RIFLE RANGE BOY

Rustom (2016) This is essentially a remake of Sunil Dutt-Leela Naidu starred 1963 film  Yeh Rastey Hain Pyar Ke  which in a retelling of the murder of a debonair businessman Prem Ahuja allegedly by a naval Commander, Kawas Nanavati in 1959. Using artistic licence, the screenplay had been altered to appeal to the general public. A supposed crime of passion had been changed to be a story of nationalism and sacrificial deed to protect the sovereignty of Mother India against corrupt naval officers and greedy businesspeople. No one wants to hear about a mother of three two-timing her husband. Hence, the wife's character is made to be a newly-wed drop-dead gorgeous bored wife. Akshay Kumar, after acting a do-gooder patriotic Indian is Airlift, shows his nationalistic side in this film. He tries to endure hardship, humiliation, career and family pride just to protect the country he loves. The script is too predictable. The element of suspense is missing and as an aud...

A Malaysian documentary on the issue of statelessness among Filipino migrants in Sabah. Living Stateless (Di Ambang) (2014) Created by Matthew Fillmore Like stray animals, they are shooed. They bring the value of their property down. There are poor. There are stateless. Nobody wants them. They are the stateless people of Sabah. While the rest of the country would like to think they are heading to be a developed country by 2020, this fringe part of the state has been battling to get rid of this group of people originally from the Philippines who are neither Filipinos nor are they Malaysians. Without proper documentations, the elders cannot secure jobs, the children cannot get a decent education, no one gets immunisation and medical attention. They show the resilience of the human spirit and are the emblem of the never-say-die attitude of the human race. They live scrapping on discards, monetise trash and perform clandestine menial tasks. Some build up enough courage to ...

Ten (Persian; 2007) Director: Abbas Kiarostami No, this is not Bo Derek starred 1979 romantic comedy! It is an Iranian minimalist movie done by an Iranian filmmaker extraordinaire, Abbas Kiarostami. Due to a rather hostile environment in Iran, moviemakers have to resort to ingenious ways to film without creating much of public fanfare. It basically involves two cameras placed in the dashboard area; one pointed at the driver and another at the front passenger of a car. There are ten snippets involving the main character, a woman, and her interaction with her son, her sister,  an elderly lady, a prostitute and a friend. We overhear her conversation with the various characters. From their conversations, as they travel through the streets, we can make a composite picture of her life and the life of the ordinary people in Iran. The woman (the protagonist) picks up her son. Through their conversation, we realise that the woman has divorced her husband by falsely proclaiming that ...

Se7en (1995) We are always told to avoid the seven deadly sins that damage humankind. Invariably, because of our inert weakness, we are lured into it. The motivation to stay clear of these temptations is the promise of eternal bliss in the afterlife. We get the chance to pass go, avoid purgatory, get the jail-free card and head straight to heaven. After all, our time on Earth is a fragment of our existence of our consciousness, which is forever. This film describes the tale of 2 mismatched cops who are called in to investigate a series of unrelated murders which later turns to be one done by a religious lunatic serial killer. All his crimes were based on the theme of the seven deadly sins; starting with a brutal murder of a morbidly obese individual and the word 'gluttony' scrawled on the wall,  followed by the killing of an attorney and the word 'greed'. Slowly, the background the cops are slowly unveiled as more bodies pile up, and they lose their patience. ...

Train to Busan (2016) Nobody in my circle actually finds pleasure in watching zombie movies. Neither do I. I sneaked this one just for the heck of it. And the verdict is - splendid. Just like any disaster movie, instead of having natural disasters, animal attacks or alien invasion to scare the wits out of the audience, here, the offending agents are the fast spreading zombies induced by other infected brain-dead zombies whose purpose in their zombie life is to bite healthy people! Putting all that senseless screaming and gore aside, which was tastefully done, by the way, there is a semblance of storytelling, development of character and purpose in narration. A busy executive modern dad, Seok-Woo, a fund manager is having a crisis to handle in office. Despite his tight schedule, he has no choice but to send his daughter, Su-Ann, to his estranged wife in Busan to spend her birthday. The emotional scene of a child yearning for her father's love is nicely expresse...

In times of tranquillity when your life is charted nicely in front you, you can talk. You would say, this is how one should do things, what is right, what is wrong, what is kosher, what is just and what is humane. The real test of humanity comes when civilisation is on the brink of collapse when law and order are in shambles. At times of emergency when the social order collapses and everyone is hanging on to their dear lives on a thread, decency, common courtesy and even humanity is a misfit. Does it really? Or is it the place where humanity is put to the acid test? Heard over a podcast about an incidence at a hospital during the time Hurrican Katrina hit New Orleans. The medical staff thought they were well prepared to handle the crisis, but they soon realised that panic button was hit when the levee broke on the second day. The hospital was flooded and by the third day, power supply was disconnected after the water reached the crucial areas. Mishandling of rescue s...

Sejarah Melayu (The Malay Annals) 2012. Translated by John Leyden (first publication 1821) ISBN 978-983-3221-38-7 This 19th-century book has been rewritten and refurbished to present-day written English, even though the Ye Olde English verbose composition is still evident. Sometimes one has the feeling that it appears like a direct translation from Classical Malay Language (Bahasa Klasik, Bahasa Istana). The author claims that the book is the result of the narration to him by the descendants of the Malacca Sultanate. It even has an introduction written by the 'founder' of Singapore, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. History is said to be the noble truth as told by the victors. History has always been the political tool to push particular agendas. This cannot be truer in the case of the Malayan scenario. Its syllabi have changed so much over the years that it appears that my understanding of the past had been totally misunderstood or perhaps I was not paying attention ...

Triumph of Will ( Triumph des Willens, German; 1935) The Godfather of propaganda must have realised early in his career that visual representation of a lie, often repeated will eventually be the accepted truth. This, coming from a person who almost made it to the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna, must be true. Thanks to a party member, a certain Elisabeth Nietzsche, he gained access to the mind of one the greatest 20th-century thinker, Frederich Nietzsche, her brother. His unpublished book, 'Will of Power', which Nietzsche thought was too controversial to man, was made available to him. Many of his ideas are starkly portrayed here in this propaganda film.   Like Zarathustra, in Nietzsche's book,  Hitler appears from the clouds and disembarks the plane to present his good news to the people. If Zarathustra brought in the news from the mountains, that God is dead, this time, it is at the Nuremberg, and it is the Social Democrat party assembly. He ...

Dedicated to PC who wanted to know my barber's philosophy... During our many hair-cutting sessions, I used to engage in deeply engaging banters about philosophy and religion, specifically religions of the Indian sub-continent. The barber shop is a simple establishment, in keeping with his simple philosophies of life, has seen much changes since the 80s when it was first set up. Starting life with a strict religious upbringing in his childhood and early adulthood, certain life changing events indeed changed his outlook on life, belief in God and attitude towards the self-professed upholders of the organised religion. In other words, there is the Maker (Nature, Cosmos, whatever) and there is him. That is all. A dash across two dates. The darkness before your existence and after, no previous lives and no after-life. Above us only sky and no cycles of re-birth and no book of Judgement too. During one of our colloquy, he brought up the notion of the origin of Lord Muruga, the deity...

Stranger Things Season 1 (2016) This is the golden age of TV, they say. With the input from companies like Netflix, box sets and internet TV streaming, binge-watching had never seen a better time. For a television addict, abstinence is becoming a Herculean task by the day. This latest offering from Netflix that is taking the millennial and Gen-Y geeks by storm is 'Stranger Things'. It brings to life all the things we saw in the 80s - BMX bikes, big glasses, striped T-shirts, big hair and the adventures of the nerds ala-Spielberg. It can be summarised as a Stephen King story with the screenplay of John Carpenter and the cinematography of Steven Spielberg. It can be summed up as a hotchpotch of a potpourri of box-offices of the 80s - ET, Goonies, Batteries not Included, Poltergeist and course the unforgettable X-Files. In fact, the opening music score is a reminiscence of that of X-Files. There are the three school misfits in place of Mulder and Scully to do the brai...

With the spate of events one after another, honouring someone in one way or another, I started thinking. Somebody sent an intercontinental Raksha Bhandhan greetings to his new found sister from another mother whilst refusing to recognise the existence of his own biological one. Another tied the band of allegiance with much disdain just for the sake so as not to break the tradition. In real life, this brother-sister duo was like snake and mongoose, eternal mortal enemies. When they met, one would look West whilst the other looked East, such were their animosity. Come to tying the string of brotherly protection in the world so hostile; they were all geared with sweets, nuts and showers of incense water to fragrance their sharing of common DNA! Same with Mothers, Fathers, Labourers, Farmers, zodiac animals in the Chinese calendar and the Hindu scriptures revered animals, the sacred cows and the divine Elephants.  The animal denoting the iconic remover of hurdles, the wise o...

Nitchiya Tamboolam (1962) Met up with a friend after 30 over years. I did not have much to talk about then, did not have the opportunity to, but now, somehow we clicked on common grounds. After honing his survival skills with the courtesy of the School of Hard Knocks of Life, he has a leaning towards philosophy. We had talked a good one hour before we realised that we had others to meet up at the gathering. When we spoke about films and philosophy, he was quick to add, "Why go so far as to look for philosophy in movies when you have tonnes of them in every Tamil movie!" True. Just look at this happy tune from 1962. It shows a group of carefree youngsters, including the pudgy Sivaji Ganesan who is trying to portray a young punk, are seen singing merrily humming a tune and playing their harmonica and guitar, driving down a country road. Despite the temporary setback in the punctured tyre, they repair their damage and carry on their merriment with a little bit of help...

Flowers (BBC4; 2016) Everyone starts life with so much of vigour and hope. They have certain expectations in life. They may have many aspirations and dreams that they may want of their family, their love ones and their offsprings. The dreams may just be sandcastles in the air, wishful thinking or a desire to satisfy their own unfilled dreams. The problem is everyone has their own ideas how these ambitions should be attained. And they make their wishes known. They also want others to follow the path that they feel is a sure way to success. The problem is there are many ways to Rome, and everyone has their pace at taking the journey, Some rush from point A to point B with blinkers; other smell the fresh air and enjoy the bloom! Herein arise the problem. The inability to keep us with each others' expectations draw parties farther and farther apart. To somehow maintain the divine sanctity of the family unit, people go to great lengths to prevent it from crumbling even at the expen...

Source Code (2011) Director: Duncan Jones When you switch off a filament lamp, the light just does not go off just like that. There is a temporary time before the brightness disappears. Even life is that. If somehow we can get into the dimension when two people die, one life can mathematically be calculated to get the others and can be made to turn the tide of events. This bizarre time travel where scientists can communicate through a digital interphase to save the world is the theme of this movie. Capt Colter Steven finds himself trapped in the body of a school teacher and on a train where a time bomb is about to be detonated. Through repeatedly moving to and fro between his old self and new, and communication through his computer, the Afghan-missioned army helicopter pilot is actually dead but is sent on a secret mission to find the culprit behind a train attack so as to avert other future attacks. His mission was just to locate the information about the perpetrator...

I remember a time in my early teenage when I was assigned to pay off debtors. As the sums involved were pretty substantial, and I had never handled such large amounts in my life, a number of 'supposed' trustworthy relatives were assigned to act as bouncers. After pawning some dear jewellery that my mother had accumulated on the sly over the years, we headed off to pay the creditors. With a heavy heart for money lost, one by one, the names on the list were struck off. I thought that was the end of it, until a few more emerged out of the blues 12 years later. That is another story. After the unenviable job of distributing the dues to the creditors, the relatives who were given the task of standing guard during the work thought it was time for their contributions. After all, it was lunch time. A job 'well done' needed remuneration, they thought. And off the two assigned relatives decided that they should retire to have a good meal for mission accomplished. I, the timid ...