May the Force be with you!

As usual things happen in waves of coincidences. Of late, quite many individuals are quite open about their beliefs and have no qualms about questioning the existence of the Almighty. Maybe, they admit the existence of a divine power or force that spins the universe but they cannot stomach the idea of God as preached by Man. Are they spiritualistic atheists?

First, in the Steve Job's biography that I am presently reading, Jobs became a non believer (he practiced Zen Buddhism later) after he refused to accept that the all knowing God refused to help the starving children of Africa. 

Then, they was another guy who questioned that no rational explanation can be given to explain the reason why his apparently healthy teenage son had to return to God after a mysterious illness. Somehow telling him that God has bigger plans and we mere mortal are at a position to comprehend the greater plans seem out of place!

The politics in the house of God also does not paint a nice picture of justice on Earth. Factions, friends with business benefits, ethnicity and other self interests prevail over the common of doing God's work on Earth.

People are giving God a bad name! And counting contribution from the donation box is a 24-hours 3shifts' job where the workers' go back smelling of money - may not be the most sanitized smell, looking at various type of people, (the good, the bad and the ugly) who would have handled the dough and donated it to wash their sins!

Solving murder through media?

The Blue Gardenia (1953)
Director: Fritz Lang

This 1953 movie, directed by Fritz Lang, is an unusual story of how a murderer is apprehended through the media.

Norah (Anne Baxter), Crystal and another colleague are telephonists living together. Harry (Raymond Burr) is a painter who is a prowler of pretty girls. Norah is deeply in love with her army boyfriend in Korea. On her birthday, she received a letter informing her that he was breaking up to marry a nurse who nursed him to health when he was taken ill.

Devastated, Norah, on the rebound, decided to accept a date from Harry via a case of mistaken identity at the spur of the moment. Harry called to date Crystal, but Norah answered instead.
After a lovely dinner with too much of intoxicants, Norah followed Harry to his apartment. When Harry tries to rape a drunk Norah, she remembered fighting back and passing out. When she comes around, she runs home in the rain.

Slowly, as the papers report the murder, her memory of the event returns.

A newspaper editor announces the murderer to give an exclusive interview in return for legal representation. When Norah finally communicates with the editor, their conversation is intercepted by the bartender who informs the police. A disappointed Norah is apprehended.
Now, the editor does his own investigation. He discovers that the song that Norah heard on the turntable had been changed. By tracing the record, they found that the real murder was one of the girls Harry had jilted.

Nat King Cole makes an appearance in the film for the rendition of the song 'Blue Gardenia'.

Just another movie...

Justice must be seen to be done!

Boomerang! (1947)
Another obscure movie of the bygone era when crisp succinct dialogue was more important in deciding the quality of a movie. The antics of special effects and pyrotechnics have now superseded  quality acting. This story is based on a real life event of an unsolved murder in Connecticut. The director, Elia Kazan, whose has the reputation of introducing many superstars including Marlon Brando, James Dean, Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood won a couple of awards for his work. Karl Malden (of 'The Waterfront' and 'The Streets of San Francisco' fame is seen here as supporting actor.
A respected figure in town, Father Lambert, in shot at short range in the centre of town on a dark night. Seven witnesses came forth, swearing to have a good view of the murderer. The only description that they can give of the perpetrator is that he wore a dark long coat and the light coloured hat.
The pressure builds up to apprehend the murderer from the public, press and politicians. The police is forced to go on a rampage to detain hundreds of suspects and finally pin the crime on an ex-serviceman, John Waldron, for possessing a weapon similar to the murder weapon. A confession was forced on him after prolonged sleep deprivation and interrogation.
In comes the State Attorney Henry Harvey who incurs the wrath of police when instead of prosecuting the accused, he managed to shake the credibility of the witnesses and the evidences put forward in the case.
In the end, an innocent man walks free. The real murderer was never found but two deaths apparently by suicide suggests maybe the actual murderer found his own justice. Or was the accused the real culprit?
The character of the State Attorney, Henry Harvey, is based on a Homer Cummings who later went on to become the Attorney General under FD Roosevelt.

If you can't change 'em, would you join 'em?

Someone came back and laid his back disappointedly on the sofa and grumbled,  "Just should have bribed like the rest and got through the driving test like the rest. Trying to follow the righteous path, now I have to sit for the exams again!"

Then he went on to mentally count the number of driving students taking the test that day and the amount of ill gotten gains that the almighty testers would be taking home to serve their loved ones, leaving the guilt aspect to be dealt with another day. And the dirty money would have accumulated to gargantuan proportions. 

There would not come a day where a beacon of light would shine upon them to stop this practice. By then, they would have got both their feet way too deep into the muddy world of corruption. They would have committed themselves and their dependants into many ventures that their needs just keep on increasing. Catch 22 situation, damn if you do and damn of you don't.  

Another instance at another place....

Life ain't fair, deal with it!

There are sweat shop wage earners who are coarsed to work extra hours for the sake of emergencies that keep on appearing for no particular reason. Workers have nothing to say but follow as they had absentmindedly or rather desperately signed off their soul to the establishment. The agreement testominially illustrates that their services would be called upon as and when deemed fit. Forget about incentives or crumbs, you pick the pittens that the power that be decides fit for you. What? It is not fair? Don't worry, there many waiting in line just to continue where you stop when you leave...

What, you as the third person, the bystander do? To leave it at status quo as it does not affect you directly? Or be a David and bring down Goliath and the whole stinking system? Not everybody can be Gandhi or Mandela who would set aside their worldly duties to sacrifice their life for others. Most people are mere mortals. They just go with the flow and prefer not to rock the boat...

A comedian who thinks out loud

Louis C.K.
Entering the lists of stand-up comedians is this guy is Louis C.K. This guy's jokes are so candid and sometimes so scary like as if I am thinking aloud. He goes around condemning anything and everything. The only drawback of his brand of comedy is that it sometimes borders on extreme profanity. Four lettered words seem second nature to him but some people find it extremely funny. Even in our local comedy circuit here, swear words are used too loosely which is supposed to augment the comedy component.
If you scrutinize C. K. Louis' sketches, they mirror that of Bill Cosby's brand of comedy (which was family friendly).
For a mature audience, I suppose it is alright. But for the underaged, is it a case of monkey-see-monkey-do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDwkVQL3Yb8&list=RD02OIdgAVSiOd0

Thriller without the gore

Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Director: Roman Polanski

I am fed up with the horror movies ala-Friday the 13th and its clones that followed. It was essentially filled up youngsters screaming their lungs out to gore, crimson hued ketchup with a lot of skin and knife piercing sounds! Thanks to mindful censors, the butchered scenes of butchering would appear out of sync.
This film is a pioneer of sorts to many psychological thrillers that followed featuring pregnant mothers and devil worship. Kudos to the director for managing to maintain the suspense with appropriate musical score and silence when required.
 The Woodhouses,  Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy (John Cassavetes) move into their new apartment. Guy is a struggling actor and Rosemary is a home maker who is longing to make home for her husband and her baby soon. After a mysterious death of one of its tenants, The Woodhouses befriend an elderly couple, Minnie and Roman Castevets. The neighbours become close with them in spite of initial reluctance on their part of the Woodhouses.
Rosemary soon conceives.

The Castevets go out their way to feed them with nutritious drinks, amulets and even suggest an obstetrician for Rosemary to see. Rosemary senses that something is not right when she has recurrent abdominal pains and keep on losing weights. Her close friend, Hutch, who suggested that there might be witchcraft involved slips into a coma for no reason. The obstetrician and her husband too, seem to be on the Castavetes' side. Against all odds, Rosemary is tranquilized and she delivers a child. She is however told that the birth was a stillbirth!
After much probing and searching, Rosemary finds out that her child is indeed very much alive and is a toast to all the devil worshipers in the group led by the Castevetes. The group comprise the obstetrician, many tenants of the apartment and her husband would had sold his soul to the devil for better acting prospects.
The child, Adrian, is supposed to be the reincarnation of Satan on earth!
An enjoyable movie with excellent performance by Mia Farrow who fit her role of a cachexic mother, accentuated by her Vidal Sassoon inspired boyish hair cut that shocked the world during her stint in Peyton Place. It is nostalgia looking at the extras in the movie with the late 60s above knee outfits complete with bob cut, fake eye lashes , eye-tex, and heavy eye shadow.
The doctors were already using plastic syringes then.....
And Mia Farrow received her divorce papers from Frank Sinatra during one of the crucial scenes, for continuing to act after marriage...

Rich spoilt brat's empathy?

So during another tête-à-tête session with my sibling regarding turns of events of late, a proposition just popped out in my mind. To understand the predicament of others, especially for someone in power when his decision would affect all strata of society, he has to have tasted the agony and hopelessness of poverty. Only then can he empathize with their sufferings. So that faux pas like what Marie Antoinette said to the starving peasants, during the royal banquet would not be repeated. ["Let them eat cake"]

Rich men's kids, born with a silver spoon, without a care or worry about the next meal may not be the best pacifier of the working class. Dubya would make the best example who just swished through his tenure with his clueless stare, leaving a trail of destruction at every nook of the world.

But then....wait!

It may not be so clear cut! A pauper who suddenly is put on a pedestal may just end up like the Emperor and his new clothes. Like a bug who falls into a bag of rice, he may just eat away his newfound fortune to death.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.