I must have been eight or nine when I decided to put up a play for our annual Teachers’ Day. It was the only day each year when kids had the opportunity to go up on stage and present their creative work. My friends and I believed that […]
I love me some Edgar Allan Poe. That man lived a fantastically harsh, brief life, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t wring some great writing out of it anyway. It might seem strange then that out of decades and decades of Poe film adaptations, my very favorite […]
Mainstream Hindi cinema doesn’t particularly gravitate towards making superhero films. It hardly needs to, given what physical feats the average film hero can pull off anyway. But like many parts of the world, Indian audiences certainly have a taste for American-style superhero films, so home-grown characters pop up, […]
One of my favorite things about mortal existence is when TV programming goes pumpkin-spiced in the fall. Not just the buffet of special Halloween episodes and, perhaps perversely, chopped-up broadcast versions of horror movies*, but the glut of compulsively-watchable spooky reality shows…if you can call heavily-edited tall tales […]
Readers of this website will hardly need a special occasion to watch a snake film, but since the Hindu festival celebrating snakes, Naag Panchami, generally falls around this time of year, I couldn’t resist. Snake movies are made by many different Indian film industries, and they tend to […]
Lately my son has been asking me to play a game called “Nutcracker” with him. The rules are simple – be whoever you want and do whatever you want. Sounds good in theory, but since being social requires some element of shaping who you are and what you […]
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The Cultural Gutter 