Mani Ratnam at MOMI

  Starting tonight (Friday) and running through Sunday afternoon, the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY is holding a special retrospective of director Mani Ratnam’s films under the title Politics as Spectacle: The Films of Mani Ratnam. The organizer of the program, Christina Marouda, the Museum’s Deputy Director for Development and Founder of […]

Singam 2: Too Lite

First time in all my Tamil movie-watching in New York and New Jersey, I witnessed in person Friday night that massive hero worship of Tamil film fans.  When the opening credits of Singam 2 started rolling, folks were already clapping and whistling, and when Surya appeared on screen for the first time, they burst into […]

Aiyyaa: Let’s hear it for the girl

When I was a teenager in Catholic school, somewhere in either Junior or Senior year, I remember sitting in Mass one day and hearing the priest tell the congregation during the homily (the discussion of that day’s gospel reading) that sensuality is bad, and I remember thinking “Really?  But why?”  His sermon didn’t answer my […]

Le Tamoul – for a change!

When recently directing a friend who was in Paris to the website for L’Harmattan bookstore there, and their amazing selection of Francophone African literature, and all variety of “international books,” I couldn’t help but notice a brief paragraph on the page promoting an upcoming salon about Indian writing (in November) this year. Wonderful, of course, […]