Il Sorpasso: Wrote about this here and also about Jhumpa Lahiri Sinners: Science Fiction and Horror are two genres that I've never been fascinated with. The Oscar hype around Sinners forced me to check it out. I ended ruing my decision. How does one suspend belief to this extent? Weapons: Despite being disappointed by Sinners, … Continue reading What I Watched – February 2026
The Wuthering Heights adaptation has been all over the news for various reasons. So I first read Bronte’s novel and then went to check what the fuss was all about. The Margot Robbie-Jacob Ellordi starrer wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible too. The childhood bond between Heathcliff and Catherine was tenderly captured. The interior design … Continue reading The ‘Wuthering Heights’ Rabbit Hole
Seven years ago, I tried to read this but abandoned it after a few pages as I knew next to nothing about the political context in which the book was set. This time, with some information about the Risorgimento, I tackled the book and can confirm it lives up to its tag of a ‘masterpiece’ … Continue reading Lampedusa’s ‘The Leopard’
A couple of days after mentioning Jhumpa Lahiri in a blog post, I unexpectedly saw her in person. The Italian Cultural Centre in Delhi, as part of an ongoing series where prominent Indian writers introduce their favourite Italian films ahead of screenings, had invited Lahiri to present the inaugural film — 'Il Sorpasso'. Sruthi and … Continue reading Jhumpa Lahiri on ‘Il Sorpasso’ at IHC Delhi
Eko:This movie has created a lot of buzz and for the right reasons. While a mystery thriller story featuring guard-dogs is definitely unusual in Malayalam cinema, the WWII theatre in South East Asia being portrayed in the movie made it all the more unique. Got reminded of Twan Eng’s trilogy. The Mastermind: Kelly Reichardt reimagines … Continue reading What I Watched – January 2026
Phantom Thread: I thoroughly enjoyed this story of a conventional artist–muse relationship that slowly turns into a strange psychological duel. Daniel Day Lewis has such screen presence that his performance alone made the movie worth watching. The Sacrifice: My first encounter with Andrei Tarkovsky’s work was far from easy. The film demands absolute attention and … Continue reading What I Watched – December 2025
The Comedy of Errors is considered to be one of the first plays of Shakespeare and is also his shortest. Double roles and mistaken identities often serve as easy gateways for displaying a writer's ingenuity; Shakespeare, however, raises the stakes by introducing two sets of identical twins, allowing confusion itself to drive the comedy. The … Continue reading The Comedy of Errors
Shame: Steve McQueen’s Shame - a deep dive into the psyche of a sex addict had Micheal Fassbender pull off a great effort. The inability to get aroused with romantic partners, the porn-addiction and his eventual spiral towards a violent climax was a gripping watch. Hunger: The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of … Continue reading What I Watched – November 2025
In his lecture on Othello, the critic Harold Bloom has this memorable line: “Shakespeare was the greatest theorist of sexual jealousy the world had ever seen before the advent of Freud and Proust”. While ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ had jealousy as one of its themes, it is in Othello that Shakespeare explores this in all … Continue reading Othello
During my travels earlier this year, Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’ was the book for the long train journeys. Austen was just nineteen when she wrote the first draft and published it when she was around 35. The book, like most of Austen’s works is a critique of English society during the early nineteenth century. … Continue reading Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’
