RIFLE RANGE BOY

Mandalorian (2019) Miniseries (S1-S2) A confession is in order here. When my classmates in 1977 were ranting on and on about a new movie in town, my curiosity was aroused. What was all the fuss about, I wondered. Every free moment, during school recess and between the change of subjects, all they could talk about was 'Star Wars'. Some were even holding fat paperbacks of 'Star Wars' related books as their badge of honour like their lives depended on them. All the hubbub piqued my interest; I decided to pick a ticket at the local cinema to see what the brouhaha was all about. I was mesmerised by make-belief vast outer space, the space ships and the various alien forms that form the storyline. And I loved the stormtrooper costume but was baffled by their bumbling incompetence and terrible soldiering skills. Unfortunately, the plot was too complicated for me to comprehend—Alderaan, Death Star, Republic, Resistance, Ewok and such were too much for me. Over the years, the seq...

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) Carrie Fisher, who acted as Princess Leia since the beginning of the Star Wars since 1977, died on December 27th 2016. But thanks to computer-generated imagery (CGI), she is kept alive in the movies until her character gets a decent burial. She appears in almost half of this movie due to the unused footage from Episode VII: The Force Awakens. I magine someone who had died two years previously still featured in a movie that demands continuity. As we see in this film also that there is a thin line between being alive and dying, especially if one is a Jedi Master. A departed soul can still perform ground shattering literally 'out-of-this-world' feats. One has to tune in to the correct frequency to receive the intended instructions on decision making. Do I sense a speck of Vedanta teaching here?  This kind of make-believe is no longer confined to the celluloid industry and fantasy but has permeated into the mainstream. Cyber...

Episode 7: Star Wars, The Force Awakens (2015) Generations Y, Z and even the millennial are talking about it. There is no reason why the self-proclaimed upholder of the Jedi pioneers, the Generation X, would not want a piece of the action. Perhaps, not to go as far as joining the frenzy of pre-booking the movie tickets way before the ticket window opened. Nevertheless, I managed to catch a glimpse of the whole show a few days after its launch in a the thinly packed cinema hall near my house. The minute the slanted scroll of subtitles started rolling, I was magically transported to an era long ago in place no so far away when I was a 14 years old boy. This teenager was frantically trying to keep up with the reading of the script and desperately attempting to understand the head and tail of the saga. The story did not make much sense then, but he was mesmerised by the splendid display of special effects (SFX). He was spellbound when the Death Star exploded to smithereens. The sig...