RIFLE RANGE BOY

Bliss (2021) Director: Mike Cahill This is one of the movies that one will either love or hate; get it, or it just passes by! I thought it was good. It helps the rest of the population not be affected by the complexities of a confused mind.  Quite often than that, to the lucky ones unaffected by the hardship of modern living, it is sometimes how certain decisions should be made. And we cannot understand why the mentally ill repeatedly make wrong life decisions. They plunge continually into states of helplessness and hopelessness.  Greg (Owen Wilson) is a staff in a call centre-like office. Even though his superior keeps calling him to the office, Greg is immersed in his own pencil drawing of his dream holiday villa. We gather that he is divorced. Even though everybody else is huffing and puffing, busy answering calls, Greg is in bliss, adding details to his drawing.  When Greg finally meets his boss, he is shocked to find out he has been fired. Greg shoves his boss aside,...

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) Director: Jon Watts I was under the impression that the Universe moves along and things happen along its path. Whether events occur by pre-determined means or just by chance, for example, by a mere flutter of the butterfly wings, is anybody's guess. Everything goes on with a pre-set sequence despite all the randomness and the chaotic soup it portrays.  The question is whether everything is pre-determined or it can be changed willfully. If events were pre-determined, nothing we can do changes Nature's course. So why bother to pray and hope that God will change things. A minor change in the complex order would just cause everything to crumble like dominos. If something can be altered at will, then the next course of events should be intelligence, not prayers. One is reminded of the battleship dilemma here. A sea battle needs battleships. Tomorrow, there will not be a battle if the Admiral does not send a battleship. So, the question of whether a sea...

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...

Nomadland (2020) Director, Screenplay, Co-producer: Chloè Zhao Maybe we never forgot our roots. Even though we decided to become farmers, stay put in one place and hope to gain strength through numbers (i.e. living in communities), we simply could not shake off our desires to wander and be close to Nature. As cavemen and hunter-gatherers, we were doing the same thing. We were awed by the things around us. We wanted to experience them and to know all about the fantastic things that we saw and felt. Who built them? When were these made?  Like an excited child, we yearned for answers. And we are still doing them today.  At one time, we were told it is what it is. Do not ask too many questions of which answers you will not understand. It is beyond your comprehension, they would say. Nah, read these scriptures; everything is there. With science, it appears that this mindset is changing. People started asking questions and more question. Apparently, there were more questions than an...

We brag, exert our authority, struggle for the course we think is right, and our ego. We fight for our rights and continue to do so. Sometimes we cling on to our convictions till breath leaves us. We do it because we think it is the right thing to do. It is our dharma to act so, and failing to impart our life lessons is sacrilegious. The law of Nature must be upheld at all account, and it is our God-given duty to do so.   In that process, we break many hearts, we shed many a tear, invoke misery in others. We, however, feel no remorse because we know we did the right thing. Sometimes it kind to be unkind. Being the elder one with greater power acceded by hierarchy means leading others is a given thing. Pandering to the need of the majority and garnering popular votes are just not acceptable. There is a divine decree to uphold, or is there? Now that twilight has passed, and Sun had set you, all is left are memories of you - anger, dislikes, idiosyncrasies and memory of strict stares....

Doctor Strange (2016) They say Dr Strange dabbles with magic in his crusade to fight the destructive forces that attack Earth. An intelligent but arrogant neurosurgeon in the real world, he is floored by a nasty accident that damaged his hands so severely that all the modern medicine could offer could not put his hands in working order again. No amount of aggressive physiotherapy or experimental avant-garde modality of treatment could resurrect his limp hands. They continued tremoring like leaves. At this juncture, he heard of a patient with a transacted spinal cord who attained 100% recovery with alternative therapy when modern science failed him. Dr Steven Strange's subsequent journey for a cure led him to Kathmandu to things beyond his imagination. He got sucked into a world of 'magic', harvesting inner energies, dark forces and alternate dimensions. Things became so complicated that he found himself defending the Universe's right side against the Dark Forces. I coul...

They are both from the rodent family but people's perception of both these furry animals are worlds apart. One receives awe of cuteness when seen roaming around the garden whilst the other received shrieks of panic. One has a fluffy springy tail whilst the other has a slim tapering tail. Both had their bodies evolve over generations to suit the environment they live and their need to survive. The squirrel's furry tail may aid in the balance as it jumps from branch to branch. The tapered rat tail helps escape through tight fissures. The bushy tail of the squirrel has its own added coincidental benefits. Being around flowering plants, the hairs on the tail aid in pollination. Certain internal traits could have evolved over time as and when the environment demanded. Other incidental features, like the fuzzy tail, performs accidental purpose to the survival of other species. Who decides on this? Is there a higher power who plays the role of an intelligent designer who, f...

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (Documentary; 1980) Creator, Presenter: Carl Sagan It all probably started over 13 billion years ago. A mammoth explosion which sent energy expanding across the universe gave light and mass. This expansion of space after the blast, by all accounts, is likely to be still ongoing as seen by the Doppler effect visible in the telescopic visualisation of distant stars. In cosmic terms, time probably started at that juncture. Then there was nothing for a very long time. Slowly with the cooling of the system, galaxies and stars came around. The earlier stars had short shelf lives. Their burning out of hydrogen fuels gave rise to other heavier atoms and supernovas that became the seed of our existence. With carbon and oxygen came the blueprint of existence, water. By trial, chance and selection, the seed of life began. Slowly unicellular, then multicellular and complex creatures formed. DNA was found by Nature for continuity of life. With time a primitive reptili...

Aryabhata (476-550 CE) Mathematician/Astronomer. The first person to say that Earth  is spherical and revolves around  the sun. The first to suggest that  any number divided by 0  gives infinity ∞. (pinterest) Continuing in the quest to make sense of things around me, I stumbled into something quite thought-provoking. It has something to do with our idea of separating knowledge into the sciences and the arts. It is interesting to note that the Ionians, of the Eastern part of the Greek civilisation, and the Hindu culture started learning things about the world we live in entirely independent of each other. It is incredible how quite similar their discoveries were, at least in the initial stages. The pre-Socratic thinkers thought that there was a connection between the Universe and the world immediately around us. Thales tried to say that water is the essence of our existence. Democritus put forward the theory of Void and eternal, indivisible ato...

Get a copy of the book 'Real Lessons in Reel Life' here... Your entry into the elusive world of Maya, the stage set by Man to learn from to live on the stage set by Nature.   https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson Asoka Chakra, quintessentially Odiyan For 17 years, I have been receiving referrals from the world over. On the morning before my long procrastinated maiden trip to India, to Bhuvanesvar specifically, where did I receive a referral from? Well, what do you know? It is from Bhuvanesvar! If you do not call it coincidence, what else? Or is it that I am specifically on the lookout for these quirky incidences. Perhaps if I were to look at other tiny unimportant data, I would surely see a pattern and claim synchronicity! [ Referral ] Am I so important to the Universe that it decides to indulge in some kind of divine game? A mystical prank. That would be putting own self as a point of reference as if Nature gives a damn to the single individual. In fac...

Source Code (2011) Director: Duncan Jones When you switch off a filament lamp, the light just does not go off just like that. There is a temporary time before the brightness disappears. Even life is that. If somehow we can get into the dimension when two people die, one life can mathematically be calculated to get the others and can be made to turn the tide of events. This bizarre time travel where scientists can communicate through a digital interphase to save the world is the theme of this movie. Capt Colter Steven finds himself trapped in the body of a school teacher and on a train where a time bomb is about to be detonated. Through repeatedly moving to and fro between his old self and new, and communication through his computer, the Afghan-missioned army helicopter pilot is actually dead but is sent on a secret mission to find the culprit behind a train attack so as to avert other future attacks. His mission was just to locate the information about the perpetrator...

“It is 5.23 am,” I told myself as I glanced at my watch. “I guess I got up early. Anyway, SK should be here right about now, right on the dot at 5.30am, as he has always been. Today is not going to be any different.” I plugged on my earphones to hear the continuation of a podcast that I listened to all through the previous week. It was a day before the full moon, but the cloudy skies and the lack of street lights made the street look pretty dark. I sat on the raised stone fence as the auto-gate slowly closed from inside. Far behind a parked car, I could see a moving shadow. It looked like the silhouette of two stocky legs pacing haphazardly as if they were swaying. At once, I thought that it must be the neighbour’s son who must be struggling back to his home after a long Saturday night out with the guys. “Wow!” I was thinking as I symbolically pat myself on the back for keeping up with the routine all these years despite the raging inner demons and concerned naysayers who ke...