Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5) I have cried reading books, but this is the first one I can remember shedding tears just three pages in. The story…
Rating: ** (2 stars out of 5) This is a short history of maths. By short, I mean really short. Which is unfortunate, because there can be no justice…
Growing up, I used to watch a lot of dubbed Chinese Kung-Fu movies. Mongoose style against the Snake style and so on. I don’t believe they used to…
Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5) I have cried reading books, but this is the first one I can remember shedding tears just three pages in. The story of life is about loss and regrets, and “Norwegian Wood” in its opening paragraph breaks through our defenses with its splendid writing that simply envelops us and…
Rating: ** (2 stars out of 5) This is a short history of maths. By short, I mean really short. Which is unfortunate, because there can be no justice done to any topic within the few pages that the author has allocated for each. In some cases, just as the topic gets interesting, the author is…
Growing up, I used to watch a lot of dubbed Chinese Kung-Fu movies. Mongoose style against the Snake style and so on. I don’t believe they used to have sub-titles in those days, but I enjoyed them very much. Even recently (a few years ago), I remember watching a Jackie Chan movie (one of his…
Rating: **** (4 stars out of 5) Reading a book, especially a classic, after a long time is always a different experience than the first time. One is that obviously you know the story and there are no surprises as to what happens at the end. So you hurry less and spend more time enjoying the…
Rating: **** (4 stars out of 5) This 2002 Japanese movie is an engrossing demonstration of how superior suspense is to action. The use of the word “Samurai” in the title may tempt you to think of an action-heavy movie with lots of stunts, but perhaps the second word in the title might alert you that…
Rating: *** (3 stars out of 5) I watched this on the weekend. Not sure why, but I seemed to click on a few boring movies on Netflix and decided to watch a thriller, never mind if it was black and white. As it happens, it was not the typical film noir detective movie and was…
I hardly watch any Tamil movies, though there are quite a few gems. Problem is getting sub-titled Tamil movies that are worth watching. Even though Tamil is very similar to Malayalam, I find it difficult to follow the dialogue especially if the actors are having a serious conversation as opposed to speech that is combined…
I am going to get into trouble if I continue using Roman numerals, especially if this goes to something like Part 1879 which is MDCCCLXXIX. So here’s to decimal! Continuing with some movies I watched: (Spoiler alert, as usual) Aftershock (2010): [Chinese — 5 stars out of 5] The Tangshan earthquake in 1976 was the most deadly…
As long as I am writing movie reviews while putting up lists of songs I like, I might as well write up a bunch of them up without the songs. Not going to write up the plot, but spoilers abound. Be careful! Rango (2011): [4 stars out of 5] I used to love Westerns when…
Nothing better to break the ice that has formed over the last three weeks than with yet another list of songs: “Tune Jo Na Kaha” from “New York” (2009): There seems to be an epidemic of movies such as “New York” with stories of extremists from the Indian sub-continent, all shot in cities in the United States.…