RIFLE RANGE BOY

The trial (1962) Based on novel by  Franz Kafka Orson Welles described 'The Trial' as the best film he made. Some critics, however, disagree and reiterate that 'they just don't get it'. I fall into the latter category - I get it but the artistic appreciation is beyond me! Anthony Perkins (yes, Mr. Norman Bates himself), the star of the original 'Psycho', acts in this movie where he (Joseph K) is rudely awoken early one morning by a few men assumed to be from the police to tell in so many confusing way that he is under arrest for an unspecified charge. There are two other characters Mrs Grubach (the landlady) and Ms Burstner, a night club worker and neighbour speak in a confusing manner just to make things more mysterious. K is summoned to attend what is supposed to be a preliminary hearing but it appeared more like a court with cheering spectators! Chaos seem to be the word of the day with K giving a sermon to the cheer of the crowd of th...

Two recent events made me think of the good old days, yet again. Early in my training, I was awestruck by the excellent clinical acumen that some of the surgeons had acquired in the course of their training. A surgeon or even a registrar in training for surgical examinations would just roll the hand gently over the abdomen whilst looking into the patient's eyes and stirring up a conversation will point blank make an accurate diagnosis of acute appendicitis even when the clinical manifestations would be far from that described in most medical textbooks. Believe you me, most of the time, the would get full marks for their diagnoses without the need for sophisticated imaging techniques. In fact, the registrar used to tell his trainees that the mark of a good surgeon is the ability to correctly diagnose acute appendicitis clinically. Two recent events queried the competence of surgeons these days. #1. An anaesthesiologist friend of mine was fretting about his ever increa...

Thich Quang Duc publicly set himself on fire in Vietnam in 1963 Reading through the excellent parallel biographies of Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi, one can imagine  what went through his mind when Gandhi proposed 'passive resistance' as a mean for Swaraj (self rule). Devoid of artillery superiority, reliance to economic and financial and skewing of Indian thinking from society to own self (individual rights), leaders of that era could only manipulate their subjects' mind through past glory of ancient civilization and nature! They said that Indian civilization had a much longer past than their invaders. So, the event of the intrusion of foreigners like the Mughals and the British were just but a drop in the ocean of India's very long civilization. Having able to boost their own self image, the next step was not go on head long collision with the invaders but to win psychologically - by gaining sympathy through pity through self torture or passive resist...

Chimes at midnight / Falstaff (1965) I am neither a student of Shakespeare nor one born in the circle of aristocrats but I have been informed that this is a compilation of Shakespeare's work taken bits and pieces here and there and altered slightly to give this Orson Welles' direction everlasting praise and awards. The fat comical character of Falstaff who appears in many of Shakespeare's plays is played by Orson Welles in this movie. He calls himself Sir John Faltroff but he seems to be just a petty thief who claims to be and to do more than he could. Richard II dies (some say murdered by Duke Bollingbroke) and relatives of the heir, Mortimer, comes to claim the throne but is chased away by the Duke. The Duke proclaims himself as King Henry IV. There is much chaos in the land but his son, The Prince, is just too happy fooling around with his fat fraud friend  Falstaff and his friends of ill repute in a lodge. After much deliberation, the Prince manages to fight the ...

Tariq Ramadan, a liberal Islamist, once asked the Dalai Lama, "Why do you recite your chants at 4 o'clock in the morning?". The wise one replied, "It is for my self discipline!" That, I think, my dear friend, lies the secret of mankind. The secret of all secrets is now out in the open. The rationale for people to do what they do as somewhat ritualistic, obsessive and compulsive like is actually to instill self discipline in one self. The purpose of prayer is not to request the Creator for wealth, health, happiness and protection for a pain free life and after life but rather to instill this human value so that he can think out rationally his next course of action so as to ensure he leads the path of least resistance. The quiet ambience in which one partakes his meditation and prayers must be the cornerstone for his to rationally think out his actions and act accordingly without rash. The ritual of allocating one day in a week for spiritual work, faithfully ...

The Man Who Saw Tomorrow (1981) At the height of the French revolution, 3 men dug the grave of Michel de Nostredame as legend had it that whoever drank from the skull of its occupant will able to predict the future. Upon opening the cast, they found the corpse holding a plaque with the number 1791 - that year they excavated the body! Nostradamus had predicted the year his body would be dug up. Unfortunately, the legend also said they would die - a stray bullet hit the digger! From the time immemorial, human being have been thrilled by the idea of gazing into crystal ball and looking into future. And that is what Nostradamus is said to have done- looking into the flicker of light of a candle and foresaw events 400 years into the future. As this type of cryptic knowledge was taboo in his era, and he could be charged with liaison with witchcraft, he wrote his prophecies in anagrams, Latin and French. This film is a documentary where Orson Welles' contribution is only being its...

20 Worlds greatest unresolved mysteries ever None of them is not explained yet, here are some fact about each of them…(from doctorweird.com ) 1. The mighty Incan Empire of South America  The mighty Incan Empire of South America flourished between 1200 and 1535 AD. They developed drainage systems and canals to expand their crops, and built stone cities atop steep mountains — such as Machu Picchu (right) — without ever inventing the wheel. Despite their vast achievements, the Incan Empire with its 40,000 manned army was no match for 180 Spanish conquistadors armed with advanced weapons and smallpox. 2. Ancient Pyramids in Giza , Egypt Khafre (l.) and Khufu (r.) are two of the three ancient Pyramids in Giza, Egypt . Khufu is the biggest, consisting of more than 2 million stones with some weighing 9 tons. The Pyramids, built as elaborate tombs for divine kings, date back to 2,550 BC. Modern Egyptologists believe that the Pyramids are made from stones dragged from quarrie...

Just the day, whilst on the treadmill, to beat boredom, I was just gazing the programme on the telly. They were showing a talk show called 'Jeremy Kyle Show'. Jeremy Kyle Show It is a trashy tabloid like a talk show, of the dysfunctional working class and usually fat people being paid to talk about their intimate problems in the open demanding something like a street justice from the audience who are just there because they probably have no job. The host of the show is, of course, Jeremy Kyle as the title suggests, an ex-insurance salesman, who tries to give his more than 2cents (maybe penny as it is a British show) to his guests, accompanied by the applause of the audience which sounds like a drum roll before a punch dialogue. (tarararara.....dish!!!)....Like in 'How I met your mother' when Barney says it, "Legend........wait for it........dary!" It is produced along the same line of 'Jerry Springer Show' in the US. The same theme of thriv...

Life is beautiful  (Italian) 1997 Yet another award winning international movie to assess. Italians, like Indians, appear to like to talk a lot. The length of conversation seem too long compared to the brevity of the subtitles, anyway. And the dexterity of their hand movement tries very hard to keep up with the speed of their speech. This film is another one of the movies that tries to reminisce that Holocaust and gained sympathy all the way to the Oscar (4 awards and 4 nominations) and Cannes (best movie). Roberto Benigni acted (won Oscar) and directed this flick. He made it an all family affair by casting his wife as the heroine. It is a simple story which can be divided into two halves. In the first half, set in a pre-World War 2 Italy, Guido, a Jewish, is shown to be a joker by nature, waiter at a restaurant, tries to set up a bookstore and falls hopelessly in love with a non-Jewish school teacher, Dora. Even though the family arranges for Dora to marry a civil servant, G...

Double Indemnity (1944) Nominated for 7 Oscars in 1945 but a winner of none, this pioneer film noir, directed by Bill Wilder won many praises from many revered directors like Alfred Hitchcock. It also raised many eyebrows for its conniving topic. Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray, one of the highest grossing actor then), an insurance agent stops at a customer's house (Mr Dietrichson) to remind him about his lapsed policy. The client's drop-dead gorgeous wife, Phyllis, (Barbara Stanwyck, the highest earning lady in America at that time) shows up, and our hero falls foolishly all over her. One thing leads to other, and our femme fatale tells him all about her sob story and miserable life as a second wife to her husband and his daughter from his first wife. The couple duped the husband to sign a life assurance policy without his knowledge with plans to kill off the husband and claim the money. The clause in the contract stated that the claim is doubled if the death is accidental -...

Journey into fear (1943) Whilst the whole world was busy fighting a war, Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton and his friends in Mercury Theatre were working with what they did best - i. e. film making. In contrast to the merciless villainous role that Joseph Cotton acted as in Hitchcock's 'Shadow of Doubt', here he portrays as straight forward American engineer (Graham) in Istanbul who is running for his life after a failed attempt on his life. Orson Welles appears as a Turkish police chief (Haki) who comes to his rescue by sending him back home by boat rather than his planned train trip. As predicted, his assassin is on board. They are Nazi agents out to delay the upgrading of Turkish Navy of which Graham is involved. Apparently, Welles was too busy with other commitments that he delegated directorial and other duties to others. Probably, if he were more involved in its production, then there would be imbroglio of massive reels of edited film yearning to be screened! In spite...

This is a blatant bastardization of a Malay proverb which goes like this, 'Lidah tidak bertulang'. Essentially it means that talk is easy and words can be malleable to suit a particular scenario. In other words, it shows the insincerity of man who would sway to the tide. Well, this colossal trait of the glossus (tongue) is a particularly useful tool of the trade of some professionals in the upholding the law (whichever side) business as well as politicians who have to make statements and modify them periodically. Why this talk about tongue, bones and insincerity? Imposing Bukit Takun, like a sleeping giant, forms a formidable backdrop at Templer Park. (The Star) On 9th May, Wednesday, at 6pm, a 51 year old seasoned trekker went into the jungle to trek out a path for his fellow climbing junkies and never came back. By the following day, a search party had been organised by police, family and friends to track him down. Just as soon the newspapers announced the news b...

The dust still has not settled on the surprise party that I organized for my deary. Since she is turning half a century old, though she looks easily looks a decade younger, she likes to be in the limelight, is a party animal (buts rises early the next morning for temple type) and she likes pleasant surprises, I thought, "Why not have a surprise party for her?" Now how do you organize a party for a person unashamedly says, "If you plan to have a surprise party for me, wait till for my sister from Canada to return home for a holiday at end of June, okay?"  Like it is going to be such a surprise that she would go, "Oh.......you shouldn't have!!!!! Oh" with a fake Oh....... This fake surprise is no surprise at all! First, to create a decoy, I just agreed that that should be the ideal time for the surprise. I would the one surprised when everybody screams surprise to the birthday girl and she is thrilled! When pressed to be more aggressive in getting th...