On the Cusp of Change
Four men spend several hours in a hotel room on a night in 1964. Not four ordinary men: these were pretty remarkable people by any standard. It is astonishing to discover that the film One Night in Miami is based...
Movies/TV/Streaming
Slices of history
Remember back when Bollywood made silent films? (If you’re reading this, probably not.) For those who do remember the pre-Independence Hindi film era, the names Sulochana, Miss Rose, Pramila and Nadira might ring bells, but even they might be surprised...
Tall, fair and cute
The first article I read about the Netflix show Indian Matchmaking gave away the ending. I wasn’t planning to watch so it didn’t matter if Sima-from-Mumbai found her clients their perfect match. Then it started. Colleagues from work – they...
Hate-Watching
~ Indian MatchMaking, on Netflix ~ If the pandemic has already lowered your spirits, I recommend staying well away from ‘Indian MatchMaking’, streaming on Netflix. Its portrayal of the Indian and Indian-American community is thoroughly depressing. The reality TV series...
Oscar Shorts
The big films get all the Oscar buzz. People argue about whether The Irishman should have got something and whether Saiorse Ronan deserved it more than Renee Zellweger and whether the Oscars discriminate against female directors and women-oriented films (me:...
Tedious gangster fare
~ The Irishman. A Scorsese film. ~ De Niro. Pacino. Pesci. in a Scorsese period-piece film about the Mafia. Sounds like an entertaining way to spend an evening, right? Lauded by critics, nominated for many awards, the film is a...
Cancer Scientist Blues
~ Jim Allison: Breakthrough ~ The backlash against scientific evidence and skepticism about data-driven consensus has reached alarming proportions, the most obvious instances being the anti-vaccination movement and the refusal to accept climate change. Into this atmosphere comes a wonderful...
Sepia
~ Photograph, directed by Ritesh Batra ~ Ritesh Batra’s Photograph is an extremely delicate film. Set in bustling Mumbai, it has periods of complete stillness, and develops slowly, more like a photograph of yore than anything in today’s frenetic social-media...
Part of a Whole
~ The Farewell, a film by Lulu Wang ~ A smart, touching film about diaspora and culture, The Farewell features Awkwafina in a wonderful starring role as Billi: Chinese-American, living in New York, with a grandmother in Changchun, China. Billi’s...
Behind every succesful man…
~ The Wife: Book and Movie ~ As a college student at Smith, Joan falls for her married professor, Joe Castleman, fascinated by his brilliance. It kills me to say it, but I was his student when we met. There...
Shaadi Stories
Can there be anything more to say about Indian weddings? Hindi films have ended with happy, ornate weddings forever, and there are dozens of films which are entirely about weddings. A gazillion books have covered “arranged” and “love” marriages in...
Rough Roads
~ Winter’s Bone ~ Book and Movie ~ Daniel Woodrell’s slim, bleakly powerful novel Winter’s Bone is set in the Ozarks, in a house where the road “has got rough to where you about can’t call it a road no...
Good Omens in our future
Good Omens is now a TV series! What a crazy, delightful book! I won’t even attempt to summarize it. Suffice it to say that it involves the Apocalypse, an angel called Aziraphale and a demon called Crowley who are the...
Sharps and Flats
~ Bel Canto ~ the book and film ~ If only Ang Lee had directed the film of Bel Canto. The exquisite novel by Ann Patchett is widely thought to be her best. It is approximately based on the 1996...
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