RIFLE RANGE BOY

Derren Brown: Netflix special (2018) Push, Sacrifice Darren Brown calls himself a psychological illusionist. He devises elaborate scams with his team of actors, engineers, stuntmen and others to influence his subjects to willingly perform heinous crimes or sometimes unthinkable sacrifices. He does all these with just suggestions as if the subjects are doing it at their own free will.  In an episode named 'Push', four people are shortlisted from a pool of applicants to help out in a charity event. He used the famous test where applicants stand up at the ring of a bell without any rhyme or reason to pick his choice. This is a classical experiment done by psychologists to illustrate that humans are mere unthinking conformists. To cut the long story short, three out of the four candidates that Brown selected could be coaxed to push a man off the edge of the roof at the order of a person in authority. This result is comparable to the Milgram Experiment in 1963 to illustrate o...

The Looming Tower (2018) Sun Tzu's 'Art of War' suggests the best way to win a war against your enemy is when they (the enemy) do not realise that they are not at war. "Know your enemy know your environment" he added. Despite this knowledge, the mighty Ming Dynasty fell to the lowly Manchus. Twenty years ago, two then Colonels in the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Qiao Lang and Wang Xiansui published a book named 'Unrestricted Warfare'. Here these two officers outlined ways to overcome a mighty force like the USA. It seems that the CIA also got hold of this book and was reading material for their trainees. In a gist, it proposes trapping the country into indebtedness, economically and militarily. Cost of waging a traditional war may prove too costly, money-wise, and annihilation of the planet as we know it.  Probably the other enemies of the USA have also got hold this knowledge. With the widespread of information on the net, nothing is sacr...

Mulk (Hindi, Country; 2018) Human beings are social animals. Maybe it is because of our cavemen living situations, we feel comfortable in being amongst the same minded. We believe that numbers make strength. We also try to blame our mishaps to the other. It is never our mistake. With our thinking capability and our skill in the association of ideas, we can quickly put two and two together and blame our malady on the other who look, speak or dress differently . Subtly, it creates a 'us' versus 'them' divide. There is an innate desire to dominate the other, either through power, numbers or economy. When the going is okay, and when the cake is enough to go around, everything is hunky-dory. The society is civil. When the homeostasis is rocked, or when uncertainties befall the society, pleasantries disappear. Man goes into survival mode. Birds of the same feather flock together for comfort and security. That is when all hell breaks loose. The Jews went through the sam...

Rocket Man (2019) No, this is not the story of the one that Donald Trump is telling to tone down. This 'Rocket Man' is from nowhere near the East or has to do with space travel. It is a musical presentation of the lives and times of Reginald Herbert Dwight a.k.a. Elton John. It is an original musical in the sense that it uses all his songs, with altered lyrics and tempo, with the liberty of anachronism, as the sequence of songs does not follow the order it was released, to narrate the story of an English musical prodigy. Just for how long are we going to blame all our unhappiness and failures in life to our parents and how we were brought up? The movie is made on the premise that Elton John lived a miserable life. The root of his disharmony is put squarely on his childhood, that he hardly spent quality time with his father, that his mother was a cynical two-timing vixen, that his parents separated when he was only a young boy. Nobody talks about him, being left with his ...

Courtesy: Zee News Stemmed a mob in Kolkatta cracked the skull of a  doctor  when his 76-year-old patient with myocardial ischemia and  arrhythmia succumbed to his ailment.  Incidentally, the victim  is  from a minority group.  That makes it difficult for politicians  to make the  'correct' decision . There was a time when it was noble to treat the sick and downtrodden. People who had 'failed' in life, i.e., failed to live up to the expectations beset by the society, would find solace is serving the infirm. It was considered virtuous to live amongst and care for sick. Father Damien cared for lepers, contracted leprosy and was canonised. Florence Nightingale spent sleepless nights holding vigil in her ward to minimise morbidity. Mother Teresa left the comforts of her hometown to answer her call among the poor of Calcutta.   In public life, many non-religious individuals sacrificed time and energy to establish medical ...

Ode to My Father (국제시장, Korean, 2014) You see a grumpy old man seeming to be hitting out at everything around him. You ask yourself, what is wrong with him? Was he always like that? What life event changed him? If one were to look deep enough, he would discover a reason for the way he behaves. The old man would have his own long life story to share. In his narration, one would find aches, joy, disappointments, achievements, unfulfilled ambitions and unbelievable feats that would make his life worth the while. He must be lethargic fulfiling all his duties in life. Perhaps, his self-sacrifice is not appreciated. He is taken for a fool for still living in the past and being sentimental about trivialities that mean little to the newer generation. 'Ode to My Father' is South Korean's fourth highest grossing film of all time. Even though, filmmakers may look at this production as a 'low-class tearjerker', low brow with the dearth of the finesse of modern filmmak...

The Black Prince (2017) Punjab has the dubious honour of being one of the last states in India to stand steadfast against the might of the British. Even when it finally crumbled, the state was the site of one of the first resistance to the rule of the British Raj. We are all too familiar with the prowess of the one-eyed Maharajah Ranjit Singh, who remains the only person that managed to conquer Afghanistan. Even the mighty Alexander the Great was blocked at the borders by King Porus with a little unceremonious help of the Anopheles mosquito. The 1919 Jallianwala Bhag massacre ignited the fire of nationalism. On one hand, the Sikh can walk proudly with their heads held high knowing very well they had a few 'firsts'. However, as boastful as they may be of their feats, they would also bow their heads in shame for the treasonous acts of many their kind.  On 13th April 1919, which happened to be the day the Sikhs celebrated their holy day of Vaisakhi, the Christian ushered...

Malay Magic Walter William Skeat (1900) There was a time many years ago when the Malaysian National Museum in Kuala Lumpur decided to go all out to make their exhibits draw more viewers. They curated an exhibition themed along the lines of 'Magic in Malay Land'. Just a few days into its starting, it had to be discontinued. The powers that be were not too comfortable as the reception was too overwhelming. Before this exhibition, the National Museum building was like Siberia; everybody knew where it was, but nobody wanted to go there. Rows and rows of hired outstations express buses were seen parking around the vicinity of the museum on a daily basis. The religious bodies did not realise that the interest amongst our community in knowing our ancient animistic past believes ran that deep.  So, as what a true-blue beholden of belief would do, to avoid confusions among its confessors, the religious authorities decided that the best thing to do would be to cancel the whole ...

To win the mind and heart of the people... This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

Bharat (2019) They say this film is based on the blockbuster 'Forrest Gump', but the only similarity to the Hollywood counterpart is that the story goes through certain landmark events that are deemed necessary. For a starter, there is Partition and Nehru's death. In keeping with the general theme of nationalism that sells these days, this offering is another one of those that spur people's patriotism. The film is also supposed to be based on a South Korean movie, 'Ode to Father', but the Indian props are way too colourful to portray melancholy that vibrates in the background - of the family cruelly divided during the Partition in 1947. The protagonist amongst the attendees at Nehru's funeral Putting all that pomp, colour, splendour and gyrating bodies aside, there is a subtle lesson that is put forward through the narration. Forget the implausible storyline. Keep mum when you know it is humanly impossible for a 70-year-old Salman Khan to beat up...