a blog about a lot of things

Rome is a cliché. Usually that isn’t a good thing but when the cliché is that a city is cool, full of life and gorgeous, the clichés can stay. Rome is possibly the only European capital that can claim to rival Paris in the popular imagination in terms of having an expectation around it. Even Paris is now succumbing to parallel narratives due to the sheer size of the city (much like London), with the immigrant experience less of an unknown story (to non-immigrants anyway. Immigrants always knew it wasn’t cities paved with gold they’d find). Some combination of smaller population, less immigration and the weight of centuries of civilization being still visible across the city has allowed Rome to actually deserve the tag of “The Eternal City”.   My idea of Rome comes to me primarily from Italian films of the 1960s. Rome is black and white in my mind just as it is on Fellini’s film reel. I had low expectations. Months in London had allowed cynicism to set in...

Best Actor Most Likely Winner: Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass in Revenant. Might actually be the year for DiCaprio to get his Oscar. They might have to change the memes about always missing out (or bring out lots more if he does). A prominent role where DiCaprio gets to play a man going through pain and torture and fuelled by vengeance. Completely different from his more heralded roles as rich playboys in The Aviator and Wolf of Wall Street. Details of the harrowing filming conditions and the difficulty in portraying the part will surely also play in Dicaprio's favour as well. But the strength of the performance of a frenzied man is what would win him the Oscar.   Backup Pick:  Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe/Einar Wegenar in The Danish Girl. It's a cliche that an actress must make herself look unattractive to have a better chance at an Oscar (Charlize Theron in Monster, Nicole Kidman in The Hours) . I'm not sure how the case of Eddie Redmayne looking stunning as Li...

A Strangeness in My Mind A Strangeness in my Mind, the latest novel from Orhan Pamuk, is another of the author’s many odes to Istanbul. The novel touches on familiar ground for the writer, not the least of which being the city he grew up in. It also addresses the conflict between secular and religious groups in Turkey, as in his earlier novel Snow. It references heavily on the gap between the rich and the poor as in the novel The Museum of Innocence. Like all of Pamuk’s novels the structure is very postmodern, and the characters regularly address the reader directly. This may be the most overtly religious novel since Snow and while Snow had religion as a central them, the main character was not religious. The main character, Mevlut, who is a boza seller primarily but has a succession of unskilled jobs throughout the novel, is a religious man who worries about problems of a religious nature regularly. Women’s honor is less of a central theme than in The Museum of Inno...

Food is usually linked to memory. This isn’t an original idea and to many people the food that I’ve chosen is barely memorable, just as most people won’t really be able to speak of great cheese sandwiches or fried eggs and not mean a specific meal instead of the entire selection of eggs or sandwiches. Dosa is a simple meal which can be ready in a matter of minutes. I usually explain it as a savoury crepe made of rice and lentil flour. It is served with sambar (a lentil and tamarind stew) and coconut chutney. The best dosa I’ve ever had is at Dosa Mahal in Toronto. It was the first time I’d had dosa in almost two years and that was probably why it remained in my mind as a representation of the best. It’s impossible to untangle the experience of food from the taste only. The taste is linked to history. It’s a common enough trope that even children’s movies like Ratatouille can use the idea that a simple dish which evokes memories of childhood will have deeper and almost spiritua...

Travel Writings – Zurich Cuisine Rösti is considered to be the national dish of Switzerland. It’s a dish which has a lot of similarities with hash browns; as it consists of grated potato fried in a frying pan. It is thought to be highly representative of Swiss German culture in particular (which isn’t really surprising as it consists of potatoes). From my experience with German cuisine thus far, I hadn’t had high hopes for this dish. Traditional German cuisine seems to regard vegetables as an accompaniment to the meat and an accompaniment which needs little attention other than being boiled. I’ve been informed the quality of the meat more than makes up for it, but as I’m vegetarian that’s not really much use to me. It’s rare that I find a national dish that isn’t comprised of meat or fish, so even with little expectation of it being good, it was still a great opportunity. Luckily I was entirely wrong about the link of Swiss German and German cuisine being a liking for tast...

Purity The newest novel by Jonathan Franzen is the kind of novel which an author can only write when previous success has occurred. Without that track record of reliability or quality, the editors would have given the book much greater scrutiny. Purity suffers badly from a lack of editing. The main character is nominally the recent college graduate Purity, nicknamed Pip, though the Julian Assange-like figure of Andreas Wolf steals the spotlight as soon as he appears. The best of the entire novel is set in East Berlin and if more of the focus of the novel was spent on Wolf, it’s possible the novel would have been far more entertaining. The parts with Wolf are not without flaws, however, especially as the character’s repeated stating of his devotion to his mother and love for his past partner, are his motivations begins to seem less plausible as the book goes on. The other main character, Tom Aberrant, an editor at Denver Independent, gives us the most emotional parts ...

Picked from directors who are Latin American or Caribbean by birth or upbringing or film in those countries regularly (at least 3 films in the region). Exceptions will be made for quality film-makers of Latin American or Caribbean descent who film stories in the United States of America or Canada about Latin Americans or Caribbeans. Or perhaps for directors not of Latin American or Caribbean descent or residence but who film about the diaspora. Stories about the children of immigrants in North America counted in a separate section.  To qualify I'm making it that the director has to release an excellent film (in my opinion) during the 21st century and I need to be able to find at least 3 excellent reference films. Same criteria as the previous lists.  13. Jose Padilha -   Brazil Directing Timespan : 2002- Present Reference Films: Bus 174(2002); Tropa de Elite (2007); Secrets of the Tribe (2010) 12. Pablo Trapero -   Argentina Dir...