A peek into the White House, again!

House of Cards (2013) - Mini Series

Meet Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), the Democrat Majority Whip in the White House. He is the Invisible Hand that puts everything in order like how he wants to put it, for his benefit.
He gets very angry when he is bypassed for the position of Secretary of State, a post he was promised before the elections. He does not exhibit his frustration but like what a true psychopath would do, he put up a straight face but whilst sharpening his sharp steely knives. He is not going to take these setbacks lying down.

Also meet his personal secretary, his confidant, his faithful dog, Doug Stomper, who probably knows all secrets about Underwood, more than his mother and his wife put together. And meet his wife, Claire, a nearing menopause go-getter, who is equally privy to all the schemes that Underwood is up to. Claire has a non profit initiative to supply fresh drinking water to the third world for which she uses Underwood's influence in the White House to garner donations.
Underwood has many dirty secrets of each and every congressman and he knows how to use it in his favour when the time demands. He is conniving and paints the picture as if he is genuinely helping them when he could be stabbing them at the very same moment.
He starts an affair with an ambitious novice journalist, Zoey, just to feed her the right information to 'leak' out of the White House.
Underwood's mantle is proven by his handling of the Education Bill which he 'helped' to contain its repercussion - even though he created the hype in the first place- to come out smelling of roses.
Then he blackmails a congressman, Peter Russo, with drinking, drugs and women problems, to withdraw a Bill. With his own agenda on mind, he grooms Russo for the post of Governor of Pennsylvania with the right kind of news coverage and political wrangling.
Unfortunately, Russo flaunters and go wayward into his old ways and he was eliminated in what appeared like a suicide.
In the meantime, Claire has to deal with her own issues at her non profit organization where she stream rolls others, even the founder, for dominance and rekindles an old relationship with an old flame who is a great contributor to her course. 

The evil plans are executed with great precision till Underwood is finally short listed for the post of Vice President. Here, he is in for a shock, as the President himself had things up his sleeves.
Yeah, sure! We have seen many movies/ TV series like this with plots where everyone has nothing but evil on their mind. Everybody now that everybody is manipulative in the politics, immaterial which part of the world one is. Power corrupts, absolute or otherwise, period. What makes this mini series different is the witty incisively razor sharp sarcastic dialogue. On top of Senator Frank Underwood soliloquies and discussed his modus operandi with us, the audience. He is so full of himself. When he bows to pray, he actually prays to himself!
A wide eye opener to illustrate how human beings would go to play with peoples' emotions and money to move their own agenda....

Don't blame me, it is my brain!

Blame my Brain (the amazing teenage brain revealed)
Nicola Morgan 2005

Had the honour of meeting the author of this book in KL recently when this Scottish lady was conducting a workshop for writers of teenage stories. Her passion to write ignited at the age of 9 but had to wait for 27 years to publish her first book. She has written books in many genres, fiction and non -fiction, mainly for teenage readers.It is an amazement how those cuddly lovable cuties metamorphose into a volatile piercing thorns, something in the line of gremlins when exposed to water. In the case of tweens, it is adolescence! They may be the next most difficult thing to analyse after the female brain!
In this 200 odd page book, the author offers an reasonable explanation for this transformation. It can basically be blamed on nature, 3 main punching bags - genes, evolution, neuro-chemicals.
The author's target group seem to be teenagers and those in constant contact with teenagers with the hope of giving a reasonable explanation to their sometimes bizarre behaviour, probably to knock sense into the youngsters and to avoid adults from breathing down their necks.

Compared to other animals including primates, human spend a much more time in adolescence as they need to learn much more to seep into adulthood. Even though we tend to think that the brain stops growing quite early in life, it continue growing to much later and the dendrites and synapses undergo pruning and remodelling during this crucial age. The frontal cortex connexion to other areas of the brain is not fully developed explaining the sometimes rash decisions. The melatonin secretion which is related to sleep, is abundant at a time when a lot of work need to be done, hence the apparently sleepy-head teenagers. Dopamine which is sometimes associated with satiety sensation in certain part of the brain is increased with alcohol. When it consumed by the brain which is not fully developed, the chances of addiction and mishaps seem higher.

Risk taking brings up us in the evolution ladder and helps us improve our technology. The risk takers survives the cold winters!
Evolution is often called an easy animal which can explain many of our behaviors. A cat is a cat in spite of years of births and rebirths with limited skills of purring and scratching their fur. Man, on the other hand, have evolved from a wheel rolling population to one who sends nuclear powered vessels to other planets. A long adolescence is needed to prepare these children to adulthood to continue the good work done by their ancestors. Nature has shown that breeding with closely connected siblings or offspring is unhealthy, hence it tries to prevent breeding within families by creating intolerance between parents, children and amongst siblings for this very reason.
It goes on to educate on other teenage problems like eating disorders, self harm and depression.
What I find quite intriguing is that we blame our behaviours to everything but ourselves. Affluence, luxurious living, living in absence of poverty may pamper us till we all turn pompous, fat and spoilt to the core.
What we all, as mankind, need is an occasional calamity to shake us and put us all in other. We can all then see how fast we all mature, literally overnight! (this is not the author's recommendation,of course!)
Good advice from the author for the teenagers on the need to stay focused. As the brain connexions are being pruned and being complete, they need to constantly practice, prepare and stay out of trouble because their future starts here.

Sherlock and Watson of the East?

Chiriyakhana (চিড়িয়াখানা, The Zoo, Bengali; 1967)
Director: Satyajit Ray
Deviating from the usual Ray's story with social theme, this flick starts with a rather unusual musical score. Ray did his own musical score for this one. It sounded like what it turned out to be - a suspense thriller whodunit, probably along the line of Sherlock Holmes and his dear Watson. Here Uttam Kumar (who acted as the hero in Nayak, Hero) appears as Byomkesh Bakshi, a quirky philosophical private eye who seem to the brain behind the duo of private investigator. His side kick, Ajit, may appear like a comedian but he is also witty in his own way and contributes his share to the story.
Just like their predecessor, they indulge in quite a bit of smoking (not cigar but cigarette) and drinking tea.
As in the case of Baker's street, Bakshi is visited by a visitor with a peculiar case when he is deep in an intellectual discourse with Ajit whilst playing with pet snake, Vasuki, whom he trusts more than human!
The visitor is a retired judge who is now running an ashram, as a way of washing his sins after sending a record number of convicts to the gallows. The ashram housed a motley crew of handicaps, social outcasts, an ex-convict, the judge's wife, a musician doctor, among others.

With Vasuki

With smoke and tea!

Bakshi is asked to visit the ashram the following day in disguise (Sherlock again). Dressed a Japanese horticulturist, he and Ajit are introduced to the occupants of the ashram. The judge dilly dallies on telling his problem. Before he manages to tell his problem, he is brutally murdered. The only clue that he is left with the lyrics of an obscure Bengali song from an old movie.

Japanese horticulturist

 The investigating police officer invites Bakshi to help out in the investigation which he thinks is a clear and cut case, not suspecting anyone! Bakshi, through his astute observation, deduces that they are more than meets the eye.
From the lyrics of the song, he traced the actress, who disappeared soon after hitting it high in the box office. He uncovered the mysterious husband of the actress whom the judge had passed judgment and had been released. The scent of blackmail filled the air and through elementary deduction putting everybody as suspect, the real murderer eventually squeals!

N.B. When my son saw the title of movie, he thought I was watching a movie which would translate to 'Bird Food' - Chiriya Khana! In Bengali, it seems, it means 'The Zoo'!

Values changes as seasons change?

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

This movie has initially not released for consumption of general public as it depicted Germans (at least one) as level headed and British as gung ho fool hardy lads! There also uncanny resemblance between Churchill and the main character of the film, Clive Candy who had both served in WW1 and Boer War in South Africa.
It starts off sounding like a satire of sorts with the bumbling British soldiers ambushing a Turkish sauna holding a General Candy as captive. Apparently, the war did not start till midnight and that the young punks had broken a gentlemanly rule of conduct!

The young swashbuckling Lt. Candy

Major General tells his life story in a long flashback.
His story takes through the time after the Boer War in 1902 all through the WW2.
As a lieutenant, he had gone to Germany on the invitation of an English governess in Germany (Edith, Deborah Kerr) to investigate the bad press spread in Germany regarding the English. Candy creates a political row by insulting the Imperial German Army. As a way to deal the tension, he is summoned to engage in a fencing duel. His opponent is Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff. Both are injured but later becomes good friends despite the differences in their ideologies. Edith who visited both of them ended up marrying Theo even though Candy realised that he had fallen for her.

Deborah Kerr

Fast forward, now Brigadier General Candy marries Edith's sister, Barbara (Kerr again) after the WW1 and believes that Britain won the war because of his philosophy of "right is might". Doing the right gentlemanly thing won the war. Theo is tracked down as a prisoner of war but he is cold towards Candy. Theo thinks that the British would treat them bad but Candy was cordial. Theo returned home.
Fast forward again, and now it is WW2...1939

But the war starts

at midnight!

Theo is now at the immigration counter in England trying to gain entry. In his lengthy heart warming speech, he tells the officer of how his two children had embraced the ideology of the Nazis. Since his wife had died, he does not fit into Germany. Candy vouch for him and takes him home.
The final part of film shows Kerr in another role as a private, Angela and Candy's driver. Candy retires but is cajoled to join the Home Guards to protect their homeland in the Battle of Britain. Candy's house is destroyed in the blitz and is filled with water. That is when he retires to the club where he was ambushed in the beginning of the movie.

Friends after all these years

The young officer who led the attack was Angela's boyfriend. Realizing that times have changed and nobody fights war the 'gentlemanly' way following rules and regulations, he decides to forgive Angela's boyfriend and invites him over to dinner. He realises that he had kept the promise that he had made with his deceased wife - that he would never change even if the house is flooded; here his house was drenched and filled with water and he is stuck on his old ideology.
The movie ends with Candy saluting the new guards.
I could not help it but compare this movie to James Cagney's patriotic movie done around the same time on the other side of the Atlantic, 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'. At the end of both movies, the actors salute a marching band as the new generation takes over with their new ideas.This is another entertaining movie with excellent dialogue with plenty of wit and eloquence which is dearth in most movies these days. Creative articulation is replaced with creative provocative postures of actors indulged in various sinful activities!