E.T., the Stolen Extraterrestrial?

Please join the Independent Film Circle for our next guest, Prof. Sudipto Shankar Roy, on Saturday, April 30th at 11am EST. You might first want to watch his jaw-dropping documentary, “Ordeal of an Impossible Dream” below.

Like Spielberg? All about E.T.? Or maybe you’re a screenwriter like me who feels infuriatingly certain that one of your scripts was once blatanly stolen? Get ready to have the top of your head blown off.

As always, this live, online event is free but pregregistration is required. Message me if you’d like to join.

Portfolio Links

  • New York Times, “The City” section cover story
    • Talk Radio , article about New York City’s hidden CB radio subculture
  • Published book foreword
    • A Postcard From India, first-person foreword for Raja Singha’s short story collection The Postcard Tales
  • Drexel University Office of Global Engagement
    • Jatra With Me, first-person essay about one of my Fulbright experiences traveling with a folk theatre company in India

Holey Logic, Batman

Brooklyn Rail review by Jeffrey Stanley of Richard Poplak’s The Sheikh’s Batmobile: In Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World; Soft Skull Press, September, 2010

Richard Poplak’s quick-witted survey of U.S. pop culture throughout the core of the Muslim world functions as a meaty, detail-laden addendum to Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus’s famed pop culture book. The latter claims to be a secret history of the 20th century, but nearly forgets that everyone has had a 20th century, not just a subculture of white people worshipping at the feet of Johnny Rotten and Malcolm McLaren. Punk rock is hard to take as anything other than really good rock-and-roll, and its so-called “philosophy of negation” is hard to take seriously when the music’s chief adherents are a bunch of white, middle-class kids shocked to discover that society is hypocritical. Really? It is?

The Sheikh’s Batmobile takes a step in the right direction, focusing on how U.S. pop culture, especially punk, heavy metal, and hip-hop, impacts upon and co-mingles with the cultures of the Middle East. The author is a Canada-based, white, South African journalist and director of music videos and commercials; he has a particularly keen eye and ear for the U.S.’s cultural influences, having been raised on a full diet of it himself.

During his two years of travels, Poplak dines with the Muslim world’s top CONT’D AT BROOKLYNRAIL.ORG>>