From Text to Image. What Silent Shakespeare Gets Right and Modern Bible Films Get Wrong

A common response when I mention silent film versions of Shakespeare is confusion. A look that says "but how would that even work?...

"Steel and Silk": A 100th Birthday Tribute to Olivia de Havilland, at Sight & Sound

The Siren is proud to announce that she was asked by the venerable Sight & Sound to write a tribute to Olivia de Havilland on the occasi...

Chupke Chupke, with drivers, botanists and communists

[An excerpt from my book The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee: The Filmmaker Everyone Loves . This is from Chapter 4, titled “Milavat, Banavat”...

How sci-fi cuts us down to size (and shows us what we can be)

[ From my Forbes Life book column ] It takes a while to figure out exactly what Isaac Asimov’s “Does a Bee Care?” is about – short though th...

Birds and cages: on Phobia, a feminist horror film

Watching Pavan Kirpalani’s compelling, creepy film Phobia , about a young artist who has a traumatic experience and becomes agoraphobic – af...

On Sairat, and the importance of a good poem

[ F rom my Mint Lounge column ] It isn’t easy to identify the precise moment when the tone of Nagraj Manjule’s Sairat goes from lilting and...

"Julian Barnes said, go ahead and betray me" - Ritesh Batra on adapting The Sense of an Ending

[Did this interview with Ritesh Batra for Scroll . Would have liked a more in-depth conversation about the challenges of adaptation, but it ...