Life goes on...

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore 1974
I wonder why the past few films have women themes in them, pure coincidence, I suppose. This 1974 flick was directed by the Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese. Unlike his usual cup of tea which involves a lot of violence and killings, this one is a family drama with a lot of emotions involved.
It did create some noise groups for portrayal of an abused docile wife.
Alice Wyatt (Ellen Burstyn) had big ambitions of being a singer. Came a man in her life, blinded by love, marriage and pop came a son, he ended up as a housewife to a hot tempered Cola Cola employee and a mother to a slightly bad mannered 11 year old boy. In spite of the strained relationship, life went on till husband was killed in an accident. Facing financial difficulties, she sells her meagre belongings in New Mexico and decide to drive back to her home town of Monterey, California with her son to continue where she stopped of what was supposed to be the beginning of her music career.
Due to dire straits, she made a pit stop at Phoenix, Arizona. She manages to get a singing job at a small bar. She gets romantically involved, unknowingly, to an abusive married man. When his wife comes to see Alice and the mad (both mood and predisposition) man goes violent on both of them, she scoots the scene.
Things becomes tougher for Alice, made not easy by her constantly whining son.

Singer to waitress

Another stop, this time at Tucson to earn more money. She landed up as a waitress in a regular restaurant. After some dissatisfaction, she comes in terms with her job and her co-workers.
Alice meets up with David (Kris Kristofferson), a divorcee, a regular patron to the restaurant and slowly through his good bonding with her son, Tommy, gets romantically linked.
On his twelfth birthday, the brat grossly misbehaved and David gave him a spanking. Upset, they have a tiff. Tom goes missing. He gets drunk with his weird friend Audrey (a young Jodie Foster) and had to picked up at the police station.
As in all happy endings, everybody apologizes and compromises.
Alice stays in Tucson to pursue her stalled singing career, Tommy starts schooling and David and Alice kiss and make up.

Mmm... Just another Hallmark like movie which did not leave a profound impression. Obviously, the Academy awards panel member thought it was worthy of many nominations and in fact it won a couple.

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Life in the fast lane

In this time and age, where everyone lives in the fast lane where speed dial rules - nobody remembers numbers any more;  immigration is through the green lane; express lane to squeeze toll in a wink; dressed down to work and so forth, everything can be arranged for your convenience.
And I thought it is only applies to our daily living!

Even preparations for penance can fast trekked. Just the other day, my son who is generally cynically and sarcastic about age old traditional rituals and ethno-religious practices, blurted out that he was taking a 'paal kodam' (milk containers) on our Thaipusam outing. I guess the stress of wanting to excel in his recently concluded public examinations lured him to display publicly his private cajoling of divine interventions.
From my understanding of carrying out penance, one has to purify the body and soul by sacrificing simple pleasures of life over a protracted period of time to focus the mind with their ultimate task of surrendering their offering at the lotus feet of the speared Lord of Destroyer of All Evils. Even a day before the said event, they (my daughter joined in the foray a day earlier) were seen enjoying the pleasures of cooked meat and comforting snooze on high quality rubber mattress!
Hey, I guess it is the thought that counts, not the execution of the task....

Picturesque life

The Illustrated Biography: John Lennon
200 classic, rare & unseen photographs by Daily Mail

Even 40 years after the break up of The Beatles and 30 after his assassination, John Lennon still manages to draw a crowd every single time something is written or said about him. There is nothing new in this book that we did not already know about this sometimes eccentric music maestro. That he started of with a gig in Hamburg, about how Dacca records rejected them saying that guitar music was on the way out, about his famous line "...those in the cheap seats clap your hands, the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry" in Prince of Wales Theatre in London, about the Beatles being more famous than Jesus and the subsequent decadence into drugs, spiritualism, Yoko (Oh, no!) and the dissolution of Beatles to retirement from music to starting over and death at the hands of a deranged fan (or mastermind power play of the CIA, if you believe the conspiracy theorists). It is a sort a pictorial biography of the 4 boys from Liverpool, in particular Lennon. 

This book is divided into two parts, the first with the Beatles (In my life) and the second (Starting Over) which tells about his time with Ono.

A few new things about Lennon - being shy of being seen outside with glasses, he started wearing his trademark round NHS spectacles after shooting his a film anti war satire film 'How I won the War' acting as a private in the army. 

Lennon also published books on his collection of jokes. He tried his hand in acting but did not shine, though.
He was also a caricaturist.
A good coffee table ornament if you are in the habit of keeping your guest wait long for you to come down or they find your company quite boring!

Disjointed, still made sense, though!

Pulp Fiction 1994

Never had the chance to watch this movie the first time around, the movie that catapulted John Travolta's acting career back into orbit after many repeated failures since Saturday Night Fever. As in other Quentin Tarantino's films, the layout of the movie is different and is full of gore, violence and flowery explicit language. Bruce Willis career too had a kick-start here. I kind of liked it with its unique brand of humour, the right chemistry between the main hitmen, Samuel L Jackson and Travolta and the witty dialogue.

The story is basically disjointed and is told in a non-linear fashion, but they all make sense in the end. You would be wondering why Travolta gets shot dead in the middle of the show but reappears later.

It starts with two novice robbers chitchatting and decides to rob a diner. When they (one of them is Tim Roth of 'Lie to Me') hold a gun to hold up, the credits roll in. The story stops there and continues at the tail end of the movie. But then the tail end is not sequentially the end of the story as the end is told in the middle! A new concept, a breakthrough that was earth-shattering and earned many accolades.

Vincent (Travolta) and Jules (Jackson) are hitmen for Wallace. They are mean killers who collect some merchandise from double-crossers. Then there is a scene where Vincent has to babysit Wallace's wife, Mia (Uma Thurman). She overdoses herself with heroin and creates a heart-stopping scene for Vincent.

Another plot is the story of Butch, a boxer, who is supposed to lose a fight on Wallace's orders but defeats his opponent instead! The mob is hot on his heels while he makes a dash. He has, however, to return to his apartment to retrieve an old wrist which he inherited from his great grandfather! Vincent is waiting for him there but is shot by Butch instead.

In a twist, Wallace and Butch get entangled with a shop owner who apprehends them.

In another scene, Wallace accidentally shoots a victim and calls upon Jimmie (Tarantino) to clear up his mess.

The scene finally returns to the diner where the two robbers are. Coincidentally, Vincent and Jules are there. Because of what Jules perceived as a miracle and a message from God, he gives his money to the robber and leaves his profession.

An entertaining flick...

An exercise in desensitisation?

"... But you just killed a soldier," I tell my sons and nephew who naturally find fine bonding by staying glued to the TV monitor and go on a shooting spree on their computer game named 'Call of Duty'.

"But they are baddies, German soldiers!" they reply. I retorted, "..they are also somebody's son, husband, brother and father. Somebody is going to grow up without a father and is going to a psychological wreck!"

Before the time when games were on hand held devices, in the late 80s (1989), my house mate who was performing the unenviable lonely but essential anaesthetic service in a district hospital, was a lone wolf in a small town where the siren of the ambulance is the only excitement. To maintain his own sanity, my friend used to periodically visit a gaming shop to have his daily dose of radiation from the consoles of Sega panels. After killing loads of baddies and aliens, he would return rejuvenated, like having a shot in the arm, like back from a vacation, ready to face what may in his next call of duty. He is still doing it now, after all these years. The only difference now is that, with Samsung Galaxy Note II, he can play his Temple Runs and Subway Surfer anywhere anytime. 

The proponents of advancement of gaming industry will boasts that it is bigger than Hollywood and that it improves hand eye coordination and so on. Some even promote it to improve surgical skills in key hole surgery!

But then, the stories of able bodies being transformed to unshaven, unkempt, social outcast, immersed into the stroboscopic lights of the Internet games depending on fast food and pampers to answer biological needs does not augur well to promote it as technology next! Loss in social interactions and desensitisation to gore, blood, violence as well to death makes it a real possibility that this addiction may indeed turn out us to zombies, just like the zombies they intended to kill! Are we heading towards a world where empathy and feeling others' pain like feeling the pain endured by The Lord who sent his only Son to die on the cross to wash the sins of Man? Is the recent apathy towards an accident victim toddler in China testimony to this end?

Much ado about nothing!

Viswaroopam (2013, Tamil)
Now I understand how things happen in life. And the interpretation of its occurrence can be varied depending on which side of the fence you are on and the gate keeper of the information is King. This is the case in the hype surrounding the release, the court proceedings and the ban of the film 'Viswaroopam'. The suspense and news generated by the media stirred the curiosity of movie buffs to catch the most talked about, by attention-seeking rumour-mongering politicians, movie of recent times at all expense. Thanks to the thriving illegal downloading business, their wishes have come through. Life, as usual is unfair, for Kamalhasan who had apparently invested his life saving into the production of this mammoth film involving a varied crew and extras of the non-Tamil film industry (excluding Naseer, the only familiar face besides Kamalahasan).
I do not understand the opposition to this film at all. This type of story has been covered umpteenth times by their Hollywood counterpart demeaning the Muslim terrorists as blood thirsty incorrigible nincompoops or even worse. Here, even the protagonist is a Muslim trying to intercept the detonation of a bomb in New York. And the shooting of the film does not depict any part of Tamil Nadu or India. The story shows mainly events that happen in Afghanistan and New York. The only remotely link to India of this movie is that Kamalahasan is half-Tamil half-Kashmiri, the dialogue of Tamil which is mixed with lots of English, Hindi and Pashtun (even the Tamil pronunciation is so Anglicised!) and the stars. Perhaps, the only Indian element here is the Bharatnatyam dance that the protagonist is teaching.
Finally, we have a present day Tamil movie which fits into a true spy thriller suspense bill minus the mandatory masala elements which are vital for the collection at the box office. Gone are comedians with wise crack dialogue and laughable fighting scene. So did the element of set dances, and no sarees and the pottu (red vermillion powder over the forehead) too!
The film starts with Dr Nirupama, a nuclear oncologist (Pooja Kumar, Kamal's wife on screen) having a session with her psychiatrist telling him about her marriage of convenience and suspicion of infidelity with her husband. Then appears Viswanath (Kamalhasan), an effeminate dance teacher performing in a true effiminate poise and mannerism (ala Avvai Shamughi @ Chachi 425). Interestingly, Nirupama is two timing with a colleague.
Nirupama hires a bumbling private investigator to check on her husband. He loses him but manages to see her Iyer Hindu husband praying at a madrasah! The P.I. inadvertently stirs a hornet's nest when he knocks on a terrorist's door. P.I. is killed and Nirupama is traced via a name card in his jacket.
Nirupama and her gentle husband is held by a Muslim terrorist group of which her lover is the head, who is planning to bomb New York. After witnessing a killing, the mild mannered Viswanath metamorphoses into a mean lean killing machine.
Here the movie goes into flashback mode...
Visvanath is now in a Muslim avatar Wisam Ahmad Kashmiri is training in Afghanistan as a AK47 wielding mujahideen. It becomes a bit confusing and draggy here and you start to think what all the hype was about. The scenes goes flip-flop into the present and the past but the suspense built towards the end will nullify whatever negative thoughts you developed throughout the show!
Wisam is introduced as a wanted man in Kashmiri escaping to Afghanistan and slowly builds his trust with Omar (Rahul Bose) and the superiors there. He is actually an Indian mole who was instrumental in an American attack on their hideout.
Fast forward to the future, Wisam escapes his captors together with his surprised wife. He and his team (all known relatives who transforms into crime busters) manages to avert a deadly explosion in the City of New York set by Omar and his team of terrorist. An interesting plot is the stealing of radioactive Caesium oncology department and tying radioactive capsules to flying pigeons to make the Americans' efforts at Geiger-Muller counter worthless whilst the terrorists bring in their nuclear devices!
I thought it was an okay movie with no glaring laughable bloopers. Do not ask why India has interest in a bomb which is going to explode in US as if they do not enough work. Even though sparse, the dialogues were witty and carried intelligent double tongued meanings. The revered director Shekhar Kapur makes an appearance in this flick.

Fastest draw in the South!

Django Unchained (2012)
Director: Quentin Tarantino

This film has been praised to high heavens for its boldness in depicting American's not so pleasant past. Even though , the powers that be always paint a sanitised and just past of the invaders who not only raped the American continent of its resources and systematically annihilated an advanced civilization already present before their gungho appearance in the New World, it takes a renegade son of the soil like Tarantino to highlight their equally unpleasant past with the workers who were slaved and treated worse than livestock.
This film can be best described as one of those spaghetti westerns which Clint Eastwood is commonly associated with. In keeping with Tarantino's penchant for gore and violence (as in Kill Bill and Hostel), there is plenty of spurting of crimson sanguineous fluids to make Dracula go into ecstasy. It is set at a time before the American civil war and has very eloquent dialogue with poetic words that would fascinate any student of English Literature albeit its liberal lace with profanity.
A maverick fast talking and fast drawing dentist, Dr Schultz (Christopher Waltz), rescues a gang of black slaves from captivity in the pretext of looking for a particular black slave who could identify a particular band of outlaw brothers. After picking out Django (Jamie Foxx), Dr Schultz just shoots them with a small pistol, the sound of menacing enough to be an assault rifle!

Slave Baron DiCaprio

A smart talking fast drawing dentist rescues a gang of black slaves from bounty hunters. He takes Django away from the group in text of trying a group of brothers.
Dr Schulz is a bounty hunter who gave up his dental practice to gun down outlaws for a living. He deputise Django (now a free man) as his assistant and they go all around from Texas on hunting spree all through winter with good returns. After finding out about Django's own sob story, both of them go in search of Django's German speaking black slave wife.

They track her down to be at Candiland in Mississippi, in the heart of slave land, owned by a ruthless rancher, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). They are looked at suspiciously, seeing a black man on horseback. With the intention of purchasing fighters for a blood sport (mandingo), they get in close with Candie and his confidantes.
Candie's chief butler, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) smells a rat and alerts his boss. The slick Dr Shultz manages to gun down Candie before after which a blood bath takes part in Candieland. Dr Shultz is killed and Django is captured and sold off to a mine. He outwits his captors and returns to rescue the love of his life and avenge in the true style of a spaghetti western as Django rides in the sunset with his girl and a flaming southern mansion on the background.
If all movies from Hollywood are guilty of racial stereotyping, portraying the whites as saviours and the coloured as crooks and uncivilised, this film is also guilty of the same. It, however, paints the whites as aggressors with bad attitudes, bad manners, bad teeth and barbaric, save for the German speaking Dr Schultz. The blacks, on the other hand are all victims of abuse and are sincere. Even Stephen who is his boss' faithful dog is loyal.
The background music score is warped. The potpourri of songs spread range from country folk to hard rock and even hip hop. An entertaining flick despite the extreme unnecessary gore and violence.