Talk about religion and you’re bound to get me all worked up; not that I don’t appreciate a good argument, just that a good argument is non existent when it comes to backing faith or the the existence of an omniscient and benevolent creator who has time to answer your petty prayers but blithely ignores starving children in [...]

There are barely a handful of artists whose music perfectly accentuates whatever state I’m in. The last time I was this moved by an album was when I listened to Jeff Buckley’s Grace for the first time; an underrated (by today’s general public I mean) masterpiece - the kind of music that slowly grows on [...]

Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights is a strange film. Some thirty minutes into it, there’s a scene in which Jude Law’s character kisses the sleeping Norah Jones; and they barely know each other. Whether or not you’ll fall in love with this film depends on how you react to that one scene. You [...]

Tarkovsky’s 1971 original was a film I first watched during my school days; needless to say, I brushed it aside as pretentious drivel along with Kubrick’s 2001: ASO. A revisitng of the film during college proved futile too. I could never appreciate Tarkovsky’s long and rather plain visuals.
The recent passing of Arthur C Clarke drove me to [...]

Television shows are a lot like relationships; you can usually figure out if it’s going anywhere from the first two days/episodes after which it’s all about commitment. Terrible metaphors aside, I find it hard to believe how much Battlestar Galactica has grown on me over the last couple of months. Science Fiction is a genre [...]

- From Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror: F W Murnau (1922)

German Expressionism, it is said, rose not because of an artistic revival but because German film makers found it hard to compete with the extravagance of their Hollywood counterparts; so they resorted to symbolism and darker subtexts. F W Murnau’s Nosferatu was one of the [...]

Paranoid as I am, the first few thoughts that rushed through my head after seeing the cordoned off street opposite to the apartment complex I stay in were terrorists, dirty bombs and Britney Spears.
Flinders St is actually being used as a filming backdrop for the upcoming Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks produced WW II mini series, [...]

Sidney Lumet is living proof that age is never a deterrent. The 83 year old master auteur has crafted what I can safely say is one of the finest films in the last few years; painfully intense, deeply disturbing and layered with nuances that no other film maker his age is capable of [...]

I love the way this country smells. I’ll never forget it. It’s kind of spicy.
Wes Anderson, in many interviews has stated that this film was intended as an homage to Satyajit Ray (and even inspired by Jean Renoir) and that’s exactly what hits you from the first frame; a poignant, stylized and funny [...]