RIFLE RANGE BOY

Conspiracy Theory (1997) Director: Richard Donner In the pre-internet era, Malaysian coffee shops were fertile grounds for conspiracy theories. At a time when all news was coming out in print and the airwaves were tightly controlled, information was a priced commodity. Everyone had their version of what was going on beyond the iron curtain of bureaucracy, of what was reported and what was not.  Surprisingly, at least in Malaysia, all the coffee shop banter that would initially be denied by the powers that be will turn out to be true. Investigational journalism is better done by the single cup of coffee purchaser sitting in the shop the whole day than by people trained and paid to do the reporting job.  In the infancy age of the internet, in the early 1990s, internet buffs scrambled to be on the mailing list of MGG Pillai's discussion forum, Sang Kancil. His brand of hard-hitting fire brand exposè journalism excited young minds who were quite fed up with paternalistic informati...

La Luna (2023) Director:  M. Raihan Halim It is not just confined to one religion; it so happens that Islam is the reference in this film. Leaders of any religion, way of life, or cult take it upon themselves to be the de facto spokesperson on how the religion should be practised. They want to have the final say as if they had an audience with the Almighty, who whispered the secrets of life in their ears.  To the young and restless, they give the impression that their lifelong purpose in life is to screw up everybody's happiness. Just to show who is the boss.  Take this example. Occasionally, at the temple I sometimes frequent, there will be public service announcements of some good news or achievements. Naturally, the congregation would display their pleasure and admiration by clapping. That was the most natural thing for us humans to do. "But no!" said one elder, who raised his hands angrily to stop them from clapping. Strangely, a few minutes later, everyone was seen e...

You think you have your life under control. You know what you want to achieve and get your path mapped out. You have a Plan B and a Plan C just in case the inevitable happens. You work your butt out, knowing the way laden ahead is no walk in the park but one paved with shrapnels and gravel. But you persevere. Just when you look at yourself and think you have made a somebody out of yourself and think life cannot be any better, that is when life gives a devious smile and shows you who is boss. By then, you decided that life must be more 'complete'. You bow to societal pressure to be complete for the continuity of progeny. You import your significant other into it, and the other accompanying condiments ensue afterwards. Progressively you feel you have hit a dead-end. Nothing seems to progress at the individual level or as a collective unit. And it becomes gradually more difficult to amend the course or steer the ship. Things that were once in our control are no more. Sadly, you a...

Midnight Mass (Netflix miniseries; 2021) Creator, Director: Mike Flanagan This miniseries is specifically relevant to the many unthinking keyboard warriors who spew venom freely over social media with their ill-thought seventh-century ideologies to spread ridiculous so-called divine decrees. Just because outsourcing labour is a legitimate way to ease physical burdens, it does mean it applies to rational thinking.  As the joke goes, the top students in the class will become scientists who will change the course of mankind. The following best will be professionals, doctors, architects, engineers, etc. The professionals will control the scientists. The truant skivers will become lawyers who will take charge of the first two groups. The playful mavericks who frequently dodge their assignments will end up as politicians and will dictate terms at the end. But it is the boys sitting at the back of the class who fail all exams who will end up as holy men who would eventually control everyb...

Population Control: How Corporate Owners Are Killing Us Jim Marrs (2015) It may have sounded like rumblings of an old man who had lived too long to be amiable to the wranglings of the modern world, or it may scream of the rebel yell of a conspiracy theorist who is explaining about that is wrong with the world today. In America and in the world as a whole, entire populations have been culled for profit and control. Elites have used the so-called GOD syndicate—Guns, Oil, and Drugs—as well as toxic air, water, food, and medicines, and of course, the unhealthy financial system on which the whole master plan depends—to reduce the world’s population. This is due to the belief of the global elite that the basis of all the world’s problems is overpopulation—just too many people using the Earth’s limited resources. The conspiracy theory angle starts with the story of the American Stonehenge, which was unveiled in 1980, in the state of Georgia by anonymous donors. The inscription grac...

Sex Pistols It is quite comical to hear how some ladies insist that absolutely no one can tell them how to dress. I chuckle a little (to myself) when they say that nobody can restrict them from wearing a headscarf. At the same time, they cannot be pressured to don one.  To wear or not to wear is not the question but the logic behind it is. What we wear and how we wear denotes a specific identity. We identify and feel bonded to one having the same fashion sense like us. Anthropologically we must have wanted to stay together as numbers mean strength and protection from the evil elements of Nature. The story of the genesis of the greatest punk rock band ‘The Sex Pistols’ is one that began with a group of downtrodden rebellious teenagers who identified them with black leather jackets and outrageous fashion sense. It began when Vivienne Westwood started sewing her brand of garments in a small lifestyle shop in King’s Road in London. Strikingly named SEX, it drew droves of yo...

How to Win Friends & Influence People  Dale Carnegie (©1936) I must be exuding the aura of being a loner with very few friends that someone actually loaned me this book. He must have thought that it must be a sure way to end all my perceived 'woes'. Generally, I do not cherish books of this nature. To me, they appear like learning swimming by reading. Some things can be acquired only through practice, experience, and dents from the School of Hard Knocks. After reading through it, I find it to be more like a handbook for psychopaths. It tells its readers how to skew others' thinking and actions towards the readers' self-serving needs. The psychopath would slowly play mind games to influence his victims into thinking that they are doing something altruistic akin to how Piped Piper would rid the town all the mice for nothing (thank you very much). And how the children would be mesmerised to his enchanting flute music to march in like zombies in...

"Don't ask too many questions, sometimes it is better to just let go and follow the pack. Follow the people who are experts and know more than us!" At the end of our intellectual discourse on religion, this is the best my friend could tell me. I think that aptly explains the current situation we are in. There was a time in our civilisation, we were all clueless about the things around us. One blind leading another, we all used to grope around making sense of things as we moved around in an environment that never failed to awe us. Initially, simple explanations sufficed to satisfy our curiosity. Answers begot more questions and our thirst for knowledge and desire to know the Truth never got doused. Then a group of self-appointed beholden of the race came to the fore to claim of direct communications with the Maker. They claim to have obtained fresh rolls hot out of the oven! Our answers are answered and that we have reached the zenith of our understanding. That, ...

X Files Season 10 (E1-E5) More than 10 years after their tour of duty, the last the two renegade FBI agents are still at their conspiracy theories. They are still keen to expose to the world of their employers’ devious plans to hide major secrets from mankind and their attempts at hastening the annihilation of mankind as we know it. Many things have happened since their last outing. The paranormal department had been closed. Fox Mulder is on medication for depression. Dana Scully is working in a hospital, minding her own business. There is a mention of Scully having been abducted by aliens before. They (Mulder and Scully) have an 11-year-old child whom they have given away for adoption for security reasons. They have reason to believe that the child must have been infused with alien DNA, hence the secrecy. The smoking man is still around! The last time I saw him, he had laryngeal cancer. In the first episode, he is seen with a tracheostomy but still smoking via his tracheal ...

Malaiur Manikam (Malay; 2015) Author: Uthaya Sankar SB From the time of Thales, the first European philosopher, the first from the European perspective, the Easterners claim to have known this earlier, the quest to know the secrets of the universe kept on growing. The Greek philosophers thought that the structure of universe could be explained via trigonometry and mathematics. They were excited when they correctly predicted a solar eclipse in 585BCE. From then on, via critical debates and intelligent deductions, many theories were created. At the heights of the Golden Era of the Islamic Civilisation and the courtyards of Agra of the Mogul Empire, majlis and interfaith dialogues were familiar scenes. Each scholar would go as far as learning each other culture’s language so as to understand the crux of knowledge that each had to offer. They understood that what they knew was the only fistful; when what they need to know was ocean deep! Akbar went as far as creating...

I may not be a connoisseur of films, but I sure do indulge in a lot of them, not in the making but as a consumer. Sometimes, I wonder if I am hiding in a fictitious world of make-believe, fantasy and poetic justice. Or that the conventional wisdom that I learned in the course of my growing up facing the hurdles of life are somehow unlearnt and new thoughts are infused. If fact, way back as early as 1905, a Catholic priest had suspected that the newly introduced moving pictures were corrupting the mind of the masses. He objectively demonstrated his theory via a modern-day lie-detector type of a contraption to prove his conviction. Over the years, people started analysing movies and its messages, whether hidden or otherwise. Hence was born the field of film studies. After its successful role of being a propaganda tool of the Americans to justify their entry and actions in the first World War, it continued its heyday of trying to mould and unify the thoughts of the Western-educated w...