All for what?

Uncut Gems (2019)

Every day we push our boundaries. We test the waters. We want to stretch our luck an extra inch, hoping that it would give better outcomes. When met with resistance, we recoil only to return to repeat the whole imbroglio all over again.  We plead for clemency when our sneaky plan is discovered, knowing very well that it is not for real. Back in our minds, we are aware that it is certainly not the last, even though we say so. We tend to take things for granted. 

The only problem is that we realise that the threshold is breached when it is a wee bit too late. By that time, the damage is irreparable, and the point of no return has been reached. 

The first Monday of the new year is dubbed as the ‘Divorce Monday’. After months and even years of sweeping the brewing trouble under the proverbial carpet, the events surrounding Christmas and New Year must have had burst the bubble. It is said to be the busiest day for family lawyers when they get the most enquiries regarding divorces. 

I discovered ‘Uncut Gem’ to be a difficult film to watch. I found myself very unsettled. All through the show, all I saw was the protagonist, Adam Sandler, a diamond merchant, Jewish of course, just going around shouting, cursing profanities, blabbing incessantly on his mobile, lying through his teeth and yakking. He is a poor role model for a husband and a father as his tryst with his vivacious mistress is an open secret. He tries to wrangle himself through all his deals because of the money he hopes to make for himself and his family. He rolls dough, cut deals, fixes auctions, bends the truth, dodges the mob and more just to find out that he is not the beneficiary at the end. All for what? For whom to savour the fruit or gloat in the nectar?

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We shouldn't be here

It was a dark, humid night, and as I was traversing a back alley making it to my car, I stumbled upon a meowing or rather a weak yowling. It turned out to be that a tiny kitten, all drench in muck, was straddling to wherever it was heading to.

My heart felt for that tiny creature. No, I did not take the pitiful animal home to nurse it back to health and send it out to the wilderness with a glint in my eye. It is too much responsibility.

What went through my mind was what someone told me (or maybe overheard) long ago; that our existence is just a freak accident of Nature. We, the products, have to fight it out to survive to preserve the entity called Consciousness. The consciousness that probably also happened via the accident of Nature. Life as we knew it was just going on without care as simple organisms with hermaphroditical abilities. We dragged on our existence with self-propagation without care. As life became more complexed, there was a need for variation. Nature dictated that heterosexual reproduction was essential for variety. Together with that came oestrus, lust, copulation and orgasmic bliss.

Not all the outcome of these unions were received with open arms. Some are left to fend themselves against the forces of Nature. As the maturity of offspring became complicated, protracted care became necessary. Somewhere along trickled in Consciousness.

In fact, Consciousness has made Man evolve to such a level that they have become a threat to Mother Nature herself. They squander, slaughter, rape, destroy the environment and bite the hand that fed them in the first place.

Our birth, in that way, is a curse. We should not be here at all. Nature was here long before Man came to existence, and it will still be here without us. The trouble is that the way the world seems to be changing, there might not be a planet at all when this civilisation annihilates itself.

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Amazons rule, ok?

Killing Eve (Mini-Series, 2018 - present)

If you imagine a world where women are in positions of power. And they make life-altering decisions in a cruel world fighting injustices. The villains are not males as we expect, but ladies themselves perform highly sophisticated and well-executed crimes. Males are just there to fill up the quotas. They are just weak characters who can be quickly wrapped around the fingers. They are the male equivalent of bimbos. They are unnecessary. Life goes on with or without them. Sex? They are at the ladies' disposal. The females hold tight the rein that controls their sexuality. Who needs men when all they provide are wild oats that sadly, the female gender has to bear the brunt of the after-effects? Women can give sex with emotional support, minus the physical baggage. Who needs men, anyway?

The miniseries is the one you are looking for. All leading roles are by women, including the directors. Men are merely supporting actors, filling up the gaps, as the story progressed somewhat haphazardly. It appears that filmmakers have no real intentions to tie up the loose ends of the story but rather ride on its popularity as long the interest of its viewers lingers.

An envelope-pushing civil servant, Eve Polastri, suddenly becomes an international high flying assassin catcher when she discovers that she may be connected to a Russian hired assassin at a celestial level. They hate each other's gut but refuse to pull the trigger against each other. 

It is a meeting of female 'James Bond' and 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'.

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Then reality hits you!

Two Popes (Netflix, 2019)


When you are young, you think you are unique. You think you are God-sent and has some set of things to do. You perceive things that happen around you as living proof that these are signs from the Divine. You carry on convinced that it is the right thing. Challenges come and go. You win some, and that doubles your certainty that you are on the right track. You go into it knee-deep.

Soon the initial euphoria dies down. Pretty fast, the miracles that were supposed to trickle in fail to materialise. Decisions are harder to make. Things are not so black or white anymore. With age and wisdom, you realise, you cannot change everything. Somebody is sleeping on the job. 

Perhaps you were wrong all this while. But then, it cannot be. All of life's work go to zilch? Cognitive dissonance sets in. You cannot falter. Right or wrong, you have to soldier on. You march on questioning everything. Answers do not come, but you make your own anyway. You finally realise that you are just passing through. Nothing you do is going to change anything. You come, you go. You are merely a spectre in the scheme of things. Everything in between is just life lessons. You understand that you cannot change the world. The world has its own trajectory to follow. You compromise, and you switch to suit the times.

This film centres around the fictionalised private conversations that took place between the ageing Pope Benedict XVI and the soon-to-be elected Pope Francis. It starts with the election of Pope Benedict XVI. Amidst the secret ballots, we see much politicking and running down of each other by the candidates.

The movie brings us the full glory of the Vatican City and the interiors of the Sistine Chapel. 

The Holy See is going through some trying times. Exposure of misconduct fo the clergymen does not augur well with the public. Real debates go on within the confines of the four wall of  Vatican. Pope Benedict from Germany and Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio from Argentina, in a fictional meeting, discuss each other's past, debate their ideological differences and finally find common grounds in football and pizza.

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Beware of deep fake videos!

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Carrie Fisher, who acted as Princess Leia since the beginning of the Star Wars since 1977, died on December 27th 2016. But thanks to computer-generated imagery (CGI), she is kept alive in the movies until her character gets a decent burial. She appears in almost half of this movie due to the unused footage from Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

Imagine someone who had died two years previously still featured in a movie that demands continuity. As we see in this film also that there is a thin line between being alive and dying, especially if one is a Jedi Master. A departed soul can still perform ground shattering literally 'out-of-this-world' feats. One has to tune in to the correct frequency to receive the intended instructions on decision making. Do I sense a speck of Vedanta teaching here? 

This kind of make-believe is no longer confined to the celluloid industry and fantasy but has permeated into the mainstream. Cybertechnology has advanced so frighteningly fast that algorithms can digitally manipulate audio and visual inputs to create fake videos. These are called deep fake videos and have the potential to create disaster when conflicting information is inserted for nefarious intentions.  We have to be aware of this ability and be ready to differentiate what is real and what is not.

Now, coming to Star Wars Ep 9, it was not the fresh idea that came to change the world when the first episode (or rather Ep 4) hit the screens back in 1977. Since then, many have changed in advances in storytelling and film technology. Many copycat franchises have also emerged competing for a share in box office collection. 

It is the same good-over-evil message, but this time around, the storytellers are telling us that there is a thin line between living and dying, as mentioned earlier.

This YouTube video gives a complete rundown on the Star War saga.

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It is our fault!

Years and Years (BBC, Miniseries; 2019)
Season 1, Ep 1-6.

It started with the £1 Tshirts in the mid-1990s. Everyone knew it was ridiculously cheap, but nobody saw the need to create a ruckus about it. The businessmen took the lion's share of the profit while the poor workers who put it together took home a few pennies. The buyers did not complain as it was a bargain. The workers did not either. They were thankful that they had a job to go to. After many years, they were able to see some money. That was the beginning of the divide - the divergence between the haves and the have nots. It went on to create obnoxiously rich conglomerates.

With the spread of the world wide web to all corners of the world, global netizens were hooked. They were lulled with the dopamine of social media influence and the lure of aimless spending. People were cooped in the comfort of their echo chamber, looking into the eyes of the fellow humans but into the abyss of their monitors. Perched in their armchair, they became opinionated about everything and feel superior to the surroundings. Unbeknownst to them, the Big Brother of the Web was busy mining their habits and idiosyncrasies and would one day be used against them.

These must be some of the thoughts that went through the scriptwriters as they envisioned a potential dystopic UK in the 15 over years after 2019. 

The United Kingdom is no longer the cradle of the world as it used to be. Many jobs which used to be done by people is redundant as AI can do it as well, if not better. Who needs accountants anymore? Unskilled works like the manual car wash are resurfacing after being phased out long ago by the automatic car wash stations. Despatch riders to deliver online orders made a comeback. People simply needed jobs.

The story revolves a matriarchal octagenarian and her four grandchildren as well as their partners and children. Trump had been re-elected and had authorised the launch of a nuclear missile to the man-made island owned by China. Theresa May is somehow still in the picture. Politics in the UK is still chaos as hatred and populist politics hog the limelight. Brexit had secluded the UK from the Continent, but it has to deal with an influx of refugees from Ukraine. Russia had invaded Ukraine and is after its enemies and the LGBTs. Gay marriages in the UK are the norm, hence the illegal immigrants.

Along the way, many British banks collapse. Political candidates become outrageous in their approach to convince voters to vote for them. Digital contents are regulated so much. Deep fake videos make nothing credible anymore. Frequent power outages are carried to continually erase and modify data. Information is controlled by the ruling regime. BBC is shut down. Once again, print media makes a comeback as it proved more credible. Housing shortage becomes acute. The long arm of the law becomes something to be feared as the process to wrangle out such legal entanglements becomes too easy and cumbersome.

On the other end, people get so obsessed with integrating themselves to the net that they go into great lengths into incorporating the human body with the digital world. In Transhumanism, man can implant chips into their hand to receive calls, plant cameras into their eyes to get their instant clicks (literally at the blink of an eye) and even to transfer our memories and consciousness to a digital format. 

Along the way, we do see advances in medical treatment. Macular degeneration (which may cause blindness) is reversed with stem cell technology. The 80-year-old, who later became 90, seems active as ever, celebrating birthdays after birthdays. There is even mention of in-utero correction of spina bifida.

If Consciousness is the common denominator that unifies all beings in the Universe, the ability to interpret Consciousness will put Man at the level of God, would you say?

History has shown that giving too much power to the ruling elite can be disastrous. In the same vein, the people in the 2030 UK realised this and garnered their resources to oust the ruling regime by exposing their concentration camps and take charge of the Government.

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The butt of civilisation

Sometimes in times of introspection, I do wonder why the contour of the posterior profile of an individual is so important that people dared to go through great lengths and life-endangering surgeries to ‘improve’ theirs to what is perceived as ‘perfect’ in the eyes of the masses.

Even though poets have described the buttocks as the equal counterpart of a person’s frontal beauty, come to think of it, it hosts orifices of some the human excrements with putrefying odours that may, in cultured settings, be considered inappropriate on polite conversations.

Seeking the perfect symmetrical contour is some people’s favourite pastime. Performing of some kind of ritualistic war dance with the gluteals is some people’s idea of arousal and enticement to exchange bodily fluids.

When exactly did this part of the human body become an object of endearment?

Science suggests that just like the nuchal ligaments which stabilise our head to our trunk, the gluteus muscles revolutionised our species to stand. About two million years ago, these group of muscles transformed us to become endurance runners who could outrun many of its predators and make them our prey instead. The gluteal muscles stabilise the trunk and help in each running stride. Hence, developed endurance running which made Man outrun other speedy occupants of the savanna. This trait made them better hunters and soon came to dominate the world. Other primates with small butt continued wandering aimlessly occupying the lower rung of the food chain.

In other words, our buttocks civilised us.

Now that our lives have become sedentary; we do not pounce or kill our dinners, our rears do not fulfil much of its duties. Perhaps due to our high caloric intake, it has now become a storage space for excess fat stores performing its incidental function as padding as we sit on our asses all day.

People are fixated on symmetry, proportion and conformance to the golden ratio. They try to apply these in all their daily dealings and get high by satisfying arbitrary cravings and imaginary standards. 

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