Every life comes with a sentence but...

Karpal Singh, The Tiger of Jelutong (Tim Donoghue, 2013)

The story of Karpal Singh is the story of any typical Malaysian born and bred in this land called home. Even though the ruling coalition would like to deny the contributions of all of its citizen and try to rewrite the history of the country as they please, this is reality, the reality of a country which raised from the ashes toiling through good times and bad ones. Any country in this world cannot live alone and cannot progress without the help of the little people. After some time, these people will not stay as little people. They too would aspire to come up in life and be somebody. With education, the offspring of the little people would not be taking things lying down but instead demand their rights. After all, they contributed to the only country that they call home. It is ludicrous to forever keep them as second class citizen and be swept under the carpet, seen but not heard.
Karpal's early recollection of childhood must be accompanied by the whirring sounds of American warplanes. The attack orchestrated by a man on wheelchair (FDR) in the mid 40s on Penang at the twilight months of WW2 had tremendous impact on a man who would eventually be on a wheelchair himself! The seemingly unstoppable tiger who had endured pain, torture, incarceration would not stop roaring even though wheel chair bound - down but not out!
The book narrates the childhood of a lawyer from humble beginnings and how this fiery looking for a good argument man builds up his law practice and political career. Many newspaper headline grabbing cases that had eluded most Malaysian people's memory is discussed in detail here.
Many death row inmates owe their lives to Karpal for escaping the gallows through his hard work. Many politicians rather not confront him anywhere especially in political arena. As the fighter swims through his eight decade of life, there is work aplenty to be done for the people which he has paved his offsprings to continue...

In the interest of science, they say!

Radio Bikini (1988, Documentary)

In the interest of science they say....

The above is a trailer of a series nuclear bomb blasts (2 of them) in Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean in the summer of 1946. I saw the full version of it over the Sundance channel recently. And it left a bad after taste. 

After the success of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US and its allies decided that there was a dire need to learn more about this deadly weapon, hence was born Operation Crossroads to test the catastrophic effects of the A-bomb.

The film starts with the actual footage of transmission of propaganda radio from Bikini Atoll. it paints a very cheery picture of the army and the locals gaily enjoying the sea, sun and the outdoors. The visitors managed to convince the Bikinian leader, Kilon Bauno, to coax his people to uproot themselves from their homeland to the Marshall Islands for the purpose of the experiment. The inhabitants never ever returned home to their homeland as it was finally deemed worthless for cultivation and potentially harmless for human inhabitants later. The events of the operations were narrated through the experience of a former American serviceman, John Smitherman who was very sick during time of the documentary shooting and succumbed shortly afterwards due to cancer.
The days leading to the blast off was met with opposition by the American public and the Soviet Union. With the touch of American diplomacy and propaganda, everything proceeded as planned.

Man checked for
radioactivity hours
after an atomic blast
at Bikini

5 war ships with various animals and experiment materials were strategically around the intended site of blasts. Tonnes of film rolls were shipped in to immortalize the event. The navy crew viewed the whole event from a distance wearing only protective goggles; no protective suits or shoes!
The footage shown after the mushroom cloud was not a pleasant one.
The steel war ships were riddled with hole and the metal aboard were twisted around like coil wire. The sheep on board were roasted, some miraculously were still alive but very very sick. The technicians were seen aboard were the clucking Geiger-Mueller counters. The soldier attire and even their bodies tested positive in the counter. They were still seen swimming and washing using the sea water.
The later part of the film suggested, but did not admit, that atomic power should only be used for peace on Earth, not to destroy Earth.

The soul searching trip

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Director: Wes Anderson
Not everyone would fancy this brand of quirky comedy. It is not really your situational comedy, neither it is a slapstick comedy! It will not make you roll on the floor laughing but make you think, albeit a bit.
As expected, as the film is mainly set in India, the picture perfect landscape of the Indian country side is generously used to paint the movie's background. Many of musical scores were done by The Kinks and some were Satyajit Ray and Pandit Ravi Shankar's compositions in Ray's movies. It is a sort of tribute to this giant of movie maker. Irrfan Khan makes a brief appearance here.
Three brothers meet up a year after their father's demise in India, enroute to visit their mother who had renounced normal life to work in a nunnery. They (Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, Jason Schwarzman) board the luxury train, The Darjeeling Limited to meet their mother who is actually not too keen to meet them. The control freak eldest brother, Francis (Wilson), survivor of a near fatal car crash arranges the trip. The other two siblings who themselves are embroiled in their own personal dilemmas and do not see eye to eye with Francis reluctantly follow suit.
After being thrown out of the train for misconduct, the trio continue the journey on foot. On the way, they rescue three young drowning brothers. One succumbs to injuries. They follow the kids to partake in their traditional  funeral. Events around the ceremony help them look at life differently.
The trio eventually reach the mother's convent. After realising that they were not welcomed there - the mother, who did not even attend their father's funeral, absconded from the convent a day after their arrival!- they leave for home. The brothers return more united than ever before.
India, as usual, has been depicted here as the haven for wounded souls and for lost souls to discover the real meaning of life, its purpose and the reason for our being here!

Stop! In the name of love...

Ram-Leela a.k.a. Goliyon Ki Raasleela (Play of Bullets, Hindi; 2013)

In my book of review and Rotten Tomatoes, this film would fall somewhere between decaying fly-infested flavanoids lost tomato and a maggot-infested putrefying one.

A century ago, when the sub-continent was experimenting with the silver screen, it chose 'Raja Harishchandra' from its vast reservoir of traditional folklore. In time, the story of love took many turns and U-turns to depict love in innumerable possibilities. Occasionally, new formulas would produce many copy cat follow-ups with the same storyline but different settings. Mostly, the films would end depicting poetic justice, satisfying society's beliefs, traditions, and fragile society structures.
Maybe I am a sucker for a good storyline and unexpected twists. Hence, when the credits rolled in to announce that the story was based on 'Romeo and Juliet', I was tad disappointed.

In a flash, the whole story flashed in front of me. We all know the story of Shakespeare's momento of undying love which ended in tragedy. So, it was... the story of two promiscuous teens dancing around the streets in the fashion of a musical in various degrees of dressing and undressing, finding 'love at first sight' type of forbidden love, in tumultuous times, with 'over-my-dead-body' type of opposition from either party ending with untimely death with the love-struck couple leaving the world to live happily on the other side.

Exposing a sculptured body is Indian Culture.
Bodybuilding started here.

The movie's saving grace would be the well-choreographed dances set against the picturesque backdrop of Rajasthan with the kaleidoscopic gaudy crimson and dark green combination clothing with rhythmic, repetitive gyration of body parts. Suppose you think Tamil movies over glorify violence where the most the petite of beau brandishes a samurai sword (e.g. Trisha in Tirupachi). In that case, their counterparts dance jubilantly emptying the contents of their Kalashnikov assault rifles in the air as they danced in the name of the Gods and Indian culture! 

People who decide to tour Rajasthan after viewing this film hoping to find pretty oversexed deep cleavaged abdomen revealing ever dancing lasses with faces like Deepika Padukone in the deserts of Rajasthan may be in for a shock. Maybe not the protective patriarchal guardians who have no reservations about honour killing! 

One who doesn't spend time with family is no man! (Don Corleone)

Breaking Bad (Mini-Series, Seasons 1-5; 2008 - 2013)

What do you do when you are stuck in a job where nobody gives two hoots to what you are saying? You are obviously overqualified when you see your contemporaries swift you by in their Bentleys and flaunt their wealth through their garden parties while you stand agape. These people were your partners and had started together. Look and them and where are you? To top it up, the students you teach do not bother what you are trying to impart. They think you are a fool. They believe their wealthy parents would see them through life. 

While they drive around in their spanking new SUVs, sponsored by their parents, you have to break your back trying to make ends meet with a second job!

Then, there is the co-brother-in-law working in the DEA (Drugs Enforcement Administration), who rattles on about these busts and the obscene amount of cash stashed by these law-breaking uneducated vermins of society.

Mr Walter White, chemistry teacher.

Then, you have a bout of paroxysmal coughing during one of the back-breaking sessions, which lays you unconscious. You are sent to the emergency ward. One thing leads to another. You, a 50-year-old non-smoker, are diagnosed with stage 3 inoperable lung cancer.

You are dazed. The only thing that comes to your mind is your family - your 7-month pregnant 40-year-old wife with the surprise unplanned baby, your spastic teenage son who was born with cerebral palsy and their long future without you and without savings. So you wear a perpetual frown on your face and walk through like a zombie with bouts of reflections on life.

You follow your co-brother-in-law in one of his hauls, and what do you see? Your former student making a back door escape from DEA. Then, something strikes you! You are a Chemistry graduate teaching a bunch of non-interested spoilt brats. Why not put your knowledge to good use for your family? It ain't rocket science. And that is when the main character of this mini-series, Mr Walter White, decided to cook high-quality methamphetamines for quick cash before his Maker takes him back. He does all this with the marketing effort of a junkie wayward rich kid and ex-student, Jesse Pinkman, simultaneously as Walt undergoes chemotherapy.

This hush-hush agenda is the background of an interestingly addictive saga with elements of crime drama, suspense, dark humour, the good musical score of a 50-year old Chemistry teacher who has to battle advanced lung cancer and ensure that his family is taken care of after his absence. In the process, he has to cover his track of illicit business and ill-gotten gains. But, more often than not, he only has to dodge the suspicions of his alert wife and the dog-eat-dog world of illegal drugs.

There are more moments of comic relief as the two characters of different generations and intelligence get things going off the ground! But, if you looking for cute characters with a flamboyant change of clothes and sleazy affairs, this one is not for you. After all, the main character is a 50-year-old bald man with a pregnant wife, a spastic son with slurred speech, an oversized cop who looks like 'The Thing' from Fantastic Four' and many drug addicts and baddies, set in the non-picturesque desert-like surrounding of Albuquerque, New Mexico,. And the poetic street lingo...yo!

Safeguard what you have!

Shatranj Ke Khilari  (The Chess Players, Urdu; 1977)
Direction, Screenplay, Music: Satyajit Ray

As the English were sharpening their steely knives to rape and rob India of their wealth, the Indian monarchs and noblemen are more interested in pleasures of the skin, the sheer enjoyment of the arts and of course Chess. The decadence of administration and those in power squarely brought the nation down.
This film boasts of high historical accuracy in its storyline and an array of a star-studded cast. Amitabh Bachchan narrates (Ray could not find a suitable role for him), Sanjeev Kumar, Shabana Azmi, Amjad Khan, Fareeda Jalal and Richard Attenborough star.

The time is pre-1857 before The Sepoy Mutiny when Lord Dalhousie and his generals are trying to hoodwink the Nawab of Oudh of his land.

The Nawab (Amjad Khan) is more interested in poetry and music than ruling over his subjects. Even when, critical history-altering decisions had to be made, he is humming tunes and composing poems in his mind. He unapologetically admits to his Prime Minister that he is incapable of ruling and he is a misfit. On a parallel story, two noblemen (Mirza -Sanjeev Kumar and Meer - Saeed Jeffrey) are obsessive chess players. Praising the great nation for inventing the excellent game for the world and ridiculing the British for changing the rules, they lose touch with reality. They are foolishly ignorant about their worldly duties and their wives. Mirza ignores his attention and companionship-seeking wife (Begum - Shabana Azmi), and it is a known fact, to everyone except Meer, that Meer's wife has a lover!

They spend hours and hours on the game smoking the hookah and chewing on paan (spiced betel leaves). Their antics during the game and their tricks trying to outdo are indeed comical. Even when Mirza's wife hides the chess pieces to garner attention, they visit a friend with the intention of using his chess piece. Unfortunately, the owner was dying and died during their visit. The noblemen were given a grand welcome as they were thought to be visiting the gravely ill!

Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jaffrey

While the English were moving in to take over the fort; these two jokers continued their games oblivious to the happenings of the day.

The Nawab on the other hand just hands over his throne to General Outram (Attenborough) on a platter without a fight, happy with the promised monthly allowance.
It just shows how wealth, if we do not have the courage and intelligence to safeguard it, it would be carved up and squandered by vultures and hyenas would are out to tear up their loot and defenceless owners!

Beware of those craftily conniving foxes who sing praises of your ability, intelligence, beauty or your singing ability just to hoodwink you of your hard-earned black-bean fritters (vadai, vada, Indian doughnut, வடை)!

Malaya 1941, 42

Photos from Mohd Faiz's post 

FB group Malaysian Heritage and History Club

Reference: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=pcb.583421528401298&type=3

Japanese Occupation of Malaya 1941 in Kuala Lumpur

Hurricane British fighter plane crashed in Malaya 1942 during World War II. This fighter plane arrived late in Malaya. This fighter plane standard was the same level like the Spitfire fighter plane. It was among the modern fighter plane and and can challenge the Zero Japanese fighter plane. However due late arrival in Malaya, most of the this planes were withdrawn to Sumatra and British lost the war. IF this plane arrived early in Malaya and being based in Kota Bahru and Alor Star airbase and escorted HMS Repulse & HMS Prince during their navigations in South China Sea, Japanese might lost the battle. This is because during that time, in winning the battle, Japanese has advantage in air superiority which made the British armies sitting like ducks!!