Mark Twain: After reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, this two-part documentary by Ken Burns helped etch Twain’s life in my mind. The discovery that he travelled extensively within India was the high point. Amritham Gamaya: Continuing on the MT diet, watched this classic helmed by Mohanlal on YouTube (subtitles available). The climax, understated yet … Continue reading What I Watched – February 2025
It’s a New Year and probably a good time to get started on some new projects. I decided to be a bit more mindful of the content that I consume. So, here we go with the stuff that I watched this month: Rifle Club: The first movie of the year and that too watched on … Continue reading What I Watched – January 2025
I just finished watching Season 1 of Shtisel—the hit Israeli series. The show revolves around the lives of a large Orthodox Jewish family. The Haredi Jews are an ultra-Orthodox sect that shuns most forms of modernity. Television and the internet are 'prohibited' for them. They spend most of their time immersed in the Torah. Until … Continue reading Shtisel
In no particular order: ChallengersZendaya's energy sizzles throughout in this ménage à trois story Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny:I've been watching all the Indiana Jones' movies with the kids. The time travel scene to the Battle of Syracuse and the appearance of Archimedes in the scene was spellbinding. ConclaveWatched this last week and … Continue reading Best Movies/Series – 2024
Its hard to comprehend the horrors that Europe went through in the early 20th century. The generation that was born in first few years of the century, was the fortunate one. They were too young to fight in the First World War and too old for the Second. Stefan Zweig’s memoir ‘The World of Yesterday’ … Continue reading Zweig’s ‘World of Yesterday’
In his memoirs, Obama writes about the time when his friends confronted him when they saw him reading Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’. I tossed the book into my backpack. “Actually, he’s right,” I said. “It is a racist book. The way Conrad sees it, Africa’s the cesspool of the world, black folks are savages, … Continue reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Every ten years, Sight and Sound, under the British Film Institute carries a poll to identify the greatest movies of all time. In the last edition of 2022, the movie that topped the list was ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ by the Belgian auteur Chantal Akerman. Akerman was a Jew born to … Continue reading Chantal Akerman
Adrian Tomine is one of my favorite comic writers. His art has a Hopperesque feature. With a minimalist style, his work often focuses on the themes of urban alienation, the complexity of human relationships, identity and heartbreak. His art also frequently appears on the cover of the New Yorker. The French movie Les Olympiades (Paris, … Continue reading Adrian Tomine, Les Olympiades…
The 2022 Iranian-French movie ‘Holy Spider’ was a treat at multiple levels. The movie is based on a real-life serial killer who murdered sixteen women in the late 90s in the city of Mashhad, Iran. The pull of world cinema is that it immerses you in geographies and historical periods that create a vivid impression, … Continue reading Holy Spider
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose The ball turret … Continue reading Masters of the Air
