Action at the Las Vegas of the East

Lancaster with a young Sarandon

Burt Lancaster stars as out of action small time thug (Lou) who had seen better days and takes a liking to his next door young neighbour Sally (Susan Sarandon). Sally is a small town girl who escaped poverty from her hometown in Sasketchewan and after a stupid marriage. She is working as a seafood parlour hostess in a casino, attending extra classes to make it as a casino dealer in Monte Carlo one day.
Her estranged husband and her pregnant sister who married him appears at her doorsteps, much to her frustration. The unwanted guests carried with them a stash of heroin. The gangsters, owners of the drugs, knive the ex-husband down, just after he passed it to Lou whom he had recruited to do his dirty job. Lou, the street wise old hand managed to sell off the merchandise at a high stake. With the newly found wealth, Lou succeeds to woo the grieving lady. When the gangsters return for their loot from Lou, he managed to gun them down and goes on the run with his new found love.
Sally, realizing that she is the rightful owner of the money scooted off with a portion of the cash.
Lou returns to Atlantic City to continue his usual job of taking care of his boss' widow in a more comfortable manner. In this movie, Atlantic City is painted as a city who is depressing with most buildings making way for more casinos.
This 1980 film was nominated for an Oscar and won at the Venice Film Festival.

Are you ready for this?

Konned by Kony 2012? 
Why is it that I do not believe anymore in humanitarian efforts in saving lives? After seeing through Banda Aceh's devastation by tsunami and how the world flocked together to give heavily politicized medical and monetary aid  to an area which have not seen any discernible since the mishap. How about the Asian financial crisis and how the learned bankers from the the most advanced countries put the blame squarely on the the affected  countries' bad practices, suggested radical reforms with IMF's interests' at heart. Only later, did fate hurled a cruel blow to themselves in the form of sub-prime loan fiasco!
Now, there is a move to bring to light the figure of Joseph Kony, an Ugandan rebel with delusions of grandiosity who is the cause of 'The Invisible Children'. This invisibility of these children is through their separation from families and enslavement into the flesh trade and mindless training to be child soldiers. A group of people realized they should make aware atrocities done in Uganda by making Kony (in)famous so that the world leaders may be pressured to do something towards eradicating this atrocity. This would be apparent when the world is supposed to come together on 20th April 2012 with massive overnight poster campaign of Kony 2012.
Sounds noble? Hey, wait!
While you are at it, the organizers are selling pouches containing bracelets to be worn on the said day and kind contributions are welcomed! Is it a sheer coincidence that they discovered oil in Northern Uganda? The issue they are highlighting is for a long overdrawn course. Joseph Kony is awaiting trial but still at large.
For a cynic like me, nothing moves me. During the 'We are the World' Sudan famine, aid only managed to fatten Government officials while the victims starved away. How can you trust that your hard earned money will indeed reach the intended party when day in day out we receive emails from Royalties and high ranking officers from the same continent complaining that their monies are stuck in a so-and-so African National Bank and they need our kind intervention to 'rescue' it at a handsome token? 

Before we go around rescuing others, we should take care our own backyards! There is so much cheating, human trafficking, corruption, apathy right under noses, and it stinks to high heaven!

SCKLM

Does He not send flies to the wound He should heal?

The Tree of Life (2011)
We are left wondering what is happening a good hour into the movie. First, Brad Pitt (set it 1950s) and his wife receive news, not in words but by their expressions that one of their son (the second) has died. Then the characters go into a soul searching mode and the movie goes into a frenzy of cinematographic extragavanza of abstract cinematographic adventure with psychedelic hue of sky, clouds, erupting volcano, waterfalls, electron microscopic views of organelles in a cell, dinasours, Sean Penn in the present time in mammoth building, back to the time when Brad Pitt becomes a first time father accompanied by excellent musical background. One by one the sons are born and the movie shows them growing, learning to bond with nature and siblings, their first fall, exposure to death through death of a fish, a Christian upbringing under a strict father Brad Pitt who believes the regimental disciplinarian way of doing things...Father teaches him way of the world reminding his children to be tough, not to repeat his mistake of an unfilled ambition of becoming an accomplished musician.
In the coming of age era in his early teens, the eldest (Jack) has issues with his father whom he despises. He is trying make sense of the concept of God and why He has no control over some apparently bad happenings like when a boy drowns in a public pool.
At the height of his anger, he secretly wished that his father was dead...
Later, the father loses his job and the family moves another town. Now the father has also conflicts within himself. He could not understand why he had to go through such a predicament for he had been a good servant of God, paying tithe as due!
Then we are brought came back to the future to the adult Jack (Sean Penn) walking aimlessly, still unable to come at terms with the death of his brother, on the beach like a weary executive, in complete business suit. He meets up with the rest of family (as the were in the 1950s) and everybody seem happy with each other. They seem to be wandering in another dimension (like in heaven or something like that!).
To be honest, it is an abstractly experimental movie with mostly voice overs and its powerful messages presented by the director is his own creative way. The take home cue is left to personal interpretation.
To a sentimental dreamy person like me (not in the literary sense), it tells us that many things in life cannot be explained with simple terms. At the end of the day, our early childhood memories are the one we treasure most and our family moulds us!
Memorable quotes...
On some of God's mysterious way of doing things,

Doesn't He send files to the wound He should heal?

Happy New Year to Fools?

After the PR disaster of handling of Copernicus and Galileo Galleili's assertion of the law of nature, the Vatican wised up. The new Pope invested their new earned contributions from the masses into books, library and scientific research. One of the new investment was a sundial monument to observe the movement of the sun.

Commission for the Reform of the Calendar
(Pope Gregory XIII Presiding), Biccherna Tablet, 1582

New discoveries showed that the Church and the rest of the civilized world have been getting it all wrong. The radical minded Pope decreed that, to synchronize the season and to give leeway for the errors of the counting of the calender all this while, modern world should fast forward the year by more than 10 days. He set the New Year should start on 1st January every year from that year onwards. News spread like wildfire across the European continent.
Their transatlantic cousins who never really fancied the Vatican control (and in absence of global news network) continued ushering their new year at the end of March. The high nosed aristocratic Europeans used to sneer down their buffoonery and named their New Year All Fools' Day!
Interesting to note that the original new year used to be celebrated from March 25th all the way to April 1st, which coincided with the Holi celebration of fun and pranks as well as Persian new year, vernal equinox and springtime!
Rather than rejoicing to the pagan festivity of the position of the Sun in relation to the equator (even though the Sun is the elixir of life as we more it) in the Julian calender, Pope Gregory decided that the beginning of the year should coincide with the biggest relevant to mankind - the birth of a child through Immaculate Conception of the Son of God. Even though, science have shown this event did not happen on 25th December 0 B.C.E. but rather 15th October 3 B.C.E. (thorugh the back calculation of the bright star that the three wise men from the East followed- and named it the Gregorian calendar.

Everything has its time...

The Descendants 2011
"Ah," I thought, "it is going to be another one of those George Clooney movies where he goes on exhibiting his flashy smile breaking young girls' heart and laughing all the way to the bank!" Luckily, I was wrong. It was not too bad, actually.
The starting line caught my attention. Something to the effect of people go under the impression that everyone in Hawaii is happy living in paradise but people there too have fatal cancers, have heartaches.....
It is an emotionally charged movie of the story of Matt King, a successful real estate attorney who has an adrenaline junkie brain dead wife in hospital after a water sport accident. He soon discovers that she had been cheating on him. Then there are his two daughters who are giving him hell - a pre-teen who is having problems with friends in school and is using 4-lettered word like punctuation marks and a wild young adult in university. To top it up, there is a question of his ancestral land (in Hawaii) of which he is the trustee and shares with his cousins, which the rest of the clan wants to dispose off. The massive piece of land was owned by his great ancestor, an ancient queen who married a white man and the land had stayed in the family since. The family still practises traditional Hawaiian rituals like leaving shoes outside the home, cremation and strong familial bonds. Because of their wealth, they went to private schools and could not speak the local lingo.
This weary King has to deal with the ambivalence of an infidel wife who is in her last few days of her life, the question of turning off her life support, informing the relatives and the same time hunting down the wife's fling, a real estate agent.
Along the way is Matt's daughter, Alex's boyfriend who appeared apparently retarded but has his own sad tale to tell about his lonely receptionist mother and his dead drunk father.
Matt is confused on how to steer his daughters back to correct path but realises that the turn of events surrounding his life actually makes them closer to each other as they unplug the ventilator off their mother. Everything is forgiven as they bade farewell. As for the ancestral land, much to disappointment of the cousins, Matt decides to defer the selling until a time in the future as he believed that they actually do not own anything, the land was entrusted upon them. He felt guilty on making a fast buck on the ancestral land.
A good watch with picturesque scenery of the Hawaiian coastline and landscape- see a down to earth mature furrowed and wrinkled George Clooney doing a good job! Many awards were awarded for this film and cast....
Memorable quote....

I don't want my daughters growing up entitled and spoiled. And I agree with my father - you give your children enough money to do something but not enough to do nothing.

Another chicken and egg story!

This guy's  (with 1 missing upper limb) job  is

to transport oil and other prayer paraphernalia
up to a temple atop a  hill

So you think you had it bad. You got a bad deal. You were born at a time when the stars were aligned at the worst constellations. Think again! Others who appear happy may have endured worse.
Yet another success story to share, that is, if it is approved by the party involved...
He hated it when people referred to him as 'the pasar malam egg seller lady's son' even though it was on a positive note, usually awed by his excellent results in school. Being a small town, everybody knew each other and each other's children. He often wondered why his parents could not be like other regular parents with regular 9 to 5 jobs. Why has it got to be chicken, eggs and all the barn and feather? He also hated it when he had to give up his precious revision time to set up stall at pasar malam (night market) as early as 3pm so as to ensure their usual business area is not hijacked by others. This squabble amongst the small men was a common daily occurrence.

Cherry blossom

The increasingly raging teenage hormones propelled with desire to 'be somebody in life' were reasons for his oft common argument with his hardworking old man. The atmosphere reached a critical point that he had to leave the household to stay with his grandparents. And away he went on his mission to be somebody....
Poverty is often said to be a driving point to kindle the inner spirits to succeed. And somebody he did become, self sufficient and role model for his family.
Fast forward to the future....The fences have been mended with his parents and relationship is cordial. The friction board (i.e. money) is out of the equation, everybody has more than enough money to spread around - Parents' egg business has blossomed like Sakura on cherry blossom season and they are more than self sufficient.
Yet another happy story from the land of aplenty!
It still baffles me why different people deal with adversities of life with different ways - Some decide to indulge in self defeating negative ways, others fight the fight with tooth and claw and give fate a run for its money. Why is this so? Is it because of karma, fate, the company he keeps with, his DNA or just that inner eye of self righteousness (third eye) opens early in life before it is too late?