Marilyn Monroe - Live in Chicago

GIANT MARILYN MONROE 50th ANNIVERSARY STATUE UNVEILED IN CHICAGO. 

LIFELIKE "SEVEN YEAR ITCH" ICONIC POSE CAPTURED BY DESIGNER SEWARD JOHNSON...

THE PROJECT WAS KEPT IN GREAT SECRECY TILL RECENTLY

PROVIDING SHELTER under RAIN & SNOW. 

NAIL POLISHING over THE SIMULATED SUBWAY STATION GRATING TO REPRESENT THE ONE IN THE MOVIE. 

THE DESIGNER APPLYING THE SPRAY COLOR?

FINISHING TOUCHES. 

AMAZING ATTENTION TO DETAILS, AND REALISTIC FLESH TONES

APPLYING THE FINISHING TOUCHES. 

WONDERING HOW THE STATUE IS ABLE TO STAND ON ITS OWN WITHOUT SUPPORT? 

BRIDE AND BRIDESMAIDS, FIND SHADE UNDER THE STATUE 

STANDING IN THE MIDST OF CHICAGO SKYLINE WOULD HAVE MADE MARILYN VERY PROUD INDEED

. 

WHAT A FITTING TRIBUTE TO MARILYN IN THE WINDY CITY OF CHICAGO! 

EVEN THE YOUTH ARE CURIOUS.

More attacks on social mores!

Apoorva Raagangal (Tamil, Bizarre Rhythms;1975)
Another Kamal-Rajni flick. This time it is Rajnikanth is a debutante and is introduced to Tamil films by K. Balachander who wrote this story, dialogue and directed this offering. Apparently, Balander identified Rajnikanth as a potential after seeing him perform in a non-Tamil drama. Rajni was promised a role if he could learn Tamil, and he sure did, and the rest is history!
This film, in keeping with its title of abnormal rhythm, obviously referring to the complicated effects of wide age difference relationships, also offers some, in my opinion, some of the most heart wrenching soul warming lingering Carnatic musical sounds!
Actually, P Ramlee did offer this type of story half a decade before but in a comical manner through 'Keluarga 69' with A.R. Tompel.
Bhairavi (Srividya), a classical singer, helps to nurse a gang bashed Prasanna (Kamal) to health in her abode, one thing leads to another and love blossoms. Prasanna is a self appointed violent social reformist college student who often gets into the wrong side of the law for his nefarious activities. His father Mahendra, (Sundarajan) once give in up for police custody after a Robin Hood type deed - hijacking a rice smuggling lorry! Animosity develops between father and son and Prasanna leaves home.
In a comedy court, Mahendran (Sundarajan) is spotted as the only guy crying, thinking of his son. A young busy body 18 year old Ranjini (Jayasudha), starts a conversation. Initially irritated, they eventually build a bond. Ranjini claims to be an orphan supporting herself with odd jobs. Mahendran offers a place to stay and offers to adopt her as his daughter. Ranjini, however, has other plans up her sleeves (er, saree blouse). She confesses her inner feminine feeling towards this middle aged man. After much deliberation on public perception, Mahendra finally gives in.
What Ranjini conveniently omits from her background is that she discovered by accidental eaves dropping before she left her home was that she was brought up her biological mother as an orphan for fear of bearing an illegitimate child and the retribution on her singing career. Again, no 2 marks for guessing who the singing mother is - Bairavi!
So, now you have a son who falls in love with a lady whose daughter falls for his father!
Nagesh who does a great solo comic act as a doctor (Dr Suri) is a philosophical advice rendering medical practitioner by day who leads a double life as a drunk by night. He is a family friend of Bharavi and knows the whole secret. By a chance meeting with Mahendran in his drunken stupor, he blurts the whole truth.
To add drum roll to the climax, a very sick terminally ill 'blood cancer' stricken Pandiyan (Rajnikanth) comes to the picture to say his peace to Bhairavi. He had earlier absconded from her after a good time, leaving her pregnant. 
Coincidence again, Dr Suri gives hospice care for Pandiyan.
Just when you are thinking how all this mess is going to end, the answer is given in the climatic carnartic music song with Vain Jairam's melodious voice in a poetic way. The finale shows both siblings burying the hatchet with their respective parent. As always, a tragedy always solves many unsolvable issues. Pandiyan's death makes Bhairavi a grieving widow and for reasons best known to her, thinks it is inappropriate to jump into a matrimonial bond. The movie ends with Ranjini and Bhairavi leaving Mahendran's house with Prasenna passing Bhairavi her house keys and symbolically the key chain snaps with Bhairavi's picture on the key chain in Prasenna's hand. Audience are left asking whether it was the end.
The black and white award winning film marks the congregation of some of the who's who and soon to be demigods in the Tamil mainstream cinema at that era.
Kamalhasan with a bad hair cut (?wig) mimicking Bruce Lee depicting a defiant youth, a subdued but stylish Rajnikanth  in bell-bottom pants and posing with his trademark tilt.
This film ignited an open off screen relationship between Kamal and Srividya. Srividya went on to marry somebody else but it ended in a bitter divorce. Their relationship however went on until her dying days in 2006 after her loss in the battle against breast cancer.
Even though Srividya is acting like someone in her late 30s and Kamal is in early 20s, they were aged 22 and 21 respectively during the release of the film.
I can imagine what Amma would say after watching this film, "Cheh, can't they get any other story?". I guess she cannot stomach movies that upset the Indian social mores. For her a tear evoking tear jerking melodramatic 'creating a mountain out of a mole hill' type of Sivaji hit movie will do just fine!

An oldie but a goldie!

On being vegetarian….
 3.1.10

Being vegetarian is a highly overstated virtue being propagated by its proponents to put the fear of God into the non-believers and cow them into submission. The same people will say “eat to live” not “live to eat”, but they lead their whole life by analyzing what they eat. When you eat to live, you also logically should eat whatever food is given to you, vegetarian or otherwise! Eat to live may mean being careful in what you indulge in – whether it is clean (prepared in a hygienic fashion, halal/kosher if you are a Moslem/Jewish), laden with cholesterol (to clog up the arteries), rich with carbohydrates (which will increase your abdominal girth and place you at high risk of getting a coronary event) etc. etc…

Maybe if you are Gautama Buddha, you will eat whatever is served to you, whether on a platter or on a leaf so as not to offend the feeder. According to the Mahayana sect, the Enlightened one was fed contaminated (? tainted) pork meat which he consumed willingly as his time to attain Nirwana was imminent. Of course, there is always two sides to the coin. The Hinayana sect, on the other hand, believe that he succumbed to mesenteric infarction which may be a common occurrence for his advanced age of 80! I digress… way off tangent...

The story of veganism is the story of the affluence of man. When a man is a beggar, he would scavenge on leftovers at the bin. Life would be blissful, a full stomach and a warm place would be Shangri-La for him. As his stature (the beggar, no longer a vagabond but has an abode) improves, he will be picky on his food. He would want his food clean and unpolluted by other people and animals’ body secretion! Later, he would long for food to be prepared in a certain fashion – Chicken ala Kyiv, tikka style, Duck Peking style and the list goes on and on… He would later be “enlightened”, he will suddenly realize that he has been doing it all wrong all this while. He will have the compulsion to be a vegetarian. Then, the need to go organic and so on and so on…

There is a thin line between ingenuity and insanity. The heights of idiosyncrasy to stay vegan took new meanings when my daughter actually refused the “roti canai” offered at the temple, assuming that egg is an inherent ingredient of this Malaysian dish!

Man is an animal of convenience. He will alter rules and regulations to suit his whims and fancies. For instance, Brahmins are generally accepted as epitomes of vegetarianism. But wait a minute, Brahmins residing around the Bay of Bengal actually consume fish and their counterpart in the Kashmir Valley enjoy mutton. On a personal note, I know of a Brahmin who likes his steak rare!

The Art of Robert Kingsley

Another plagiarism case!

Actually, it all started when I started listening to this old 70s Malay song, "Bum Pam Bum Pam Parara" over the radio. A song that some students used to sing in school with altered lyrics - goncang, goncang parara..-mocking a burly guy named Guan Chiang!
Then I discovered via You Tube that that song was initially sang in Greek by a Ari San in the 60s. Then there was a Hindi song with that same tune.

Aris San

A Greek (non-Jewish) singer who arrived in Israel as a young man in 1957 and within five years became a megastar, club owner, close friend of IDF commanders and politicians, and lover of countless movie actresses and singers. In Israelof the 1960s, everyone was singing Aris’s hits “Sigal” and “Boom pam” and the gossip columns were full of his forbidden love affair with singer Aliza Azikri. For his fans, Aris was the perfect combination of east and west. Then began the rumors that Aris was a spy, and stories of violence between him and Aliza. Aris left Israel and set out to conquer America. He opened a hot nightclub in New York where Hollywood stars, politicians, and mafiosos basked in the light of the singer who hid behind an artificial wig, huge glasses, white suits, gold rings, and a guitar. His friends included Anthony Quinn, Telly Savalas, Harry Belafonte, as well as the Gallo crime family. Aris thought that he had found the key to success, but at the end of his meteoric rise came his fall, flight, and mysterious end in Budapest.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/songstress-brought-greek-music-into-mainstream-1.270942

Possibilities are aplenty

Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt, German 1998)

Continuing the trend of Sliding Door and Blind Chances, I ventured into a German movie (dubbed) about Lola, who has to run to her boyfriend in 20 minutes with 100,000 marks. Lola's boyfriend, a petty thief, gets into trouble when he accidentally leaves a stash a cash of thr amount in a train in the confusion of helping a vagabond and spotting some cops. He had earlier collected the cash from some gangsters involved in smuggling. Lola was earlier supposed to pick him up from their rendezvous with the money but her moped was stolen.

 
Lola starts running and the story goes in three possibilities, each affecting different people and their lives differently, all having different endings. Essentially she runs to her banker father workplace to find him with mistress/co-worker, she either leaves empty handed after discovering their illicit affair or kills him or misses him altogether because of certain obstructions along the way.

In the first ending, the boyfriend robs a supermarket. She joins him but is shot by the police. In the second ending, she reaches him with the money, but he is hit by a fire engine as he crosses the road to meet her. In the third ending, the boyfriend tracks down the vagabond and gets the cash. At the same time, Lola manages to win 100,000 marks at the casino!

The director manages to keep the surprise element intact, as the outcomes are all different. The film received over 26 awards the world over. It's an entertaining flick with a different angle, but nothing ground-shattering (to me—armchair critic)!

"Every question leads to another question, and finally, the answer leads you back to the same question."

Terror at RRF!

Thursday July 12, 2012

Heartless passers-by

Reports by LOURDES CHARLES, CHRISTINA CHIN, STEVEN CHIEW, CHONG KAH YUAN and HAFIZ MARZUKHI

GEORGE TOWN: Seven people walked past snatch theft victim Tan Kim Chuan (pic), 60, without lifting a finger to help her as she lay unconscious on the road with a cracked skull at the Rifle Range flats.
CCTV footage showed her lying on the road for about seven minutes (see sequence of events on the right).
Kim Chuan, who fell and knocked her head on the road in the 6.02am incident on Tuesday, succumbed to her injuries nine hours later at the Penang Hospital.
Her sister Lay Yong, 63, wants the passers-by “to listen to their conscience”.
“Those who saw her should have done something the least they could have done was shout for help.
“How could they have just walked by? I am angry but what can I do?” Lay Yong said at the Penang Hospital mortuary yesterday.

Tears flow: Investigating officer Asst Supt Wong Yeut Oon sharing Lay Yong’s painful loss at the Penang Hospital mortuary.

She said Kim Chuan was on her way to the family-owned coffeeshop in Carnarvon Street.
She would take the bus every morning to help out at the coffeeshop.
“My sister was the sort of person who would not hesitate to help others. The snatch thief who did this to her was heartless,” she said.
Kim Chuan, a widow who had just moved into the Rifle Range flats two weeks ago, was walking alone near Block J of the flats when her handbag was snatched by a motorcyclist.
At about 6.10am, three good Samaritans lifted her to the side of the road and called for an ambulance.

Sequence of events.

Penang Hospital Department of Forensic Medicine head Datuk Dr Zahari Noor said the post-mortem showed the cause of death was multiple injuries to the head.
“She suffered internal bleeding in the head and the back of her skull cracked when she fell and hit the road the impact was strong,” he said.
The body will be cremated in Batu Gantong at 2pm today.
Meanwhile, George Town OCPD Asst Comm Gan Kong Meng urged the public to help police in catching the suspect.
“As we are unable to be everywhere at the same time, we value the information from the public, especially from those who may have witnessed the incident,” he told reporters after paying his last respects to Kim Chuan at the Mount Erskine funeral parlour.
He also advised the public to always offer help to those in need.
“A swifter response could have saved her life,” said ACP Gan

Still haven't found what you're looking for?*

With the endorphin levels from the last 42.195km run slowly dwindling, one has recalculate the possibility of doing it all over again! That is the problem with mankind - Ever since the beginning of mankind, people have found pleasure in the these pleasure experiences which they have found difficult to give up.
Let us look at history...Thanks to History Channel.
Circa 1500 BCE, Aryan invaders brought in scriptures as they invaded India. This scriptures (e.g Rigveda) tell of pleasurable heavenly divine experiences with Soma - ? an extract or fruit of a tree. It is said to open the consciousness into a different level where one can communicate with God and the truth of mankind would be laid bare to see. The elusive tree was never discovered - perhaps it was abused to extinction by overzealous devotees or banned due to fear of its potency!
Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations had their own beers and wines to feed the masses. The Sumerians are said to use 40% of their crops to yield these beverages. Wines were freely used to treat the sick by Jesus. It seems that during the march to crucifixion, He was offered wine and opium to allay the pain but He refused.
In some instances, a fungal contaminant in wines produced psychedelic effect.

Mayan chief forbids a person to touch a jar of chocolate

In the Middle Ages, the Arabs discovered distillation to produce aromatic perfumes. The Europeans went one step further to use this same process to produce strong spirits. And everybody in Europe was happy for a while until alcoholism became a real problem.
Christopher Columbus' travel to the New World in 1492 opened the floodgates of intoxicants. The Aztecs were using spiced up Cacao drink ceremonially and a daily basis. The invaders started abusing for its mind altering property, so much so that the Vatican had once outlawed its use after a nun neglected her nun duties after overindulging in cocoa beverages.
The Indians (Red) also imparted the concept of a peace pipe and tobacco. It found its way to the European everyday life after Sir Walter Raleigh walked to the Queen's courtyard with a pipe. Another American contribution to the world came about when Francisco Pizarro found that the slaves in Andes working long hours laboriously in the high altitude after consuming coca leaves.
The Europeans extracted pure cocaine from these leaves and this alkaloid became a medical miracle. Its use was popularized in the modern world after Sigmund Freud used cocaine for depression. I suppose he also dwell into the inner labyrinth of the inner space of the mind to suggest his weird psychological mumbo-jumbo of Oedipus complex and genital envy!   Pretty soon it was the panacea for all humanly ailments from headaches, cough, alcoholism to general malaise.
The enterprising John S. Pemburton decided to make a killing by mixing coca and cola (from Africa) to legally sell the addictive substance at the counter of the pharmacy (like a saloon bar), colloquially calling it 'a shot in the arm'!
As psychological dependence increased, cocaine was outlawed.
The irony of all this is that the continent that import the substances are bearing the brunt of its ill effect. The Mayans, Red Indians and the Aztecs were consuming coca, tobacco and cocao without any problems because they used it with respect for ceremonial reasons whilst maintaining its sacredness and maintaining the discipline associated with it (the fasting and the rituals). The Red Indians took in alcohol and lost their rich heritage to alcoholism. Drug abuse and addiction are perennial problems in the developing and developing worlds.

P.S. Freud died of throat cancer. He smoked 20 cigars a day!

*I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2)