RIFLE RANGE BOY

Adipurush (Primordial Human, 2023) Director: Om Raut Growing up immersed in many devotional movies, I concluded they were all too uninspiring. I remember Dasavaratham (1976) was a bore with song after song. Then some stories were unbelievable, like Aathi Parasakthi   (1971), where a new moon day becomes full with the Goddess' divine intervention. I was not impressed. I was seeking a scientific explanation, which I have yet to find.   As an adult, I was once called bewildered by a Christmas production by a local church. It was produced, choreographed, stage-managed, and sound-checked all by the teenage members of its church. And the musical accompaniment was theirs too. Now, I told myself, that is what draws (or keeps) members in their fold. It fulfilled their contemporary needs - staying attuned to the times and keeping them 'entertained'. That was where it stood. Hindu narratives remained myths, and the hidden life lessons were lost in translation. Times have changed, and ...

Call Jane (2022) Director: Phyllis Nagy This is the world we live in, contradictory. Outwardly, everyone seems to portray an image of being pious, virtuous and conforming to the teachings of his religion. He claims that Man's laws must be the ones sanctioned by God and would all out to see to this. In private, however, his moral standards go out of the window. Regardless of what believers say, religions are oppressive against the female gender. The female members are always blamed when the question of vice is discussed, even though it is obvious that we need two to tango. Even Nature is unkind. The female population always become the receptacle for exchanging biological fluids. No matter what the trans people may say, one needs a uterus to carry a pregnancy. Biology does not give in to social demands. One can call a spade a shovel; it still picks up what it is supposed to pick up. Pro-choice protestors in 1972. This story tells about a time before Roe vs Wade when termination was i...

Sometime last week, a submersible (a titanium-carbon fibre-made mini-submarine, christened Titan) commissioned to investigate the remains of the Titanic went into trouble. A catastrophic implosion is said to have instantaneously killed the five aboard. Each had sent about $250 000 to get 40,000 ft below sea level to catch a glimpse of the ill-fated ship. The dead ranged from wealthy businessmen to adventure explorers. A few days later, a Greek boat carrying hundreds of refugees from Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and Palestine submerged off the coast of Libya.  The papers went agape with moving stories of economic refugees picking up the pieces and risking their lives for a better life in Europe. At the same time, the mass media has also been accused of paying more attention to the five victims of the Titanic sub rather than the refugee boat accident that swallowed more than a hundred lives.  Critics assert that life is precious, whether the victim is rich or poor, educated or otherwi...

Sansho the Bailiff ( 山椒大夫, Japanese; 1954) Director: Kenji Mizoguchi At the outset, we are told the story occurred in "an era when mankind had not yet awakened as human beings." I pictured that time can any time in Man's history. We just have yet to awaken. We can scream all we want that all Men are created equal in the image of God and whatnot, but the fact is that people always try to dominate each other. Humans always try to be one up against their neighbour and, if possible, push him down an imaginary hierarchy. Even before the mass transatlantic migration of slaves from Africa to the New World, slavery was already very much alive in every civilisation. There was a penchant for white slaves as brown people (read Arabic) prospered. The Vikings and Barbers were famous for the trade of white slaves. Some were captured crew members of small ship-jacked vessels. Others were bundled up when pirates landed on shores to snap up unassuming bystanders. There are stories of pira...

My body and mind went overdrive as things typically do while partaking in one of those age-defying mindless Sunday morning recreational run-cycle-run combo of Powerman Malaysia 2023 Edition. Staying mindful of the traffic flow of fellow madmen, the condition of the roads, my heart rate, race timing, the remaining distance to cover and gears, I had my hands figuratively full on top of everything else I was doing. Behind it all, buffering silently in the background, basking in the inebriation of all sanguineous perfusion of flurry vascular tributaries is the creative part of the brain. It wants to keep up with the rest of the body. It, too, tries its hand at neuroplasticity. It sprouts out dendrites to establish long-lost connexions. And it engages in its internal soliloquy. I just happened to be there eavesdropping the murmur.  Life is a battlefield. In modern times, the enemies we are supposed to fight are no longer the co-creations created in His image but the one in the mirror. T...

The Black Phone (2021) Director: Scott Derrickson It was in the mid-70s that innocence was lost. Before this time, life on Earth was a peaceful one. Children could wander about without fear of being abducted. Ladies could go out unaccompanied. They would not end up as tomorrow's headline. And road rage was not a thing yet and be assured that Mat Rempit would not crash into your car in the dead of night, unannounced, as you scramble back home, following all the road rules, after a long day at the office. It used to be serial killers, looneys, and UFOs only attacked America. Well, other nations have caught up too. The world is no longer a safe place. Mad people are everywhere, in every society. It is just a question of how competent the arm of the law is in that locality. With more money at their disposal, time and manpower can be put aside for that purpose. If day-to-day living is in peril, they just have to accept victims as collateral damage of changing times. It is said that ener...

Vetalam dan Vikramaditya (2020) Author: Uthaya Sankar SB  I remember a time when a newly married couple rented a room in our house. My sister and I, 4 and 6 years old, respectively, were dying to hear the wife's stories that she did tell without fail every evening, with our persuasion, of course. She had a peculiar way of making us glued to her stories. We affectionately addressed her as ‘Atteh’ (Auntie, father’s sister or maternal uncle’s wife).  Every evening, after she had her shower as she returned from work, it was storytime. Her stories usually carried a message, and many of them were Indian folk tales, including ‘Vetalam and Vikramaditya’.  ‘Vetalam and Vikramaditya’ stories always carry a moral dilemma that needs critical thinking. We were often disappointed as she never told us the answers to the questions she put forward. She would ask us to think carefully. That is the thing about these stories. Legend has it (it is probably a historical statement now) that Kin...