RIFLE RANGE BOY

Downfall (Der Untergang, German, 2004) After 60 years of having unpleasant memories of the Third Reich and his atrocities to people of the world over, a film finally came out from Germany to portray the leader whom they elected and would like to forget. Trying to juggle a balance of not hurting the victims of the war, giving a sympathetic face to this leader, telling the history as it is, give a story to just to a few random events in life is not an easy task, but the film managed to put it out just so well. For a person not very well versed in the nitty-gritty of warfare, it can be very confusing, but a little bit of background will put things in perspective. (especially Alec Guinness' '10 Last 10 days of Hitler' did help, though the latter was more simplified). The movie starts on a night outside Fuhrer's office in 1942. Candidates are waiting anxiously for an interview for the post of a typist. A mild-mannered Adolf Hitler walks out to greet all of them indi...

Ever since Mel Brooks used the line  “That’s it baby, when you got it, flaunt it! Flaunt it!” in the 1968 not so famous film 'The Producers' and Braniff Airways ad slogan screamed  “When you got it – flaunt it.” (1968 to the mid-1970s), that became the mantra of the then new generation (The late baby boomers and early Gen-X). We are living in an era where showing off and smoasting is an accepted way of life. What is construed as boasting by one may be accepted as self confidence by another. If you have the assets, then may as well flaunt it, the dream of capitalism being met, an ambition realized, down the drain to moderation and middle path, pride and joy to the clan! 1967 Slogan of the year The assets here may denote physical attributes or the age old desire of man- materialism. In the feudalistic era, kings were worshipped as demi-gods due to their ability to make dreams of mammoth proportions possible. Builder of Taj Mahal, Ruler of Ayuththya, Pharaohs are some ...

At a time of weakness, I must have signed up to this 30km run organized by the Pacesetters. After coming to my senses, it was then the question of pride to finish the run (not a race as such, unless you are running against your inner demons and naysayers)! This 'Back to Basics' 30km run is mainly a preparatory run for Penang Bridge Full Marathoners, but what the heck, I must have thought, too much of endorphins would not hurt anyone! Amidst bruised knees from a freak fall from a temporary lapse  of coordination and concentration sustained 2 weeks prior to , life on the long lonely run went on...(not Life in the fast lane by Eagles ) The running buddies were either too bruised by injuries or too cowed by the distance to partake. So, it was just me on the lonely run in the pitch dark Sunday morning @0530h. The course that was chosen is the familiar running hills of Bkt Tunku, the last bastion of green lung in the heart of KL. As those familiar with this route may v...

Forbrydelsen (The Crime, Danish; 2007) Season 1 Just got suckered into another mini series. This time it the original make of 'The Killing' in Danish. The Danish language edition of the American counterpart is supposed to be more engrossing with more human element. It is a cold and dark story befitting the country it is shot in. Three main characters/couples are mainstay of the show. Sarah Lund is drawn into a case of missing teenager, Nanna Larsen, on the day she is supposed to do her last police duty as she is leaving her job to settle in Stockholm. She is so sucked into the case that she lets her family leave without her. On the side, there are the parents of the missing teenage girl who get the bad news of her death at the end of episode one. Then there is Troels Hartmann, the local candidate for Mayor in whose car the murdered girl was found submerged in the lake. The story drags on to 20 hours (20 episodes) before the mystery of the murder unfolds. It procee...

There are guys who like to bring it upon themselves to make sure that people around them are aware of their affluence by including phrases like 'When I was in Frankfurt..." or 'during my umrah' to subtly announcing his 'holier than thou' devotion to his new found faith. I remember a guy who was boasting about his multi million ringgit project just not to have enough money to pay his minuscule clinic bill! In short there are many around us who are pure show offs (and some empty vessels with a lot of noise). There is this small built guy with a rather strange head gear which looks like a cross between a turban and a beanie with an ever willing toothy smile and a piercing stare whom I had the privilege of meeting through my line of work. He appeared to me to be timid, soft spoken and courteous. One day, he presented to me a CD and asked me to have a listen. It turned out to be his debut instrumental composition album, a 7 track musical extravaganza with he as...

In the limelight but for how long? By now we are all too familiar with the now infamous blog 'Sumptuous Eriotica' with the authors' (s)exploits and public display of their supposedly private expression of their casual love. And the hysteria that had followed suit, by the main stream newspapers who would otherwise have to continue churning out oft nauseating news of praise of the ruling party and bashing of the opposition. The issue, stems from the fact that it is just a difference of importance placed by two different generations. The older generation lived a life trying to pacify the needs of the society whilst sometimes sacrificing personal needs or desires. The newer generation on the other hand live for themselves, to satisfy their needs and care a damn of others. They can all go to hell for all they care. It is already a challenge trying keep pace with others and establishing themselves in this competitive world. Compromising for others is not on their a...

Sex blogger takes to Facebook to blast media, critics By  Lydia Gomez  |  Yahoo Newsroom  –  Mon, Oct 22, 2012 KUALA LUMPUR, Mon.: When it comes to sex bloggers Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee's attitude towards their expose', the phrase 'taking it in their stride' is a gross understatement. The duo, whose mercurial rise to infamy became the topic of frenzied online discussions and non-stop  media coverage, have bulldozed their way through the harshest criticism with what appears to be confident, sarcastic rebukes. Tan, an ASEAN scholar and law undergraduate at the National University of Singapore (NUS) ,  took to his Facebook account to systematically rebut the highly publicised brickbats thrown at them, mostly through local news headlines.  Taken from his profile, these are his posts:   "I love these NUS Board of Discipline hearings, where the judge and the prosecutor are the same people"  - [The NUS is conducting an interna...

It is that time of the year again! No, not the time of Yuletide, snow and cheesy movies showing love, humanity and kindness. It is that time of the year where nobody bothers switching off lights after leaving a room, sleeping double wrapped up in blanket when air conditioned rooms are intentionally set at 16 degrees C! This sheer wastage of power and recklessly leaving carbon foot print all over the place will go on all the way through Diwali, Christmas, New Year and Lunar New Year until the last Saturday of the month of March, on Earth Day. It is at this time that perfectly sane people will call friends to their homes for birthday parties just to sit in semi darkness with only the brightness of wax filled lit tea cups for light. For 1 whole long hour, the young generation will insists on doing usual chores, besides littering, exhaling CO 2, cruising in their petrol powered oil guzzling automobiles and scrolling on their nickel battery powered smart phones and other digital device...

Devi (Goddess, Bengali,1960) Director:Sathyajit Ray The film starts with the worship of Goddess Kali, fireworks and Diwali. Uma (Soumitra Chatterjee) and wife Daya (a young Sharmila Tagore) lives with his osteoarthritic and staunch Kali worshipper father. The father is rich with many servants at his disposal. He also houses Uma's brother, wife and child Khokha in their home. Uma leaves for Calcutta to sit for his B.A. exams. During his absence, the father dreams that Daya is actually the reincarnation of Goddess Kali herself! He rushes to Daya's room to prostrate in front of her, joined by others in the household. Pretty soon Daya is placed on a dais and daily prayers done upon her with aarti, bells and all. Daya, the docile occupant of the patriachial home follows suit without giving a fight. Meanwhile, Daya is trapped in a lonely world. Her chirpy world comes tumbling down. Her demure smiles vanish, her regular play with Khokha ends abruptly. On Uma's return, a ...

12 Angry Men, 1957 This is one of those films whose story started as a radio drama to make it to become a stage drama and later  into films in many languages from English to German to Russian to Hindi to Kannada and the story had been featured in many TV Serials including 'Happy Days' where Fonz did his jury duty. The movie starts with the judge instructing the 12 juries to be ushered to a room for deliberations before deciding on the guilt of a 18 year old Hispanic boy from a broken home who have allegedly stabbed his father to death. At first look, it looks like a open and shut case to most jury members. The crime and the chronology of events is only made available to us as we listen to the discussion that goes on in the hot and stuffy room. The 12 members are all Caucasian males of different professions. No names are made available to us, only their professions (car salesman, architect, ad man, architect, watch maker, painter, man who grew up in slum). The heat in the r...

The Night of the Hunter, 1955 Just like John Garfield, Robert Mitchum is considered one of the kings of film noir with its dark themed subject. Even in life, Mitchum and Garfield got had a brush with the law - Garfield for links with the Communist movement during the McCarthy era which cost him his livelihood and probably premature death fro m ischaemic heart disease; Mitchum with charge of assault for which he was incarcerated. Robert Mitchum has that God given good looks at the same time looking mean with a dark past! Here, he acts as a preacher, Harry Powell, with a deviant understanding of the religion who doubles as a serial killer and goes after rich widows. After his last duty from God (of killing yet another widow - he lost count), he is arrested for possession of a stolen car. He is found guilty and is jaiiled. Ben Harper (Peter Graves, of Mission Impossible fame) is his cell mate. He is a condemned prisoner who had murdered two men and had hidden his stash...

Someone told me the other day of what happened in a small constituency in Singapore. The Prime Minister and his ruling party members were having a 'meet the people' session.  The audience was predominantly young. When the speaker asked for suggestions on things that should be carried out in their area for their benefit, one of them got up to say, "That is what we, the taxpayers elected you for!". I do not think this is what the nationalistic part of LKY had in mind when he and his party members set out to develop their trawler parked backwater state after leaving the coalition in 1965 with no natural resources to rely on but only their mental acuity to fall upon to the present first world status. He must have thought the subjects would be subservient and put him up on a pedestal and forever immortalize him in the journals of Singapore history. But no! The product of his transformation feels that his patriarchal interventions are only to be laughed at. Sudde...

The River (1951) The film made in technicolor was shot totally in Bengal and was the launchpad of Satyajit Ray's career. At a glance it looks like a young girl's coming-of-age film about love and growing up but if we were to analyse, they are a lot of things buried in its story. Sometimes, it also sound like a documentary with many shots of  River Ganges, peasants at work, in their natural habitat and celebrations (Diwali and Holi) with the recurrent voice overs. The story revolves around Harriet, a young teenage girl, who grows up with 4 other younger sisters and a much younger brother in a well to do Caucasian family living by the Ganges with the help of servants and nanny. Her neighbour, Mr John, has an American visitor, a dashing young serviceman (Capt. John) with one leg. Harriet and her slightly elder friend, Valerie are both infatuated with him. Mr John is now a widower (his Hindu Indian wife deceased) with a daughter, Melanie, who has a serious identity crisis - wh...

The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha (Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne), Bengali, 1969. B/W Can you imagine someone making a film for his son because of dearth of local children story, made on a story written by his grandfather? Well, that someone is Satyajit Ray, the legendary film maker who was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar by his favourite actress, Audrey Hepburn at his death bed in 1992 in his home in Calcutta! Even though with technical advances of the swinging 70s, this film was made in black and white due to financial constraints. There was a financial offer to make in colour but Ray decided against it as it would casting a certain someone from Bollywood! A village idiot, Gopi, flaunts the tempura (a musical instrument like a veena) and is ridiculed by the village elders. They play a prank on him. They coax him to croak in front of a village head's abode, rudely awakening him from his morning sleep, causing his wrath. Gopi is humiliated and banished from the villa...

Men Behind the Sun (1988) Saw a rather disturbing movie the other day. Disturbing, because of the gruesome cinematography and because of the subject matter. It was a historical film directed by a Chinese director named T.F Mou and relives the atrocities carried out by the Japanese Imperial Army (Manchuko Unit 731) on its prisoners during the tail end of the Second World War. Gruesome human experiments using biological weapons with microbes like anthrax  plague and many more were done. The efficacy of various bombs and poisons were conducted on live subjects. The ability to withstand extreme temperatures were tested. The subjects were Chinese, Russian and Korean prisoners. The centre is led by a scientist named Shiro Ishii and it is unbelievable what men can actually do his fellow kind all in the name of national pride and war. I doubt that we are now wiser than we were before more than three quarter of a century ago. We are still doing the same thing this very moment - ki...

I probably will let my imagination go berserk on this one. It may stink of stereotyping, generalization and gross assumption. I may be wrong but what the heck. It is the only way to keep the neurons firing away and keeping senility at bay. Talking about senility and selective amnesia at will, we have seen many around us guilty by the first degree on this charge! Just the other day, I saw a lassy pushing a deep pram like contraption with three thorough bred puppies sticking their heads looking at passers by. The lassy,  in her mid 20s, in a well confident poise, brimming with self confidence with her equal well sculptured gymnasium time spent thighs and legs and hot pants, stiletto to accentuate her bragging rights and tops leaving little imagination of the modesty that it was meant to cover which was nothing to feel outraged about anyway, was trying to get her 'babies' into her car with her partner. The partner, probably not witnessed by fire, tea ce...

Nowhere Boy 2009 If you expecting another of those Beatles glorifying films, you are in for a disappointment. It is actually an emotional drama of John Lennon's early days as a confused teenager who has deal with his estranged biological mother, Julia, who left him at the age of 5 to stay with her sister, Mimi. He grows up to be a troubled teenage always getting into the wrong side of the school - the trouble side. This is a biography of a teenager John Lennon was told by his principal that he is going nowhere (in his future) - hence the title but also his later song, Nowhere Man. He grows up with Auntie Mimi and Uncle George since five. John is very attached to his uncle but he, however, dies early. With his friend Stan, he secretly goes to visit his biological mother Julia, a shallow, inappropriately behaviouring promiscuous young at heart (for her age) lady who is married with two kids. John finds himself able to open up better than with Aunt Mimi but he still cannot get ov...