You can't win 'em all!

Drunken Angel (Japanese, 1948)
Director: Akira Kurosawa

 It is a depressing little town with a dirty, swampy pond right in the centre of things. It is a sad time too, post-war Japan. People are sick, life is hard, and cleanliness takes a back seat. People actually dump their refuse into the pond and children play in their muddy waters.

In the midst of all this is a cranky small-time middle-aged doctor, Dr Sanada. He seems to frustrated with life, the system and his patients for their non-compliance. Dr Sanada is disappointed with his life decisions and appears to find solace in the bottle. Times are bad, and booze is hard to come by, so he dilutes his medicinal 100% alcohol into his beverages for a kick! Deep inside, the small-time physician has a keen interest in treating tuberculosis and goes the extra mile to treat his patient to health.


One day, a local thug, Matsunaga, walked into his surgery for a hand-wound after a scuffle. The excellent doctor incidentally found that he was suffering from lung abscess due to tuberculosis. The tough punk gets hostile when told of such a diagnosis, which is bad for his reputation as the leader of the pack.

He refuses treatment, but the good doctor takes it upon himself to pester the defiant Matsunaga to comply.

In the meantime, the doctor's nurse has a dark past. Her partner had just been released from jail after 4 years of imprisonment for criminal activities. The partner is Okada who finally tracks her down.

Okada slowly takes over Matsunaga's position and also his girl. As the ailing gangster gets more feeble, the hate-love relationship between Matsunaga and the kind doctor becomes more intense. 

The story ends in tragedy, but life still goes on in the slum with Dr Sanada get a courtesy visit from an appreciative patient who is cured of her tuberculosis.

An intense movie, which may sound preachy at times but exhibits the frustrations of a well-meaning medicine man who faces challenges from the patients who do not value health their as much as he does. Paradoxically, the doctor himself seems to be killing himself with his overindulgence in alcoholic beverages.

A trivia about this movie. The censors, under supervision of American observers, were strict about depicting poorly about the devastation of the war. Certain scenes like that of burning houses were banned. Somehow, due to short of manpower at the censor's board, the filmmaker still managed to sneak in a specific taboo item without getting snipped off. An interesting catch.

Social studies behind the elevator!

We always tend to gauge modernity via our ability to go from point A to point B on a horizontal plain in record time. We were considered to have propelled into a new era when the steam and combustion engines came to fore. With nuclear energy we took another giant step for mankind. Speed was of essence.
We forget that our vertical mobility is also a sign of modernity or at least left an impact with it.
Before elevators were invented, buildings were not tall. Elevators helped us to develop 'vertically'. Anyway, what is modernity without skyscrapers?
With increased concentration of people in a small square metre, the concept of familiarity and need to acknowledge each other slowly dwindled. Slowly, people began not acknowledging each other and started the business of MYOB. People may be literally dead in the pigeon hole before his neighbour realises that he actually had he had an neighbour from the stench emanated from the decaying corpse!
The early elevators were slow and were big rooms for passengers to rest and have a drink, manned by elevator boys. He manned his own space.
Placement of social class also turned with the advent of electric elevators. Initially, the poor classes and mistresses were placed in the higher floors. It was a time when a bourgeoisie ascends to the higher floor for his private business, it was assumed that he had a mistress placed in the higher or was having an illicit union with a mistress from the working class! The higher floors also placed ladies of ill-repute.
When vertical achievability became easy with modern electrical generators and hydraulics, slowly the penthouses and the affluent found their way up. Naturally property prices soared as you when further up the ground, away from the filth of the city, so to say.
Elevators also help to investigate the peculiar behaviours of people, also a confessional space when it goes into trouble (e.g. like trapped in a lift). It is also a fertile ground for studies in psychology. When a person enters an empty lift, he would invariably stand near the controls. The next person who enters would place himself diagonally opposite to the first. The next two would take either corners and the next one in the centre. Almost like clockwork, all of them would look up in unison waiting for the ascent into space. There is a kind of suspicion amongst all these people even though they may be on top of each other, location wise, each day, every day would go without giving a care to the person who stays, live or work in the same building. That, in essence, is the dynamics of modern living. Each man is a man for himself..

Amazing pictures

http://m.tickld.com/x/46-incredible-photos-you-may-not-have-seen-before

46 Incredible Photos You May Not Have Seen Before. 

29th July 2014

1. Path-Laying Machine

2. The Internal Mechanism of a Watch by Patek Philippe, Considered the Finest Watchmaker in the World

3. Sunset and Eclipse Happening at the Same Time

4. Algodones Sand Dunes Curvy Border Fence in Southern California

5. Perfect Cubes of Pyrite Formed by Mother Nature

6. Melted Glass in a Fire Damaged Building

7. World's Deepest Swimming Pool - 113 Ft. Deep and Holding 600,000 Gallons

8. A Turtle Riding a Jellyfish

9. A Child's Skull Before Losing Baby Teeth

10. You Won't Believe How Accurate GE's New CT Scanner Is

11. Horizontally Spiraled Bricks On a New Restaurant Building

12. Lizard Shed His Entire Face in One Go

13. Intricate Colored Pencil Drawing of a Wave

14. This Eggshell Has More Than 20,000 Holes Drilled in It

15. Sverd i fjell Giant Sword Monument in Norway

16. Present Day Manhattan Versus What It Would Have Looked Like 600 Years Ago

17. Cool Idea for a Bridge

18. This Is What Space Mountain Looks Like With the Lights On

19. Cabbage Geometry

20. The Fukang Meteorite

21. Human Vision (Top) vs. Cat Vision (Bottom)

22. A Cabinet Carved to Look Like a Digital Glitch

23. Grass After a Lightning Strike

24. This 3D-Printed Cast Uses Ultrasound to Heal Bones 40% Faster

25. Bridge Over Icy Water

26. Fireworks, When the Camera Refocuses During the Explosion

27. Wounded Lion Sculpture in Honor of Swiss Guards Who Died in the French Revolution - Luzern, Switzerland

28. Artist Designs a Wolf Out of Pipe Cleaners

29. Moreton Island, Queensland, Australia. It's a man made scuttle structure so boats could have safe anchorage while also providing a neat dive site

30. Lenticular 'UFO' Cloud

31. The Runway at the Gibraltar International Airport Has a Road Crossing It

32. Loaf of Art. Each Color Was Layered to Form the Picture. Apparently Each Slice Sold for $5000.

33. View of Space Shuttle Atlantis from the International Space Station

34. What a Liter Bottle of Soda Looks Like Before Compressed Air Is Added

35. Rarely Seen Back of the Hoover Dam Before It Was Filled with Water in 1936

36. Marlon Brando Before and After His Makeup Was Done for His Role in the Godfather

37. Power Strip Liberators

38. Cross Section of Undersea Cable

39. This Is Only One Picture

40. Cryptex Flash Drive

41. Cross Section of a Commercial Airplane

42. There Are 1 Million Different Colors in This Picture

43. Hitler Had to Cut His Moustache to Fit Into a Gas Mask. This Is How He Looked Before

44. A Fish That Eats Prey Up to 10x Its Mass and Twice Its Length

45. Bismuth Is a Chemical Element With An Amazing Iridescent Oxide Surface

46. Coins Stacked in Such a Way That They Extend Past the Edge of the Table

Not all who scold loathe you!

Cry of the City (1948)
Another obscure film noir from the yesteryear forgotten in annals of the ticking time. This offering had nothing extraordinary to offer to mankind. The particular message that struck a cord with me is the message that it carried at the end of the show.
Firstly, humble beginnings, poverty and scarcity in appreciating the finer things in life is no justification to one's involvement in crime and vice. There are others who were in the same both boat with you opt not to slide the same slippery slide as you. They used will power and good friends to thread them the part of lasting piece of mind.
Secondly, what you do actually affects all the people who live around you or are bound by an intangible union through blood or DNA. Their skin would quiver if yours is breached even if you feel that all man is for himself. The people closely related to you mostly mean well to our welfare even though on the surface they may seem like a wet blanket to your wonderful dreams!
The only familiar name in the cast is Shelley Winters who had donned the silver screen for 5 decades before her demise. The rest of them were just characters. The setting of the film was excellent belying the fact that the location of ghetto neighbourhood and the apartments were all staged. The story. however, did not really excite the viewers as it appeared too complicated for comprehension.
A cop killer is hunted by a police lieutenant after he escapes the hospital where he was treated for near fatal injuries. The lieutenant knows the convict's law abiding homely humble Italian parents. His relationship with the parents and the convict's younger brother, who hero worship his elder brother, and the tracking down of the killer's tracks form the crux of the story.