bought the last Warfaze album. I rushed up to Level 6, fondly remembering the days when it was home to several fantastic music shops boasting rich collections of both local and international releases. To my utter astonishment, every single one of those music shops had vanished, replaced by an endless sea of mobile phone and accessory stalls. Hoping for better luck closer to home, I visited Rajlaxmi Complex and Syed Grand Centre in Uttara, where a few prominent music shops used to thrive. They, too, were completely gone. I eventually tracked down one solitary shop that had survived the purge, but the CD I was looking for was nowhere to be found.

How on earth is an audiophile supposed to find physical music these days?
When I posed this question to a friend, he nonchalantly suggested I log onto my ISP’s FTP server to find it there. As my readers well know, I absolutely refuse to listen to pirated music—especially when it comes to supporting Bangladeshi artists—and I do not condone piracy in any form. Naturally, I did not look for the album there. Yet, this has become the biggest talk of the town. Everyone openly admits that their ISP maintains a colossal repository of films, music, software, and video games. It is no longer just the small-scale, neighbourhood ISPs doing this; even major corporate ISPs are hosting these vast collections to keep their customers happy. While many users might find this convenient, I strongly believe this is a dangerous path to tread.

The roots of this collapse run deep. Historically, the industry relied on a heavily transactional model. Major record labels like Sargam, Soundtek, Sangeeta, and G-Series operated purely on a contractual basis with artists. Because Bangladesh’s copyright laws have always been notoriously weak and poorly enforced, these partnerships never evolved into sustainable, long-term careers for musicians. This lack of legal infrastructure triggered a chaotic gold rush in the 90s. Music companies mushroomed like toadstools overnight, riding the wave of the audio cassette boom. These fly-by-night labels would produce one or two hit tracks, cash in on a couple of trendy mix-albums, and vanish into thin air just as quickly as they had appeared, leaving the industry fragmented and artists exploited.

Almost a decade ago, I watched a documentary film called “Who Killed the Electric Car?”, which exposed how a capitalist fuel industry suppressed electric vehicles to keep them from ever seeing the light of day. But look at the world today: the UK government has since pioneered dedicated highway lanes fitted with induction charging technology for electric cars. Progress is inevitable, and it gives me reason to believe that someday, our media industry might also stage a comeback.

However, for that to happen, we must undergo a cultural shift. We desperately need to respect foreign copyrights too. Bangladesh is a developing nation with a massive population to sustain. If we do not learn to respect the intellectual property of others, the global community can easily retaliate by disrespecting the things we rely on and care about the most—a consequence that could utterly ruin us. Until we value the art we consume, the music shops will remain empty, and the silence in our industry will only grow louder.

Open Letter to Taylor Swift

25 Monday Apr 2016

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Taylor Swift,
For some you are an icon, for some you are just another musician and for most, you are nobody. Honestly you are nobody, people do not even know and do not even care who you are what you do. For most you are just another person like me. 🙂

I believe you also know that and all of your intentions are to get more and more attention and make more money. Yes, money is what you are up to end of the day. In your letter to Apple, you have mentioned that you are making enough from your gigs. We both can understand those are just some words to make the letter more polished. Because this is what you do, play with words, right? 🙂

You are just a money sucking bitch, period. And when you released that people are listening to you a lot on Spotify rather than buying your albums, you decided to quit Spotify. Still you are on other distribution networks, who maintains very small footprint, but you are not on Spotify. Because you know that as soon as you are on Spotify, your numbers will see some changes.

Money is your ONLY concern and that is why you have ditched Spotify, played a drama to make Apple to change their policy. You love Apple, but you were worried about not being on their platform as you love money more. But whatever you did, clicked. But not for everyone. It is very unfortunate that more people listen to your music for free than paying for it. Yes, piracy is a thing you have not considered yet. The more you restrict your distribution channels the more you are influencing people to use nasty channels like BitTorrent. I think you have not done that math.

Do some math and stay well.
Omi Azad
Not your fan. 🙂

Office 2013-2016 C2R Installer

18 Thursday Feb 2016

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Doing something wrong is what Microsoft is expert of! This time I found Office 2016 has no way you can select what packages you need what you do not. You just have to install everything you have paid for! Even I paid for Office 2016 Professional Plus, I cannot use Skype for Business and OneDrive for Business (actually I also wanted to get rid of Access and OneNote as well). But there is no way you can un-select them during installation.

I was searching for solution and found Office 2016 Deployment Tool. May be you are thinking what I have thought. This is the tool I was looking for! I am very sorry to tell you that you will be very disappointed just like me. That is just a joke Microsoft did with us. I spent more than 12 hours and could not find any way how I can customise my Office 2016 installation from the installer DVD I have. Then I was just thinking why no one on earth felt my pain and found my Russian brothers have developed something I was looking for.

Office 2013-2016 C2R Install Lite v5.1

Now you may be thinking what is this joke! Well, this is something Microsoft should have made at the first place. This is a toll lets you

  • Download office from Microsoft’s sources
  • Customise what components you want to install
  • Chose your architecture (32bit or 64bit)
  • Remove Office and make the computer clean
  • OK, that’s it. Isn’t it enough to ask for free? 🙂

No, I am not going to write a tutorial on how to use this. Please feel free to help yourself by downloading it and then explore it.

Download Link

Metered Connection in Windows 10

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Microsoft, Tutorials

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Microsoft may say that Windows 10 is the most polished Operating System they have ever made. If you ask my opinion, I would say they are wrong. Windows 2000 is the most polished operating system ever. 🙂

Well whatever I think, that would not stop them from doing whatever they are doing. So if we want to stay up to dated, it is better to cope ourselves up with whatever they are delivering or keep using with whatever we are comfortable with.

Some Internet service providers can charge by the amount of data used (the amount of data sent and received by our PC). That is called a metered Internet connection. These plans often have a data limit, and if you exceed the limit you might have to pay extra or in some cases, you are not charged extra but your connection speed becomes slower until the billing cycle ends.

If you have a metered Internet connection, setting your network connection to metered in Windows can help you reduce the amount of data you send and receive. Now Metered Connection is a very useful feature since it has been introduced first with Windows 8. Once you set a WiFi/(3G/4G) Dial-up connection as metered connection, your bandwidth usage would be limited. Unfortunately you cannot set a LAN connection as metered.

Setting a metered connection was super easy in Windows 8 and 8.1, just right click and set. But it became a bit complication in Windows 10. Maybe ISPs have asked Microsoft to hide that so that they can make more money. 🙂

So here is how to set your connection as metered in Windows 10.

To start, click on the WiFi connection in the taskbar on the far right side and select Network settings at the bottom of the panel that pops up. This will open the Settings app.

2015-08-12 21_29_20-Network Connections

You can also just open the Settings app and click Network & Internet > Wi-Fi. The Settings app lets you set a WiFi connection as metered.

At the bottom of the Wi-Fi screen select Advanced options.2015-08-12 21_31_17-Settings

This opens the advanced settings for the WiFi access point you’re currently connected to. Next, scroll down to Metered connection and turn the slider to On under Set as metered connection.

2015-08-12 21_31_49-Settings

That’s it. You’re done!

So these are the things you will get once you turn metered connection on:

  • Windows Update will only download priority updates. (This is good, cause there is no way to turn Windows Update off in Windows 10)
  • Apps downloading from the Windows Store will be paused.
  • Start screen live tiles might stop updating.

The next time Windows 10 has an update ready, you’ll be notified that an update is available for download. You can either grab it then or wait until you’re on a non-metered connection.

Enjoy!