Isabel Coixet’s Learning to Drive begins with one of the most embarrassing and painful types of break-ups a person might have to live through in this crowded city of New York: in the cramped back seat of a taxi, with the silent driver bearing witness from the other side of the partition. This is how […]
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 […]
raj Amit Kumar interview
This is a recent interview I did with the director raj Amit Kumar, whose film Unfreedom has been banned in India. The film opened yesterday in the U.S., in New York and Los Angeles. It has also been released on iTunes. As an artist, as a creative person, and knowing how volatile things can unexpectedly get […]
Ray’s Restored Apu Trilogy opens today
Sixty years since the release of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, a lovingly restored set of the films of The Apu Trilogy are being released by Janus Films for a limited time, starting today, May 8th, at the Film Forum here in New York City. The NYC debut of the digitally restored trio will be followed […]
Poorna Jagannathan’s Nirbhaya: The Play
When I spotted actress, model and producer Poorna Jagannathan (who played the kick-ass and worldly journo in Delhi Belly) at the opening night of the Indo-American Arts Council‘s NYIFF on May 1st, 2013, I asked her what else she had coming up. In addition to her role in Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani, she told me […]
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
With the huge (and initially, surprising) success of John Madden’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, it wouldn’t take the keen insight of the Weinstein brothers to realize that a sequel might also prove to be a goldmine. But it can be so tricky, the second time around, can’t it – to rekindle the chemistry among […]