Art, Music, and Cinema

Endhiran: A Review
Endhiran (The Robot) is India's biggest blockbuster foray into science fiction, starring Superstar Rajinikanth.

James A. FitzPatrick's India
Best known for his 200+ short travel documentaries from 1929-55, including many on India, what should we make of FitzPatrick and his films today?

Advice to a Young Artist
The idea for writing this came to me from an interview in which an author was reverentially asked, ‘Sir, what would be your advice to a young artist?’  The author turned his nose up and gave a pat, patronizing answer but the question stayed with me. How would I answer it?

Avatar: A Review
Outlandishly expensive, visually stunning, and politically loaded, Cameron took every risk with this film. And what did he give us, after all? A heroic fantasy of White Guilt. The story of Pocahontas, re-imagined.

Slumdog Millionaire: A Review
The film has obvious and broad appeal as the quintessential underdog story [but] the movie on the whole was just downright silly.

On Photography: Truth, Lies, and Photos
Many urban middleclass Indians I know are peeved by what they see as a staple of photography on India: squalor, poverty, lepers, fakirs, the deformed.

The Asian Art Museum
The Asian Art Museum (AAM) in San Francisco is one of the largest of its kind in the West. Interestingly, over half of its 15,000 pieces come from a single donor.

Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka
In Aug 2005, I visited a remarkable site in Madhya Pradesh, India: the prehistoric rock shelters and paintings at Bhimbetka, discovered in 1957-58 by Dr. Vishnu S. Wakankar.

Jack the Dripper
Does art lie entirely in the eye of the beholder, or should it have minimal standards? Who decides what is art and what is only a visually appealing painting, photograph, or sculpture? What makes a sketch end up on on a museum wall and another behind a refrigerator magnet?

Peter Brook's Mahabharata
I've seen Peter Brook's Mahabharata thrice in fifteen years. Each time my admiration for it has grown. I consider it one of the greatest dramatic productions of all time.