"An original, thoughtful, and daring anthropologist, Anand Pandian has written a book ostensibly about the fierce intensities of Tamil cinema and the great cultural themes that pervade it:  hope, color, space, love, desire, light, dream, time. It might, however, be more apt to describe this work as a rich, experimental meditation about the elusive momentum of creativity, the shift in perception when something unexpected happens. This meditation is set in the Tamil country, mainly in its cinema capital, Chennai, whose streets, tea stalls, beaches and offices are beautifully evoked. It is often difficult to decide if the emerging text is driven more by the inner landscapes of Tamil villagers (such as those discussed in Pandian's superb first book, Crooked Stalks ), or by resonant voices from the modernist canon (Bohumil Hrabal, Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, Lefebvre, Joyce, Deleuze). The lyrical interweaving of these worlds along with lively vignettes of many of the great names of south Indian cinema as they struggle to define themselves and their work offer us a context-sensitive understanding of 'cinema as a medium of thought, a way of thinking with the visceral force of moving images.'".