RIFLE RANGE BOY

Our world has become one which is ruled by mobs. We thought we had cancelled mob behaviours when we started engaging in intellectual discourses and discarded our weapo ns for civilised dialogues. We were made to believe so. The muffled undertones of passive- aggressiveness were always there in the background. It never really disappeared. In those days, the dominant ruling forces called it resistance, reformation or revolution. We learnt that numbers matter and recruiting the masses worked best to overthrow a seemingly impregnable and cruel regime. Most new religions came about through these ways - show the unthinking inebriated public the virtues and purpose of existence, riled their emotions to unite them against a particular cause, sometimes a self-serving one. The major Abrahamic religions began thus, creating a sense of fear, perpetually assuming that they would be besieged. Fast forward to the present time. We thought that in modern times, with the ease of information at our ...

Mulholland Drive (2001) Story and Direction: David Lynch I remember my school teacher telling the class a story about art and artists. A painter once smeared paint over his toddler's bare buttock. He then made him sit a white sheet of paper. What resulted was the silhouette of a perfectly shaped apple. He went on to exhibit his masterpiece which spurred rave reviews and stimulated great literary discourses. What he was trying to say was that behind a masterpiece, there is a story and that sometimes people are fooled by artists! I watched this David Lynch's film with the same thought. This movie was initially intended to be a pilot for a TV series. Unfortunately, it was rejected by the TV company, but they decided to make out a feature film out of it. I think that is why there are many unrelated gaps and seemingly unrelated characters infused into the story. Or am I missing something? Still, these are very reasons this film attracts many interests, spurned multiple viewing...

Blue Velvet (1986) Story and Direction: David Lynch My impressionable young mind used to wonder when I used to read of random shootings in schools and somewhat bizarre behaviours of certain people in the so-called civilised world. I thought the deviant acts were the price one paid for development. The phenomenon of adolescent psychology was not even an entity in this part of the world till about 20 years ago. Is it a first world problem as we set different priorities as our target and different role models to follow? Perhaps this film, another David Lynch classic, is trying to tell us that the dangers were lurking inside all the while. It is just that avenues are available to express now. It had just been swept under the proverbial carpet all this while. It starts on an idyllic day in the 60s on a sunny day with everybody smiling and Bobby V's 'Blue Velvet' song in the background. A man is watering his lawn, and his family members are drawn to a TV series. The man...

Lost Highway (1997) Written and Directed by David Lynch An interesting concept. When you are already up there amongst the doyen who change the field, you can never go wrong. You must be right. Others just do not get it. It is not that you do not make sense. You are not playing with their minds. They do not get it, plain and straightforward. This is another of David Lynch's thriller which appears complicated. A man is leading a quiet life, but it is later convicted of killing his wife. In a closed confinement, he actually changes into another person! Unable to contain an innocent person, he is released. The released person meets a girl who is the same girl who was the wife who was killed. In a convoluted story, this man gets entangled with another murder and changes back to appear like the first man. After watching so many movies with a straight storyline, this is a good distraction.