They did it because they felt like it!

Compulsion 1959
Set in Chicago of 1924, this is another film noir starring Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell (the guy on TV series 'Voyagers!' with the time gadget), Bradford Dilman, Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman of TV series $6million dollar man) and others.
Artie Strauss (Dilman) and Judd Steiner (Stockwell) are two intelligent wayward rich university law students who go around with a chip on their shoulder (thinking that they are of superior intellect) doing mischief and hit-and-run a drunk off a road because they felt like it!
Richard Anderson (Max) is Judd's brother who despises his brother's association with Artie.
The deranged duo kills a boy but for a perfect murder but Judd inadvertently dropped his glasses at the crime scene.
Judd is a loner and child prodigy speaking 14 languages who lost his mother at 8. Artie is always abandoned by his aristocrat parents. The police finally pinpoint the murder to the duo. By that time, I was wondering when Welles was going to manifest.
The weary and clearly obese Welles (Jonathan Wilk) walks in only 1 hour into the movie as the flamboyant and sarcastic atheist defence lawyer for both Artie and Judd.
The second half of the movie focuses on the court proceedings and its drama. The outcome of the case is somewhat predictable but the pull factor is the compelling powerful dialogue. Wilk, who opposes capital punishment manages to get life imprisonment for them with his heart wrenching persuasive 15 minute submission at the end of the movie, leaving a bad aftertaste of life, hatred and killing amongst man as well the the question of religious belief and the Hand of God which dropped the pair of spectacles at the scene of crime!
It is alien to see university students dressed to the nines with suits and ties here. The story is based on hate crime killing of a Jewish boy in Chicago back in 1924.
Dilman, Stockwell and Welles all received Best Actor Award at Cannes in 1959. Another 100% rating from The Rotten Tomato. Double thumbs UP!

Memorable quote...

If there is any way of destroying hatred and all that goes with it, it's not through evil and hatred and cruelty, but through charity, love, understanding. 

Start of loss of Prohibition?

Since the 1920s, antics of artistes from Hollywood have been frowned upon by the rest of America. They were blamed for the decadence of society moral then. The conservative part of the community thought that it was time to hold the rein on what the society should be exposed. Hays Code is one of the predecessors of the present film rating system. In previous rating system, almost everything is a taboo - uttering the word Jesus in a negative light to first night scenes!
Over the years, societal values changed. Succumbing to external pressures in the form of liberal European outlook on various subjects, the morality code had to be relaxed.
In the era of Golden Era of Hollywood, many directors pushed their boundaries to test the waters - 'Duel in the Sun' is one such movie.
It is a 1946 western movie done in technicolor with a storyline which will raise an eyebrow even in the 21st century.
It tells the story of a Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones), a vivacious young mestizo (half Red Indian bred), who comes to live with her father's second cousin and old flame, Laura Belle, after he is hanged for killing his two timing wife (Pearl's mother). Pearl's father is despised by Laura's husband.
Laura's two grown sons are like day and night - the elder (Jesse, Joseph Cotton)is a mild mannered lawyer who has a soft spot for Pearl and the younger one (Lewt, a very young Gregory Peck) is a rough, hardy cowboy who pushes himself shamelessly on the easily arousable Pearl.
This cascades into a cat and mouse game of Pearl's dilemma of choosing real love and giving in to lust. After a small tiff with his father, Jesse leaves the ranch but not before catching Lewt and Pearl together in rather compromising situations.
Lewt is only interested in Pearl for pleasure of flesh with no intentions to wed her. Just to get back at Lewt, Pearl accepts a marriage proposal from a nearby rancher. The possessive Lewt guns him down and goes on the hiding.
As Laura Belles dies due to ill health, Jesse comes to visit the ranch. A duel breaks out between brothers and Jesse is seriously injured but he survives. Pearl goes out in pursuit of the outlaw Lewt in the desert bordering Mexico. Another shooting broke out between lovers, mortally wounding each other. They die in embrace after discovering that they love each other very much.

Gregory Peck

The screenplay had to altered to satisfy the moral policing beholders - a rape scene had to be downgraded to love scene, storyline tone of overt sexuality reduced and a seductive dance cut altogether.

Jennifer Jones

After always seeing Gregory Peck in calm protagonist roles, it is surprising to see in a mean villain role. This controversial movie also set havoc in Jennifer Jones and David O. Selznick's (producer) marriages. Selznick was hoping to make the movie as big as his previous production of 'Gone with the wind'. Unfortunately, with all the big budgets for advertisement, production costs as well as the sexual controversies, they only broke even!

Piece of white trash

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
The picture of the 'Diktator' (real name: Sacha Baron Cohen) in the newspaper walking on the red carpet before the Academy Awards aroused my curiosity to have first hand experience on his previous movie 'Borat'. I remember many years ago reading about it in Newsweek singing praises on its effort. My verdict: I should not even waste my time blogging about it! Or maybe it would discourage others from wasting their precious times too, but then, any publicity is good publicity in Tinseltown!
I never really paid much attention to this Borat character before. I actually thought that it was a Kazakh production.
It starts with Borat, a TV reporter showing us his village in Kazakhstan in a very derogatory, sexist and vulgar manner. He stereotypes Kazakh man and also ridicule their leader by giving the same name to his neighbour and puts him in bad light. Their children are holding guns and smoking cigarettes.
He is sent on a cultural expedition to USA with Azamat, his producer.
After reaching New York, poking fun at many of the American way of living and making an ass of himself by his supposedly country-bumpkin behaviour of a Kazakh, he decides to look for his love of his life (after he heard that his fat wife succumbed to a bear attack back home), Pamela Anderson, after mesmerised by her appearance by watching 'Baywatch' on TV!
Azamat and Borat make a transcontinental cultural expedition across USA on an ice-cream truck. The jokes here are worse than the toilet jokes and it ridicules all strata of society - feminist, handicapped, Jews (even though Cohen is grandson of Holocaust victim). Watching a grossly overweight middle aged man and another with strategically pixeled  in full monty is not my kind of comedy. It may excite a different group of audience altogether.
I am surprised that Cohen is a Cambridge scholar and this film has many titles under its belt and was even nominated for Best Actor, Best Film and many more in 2006. Give a miss, give a miss.....
And don't even get me going on Cohen's next movie 'Bruno' (2009)!

Yellow fever!

Another perspective of coming back home?

A recent interview that was caught on radio about a Kelantanese boy who studied in a Chinese type school, stayed above his father's mechanic shop studying all the way to Cambridge, becoming a renowned surgeon in the London only to discover that he was wasting his time in England sipping tea lazily on an autumn afternoon at the prime of his life. That prompted him to pack his bags and family back to the country where he remembered his childhood was. Maybe he thought that he was not getting any younger whilst his contemporary were minting money away in private practice in Malaysia and enjoying its perks. Pray listen and decide....
All the 21 years of training in the UK has surely improved his communication skills and he is not too economical with his words like most Asians are. And as you can see he wears many hats!

House of fools?

Housefull (Hindi, 2012)
Now shouldn't it be full house, you may ask. Well, that is how people in India refer to a movie which had sold all tickets and all the cinema houses are full to the brim. This phrase have been around for ages that even those illiterate in English still fully understand the its meaning and is accepted in their society.
'House full 2' is a 2012 Hindi comedy which is remake of a Tamil movie which in turn is a remake of a Telegu movie about two brothers who claim to be the real son of their father! This feud even extends to their spouses and daughters. Trying to outdo each other, both brothers engage a common marriage broker to marry off their respective offspring to someone richer than the other. A prospective groom's father, insulted by one of the brothers, lands in intensive care after a heart attack. In the name of revenge, a conman is sent to woo one of the girls. Through a comedy of errors, 4 people end up claiming a billionaire's son and one lie leads to another and develops into a fiasco of mistaken identity as well as comedy.
It is an entertaining movie but by no standards ground breaking. It boasts of a star studded cast of Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Mithun Chakravaborthy, Rishi Kapoor, Randhir Kapoor, Boman Irani, Ritesh Desmukh, Johnny Lever, Asin, Chunkey Pandey, Ranjith and others. Again another Indian movie where the only thing Indian about it is the spoken language, the high decibel melodrama and the melodic run around the park but this time in comfort of resort and beach of Sentosa in Singapore, I think. Gone are the 6-metre long sarees and so-called Indian modesty.

J. Edgar Hoover, complicated man!

J. Edgar (2011)
Taking freedom of speech to the extreme, Clint Eastwood produced and directed this 2011 movie on American icon of paranoia who made Americans to perceive that there is USA and there is the rest of the world, John Edgar Hoover, the first director of FBI. The movie dwells upon at best speculative stories that surfaced after his death regarding his secret private life, essentially, opening up his closet and displaying its contents in full for public scrunity. Looks like Leonardo De Caprio is slowly stereotyping himself into acting in biographies - first he acted as Howard Hughes in 'Aviator' now this. A stellar performance he did give and is slowly earning a reputation as a actor of class.There are a few 'myths' floating around in books and Internet on J. Edgar Hoover. He is alleged to have black ancestry and was adopted by the Hoover family. His wirery curly hair in his younger days is testimony to this effect.
The movie starts with an old JEH dictating his side of the story to a young agent. From here, the film, as in the trend in present day film making, it flip flops between the past and past, narrating the story as it went on. One interesting way of shooting was how these two are interposed - e.g. two characters enter a lift in the 60s and exit it in the 1930s! Edgar lives with his mother (Dame Judi Finch) who has a strong influence on him and his mentally ill father. He fancies a new secretary who joins his department but his love is turned down as she rather be married to her job. She (Helen Gandy, Naomi Watt in a less glamorous role) , however, becomes his lifelong personal assistant.
Edgar heads The Bureau of Investigations (before it had the prefix Federal) after overshadowing his superior in apprehending some subversive Bolshevik elements. He revamped the Bureau with his firebrand way of no nonsense leadership. He introduces fingerprinting to track communist sympathizers at a time when it was still a pseudoscience.
After that came the Depression era spates of bank robbery and highway machine gun wielding gangs.
Edgar took in Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) as his assistant at the Bureau. It developed into a lasting relationship which got people talking. They went shopping for clothes together, went for holidays and dined toghther wothout fail.

Long arm of the law: J Edgar Hoover in 1936.
New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images

The case that shook the Bureau was the kidnapping of America's 20th century hero, Charles Lindbergh's toddler. Local police's bumbling manner of collecting evidence ended with tragedy for the Lindberghs. The case helped him develop a sophisticated forensic laboratory. Edgar is said to hold secret recordings of many prominent signataries like Mrs Roosevelt, JFK, Nixon and many others in his 48 years of leadership. Apparently the information he acquired were his bargaining tools to get his things done the way he wished and to continue to hold the helm of chief.
There was many gangsters caught by his team but Edgar is accused of not doing enough to eradicate gangsterism as the urban legends say that the mobs hold many evidence of Edgar's sexual preference. At a time when gay men were frowned upon and ostracized, Edgar denied his feelings by purposely going after the homosexuals and showing his prowess.

Dorothy Lamour

The team also gets a breakthrough via their use cryptography technology and marking of dollar bills.
Edgar is depicted here as a person who takes prominence over the successes of his men.
During one of their holiday outings, Edgar tells Tolson about his intention to propose to an actress, Dorothy Lamour, which enrages Tolson who confesses his true love!
He even has a secret recordings of Martin Luther King (of his sexual imbroglio with a white woman which was a crime then) which he used against him days before his Nobel prize for Peace awards which Edgar tries to block.
The film also shows a weak moment where Edgar tries his hand in cross dressing in the comfort of his own room after the passing of his mother. It also subtly suggests that Edgar may have a hand in Dr King's slaying and perhaps in exposing Nixon's Watergate scandal.
Towards the end, Tolson accuses Edgar of making up most of the crime busting escapades mentioned in his manuscript with a lot of exaggerations to boost up his image.

T Rajendar

In the typical Nixon depiction, who is filled with profanity and double faced politician's fashion, he sadly announces the demise of J E Hoover, the agent who served 8 presidents and the iconic hero of many including himself whilst his men seal and ransack his office for the secret files which were never found!
Clint Eastwood not only produced and directed the film, he even wrote the music score! Hey, he is following the footsteps of T.Rajendar and his co-film makers in Kollywood!
A definite Oscar contender!
Just a thought... If I were famous and enviably important, they would label me gay too! I have cordial relationship with my mother (albeit our differences sometimes), I enjoy weekly indulges of activities which involve drenching in sweat with the boys on Sunday mornings as well as the breakfast of thosai afterwards,  enjoy songs belted by many gay singers (Sudirman and Queen) and I sometimes go undercover with a pseudonym of a person is flamboyantly overt about his sexuality!

Memorable quote...
When moral declines and good men do nothing, evil flourishes.

The secret life of J Edgar Hoover http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jan/01/j-edgar-hoover-secret-fbi
Five myths about J. Edgar Hoover http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-j-edgar-hoover/2011/11/07/gIQASLlo5M_story.html