I think doing period piece is easier, because after a certain distance, everybody is equal, I think. The relative contemporary is harder. I think that's the way it is.

I guess in Hollywood you chart your life by Oscars. You say to each other, "Remember when that movie won that year? It was 2006. Remember that?"

Every movie I make. That’s my hideout, the place I don’t quite understand, but feel most at home.

I think for most people, the audience probably couldn't tell the difference, but I know they [shots of visual effects] can be better. And the people working know they can be more precise. I'm still doing another round of sound mixing and color timing, pretty technical stuff. I think the movie [Life of Pi] is really presentable, nothing was left out that would take you out of the movie. I just need to perfect the job and I still have two weeks to go [to deliver final cut to Fox].

Americans are hidden dragons to me.

Thinking back to those earlier days, I felt I was weak when I wasn't making movies, and then when I was, I thought I was weak as a family member.

The thing we call critics are not really reviewers, they are not really critics. They don't have the discipline to write what we would term as critique - it's really just reviewers. They have a common man kind of taste. If you watch them overall, they are not different from the box-office. That's my view.