RIFLE RANGE BOY

Emilia Pérez (2025) Director:  Jacques Audiard mvtimes.com/es/2024/10/29/emilia- perez-film-musical-genre-bender / This musical offering would not have garnered as much airtime if it had not been for an openly transgender individual who won the Best Actress awards at both the Cannes and the Oscars. Interestingly, a female actor (a cis woman) insists on being referred to strictly as an 'actor', not an 'actress'. They are particularly keen on this, demanding to be addressed as 'actors'. I suppose this does not apply to transgender actors. A quick glance at Karla Sofía Gascón's Wikipedia page states her occupation as an actress. For a transgender person, being addressed as female represents the ultimate victory of her transition.  It continues to be one of the most nominated films of the year and the most nominated non-English language film in the Academy's history. When it comes to the basics, this is a gangster film with a twist. The twist is that one can...

Kadhalikka Neramillai (No time to love,  காதலிக்க நேரமில்லை;  Tamil, 2025) Director: Kiruthiga Udhayanidhi https://www.moneycontrol.com/entertainment/kadhalikka-neramillai-ott-release- when-and-where-to-watch-this-romantic-drama-starring-jayam-ravi-a nd-nithiya-menon-article-12936421.html It would have been just another Netflix recommendation that I would have ignored. Having such an unoriginal name, which had been used before, did not excite me. For the ignoramus, in 1964, the Tamil cinema was taken back by Sridhar's superhit. Its psychedelic, picturesque Eastman moment came to be defined as Tamil cinema's first rom-com. The hit song. ' Visvanathan, velai vendum !' became to be sung as the voice of defiance of the oppressed. My interest was piqued when a YouTuber of a channel I follow went into a tirade trying to tear down Netflix and its moviemakers for thinking out of such a crass movie. Other Tamil movie reviewers were kind to the movie, praising it for its modern a...

One of the most learned members of our clan, Uncle Shan RIP, was once working as the head of a reform school for juvenile delinquents. In his later years, long after his retirement, he used to reminisce about some of the exciting situations he encountered as a counsellor. I remember one such scenario. By and large, the school inmates were of extremely high intelligence. The only problem was that their true potential was hijacked by negativity. A teenager was admitted after being caught breaking into a home with his friends and sent to reform school. Uncle Shan used to have pep talks with him. The message that stuck with him was what the young man had told him, "if only my father had smacked me on the head the first time I came back home late, I would not have spent how much time outside and got entangled into the wrong crowd!" The children do not know what they want. Oh, what the heck? Even adults do not. That probably prompted Steve Jobs to say about mobile phones, "Peo...

P rofessor Thomas Sowell, the 90-year-old veteran economist and social theorist from Hoover Institute of Stanford University, is still active on social media. He is quick to give his opinion, backed by statistics and historical events, to run down ongoing national policies. He is an opinionated person and at one time was drawn to the idea of communism. His rationalisation for gravitating toward the left is that it is just human nature. He wants to share when one has nothing; conversely, he does not share when he tends to lose his 'hard-earned' possession. Sowell hails from Harlem, working as a postal worker as a young man and pulling himself up by his bootstrap to his current stature. He often campaigns against affirmative action and minimum wage. He asserts that the Black American community had a better quality of life when the aforementioned policies were pinned upon them. Another recurrent theme in his rhetorics is the importance of the family unit in the upliftment of socie...