Recent Posts

• Notes on this, that, and everything in between – Episode 1: Does age matter?
• A very happy 80th birthday, Ilaiyaraaja
• Ajitpal Singh’s ‘Fire In the Mountains’, on SonyLIV, peels back the beauty of the mountains to gaze at stark realities
• Akhil Sathyan’s ‘Pachuvum Athbutha Vilakkum’, on Prime Video, is proof that templates are never an issue if the storytelling is strong
• Interview: Sohum Shah (Maharani on SonyLIV, Dahaad on Amazon Prime Video)
• Readers Write In #582: The Story of Allen Dulles and his CIA
• Readers Write In #581: Virupaksha: The Succubus lies in the details
• From the Web (FTW) #9: Martin Scorsese on the Importance of Visual Literacy
• BR Live Season 2
• Thank you so much for this appreciation, Bits Of Info Tamil
• From the Web (FTW) #8: Nenendu Vethugudura (a translation)
• Readers Write In #580: The Imposter – The ramblings of a fundamentally uninteresting man
• Readers Write In #579: Daredevil Musthafa (DDM) – An outsider’s view
• Achyut Vinayak’s ‘Thrishanku’, with Anna Ben and Arjun Ashokan, has a super premise, but it’s content to remain a pleasant watch instead of the all-out riot it could have become
• Shashank Soghal’s ‘Daredevil Musthafa’ is a laid-back charmer filled with newcomers, and it covers up its flaws with a massive dose of can-do spirit
• Interview: Sarathkumar (Por Thozhil, etc.)
• Interview: Anna Ben / ‘Andhadhun’ producer Sarita Patil (Thrishanku)
• Readers Write In #578: Succession – A Saga of Kendall and Logan
• Apoorv Singh Karki’s ‘Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai’ is an earnest, well-acted courtroom drama that needed more tension
• Yashowardhan Mishra’s ‘Kathal’, on Netflix, is  a gently amusing detective story-cum-social commentary that involves missing jackfruits 
• Readers Write In #577: The National Legacy of NTR
• From the Web (FTW) #7: The Magic of K Vishwanath’s songs
• Shamal Sulaiman’s entertaining ‘Jackson Bazaar Youth’ makes you think it’s a drama about the underprivileged before pulling the rug from under your feet
• Lights, Camera, Analysis: Ravi Varman (Ponniyin Selvan 1 & 2)
• Vijay Antony’s ‘Pichaikkaran 2’ is a sentimental, speech-heavy take on how the rich should help the poor
• ‘Modern Love Chennai’, overseen by creative producer Thiagarajan Kumararaja and team, makes a strong case for what Tamil creators can do in the OTT space
• Interview: Thiagarajan Kumararaja (Modern Love Chennai, and this man’s mind)
• Interview: Bharathiraja (Modern Love Chennai, and all other kinds of love)
• Interview: Siva Ananth (Ponniyin Selvan 1 & 2)
• Vinayak Chandrasekaran’s ‘Good Night’ is an easy watch with a few good laughs, but it struggles to hang on to a single tonality
• Nelson Venkatesan’s ‘Farhana’ gives Aishwarya Rajesh a fine chance to shine in the midst of a middling thriller
• Jude Anthany Joseph’s ‘2018: Everyone is a Hero’ is painted in very broad strokes but ends up a solid account of a tragic time
• Interview: Vijay Antony (Pichaikkaran 2)
• Readers Write In #576: Book Review: The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple
• My interview with IIT Madras BS Film Society
• My interview on Mindscape Matters
• Interview: Sriram and Shridhar Raghavan
• Anup Singh’s ‘The Song of Scorpions’ (Irrfan Khan, Golshifteh Farahani) is a minimalistic and magnificently twisted story of obsessive love
• Bitty Ruminations 95 – Naturalism vs. Realism
• Readers Write In #575:  PS-2 comes out with the soul intact
• Readers Write In #574:  PS-2 and why it is riddled with the same problems that plagued later seasons of GoT
• Interview: Vetri Maaran, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Rajiv Menon (The extended Director’s Cut of Viduthalai – Part 1, on ZEE5)
• My interview on The Shin Pad Podcast
• Mani Ratnam’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan 2’ is more dramatic, sadder and more serious in tone, and a meaty conclusion to the two-part epic
• Lights, Camera, Analysis: Dharani Rasendran (Yaathisai)
• Bitty Ruminations 94 – Mani Ratnam, ARR and the ‘mainstream’
• Readers Write In #573:  Objects in the rear view mirror: 90s Kollywood
• Interview: Mani Ratnam / AR Rahman (PS-1, PS-2, 30+ years of working together…)
• Readers Write In #572: Reflections on ‘Kaathuvaakula Rendu Kaadhal’
• Readers Write In #571:  Web Series Review – Jubilee – Of Mice and Men, Of Stars and Blackholes