Comedy Icon Samir Ghanem Dies of COVID-19

Late Egyptian comedy icon Samir Ghanem
Late Egyptian comedy icon Samir Ghanem
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Comedy Icon Samir Ghanem Dies of COVID-19

Late Egyptian comedy icon Samir Ghanem
Late Egyptian comedy icon Samir Ghanem

Egyptian comedy icon Samir Ghanem died aged 84 on Thursday after having contracted the COVID-19 disease, Egyptian media reported.

Ghanem had been suffering from organ failure in his kidneys and was transferred to the intensive care unit, while his wife, renowned actress Dalal Abdel Aziz, was transferred to another hospital in Cairo due to an acute health deterioration from coronavirus.

Ghanem began his career in the 1960s as part of a celebrated comedy trio, including George Sidhom and El Deif Ahmed.

The trio starred in a number of hugely successful films, which cemented Ghanem's place as one of the essential figures of Egyptian cinema's golden age. He also helped discover actresses that would go on to be stars, like Athar El-Hakim, whom he had convinced to enter the limelight.

In addition, Ghanem supported several young actors by taking minor roles in their works, and he collaborated with his daughter on several of her works. In 2017, Ghanem was honored at the Cairo Festival, receiving the Faten Hamama Honorary and Excellence Award.

Mourning the loss, Egyptian Minister of Culture Ines Abdel-Dayem, said: "The artistic scene in Egypt and the Arab world has lost one of the geniuses of comedy who painted pages of joy in the history books of theatrical performance."

Abdel-Dayem pointed out that "his distinctive style managed to draw the public in over many years. His work will be remembered fondly for its uniqueness for many years.”

She and many artists expressed condolences to Ghanem's family, friends and loved ones.

Dr. Samia Habib, Head of Higher Institute of Art Criticism Academy, told Asharq Al-Awsat: "Samir Ghanem was a talented performer in all the artistic phases that he went through. He relied heavily on folk art techniques, especially in improvised theater. He was skilled in taking on female characters' roles, taking advantage of his comedic talent to diversify his roles and his ability to improvise.”

“A pioneer in Egyptian comedy, he passed his teachings to the generations that came after him, and many adopted his satirical performance style, which is a testament to his authenticity as an artist."



Movie Review: The Villains Steal the Show in ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

 From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
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Movie Review: The Villains Steal the Show in ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

 From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

More than six decades after Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created a superhero team to rival the Justice League, the Fantastic Four finally get a worthy big-screen adaption in a spiffy ’60s-era romp, bathed in retrofuturism and bygone American optimism.

Though the Fantastic Four go to the very origins of Marvel Comics, their movie forays have been marked by missteps and disappointments. The first try was a Roger Corman-produced, low-budget 1994 film that was never even released.

But, after some failed reboots and a little rights maneuvering, Matt Shakman’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is the first Fantastic Four movie released by Marvel Studios. And a sense of returning to Marvel roots permeates this one, an endearingly earnest superhero drama about family and heroism, filled with modernist “Jetsons” designs that hark back to a time when the future held only promise.

“First Steps,” with a title that nods to Neil Armstrong, quickly reminds that before the Fantastic Four were superheroes, they were astronauts. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (a soulful Ebon Moss-Bachrach) flew into space but return altered by cosmic rays. “We came back with anomalies,” explains Reed, sounding like me after a family road trip.

They are now, respectively, the bendy Mister Fantastic, the fast-disappearing Invisible Woman, the fiery Human Torch and the Thing, a craggy CGI boulder of a man. In the glimpses of them as astronauts, the images are styled after NASA footage of Apollo 11, like those seen in the great documentaries “For All Mankind” and “Apollo 11.”

But part of the fun of the Fantastic Four has always been that while the foursome might have the right stuff, they also bicker and joke and argue like any other family. The chemistry here never feels intimate enough in “First Steps” to quite capture that interplay, but the cast is good, particularly Kirby.

In the first moments of “First Steps,” Sue sets down a positive pregnancy test before a surprised Reed. That night at dinner — Moss-Bachrach, now an uncle rather than a cousin, is again at work in the kitchen — Ben and Johnny immediately guess what’s up. The rest of the world is also eager to find out what, if any, powers the baby will have.

We aren’t quite in our world, but a very similar parallel one called Earth-828. New York looks about the same, and world leaders gather in a version of the United Nations named the Future Foundation. The Thing wears a Brooklyn Dodgers cap. Someone sounding a lot like Walter Cronkite reads the news.

And there’s a lot to read when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) suddenly hovers over the city, announcing: “I herald your end. I herald Galactus.” The TV blares, as it could on so many days: “Earth in Peril. Developing Story.”

Yes, the Earth (or some Earth) might be in danger, but did you get a look at that Silver Surfer? That’s Johnny Storm’s response, and perhaps ours, too. She's all chrome, like a smelted Chrysler Building, with slicked-back hair and melancholy eyes. He’s immediately taken by her, but she shoots off into space. In a rousing, NASA-like launch (the original Kirby and Lee comic came eight years before the moon landing), the Fantastic Four blast off into the unknown to meet this Galactus.

But if the Silver Surfer made an impression, Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson) does even more so. Fantastic Four movies have always before gone straight for Doctor Doom as a villain, but his entrance, this time, is being held up for “Avengers: Doomsday.” Still, Galactus, a planet-eating tyrant, is no slouch. A mechanical colossus and evident fan of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” he sits on an enormous throne in space. Sensing enormous power in Sue’s unborn child, he offers to spare Earth for the baby.

What follows casts motherhood — its empowerments and sacrifices — onto a cosmic plane. There’s a nifty chase sequence in space that plays out during contractions. The two “Incredibles” movies covered some similar ground, in both retro design and stretchy parent and superhuman baby, with notably more zip and comic verve than “The Fantastic Four.” That's part of the trouble of not getting a proper movie for so long: Better films have already come along inspired by the '60s comic.

But as good as Vanessa Kirby is in “First Steps,” the movie is never better than when the Silver Surfer or Galactus are around. Shakman, a former child actor who’s directed mostly in television (most relevantly, “WandaVision”), proves especially adept at capturing the enormous scale of Galactus. “First Steps” may be, at heart, a kaiju movie.

What it certainly is, though, is a very solid comic book movie. It’s a little surface over substance, and the time capsule feeling is pervasive. This is an earnest-enough superhero movie where even the angry mob protesting the superheroes turns quiet and pensive. I was more likely to be moved by a really handsome chalkboard than I was by its vision of motherhood.

But, especially for a superhero team that’s never before quite taken flight on screen, “First Steps” is a sturdy beginning, with impeccable production design by Kasra Farahani and a rousing score by Michael Giacchino. Even if the unifying space-age spirit of Kirby and Lee's comic feels very long ago, indeed.