I’m now knowing the smell of death. They are sweet like sugarcane and rotten like palm wine. And when [dead bodies] stay in the sun, they’re growing plump like brown mangoes. – Little Agu, after witnessing one too many deaths as a child soldier Director Cary Joji Fukunaga has put out no less than a […]
In a bizarre (non)incident sending shock waves across America, no shootings were reported on campuses and no one was killed, maimed or injured at US kindergartens, schools, colleges and universities today as active and passive shooters remained AWOL. Emergency rooms at US hospitals remained as deserted as in the recent Korean corrupt doctors TV series […]
If you ask me, there’re a couple of vexing flaws at the heart of Ridley Scott’s space adventure Martian (Matt Damon, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Jessica Chastain). At its core, the movie is about a young astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) stranded on Mars and the heroic efforts mounted from Earth to rescue him. When […]
Thanks to a recent issue of the New Yorker, I stumbled upon Nell Zink. After reading the New Yorker piece, I figured that if Jonathan Franzen had high regard for Nell Zink there must be something to this American writer (now living in Germany). That’s how I got to Zink’s new book Mislaid. The book […]
Ever since the Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson hit the jackpot (alas posthumously) for his crime trilogy, other Scandinavian writers quickly spotted an opportunity, clambered on the sex-murder bandwagon and pumped up their output. What was a novelty with Larsson and his dragon tattooed girl Lisbeth Salander has now turned into a tiresome exercise with the […]
Steve is so hugely successful and yet he treated so many people so badly. How much of an Asshole do you have to be to be successful? – Daniel Kottke (Steve’s friend and Apple technician who accompanied him to India), quoted in the new documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine As Executive Producer […]