It was a sweltering summer afternoon when photographer Taha Ahmad first walked into Feroz Shah Kotla, a sprawling 14th century citadel in New Delhi. At the gate, the guard warned him to take care of his camera. Cheels, birds of prey also known as black kites, circled above his head, trying to catch pieces of…
Daniel Harmon got lucky growing up. The entrepreneur came from a “freedom-loving family” where even his Uncle sat him down to share key principles behind American capitalism. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWhen Harmon became a parent himself, he realized “how few people get that kind of a foundation.” “Not everyone has…
“I’m just a guy who says… ‘I can do some good here.’” Discovery+ has released the first official trailer for a documentary called Citizen Penn, indeed about the actor Sean Penn. But this is about the time in 2010 he decided to gather aid workers and fly down to the Caribbean nation of Haiti to…
Starting from the from the highlands of Guinea, the Moa River flows southwest toward the Atlantic Ocean. Along its path, the wide river hosts a cluster of islands. One of those is Tiwai Island, a 12-square kilometer piece of land in the southwestern region of Sierra Leone (about 30 kilometers from the Liberian border). Read…
★★★ Directed by: Christopher Smith Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWritten by: David Beton, Dean Lines, Ray Bogdanovich Starring: Jessica Brown Findlay, John Heffernan, Anya McKenna-Bruce, Sean Harris, John Lynch, Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’Shudder Film Review by: Chris Olson The Banishing review A…
I have yet to meet someone who loves a Monday. The start of the work week, the signifier of the end of the weekend, Mondays are literally the worst. While Monday, from director and writer Argyris Papadimitropoulos, is not the worst dramatic romance, it definitely resonates with the feeling of that dreaded day of the…
In St. Thomas’s churchyard, Stanhope, stands an unusual piece of history. What appears to be an old, dead tree trunk standing in front of a missing section of church wall just along from the war memorial is actually a large fossil. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThe tree would have grown some 320…
In 2017, Anoop Babani, Goa-based former journalist, was recuperating from a cycling accident when he encountered a book from 1931, With Cyclists Around the World, written by three Indians who, in the days before widespread paved roads and satellite communications, had biked around the world. “A new China has been born in the world,” they…
Going along Memorial Drive into Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, it may easy to overlook a small black-and-grey stone sitting next to an intersection. But a closer look yields something unexpected: an image of the space shuttle Challenger, located in a state with few connections to NASA or the space industry. Read moreA Guide to The…
In the early 12th-century, Norse settlers of Greenland established the first bishop seat on the island in the southern village of Garðar. There, a cathedral dedicated to Saint Nicholas, patron saint of sailors, was founded by Greenland’s first bishop Arnaldur in 1126. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThe church was composed of red…
The animated shorts are a wealth of emotions wrapped within the artistic caress of animation. With COVID-19 gripping the world this past year, the viewing experience of the 2020 animated shorts has been interesting, to say the least. Thankfully, my local theater, Fairfield Theater Company in Fairfield, CT, embraced the easing of restrictions and my…
Altogether, Joseph Stalin maintained about 20 different summer cottages or dachas, mostly around the Black Sea coast. He had health issues that included poor joints and lungs, so the weather of this warmer region was often comforting. He used this large building complex in Sochi rarely. However, it was always staffed and running just in…
Altogether, Joseph Stalin maintained about 20 different summer cottages or dachas, mostly around the Black Sea coast. He had health issues that included poor joints and lungs, so the weather of this warmer region was often comforting. He used this large building complex in Sochi rarely. However, it was always staffed and running just in…
Whether praising Miley Cyrus’ bona-fides and Andie MacDowell’s hair or extoling the virtues of the #16 taco special at Santa Barbara taqueria La Super Rica, Bill Murray was at his Bill Murray-est in accepting the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Maltin Modern Master Award, the festival’s highest honor. Murray was arguably the festival’s biggest “get”…
Located in the famous Gangnam District of Seoul, Seonjeongneung is a large park that stands out in the middle of the bustling and crowded capital of South Korea. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThis site is the burial ground of two kings and a queen of the Joseon Dynasty. The westernmost area…
California’s deadly, damaging wildfires worsen by the year. The state’s naturally dry landscapes, parched by a changing climate, have turned into tinderboxes. A stray match or lightning strike has the capacity to incinerate forests, fields, and neighborhoods. Last year saw a summer and fall of choking smoke and blood-red skies over huge portions of the…
When it comes to the carryover effect between America’s social dilemmas and its dependence on artificial intelligence, the command, unfortunately, is not “delete,” it’s “copy and paste.” That is the basis of Shalini Kantayya‘s frightening and informative documentary Coded Bias. The film, which premiered at Sundance 2020, has been the source of much-needed attention and much-deserved praise….
Most Americans haven’t heard the name Virgil “Bus” Carrell. But drive across the country and you’ll see Carrell’s work. And if you’ve entered a national forest, driven to a natural monument, or crossed the Continental Divide, you’ve probably even pulled over and snapped a selfie next to one of his creations. Those quirky brown-and-cream trapezoids,…
“Do not let yourself be blinded!” Focus Features has released an official trailer for Final Account, a eye-opening and frightening look back at Nazi Germany. And oh yes it definitely has an important connection to the events of nowadays. “Everyone knew, but no one said anything.” Filmmaker Luke Holland (who sadly passed away last year)…
The Palazzo del Tè was built in the 16th century as a leisure palace for Federico II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua. Italian artist and architect Giulio Romano, who had been a student of Raphael, designed the building. Today it is widely considered to be Romano’s masterpiece. The palace is filled with elaborate decorations and paintings—one room,…
Some news stories get far more attention than others, and there’s often a reason for it. When a liberal celebrity unleashes an anti-Trump jeremiad, for example, it quickly ricochets around the web. If that same star does something embarrassing, or hateful, on social media, reporters often look the other way. Read moreA Guide to The…