Owlspotting

I wrote a bunch on this blog about the awesome Romanian movies of the past couple of years. Now there is finally a gorgeous story that puts all the necessary context around the idea. Of course it does. It’s a piece by A.O. Scott after all. I did my own version of this for CS […]

I can’t see the sun anymore—it’s now a smidgeon of light behind grayish clouds, as if it turned away to fluff the pillows and get ready to tuck itself in. I’m not a sucker for sunsets and I’m not one to indulge much in star-gazing or in the occasional open-sky-as-a-parable-for-freedom banter. I once dumped a […]

Freaky Fridays have made a career over the past couple of months in Targu Mures so it was time to export a little of the magic to the nation’s capital, Bucharest. I woke up early to be as close to spending 24 hours on the Bucharest streets as possible–thus shining a brief ray of light […]

When I arrived home this summer I asked around for new Romanian music that might be worth a listen. I didn’t get many suggestions–the lead singer of a Romanian rock band actually replied to my query in an e-mail saying: “Are you serious?” It was at that point that Luiza told me I should look […]

There is something about my Fridays in Targu Mures. They are odd, conflicting, almost schizophrenic. Last night fit the bill perfectly. Things kicked off around 6 PM when I decided to attend a photo exhibit opening coupled with a poetry book launch. This local artist had traveled to India and she was displaying some photos […]

Last night felt surreal for a few hours. Before me and my friends settled in the smoke-infested joint that has become our second home, we experienced Romanian Gothic and Romanian Joy in rapid succession. We kicked off the night with a movie. We thought Romanian cinema might need a few extra lei so we decided […]

It’s not easy to translate English-language movies into Romanian. Doing subtitles is bad enough as way too often cultural references and certain phrases hit a brick wall when meeting the translator. But even worse is the translation of the actual movie title. Sometimes, the translation reflects the title (which happened in the case of “Inside […]

Remember when the whole red state-blue state thing was fun, insidery jargon used by political junkies? Yeah, those were the good ole days. Much the same as we have to tolerate the thousands of permutations of Evangelicals Doing Stuff, now we have to put up with endless stories on the red-and-blue theme. One of the […]

A post on the music-dominated blog BrooklynVegan inspired me to compile a top five of albums released so far in 2005. I can safely rank the first two: 1. The Decemberists – Picaresque 2. Bright Eyes – I’m wide awake… it’s morning And unranked, here are the other three: System of a Down – Mesmerize […]