Shiraz Janjua

Writer and producer who is passionate about mashups between documentary, animation, gaming and the Web, and who believes in storytelling that is wise, unexpected, idealistic and playful.

Category: Film

The Backwater Gospel

Francis Ford Coppola on Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration

Thought-provoking interview with Coppola at The 99 Percent blog.

The Rise of Self-Awareness in Cinema: Is Film Doomed to Become a Mockery of Itself?

Fascinating thought-piece on Slashfilm about the self-reflexive nature of contemporary Hollywood film. Cinema has entered a new dawn. It arrived a while ago, actually, and you may not have even noticed. I’m not referring to the recent surfeit of remakes, sequels and adaptations, or the rebirth and subsequent profusion of superhero movies, or even the [...]

Logorama

This year’s Oscar winner for Best Animated Short.

Stuff I enjoyed in 2009

A collection of things I discovered and enjoyed this past year, whether or not they were released this year. Selections are in alphabetical order. What’s on your list?

The passion of United 93

What I realized after watching the film United 93 is that a lot of the time, I’m talking right out of my ass. It’s hard to not get too attached to particular feelings of certainty, of somehow knowing that you know more or are smarter or have more perspective on a situation than someone else. [...]

Star Wars, orthodoxy and spirituality

I was looking over the post I made about The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and I thought back to actual philosophical conversations some friends and I have had about Star Wars. We were all born in the late 70s, so Star Wars was part of our childhood mythology. It’s a passion for us, and [...]