Thursday, 29 March 2012

Death by deceit!

This 1958 film noir is an Academy Award winner for Best Actress. It is a depiction of journalistic investigative word of one Ed Montgomery, a hearing aid wearing journalist. It queries the rationale of institutional approved murder (gas chamber death penalty) for a person who is wrongly accused of murder of a person where she was no party of. Susan Hayward plays the part of a Barbara Graham, a party girl with loose morals who would just lie in court for the kick of it.
Having heaps of financial problems due to a gambling husband, a hungry infant and finding it hard to get a job after her perjury charge, she mixes with the wrong 'friends' and finds herself behind bars for murder. She goes deeper into the quicksand of self destruction after her 'accomplices' sold her out for a plea bargain and the police trap her with a phony alibi.
By the time she realizes that she is in trouble deep, all her avenues for freedom are closed. She is finally executed. The movie ends with all the vehicles of people who witnessed the execution leaving the penitentiary as if feeling satisfied (a job well done) that justice is served. We, the audience, are left with the conundrum - can justice ever be served on earth?

Wednesday, 28 March 2012

What is strength after all ?

The Keys are small islets just off Florida where Key Largo is the biggest of them all.
Key Largo is a 1948 film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. It is not your usual story love and its melodrama. Frank McCloud (Bogart), a war veteran stops at Key Largo to pay respects to his comrade's widow (Bacall) and crippled father who run a hotel there. Unknowingly, the hotel is hijacked by Johnny Rocco, a wanted mobster who ran away to Cuba but stopped there awaiting to complete his counterfeit money transaction with another mob. The drama unfolds when our soldier is caught in between amongst the owner of the hotel, Rocco, his alcoholic ex-singer mistress (Claire Trevor who won the 1948 Best Supporting Actress Academy award), the henchmen, two escaped Red Indian convicts and an impending hurricane.
McCloud, feeling weary after all the killing, gets ridiculed after declining a duel with Rocco. When the typhoon is about to show up, it is the turn of the hoodlums to panic, especially with psychological fear tactic tales told the handicapped owner of the hotel. After a series of suspenseful encounters, the hero realises that he has to defeat the baddies in their own way and he does it well.
It is another fine performance by the husband and wife team as well as Edward G. Robinson as the mean gangster. Interestingly, the poster advertising this movie displays that this showing is only suitable for adults. I wonder why? There is nothing adult in its theme and the point the movie is trying to tell is that just because you are holding the gun does not make you strong, being strong is more that that.

Monday, 26 March 2012

Les Quatre Cents Coups* (400 Blows)


Now I can understand why this movie got a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is the favorite movie of a many great film directors like Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) and Satyajit Ray (Honorary Academy Award Winner from Bengal, India). It is a 1959 French language movie directed by François Truffaut, one of the greats of the French New Wave Cinema.

It is a simple story about simple things in life. The cinematography is done in such a way that you cannot imagine why such a particular long shot was made but is actually integral to highlight the artistic value of the movie. It went on to win the 1959 Cannes' Best Director Award.

Antoine Doinel is a a 12 year old boy who is having a hard time adjusting to school where all his mates are up to mischief and he is the fall guy and is punished by his ferocious school master. At home, he goes home to an empty house where his father is forever busy at the racing track and his inaffectionate mother is apparently 'busy' with work. She is actually two-timing his father with her clandestine activities.

Always scolded by his parents (especially mother) and howled upon by his frustrated teacher who always pinpoints him for all mischiefs in class compounded by his lies, he gets disillusioned by school and his family. He and his school friend always play truant and gets engaged in small pranks. During one of his truancy, he bumps into his mother who was engaged in a passionate embrace and kiss with a stranger, much to the embarrassment of both. He later runs away from his home. He is apprehended by the night watchman at his father's office when he tries to return a typewriter that he managed to steal but decided to return it when he could not sell the loot.

His father is called in who decides that the best course of action is to hand him to police and have him rehabilitated at a juvenile delinquent camp.

Doniel's incarceration and interview with the psychiatrist reveals that he was an illegitimate child who, if not for his grandmother's intervention would have been aborted. His father (stepfather) stepped in later to be kind enough to lend him his surname. His early childhood was filled with him being shuttled between wet nurses and his old grandmother till she grew too old to care for him. Reluctantly, his mother took him in, curbing her carefree life.

One day, our hero breaks away from the camp through a broken fence. He runs and runs until he reaches a seaside - he always yearned to see the ocean. And the movie ends. FIN.

A simple story with good acting from the child star. The cast are mostly the children, the adults are there only to fill up the gaps. In one scene, there is a puppet show on the story of Red Riding Hood when there is a violent showdown with the wolf. The director takes great effort to depict the spontaneous the facial responses of the children at such a gruesomely violent scenario.

*Les Quatre Cents Coups is the original French name for the the movie 400 Blows. The French title refers to the expression "faire les quatre cents coups", which means "to raise hell".

Every living day is a miracle

Extremely loud & Incredibly Close (2011)
I just heard news that a friend of mine had just lost two of her sisters to cancer over a span of six months - one to breast cancer and another mid 30 non smoking sister to lung cancer. Losing a young relative is already a heartache; imagine two at that but to cancer that makes her to be more wary that she may be another cancer victim.
Coincidentally, the latest movie that I watched dwells on the same topic of death. Looks like the Americans have not recovered from the grief brought about 911. Or are the people in Hollywood are reminding people of their loss and subtly influence them to put their support behind the endeavor of their self proclaimed protector of Mother Earth to fight the Axis of Evil.
This film must have been released in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of 911.
It tells the story of an intelligent and precocious young 12 year old boy who was extremely close to his father but loses his father in the Twin Tower attack. The only 'unspoken' farewell note left by him were the 6 telephone messages by his father before the collapse of the structure and a mysterious key placed in a vase. Assuming it is part of his father's treasure hunt play, he laboriously plans a plan to hunt down the person with the surname 'Black' who is written on the envelope containing the key. In his journey, he discovers his possible grandfather and that he is not the only person who had lost someone in the tragedy. Many people have their own son story. He also bonds with his apparently depressed mother who seems to be sleeping all the time. Both mother and son finally come in terms with the father's death.
This little corny movie did not stimulate any emotion from this stone cold heart of mine in spite the input by Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Thomas Horn, the child star did a good job as the main character, Oskar Schell. Er, can give this one a miss!

Sunday, 25 March 2012

Next Stop: 36, Chowringhee Lane

I first watched this movie some 30years ago when it was screened in the auditoriums of Universiti Sains Malaysia in an international film festival. My friends and I were not there to rub shoulders with the cultured but rather because we were excited to get free admission to watch an internationally acclaimed and we wanted to kill our curiosity on how an Indian movie could be critically acclaimed! As far we knew, Indian movies were kings of melodramatization and the actors ran around the park and learn relative velocity and theory of relativity by running to each other in slow motion. We were utterly wrong. Firstly, it was an English movie set in India and there was way too much necking for an Indian movie, even the Anglo-Indian character in the movie was embarrassed.
Viewing this film after 30 years makes you appreciate the complex characters and human relationships that can only develop after all the battle wounds of  with ageing. '36 Chowringhee Lane' is art movie produced by Sashi Kapoor for his wife Jennifer Kendall to star. A good work she did to, earning many accolades for depiction of a lonely bored spinster past her prime, Ms Violet Stoneham, who leads a very boring life by any standards.
A typical day for Ms Stoneham would involve visit to the cemetery, teaching English Literature to a bevy of disinterested students in a Calcutta school, going back to empty flat with only a cat (Sir Toby, even the cat has literary connexions; Sir Toby is a controversial character in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night!) to receive her. Her weekly visit to a nursing home to talk to her senile and diabetic brother Eddie seem the only event that she look forward to. Her only other living relative is her niece who is residing overseas who writes to her regularly requesting her to live with her.
I feel that the movie is taking a punch at the people left behind by the colonial masters who still live in the shadow and grandiosity of the British Empire even though they are long and gone. These people, the Anglo-Indians, speak impeccable English, albeit their sing-song mannerism, consider themselves as elitists and feel alienated from the rest of the Indians. Many of the disgruntled Anglo-Indians over the changes in New India seem to be migrating to greener pastures but are also unhappy at their new place of residence.
A new term starts with a new headmistress who 'demotes' Ms Stoneham to teach grammar to the lower forms as a younger qualified teacher takes over her Literature class due to advancing age and failing health.
In this depressive mood, Ms Violet meets up with her former student, a promiscuous Nandita, who is loitering around with her loafer boyfriend. She calls them over for tea and the couple manages for win the heart of this lonely spinster to allow them to use her flat whilst she is at work in the pretext of completing the boyfriend, Shamrukh's poems. Poems, he hardly penned as the couple were more engrossed in their clandestine romantic liaisons. To be fair, Ms Violet did have a whale of a time enjoying their company.
Here, we are also told about Violet's failed romance, her boyfriend Davy was killed in war.
The couple finally gets married and move on up in social strata. They find the old spinster's company not to their liking. They come up with excuses just to get her off their radar. One day, Ms Stoneham decides to surprise the young couple with a Christmas cake, as they had discussed in happier times, by leaving it at their home before their return from an alleged holiday out of town (which was the reason they could not celebrate X'Mas with her). Much to her disappointment, she saw them very much at home entertaining their new found friends.
She walks home heart broken and decides to leave India to live with her niece overseas as her only remaining relative, Eddie had died due to complications of diabetes.
It is a depressingly sad tale of old age, loneliness, spinsterhood and children flying from the nest.

Saturday, 24 March 2012

The fences of traditions

விண்ணைத்தாண்டி வருவாயா? (2009)
During two treadmill sessions, I managed to run through (no pun intended) a 2 and half hour Tamil movie with the volume way down low but music still audible and dialogue understandable with English subtitle. It did not need too much of brain power to map out what was going on. A typical Kollywood story of love at first sight between Simbu and Trisha who are occupants of a same house. Trisha's parents were the owners of the house and occupied the top floor whilst Simbu's family rented the ground floor. The cardinal sin was that Trisha was Malayalee Christian and Simbu Tamil. It is massive fireworks on the Malayalee side of the fence. 
The initially resistant Trisha gradually melts down to the persistent juvenile impulsive antics of the love struck hero. A good a hour goes into showcase the efforts of hero to woo his 'victim'.
Simbu is in show-biz, a hated profession by both families, but hero tries to work himself up to prove a point.  
As predicted, upon discovery of the forbidden liaison, Trisha's family network produces an overseas well-to-do comfortable prospective groom on the spot and an almost shot-gun wedding is arranged. Luckily, it is a Christian wedding where the bride's consent is requested. Trisha answers to the negative, much to the humiliation of family members. Trisha does not follow Simbu but decides to migrate overseas instead. Simbu, heartbroken, concentrates on his work and in 2 years directs his own movie with his love life as he theme. His colleague takes a liking to him but Simbu rejects her advances.
During the launch of his movie in New York, Simbu bumps into Trisha. They talk and profess undying love to each other and decide to marry on the spot and turn up as man and wife at her father's doorstep in India..... but STOP!!!
That is twist in the story. This is how Simbu's movie ended but in reality, Trisha is married to an arranged groom and life goes on. Simbu goes back home and works on his next movie.
Same story different time and setting that is all, from 'Sinna Thambi' to 'Bombay'. At one point of the movie, towards the end when they met in USA and got married, I thought, "All these fences that contained us and refrain us from so many desires of mind and heart go missing when we cross the Atlantic Ocean. Like the title suggests, 'Will you cross the skies for me?', when you cross the seas, there is no more prohibitions any more. But then, I realised it was all a mirage, it is still status quo - heroine succumbed to societal pressure, married some guy and carried on doing things that is expected from her, i.e. to perform as a wife, companion, punching bag , mother, home maker and bosom for the family members to pour their tears while she suppresses her tears. By then, this juvenile madness will be forgotten and different priorities would set in.......

Friday, 23 March 2012

Oxymoronic phrases for morons!



Seriously funny
Think of nothing
Now then
Found missing
Deafening silence
Genuine imitation
Accidentally on purpose
Agree to disagree
Amicable divorce
Original copies
A little big
A quiet storm
Silent scream
Living dead
Almost exactly
Brave politician?
Honest lawyer?
Pretty ugly
Awfully pretty
A just war
Spendthrift
Deficit spending
Happily married
Virgin birth?
Liquid gas
Student teacher
Clearly confused
Anarchy rules
Working vacation
Civil War
 oxymorons cartoons, oxymorons cartoon, oxymorons picture, oxymorons pictures, oxymorons image, oxymorons images, oxymorons illustration, oxymorons illustrations
For a more comprehensive list, have a peek into http://www.oxymoronlist.com/ and http://www.fun-with-words.com/oxym_oxymoronology.html

Vampires in Mississipi?