Blessed are those whose boats are rocked by oats. When did oats take over our lives as the bitter pill adults must swallow to get better? Most breakfast places serve oatmeal, but they are loaded with sugar and fat. I recently saw a healthy tip for eating your daily oatmeal: top it with creme fraiche! […]
One-line review: A National Geographic edition on the Wild West’s Coenesque inhabitants. The Ballad is an anthology of six short films in the Western tradition that the Coens wrote separately over the years. In fact, Tim Blake Nelson (Buster Scruggs) got the script in the early 2000s. But he didn’t know when and whether the
THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018) Read More »
One-line review: A migrant worker also helps an English farmer find love. God’s own country is a love story between two men working on a Yorkshire farm, and therefore comparisons with Brokeback Mountain are inevitable. But unlike Brokeback Mountain, neither homosexuality nor homophobia is God’s own country’s focus: love is. This is director Francis Lee’s
GOD’S OWN COUNTRY (2017) Read More »
Should applause be spontaneous or dictated by social norms? I first experienced the classism in applauding Western Classical music when attending a concert by a touring German Orchestra in Chennai, India. Chennai is the capital of Carnatic music, the classical music of South India. The venue for the concert was The Music Academy, a hallowed
THE CLASSISM OF APPLAUSE Read More »
One-line review: A talented folk singer’s losing hustle to make it, thanks to mostly him getting in his way. Let us be clear that there would be no Inside Llewyn Davis without Oscar Isaac. Even the Coens admit that they thought the film’s lead was uncastable after a slew of auditions. It was impossible to
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013) Read More »
Creativity needs selfishness and selflessness. Most people are familiar with Malcolm Gladwell’s rule for success discussed in his book, Outliers: ten thousand hours of work spread over ten years (the work of late Professor Anders Ericsson). Although evidence is mixed about the holy grail of ten thousand hours – even Ericsson cautions about the role
THE PARADOX OF CREATIVITY Read More »
One-line review: Four middle-aged friends use alcohol to get back their high for living. Another Round’s original title in Danish is Druk, or binge drinking, which has no English equivalent. But the English title allows multiple interpretations of the term another round: it could be for a drink, love, and life. The film is director
ANOTHER ROUND (2020) Read More »
Get out of your head’s gilded cage. When people ask me to describe the view from my NYC high-rise apartment window, I say I see “perspective.” I see other buildings occupied by people like me, going about their day wrapped up in their thoughts, each the master of the kingdom created in their heads. We
One-line review: A superlative comedy that gets its laughs by being a sincere ode to the originals. Young Frankenstein is the touchstone of movie comedies, all muscle and no fat, like a tight five-minute stand-up comedy set. And that is no accident. Director Mel Brooks started a trend by showing the film’s rushes to the
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) Read More »
One-line review: Harry Dean Stanton plays mostly himself in his befitting last hurrah. I discovered Lucky after a recent rewatch of Fargo and John Carroll Lynch’s brief but unforgettable turn as Marge’s adoring husband in it. As I explored his other works, I stumbled upon his solo directorial venture: Lucky. The film was written for