Plagiarized music at the local level

The Malay music scene is familiar with many songs emanated from unabashed plagiarized works of Hindi songwriters. DJ Dave, R Azmi and many the Malay singers of the 40s, 50s and 60s gain fame through these ventures. When we were growing up in RRF, every time an English song hits the pop chart, the market cassette seller would be playing his Cantonese version of the tune almost simultaneously. Of hand, I can remember 'Dance Little Lady Dance' by Tina Charles, 'Ring My Bell' by Anita Ward, fitting this bill.
RTM (Radio TV Malaysia) at one time banned local songs penned to foreign tunes and songs glamourizing foregn lands (e.g. Yellow River by Christie). Here for your hearing pleasure, 'Sunshine' by Archies and 'Si Gadis Ayu' by Black Dog Bone... 

Followed by 'Fantasy' by Earth, Wind and Fire as well as "Khayalan' by Black Dog Bone again!

In honour of pioneers of the silver screen...

With all the technological advances in sounds systems and colour, some people may think that I must be nuts still watching silent movies after all these years. But hey, they are still producing them, you see. The Artist from which the Best Actor for the 2011 Oscars came from - The first recipient of Awards since 1927!
It is a completely speechless movie (barring the two minutes of a dream scene when people started talking and the closing lines). The movie narrates the story set from 1927 to 1932 of a silent movie star, George Valentin, a swashbuckling toothy grinned hero who has has problem adjusting to the introduction of talkies.
The movie starts with the premiere of his movie 'Russian Affair ' which receives a roaring approval from the masses. During a photo shootout with fans, George meets Peppy Miller who makes it as a chorus girl extra in Valentin's new movie. Slowly Peppy moves up the ladder of stardom.
Come 1929, the studio decides to go talkies with the introduction of sounds in movies. All at once, old faces are axed to give way for newbies including Peppy Miller. As all actors of that era who thought that sounds are going to kill the acting ability of the actors, Valentin decided that he was not going to take it lying down. He acted, produced and directed in on own silent movie which was released at the same day as Peppy's talkies. Unfortunately his release coincided with the stock market crash and the reception to his film was appalling. He became a bankrupt while Peppy's career flourished. His wife had left him too.
Poor, drunk and depressed made him burn his old film collection and he is trapped in his own flat only to be rescued by his faithful companion Uggie (a Jack Russel terrier). (Watch Uggie's antics here!) Incidentally, Uggie needs a special mention for his extraordinary talent. If not for being of the human species, he would have vied for the Oscars! In 1928, a dog acting as Tin Tin got more votes then the actual winner - after that most award boards disqualified animals from nomination!
George is nursed back to health in Peppy's mansion where he stumbles upon all his old collection of items which were auctioned by him nicely stashed away. Feeling disillusioned, he attempts suicide, while Uggie compassionately coaxing him not to do so by ticking on his pants. This scene quite poignant and heart wrenching. Just in nick of time, Peppy makes it to the scene literally in a bang by crashing at the compound stopping our hero from his silly action.
Peppy suggests that they should use his dance talent to make it back to the movies which proved to quite true.
I can swear that the hero (Jean Dujardin) is trying very hard to be much like Sean Connery via his mannerisms, actions, moustache, smile and barrette! He is quite a likeable guy. The movie is quite straight forward in its storyline - nothing extraordinarily. Perhaps there is a lot of hype for this movie to sort of to commemorate and honour the contributions of the forefathers of the celluloid industry.

Only for collectors!

Elstree Calling (1930)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock et.al.

At a time when Hollywood was churning out colourful lavish feather in the hat type of 'Copacabana' styled performance, 'Elstree Calling' was London's premiere studio's
1930 answer to their trans-Atlantic cousins. This one of the earlier talkies was made at a time when the British Empire was on the decline, but its culture was the envy of the world over. Trouble was already brewing over the Empire as the fall had started at the turn of the century.

The movie at best can be referred to a collection of songs, dances and sketches ala-Donny and Marie (a variety show) of the 70s! There is a bumbling master of ceremony who gets all his scripts mixed up but manages to introduce the performers. He goes on to give announcements out of context, like a child looking for her father who left her 22years previously and so on. There is a funny running sketch of a man fiddling with his primitive temperamental TV set which only works when the compere bade farewell! This script was apparently choreographed by Hitchcock. One can see the influence of Hitchcockian humour in a few of the skits. In one, an enraged man shoots a couple embraced in passionate kiss only to realise that he is in the wrong flat!

Tuning in J L Baird's invention
Need much tinkering like our set in RRF!

Moving talkies were its infancy, and they were experimenting with colour. Dances ala-can-can were shot in monochromatic yellow hue (Pathecolor stencil).
This presentation is of historical value and is only for die-hard Hitchcock fans.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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The lady who put the great in Great Britain or did she?

Truly a stellar performance from Meryl Streep depicting the Iron Lady Mrs Margaret Thatcher (MT) in this 2012 movie deserving a well deserved Oscar.
Emotion provoking scenes of old lady reminiscing (in spite of dementia where the margin between reality and old memory is blurred) the old times that she went through in her life from a daughter of a grocer battling through playing fields of the male dominated politics and finally in her twilight of her life when others feel that she is incapable of doing anything on her own.
This film is different from most biographies in that the story moves to and fro from the present to the past and back, making the makeup more and more believable.
It starts with the present day aged MT shopping for milk at a grocer. She goes back to her flat, talking away and arguing with her husband Dennis. Only later we realize that Dennis is long death and gone！
The story then unfolds about the small town grocer's young daughter being accepted to Oxford, meeting her first love, Dennis, whom later proposes to her and her slow ascent to her status as the most powerful era on in UK.

The movie does not fall into the trap of telling too much in too short a time. Instead, the director concentrates on certain issues that rocked the world like the emotional Falkland Wars, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the multiple IRA bombings and finally her ouster after 12 years at the helm.

The convincing acting is complemented with equally powerful dialogues which is dearth most new movies. 

The movie ended with MT coming in terms with the fact that Dennis is dead and she does her own cleaning like she promised Dennis she would NEVER DO!

Kelantanese movie scene

In my previous entry, I did mention about watching 'The Untouchables'. That movie carries more than just the story says. I actually waited 24 years to watch it. The first time I attempted to view was in Kota Bharu on a Friday afternoon in 1988 during the final 2 years of undergraduate studies in Kelantan.

Kelantanese, the self-appointed stepchild of Malaysia, have many ancestral and cultural links with Siam (Thailand). During the local radio programmes, it is the norm to have callers dedicating songs and greetings to their close relatives across the border. They have their own peculiar ways of doing their rituals (besides the slang). Friday was and still is the weekend ( + half day work on Thursday).

To celebrate the end of term examinations, the students' entourage made its weekly trip to town to get some non-halal food. We used to term it as 'hypo-porkemia fix'. After the sumptuous Chinese meal of economy rice and the accompaniments, TFLG and I decided to watch a movie.

In honouring the Friday prayers, most business outlets there were temporarily closed between noon and 3pm. So, we had to hang around looking at the wheels go by whilst the ticket booths open. As the posters at the cinema advertised 'Untouchables', we excitedly got ourselves tickets. Usually, English movies only survived screening a solitary day in Kelantan, and we thought it was our lucky day.
Now, in Kelantan, there are some cinema etiquettes that one must be accustomed to before enjoying their day at the cinema. There is an understanding that different sexes are expected to be seated in different rows. The lights do not go dim when the film starts. The show begins with the mandatory screening of the portrait of the state monarch and the playing of state anthem to which audience is expected to be upstanding at attention. There is a short intermission but do not be surprised if you are rudely interrupted by flashing torchlight on your face in the midst of the screening. You see, they are not the ushers but moral police of the Anti-Vice Unit (Pencegah Maksiat, affectionately known as PM by Kelantanese) out doing what they do best.

Now that we got the formalities were out of the way, we thought we should be viewing Sean Connery, and his team do their job. There, in Kelantan, they do not waste much time with trailers and advertisements - they do not have any anyway!

So, on that fateful day, the screening started with er... what we thought was a trailer - one B-grade maybe C-grade butchered Italian R-rated flick with lousy dubbing and bad acting named 'Blue Island', not even 'Blue Lagoon'. And it went on and on until the whole show ended and the doors opened, that is it!
When we came out, the posters had all been changed to 'Blue Island'. Upon enquiry, we were told that 'Untouchable' had ended the day previously, but the workers had not replaced the posters!

The annual Kelantan regatta - Floods during the monsoon. One can see the joy on the faces of average Kelantanese during this time of the year - legal holidays, time to meet partners, indulgence in water sports and temporary eradication of the infamous Kota Bharu rats which is reputed to cow cats to submission, especially the fat rats around the General Hospital. (? after thriving on antibiotics and hospital supply?) [http://ummi-iman.blogspot.com]

Note: The poster showing '077 Espionage in Tangiers' -not even 007! Googled it and found that it is a spoof of James Bond, no mention of 077, though, that is Kelantan's addition!

The golden era is now!

Midnight in Paris 2011

40 over years after Shammi Kapoor gyrated to the world through his signature dance moves in 'Evening in Paris', Woody Allen's handiwork of 'Midnight in Paris' made it to the Oscars.

'Midnight in Paris' is a typical Woody Allen movie with a rather timid male character trying make sense of life and is bullied upon to do things, like getting married, where to stay after marriage and take ridicules from the soon to be in-laws. Owen Wilson (Gil Pender), a dreamy screenwriter who is trying to write a novel and is hoping to hit it big. He is in Paris to gain inspiration for his writing just like the great writers did in the 20s. Writers always felt that Paris on the 20s was the place to be to churn out the creativity charms of a person. He secretly wished that he was living in that era.

His fiancé meets up with a friend (a Mr Know-It-All) and his partner but Gil feels out of place as he is belittled more than once. Whilst walking back to his hotel, he gets lost. After the stroke of midnight, he is picked up by a group of reveling party goers in an old Peugeot. He is transported back in time to a time he loves to be- Paris in the 1920s! And he meets up with great writers like Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Salvador Dali, poet T.S. Elliot, painters Pablo Picasso and Matisse. Gil yo-yos from the past to the future as and when he felt like it by waiting at a designated point at midnight. He even gets his manuscript to be read by a great writer.

He hooks up with Adriana, Picasso's girlfriend who is a kind of confused girl with confusedly promiscuous  people around her. We really get to appreciate many of the songs of the 20s like "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love" by Cole Porter which sounds freshly cheeky!
During their last outing, Gil and Adriana discover that they had moved to  the 1890s where they meet other artists who worship the time before their time, the Renaissance, just as much as Adriana adores artists before her time! Now our hero realises that he should be happy with the present and do the best with what he has.
He stays back in Paris (at present time), breaks up with his fiancé and find common things with a French girl named Gabrielle who enjoys same things like he does like walking in the Parisian rain.......

It is a typical Woody Allen movie with Woody Allen type of a hero in Owen Wilson. I simply had that deja vu feeling that the story was predictable - Man about to be married, rediscovers himself, uncertain whether he should take the plunge but turns cold feet, makes his stand and everybody is happy! Too many times.....

Obligation to remain sick!

Many years (a quarter of a century) ago, when I was still in training, there was a patient who used to stay in the wards for weeks on end for asthma. Even though he may be moving around the ward, chit-chatting and carrying tales from patient to patient to create territorial animosity between chronic long-staying patients, when it comes to morning rounds, he would be wrapped in blanket sweating like a pig creating wheezy noisy breathing insisting that he was still unwell to return home. It went on for some time until the senior officer of the ward, aware of chronic asthmatics' ability to feign a wheezing sound of an asthmatic attack, managed to coax him to return to his worldly duties like working for a living! I can swear by the look that he had on face, he was screaming ala Arnold Schwarzenegger avenging to be back -"Hasta la vista baby!"

Frank Gardner, a disabled skier

In our daily life too, we see many able bodies running their lives as if theirs is the most tragedy stricken, ailment filled torturous life that is a burden living. Yet, they failed to see how so many physically, mentally and economically challenged individuals carry on life making do with what they have and are capable of and utilizing it to its fullest potential. Yet, there remains an obligation to remain sick as an outlet to garner sympathy that there so yearn as well avoidances of challenges of getting up in the morning and facing the obstacles of the real world.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season 6
Final Arrangements Part 1, 2, 3...
Have a watch, enjoy!