RIFLE RANGE BOY

Run Fatboy Run (2007) If only life was so easy to win the girl over after leaving her at the altar high, dry and pregnant. Five years after developing cold feet at the church, Dennis has a second lease on life when his ex-girlfriend allows him to bond with his kid. Just when he thinks of re-establishing his relationship, his girl gets cosy with an American Mr Perfect, wealthy, articulate, good looking and runs marathons! After that, you know what to expect. An out-of-shape smoker and a boozer whips into shape within three weeks to complete 26.2 miles of gruelling run. If only life was so easy and running marathons were such, well, run in the park!  This comedy, in the typical vein of any British comedy, is a self-depreciating one where a loser, a zero becomes a hero in the end. I do not why, but it keeps reminding me of another British flick, The Full Monty - a father fighting to keep his son with him. My running buddies would flip if anyone, who is ...

See what  I picked up from my WhatsApp group.. Uttam Kumar: It is said in the texts that 80% of the fighting male population of civilization was wiped out in the eighteen days Mahabharata war. Sanjay, at the end of the war went to the spot where the greatest war took place; Kurukshetra. He looked around and wondered if the war really happened, if the ground beneath him had soaked all that blood, if the great Pandavas and Krishna stood where he stood. “You will never know the truth about that!” said an aging soft voice. Sanjay turned around to find an Old Man in saffron robes appearing out of a column of dust. “I know you are here to find out about the Kurukshetra war, but *you cannot know about that war till you know what the real war is about*.” the Old Man said enigmatically. “What do you mean?” *The Mahabharata is an Epic, a ballad, perhaps a reality, but definitely a philosophy*. The Old Man smiled luring Sanjay into more questions. “Can you tell me what the p...

Ulagam Sirikirathu (The World is Laughing; 1959) I bumped into this movie quite by chance. It is one of those films which is heavy on dialogue and cynical on the behaviour of people in general. Its main character is the legendary actor MR Radha. This brand of sarcastic humour is typical of this player's social comedies. He tried to ridicule the average man's somewhat irrational practices, blind faith and herd mentality. It may not be your forte if Tamil is not your mother tongue as one has to understand the subtlety and the delicate nuances of the language to appreciate his brand of comedy. Even though the main story is a sort of a social drama telling the message of the evils of gambling, specifically horse-racing, MR Radha's antics of a social critic and a cynic takes the limelight over the main characters of Prem Nazeer and Sowkar Janaki. He pokes fun at people's frantic chase for money, exemplified by another character, a moneylender, played by VK Ramasamy. The...

They say that you, an individual do make that count. That is what they tell us when election day comes. They persuade you not to waste that vote and that it is everybody's birthright to choose their leader. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, so you do your share of your bargain. Cynics would reply them that a single swallow does not make up the whole summer. And that your single vote will never make the difference. That had never been a single incidence of an election decided by a single vote. But wait, there is! A constituency in Rajasthan was indeed caught in such a predicament in a 2008 Elections. A Congress candidate secured 62,216 votes versus his BJP opponent who managed 62,215 votes. The recounting of the postal votes and later, all the votes, showed exactly the same results. That, in itself, demonstrated how accurate the counting was! Zero error rate. The case later went to the courts when the loser accused the winner's second wife to have v...

Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) Director: Ken Loach Now, how often have we seen of individuals, in our day to day lives, who are obviously leading themselves into situations of self-destruction and hopelessness? The clear and present dangers of their moves are apparent to everyone except themselves. They stare into abyss and abyss becomes a part of them. They plunge into acts which self-destructive in nature. They go astray, but there is nothing you can do about it. Your pleas and words of advice just fall on deaf ears. Just how often you have heard them say, " I know what I am doing!", "I am in control here!", "Just leave me alone!", "It is my life!" actually and "Don't control my life!" In the era of self-empowerment and individualism, nobody can put them in order especially if they are no longer minors. These people not only spiral into self-destruction but pull others into the whirlpool of the same. The authority takes charge o...

Before the Flood (2016) This must surely be the follow-up to Al Gore's 2006 'The Inconvenient Truth'. It is an indirect manner of telling that nothing much has changed in the past ten years except that what was known as global warming is now referred to as climate change. The latter seems to be a more appropriate term as the weather change caused by the excessive emission of greenhouse gases also give rise to colder winters as well. Before the Industrial Revolution, the world used to be in a steady state. Greenhouse gases (water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, fluorinated carbons and ozone) from the perspiration of plants and animals helped to maintain the temperature of Earth which would otherwise be too cold (-18 degree C) for human inhabitance. The corals in the sea and lush green forest act as a reservoir to absorb the extra greenhouse gases primarily carbon dioxide,  CO 2.   Man's insatiable desire to assault of Nature with their...

Continuing in our series of exploration of smacks of philosophy in Tamil film, we will look into a MGR starred 1971 film, Rickshawkaran. It must have been a year to honour the little men of the cheaper mass public transportation sector, the trishaw men! Later that year, another film, Babu, was released with Sivaji Ganesan as a dedicated cart pulling trishaw man makes a graduate out of his adopted daughter. I did not realise that quite early in childhood I had been infused, rather subliminally with Nietzschean philosophy. Of course, the Indian screenwriters need not look up to Nietzsche for inspiration as the Vedic scriptures already have in abundance a treasure chest so filled with philosophy that would last many generations.  In this song, MGR a MA graduate, yes Masters of Arts, who just finds being a rickshaw rider more rewarding than other bourgeois professions, tries to pacify a child from the monstrosities around her. Her father had  been murdered and MGR is try...

DUKE Inspector Mislan & the DUKExpressway Murders By: Rozlan Mohd Noor Met Rozlan at a book reading event and was convinced by him to give a go at his brand of Malaysian crime pulp fiction. After leaving the police force, one of his lifetime ambitions was to write ten books. Apparently, he has almost filled up with bucket list; two more to go!  He mirrors his protagonist after Horatio of CSI Miami, the mysterious cop with many hidden things in his closet. He juggles life as a single parent of a preteen and his demanding job of busting crimes in the city of Kuala Lumpur.  A car crashes onto a divider in the DUKE highway. Initial investigations soon reveal the victims to be business colleagues and lovers. What is initially reported as a suicide-murder becomes murky as the investigating officer, Inspector Mislan Latif, finds more and more loose ends that do not fit. The case becomes hotter as many people from the top, his superiors and politicians, hellbent ...

Bread and Roses (2000) Director: Ken Loach Staying true to what Nietzsche was saying about masters, slaves and master morality, the economic migrants put their lives at stake to get to be like their masters. They (the migrants) yearn to be like the masters; speaking their language, dressing like them and abandoning their age-old traditions. Whatever the masters did was good and their own self-depreciating. They achieve what they want, but they are still not happy. They have a kind of self-realisation. They realise that their back-breaking endeavours are only to make the masters' life comfortable at the expense of their (slave's) health and life. They rebel, demanding appropriate recognition and remunerations. That is when the boat starts to rock. The masters do not like all these melodramas. After all, there are many other newcomers ever-ready to fit into the workers' shoes. The master's continuity of comfort and high-brow lifestyle is of supreme importance. Hence...

They say the silent majority has spoken. They say this is democracy in its full glory. That a single swallow would not make a whole summer. The loud and verbose cannot hoodwink the masses with their rhetorics and statistics. After all, they, the elitists and the deep-pocketed, only make a small portion of the general public. The 99% do not share the same sentiment as the top 1%. They do not care what the foreign policy is or who does what to whom in the name of justice or freedom. They are interested only in bread and butter issues. They want their continued way of life, their style of doing things and their rights. And they saw through the media bulldozing of intelligentsia agenda and meaningless smokescreen. Did they really? Do they not expect some decorum of their leaders, some politeness in speech and inclusiveness in leadership? Are they persuaded by his media presence, his fast talk, his ability to go down to their level to speak their lingo? Some say that people are stupid,...

Pink (Hindi, 2016) That is the reality. On one side, we have the fairer sex fairing better by leaps and bounds in all areas; equality, education, knowledge, even in games that require endurance, as leaders in society and assertiveness. We concede that we are modern and do not impose the chains of control over them. On the other hand, we are still feudalistic in our mindset. We still look at them as lesser beings. We expect them to behave in a particular manner and wait for them to curl up to meet our primal, animalistic needs. We make our own impressions about their needs. We assume their seeming ordinary acts of culture, intelligent behaviour as an invitation to casual sex. We say they asked for it. Their way of dressing, friendly demure and friendly gestures are misconstrued. The society has the view that when she says 'no', she means 'yes'. We have different rules for different genders. Men are not ready to lose their patriarchal role to give the female gender eq...

See what I picked up off WhatsApp... *Parent Induced Wastefulness* (PIW) When parents strive to give their children the best of everything at an early age, they are sowing seeds for materially insatiable monsters that are prone to sloth, apathy, avarice and fear. Don’t stand in self-defence as yet. I have proof. As I sit in my counsellor’s chair day after day I encounter an altogether a new disorder that I have come to label as- *Parent Induced Wastefulness* (PIW). Here are a few examples: * 26-year-old Manas does not want to finish his Engineering degree because he does not ‘feel like’ studying. But he harasses his parents every day for money. He tells me that whenever he did not feel like doing any particular activity, his parents told him he could quit. They always said they did not want him to get ‘stressed’ like they were when growing up. * 34-year-old Raghav is a qualified Engineer and is married for two years but his wife is not ready to live with him hence th...

Awake: The Life of Yogananda (2014, documentary) This documentary is not much of a faith-changing experience for its non-believing viewers. It is just a superficial narration of  the lifetime of an Indian yogi who introduced yoga and the mystical thoughts to the rapidly changing American public of the 1920s and beyond. Parahamsa Yogananda went on a mission to introduce his brand of meditation and tapping of positive inner energy from within. It starts off with the story of his moment of enlightenment when he believes that the picture of his guru had cured him of his ailment. From then on, he had many life-changing experiences which convinced him of his purpose of his existence in this life. His calling to the USA was a turning point in his life. Starting with a series lectures to packed auditoriums, he subsequently started an ashram in California. With his piercing eyes, which some says peeks into your soul whilst others says they reminds them of Rasputin, his movement met w...

Cathy Come Home (1964) This is the story of many societies. The urban dwellers, unable to keep up in the rat race, get left behind. Initially occupying the centre of the city, as their earning capacity declines or the opportunity dwindles, they get displaced. Slowly they abandon their urban dwelling to sojourn for something modest at its fringes. With further obstacles, they go further to the suburbs. In the best of times, they form the backbone of the workforce. As the economic pie gets smaller and the profit to the bosses takes a dip, they are replaced by economic migrants who would work for a song. And the original urban dwellers would show their resentment to the migrants and the system they plunge further into hopelessness. The bourgeoisie blames the poor for taking it easy, for their decadence and not saving for a rainy day. The poor feels that it is their birthright to be cared for, after all, they contributed immensely to the progress of the country. The politicia...

http://wallpapersafari.com/ Maybe it is just me with my twisted mind. Perhaps the others do not have such morbid imaginations about life. They like to see their glasses half full rather than their nihilistic nemesis. But I cannot help it. My mind seems to go on autopilot, and I cannot press the reboot button. It is hanging but still buzzing under the surface. Luckily it only happens sometimes. This train of thought came sprawling to me one day when I was given the honour to bear witness to the public declaration of a private intent, i.e. to bless a couple who wish to share their joy of nuptial bliss. There I was sitting at the back row of the dinner table just watching the world go by. Sometimes, people watching can be therapeutic. It can stimulate your philosophical cords. You can also indulge in a game of one of trying to guess their background, stature, the worries, their fears etceteras. Nobody wins and nobody loses in this meaningless game to kill time. It dawned upon m...