RIFLE RANGE BOY

The Bishop's Wife (1947) Director: Henry Koster Even though 'It's A Wonderful World' (1946) may be hailed as the best Christmas movie of all time, the message behind 'The Bishop's Wife' is the same. Christmas is a time of giving (to the needy) and caring, and it is a time for peace on Earth. 'The Bishop's Wife' is nowhere listed as even the top thirty of X'mas films. Christmas is in the air, but there is no peace in the life of Bishop Henry Brougham. The stress of getting funds to build a new cathedral is proving too much. He neglects his parish, his wife and daughter. The Bishop asks for God's guidance, and God sends him an angel to sort things out. In the neighbourhood, there is also a learned professor who has been procrastinating on his book writing. A wealthy widow is also trying to figure out how to utilise her husband's cash, give to charity, or contribute towards the cathedral. A nondescript angel, Dudley, comes in the form of...

FICTION  Saturday Night with Pa  Farouk Gulsara Saturday is usually a busy day for Pa. After finishing his work at the printing press about 6 in the evening, he hurries home for his routine of fashioning up for his night out with his bosom buddies. Come what may, the appointment must be upheld at all costs, and his grooming and styling must be completed like a religious ritual. After a vigorous shower to scrub the stains of printers’ ink off his skin, he inspects himself in front of a three-sided, half-length mirror, which gives the illusion of a 360-degree view of oneself.  Pa would powder himself with Himalaya on Ice talcum powder and dab his newly shaved chin with the stinging but aromatic Old Spice aftershave. Hair is next. It must be immaculate, and nothing is better than Tancho nourishing pomade. He dons a crisply ironed shirt and matching pants, creases like knife blades, and the drill is complete. This is no quick endeavour. Pa takes as long to get ready as Ma tak...

“For a vegetarian, you seem to have a lot of demands,” I told myself.   I am obviously out of sync with what being vegetarian means these days. At an age when everyone demands rights, I guess it is the same for vegetarians (and vegans, too). Rightly so too. Everyone deserves their place in the sun or rather on Earth, the rich, the economically challenged, the disabled bodies and pretty much everyone else.   From the things that I understood in my impressionable age, by sticking around erudite adults, I assumed that one needs to control his primal desires to be a better soul. By suppressing innate desires to attack, devour and consume fellow members of the animal kingdom, it is believed people would pick up more brownie karmic points in the repeating cycles of rebirth. Hurting the sentiments of their own kind with their uppity attitude does not count.   Of course, some have turned green for health reasons. Perhaps they had a pressing need to care for the environment or jus...

Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife (2023) Documentary Perhaps the media is the one that needs to take the blame. It may be people's fascination with the high life and their gullibility. Or the society's rules on the confidentiality of information or the restriction. Some have perfected the art of staying in the limelight to awe others with their stories so tall that they cannot be refuted. These do not make sense, but watching Dr Paolo Macchiarini's shenanigans, they would.  Dr Macchiarini is an Italian maverick surgeon employed at  Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, between 2010 and 2013. With a long, impressive CV, including a stint as a visiting Professor at University College London and multiple revolutionary discoveries in regenerative medicine in Russia, he hit the headlines performing groundbreaking trachea replacement surgery using a plastic mould and stem cell technology.  At the height of his success, he meets journalist Benita Alexander. She is swep...

Pendatang (Malaysian Cantonese, Malay, Newcomer; 2023) Director: Ken-Kin Ng In the old days, most houses will have a single bathroom. Two, if you are in the upper middle class. Bedrooms were hardly to go by, usually reserved for the female members of the family for modesty. The males would usually rough it out wherever there was space. This was especially so when relatives visited the household. Everywhere they lay their pillow, it was a sleeping place.  Fast forward to 1990 and beyond. Even siblings find it difficult to share living space. They talk about wanting personal space and wanting privacy. The concept of her sharing and accommodation for a fellow roommate or a sibling has suddenly become an alien concept. Hell hath no fury for a person whose personal toiletry or cosmetics are used without consent.  Outside the confines of the home, we were a tolerant lot. We did not tolerate but instead accepted each other with each other's idiosyncratic ways of eating or worshipping...