Category Archives: Arts

The Avatar (2009) Potpourri: Medium Is Not The Message

Avatar (2009) needs no intro­duc­tion. The most expen­sive movie ever made is a tes­ta­ment to James Cameron’s coura­geous vision of an immer­sive cin­e­matic expe­ri­ence to out-Lucas the Star Wars leg­end – an ambi­tion he har­bored since he watched it in 1977 as a truck-driver.
Cameron has uplifted the bench­mark for Hol­ly­wood block­busters and cre­ated a

What The Hell Is Divinity?

A few blog posts and con­ver­sa­tions with friends have made me unquiet about the con­cept of Divin­ity: What is Divin­ity and what does it mean?
Back­ground
My friend Asuph wrote about Divin­ity in 2004, when I had not even started blog­ging. He uses Pirsig’s Meta­physics of Qual­ity from Zen and The Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance to describe what

What Is Wrong With This Picture?

When I was a kid, I loved to play a game that came in some comics and mag­a­zines: What’s wrong with the pic­ture? You had to spot illog­i­cal, unreal, mis­matched and other such odd­i­ties hid­den in small details in the pic­ture. The game encour­aged atten­tion to details, keen obser­va­tion, and appli­ca­tion of con­cepts like har­mony,

Eight things you never knew about Joseph Haydn

Born to a wheel­wright, he left home at age 6 to sing in Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathe­dral. When his voice broke, he was dis­missed.
Haydn like wine so much, he insisted that part of his salary be paid in it.
The great­est mis­take of his life was mar­ry­ing his wife. Ini­tially, he fell in love with

A to Z of Films Meme (XYZ)

With this post, the film meme on this blog is com­ing to an end. I once again thank Dev from the bot­tom of my heart for urg­ing me to take this up. I am also deeply grate­ful to all of you who have appre­ci­ated my writ­ing, pro­vided numer­ous rec­om­men­da­tions, and shared your expe­ri­ences to make

A to Z of Films Meme (W)

A ‘W’ is formed when two Valen­tine Vs bond together to say ‘We’. Hence my ‘W’ selec­tions are both enjoy­able romances. When this ‘W’ becomes the ‘M’ for Mar­riage, things some­times get topsy-turvy.
W
When Harry Met Sally
One of my all time favorite films, end­lessly re-watchable, to the point where it becomes dif­fi­cult for me to switch chan­nels

A to Z of Films Meme (V)

You can now book­mark and browse the entire list of movies I’ve writ­ten about, and those rec­om­mended by you, here. After the meme is com­plete, those inter­ested can also get it as an Excel spread­sheet.
V
Ver­tigo
Ver­tigo is one of Hitchcock’s most mes­mer­iz­ing, haunt­ing, and com­plex films I’ve seen. There are many lay­ers at work simul­ta­ne­ously, and

Blog Camp Pune 2: Photo Post

Here are some pho­tographs I man­aged to click at Blog Camp Pune 2 when I could dis­en­gage myself from the talks. Snaps are hosted on Flickr, please click to get higher res­o­lu­tions. My thanks to all the ‘un’-organizers of the event for mak­ing this such a flaw­lessly smooth event!
 
 
 
 
 

A to Z of Films Meme (U)

The list of rec­om­mended films com­bin­ing my posts and your com­ments (exclud­ing this post), now totals 216 films. I wrote about 5 ways to cat­a­log movies online at MakeUseOf.com. If you have any pref­er­ences, do let me know. We can always get a spread­sheet down­load from any of those sites.
U
Unfor­given
Clint Eastwood’s homage to Ser­gio Leone and

A to Z of Films Meme (T)

Ever had to take a leak dur­ing a long movie but didn’t want to miss the action? Runpee.com tells you the best time to go and also what you will (not) miss. They will soon have an iPhone app you can use to check Pee­Times, along with a timer that tells you how much longer