31.08.2007
There is a lot that can be said against Summer Palace the latest film by director Lou Ye, which has been banned in China, because of its depiction of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The film is too long, there are too many tedious sex scenes, which go on for too long and halfway through the film it looses focus. But still, despite its flaws, I was moved.
04.02.2007
It is hard not to be moved and angered by In This World, Michael Winterbottom's harrowing film about two Afghan refugees' journey from a refugee camp in Pakistan to London. I recommend watching it alongside Code Inconnu by Michael Haneke, which tells a similar story in one of its subplots.
28.01.2007
I finally got around to watching Devdas. The dvd had been lying around for some time, but because of its Titanic length, it had remained in the pipeline. Since I had just finished reading Edward Luce's "In Spite of the Gods. The Strange Rise of Modern India", the moment had finally arrived.
18.01.2007
I just went to Our Daily Bread, a brilliant documentary about the food industry directed by the Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter. The film is entirely without commentary. All you hear are the sounds recorded during the actual filming. It is hard to imagine what a voiceover could have added. The images make any commentary superfluous.
The Aesthetics of Financial Time Series
An appraisal.
Animated Discussion on Reading Sein und Zeit
Hilarious animated video about Derrida and Heidegger.
Just how representative are all those social science studies based on a small sample of North-American or European undergraduates?
Browse the archive