RIFLE RANGE BOY

Nootrukku Nooru (100/100, Tamil; 1971) I remember watching this film way back in the RRF days when RTM used it show on Wednesdays, rudely interrupted by hourly news just to be told that the King had cut some ribbons at some function, told again and again in various languages. I do not remember the ending of it probably because our old cathode tube TV got overheated and stopped transmitting or the power supply went off. Finally after almost 40 years, I managed to catch it on You Tube.  This time around (as usual), K. Balachander wrote the story, screenplay and directed the flick. This film is not ground breaking but the story is different, swaying away from the typical boy meets girls, falls in love against all odds, resistance, persistence and love wins the day type but decides to sort of venture into a kind of Hitchcockian type of right man wronged! Also gone are the pathetic melodramatic wailing and cheesy interpersonal relationships. The setting in an urban set-up where gi...

GIANT MARILYN MONROE 50th ANNIVERSARY STATUE UNVEILED IN CHICAGO.   LIFELIKE "SEVEN YEAR ITCH" ICONIC POSE CAPTURED BY DESIGNER SEWARD JOHNSON... THE PROJECT WAS KEPT IN GREAT SECRECY TILL RECENTLY PROVIDING SHELTER under RAIN & SNOW.  NAIL POLISHING over THE SIMULATED SUBWAY STATION GRATING TO REPRESENT THE ONE IN THE MOVIE.  THE DESIGNER APPLYING THE SPRAY COLOR? FINISHING TOUCHES.  AMAZING ATTENTION TO DETAILS, AND REALISTIC FLESH TONES APPLYING THE FINISHING TOUCHES.  WONDERING HOW THE STATUE IS ABLE TO STAND ON ITS OWN WITHOUT SUPPORT?  BRIDE AND BRIDESMAIDS, FIND SHADE UNDER THE STATUE  STANDING IN THE MIDST OF CHICAGO SKYLINE WOULD HAVE MADE MARILYN VERY PROUD INDEED .  WHAT A FITTING TRIBUTE TO MARILYN IN THE WINDY CITY OF CHICAGO!  EVEN THE YOUTH ARE CURIOUS.

Apoorva Raagangal (Tamil, Bizarre Rhythms;1975) Another Kamal-Rajni flick. This time it is Rajnikanth is a debutante and is introduced to Tamil films by K. Balachander who wrote this story, dialogue and directed this offering. Apparently, Balander identified Rajnikanth as a potential after seeing him perform in a non-Tamil drama. Rajni was promised a role if he could learn Tamil, and he sure did, and the rest is history! This film, in keeping with its title of abnormal rhythm, obviously referring to the complicated effects of wide age difference relationships, also offers some, in my opinion, some of the most heart wrenching soul warming lingering Carnatic musical sounds! Actually, P Ramlee did offer this type of story half a decade before but in a comical manner through 'Keluarga 69' with A.R. Tompel. Bhairavi (Srividya), a classical singer, helps to nurse a gang bashed Prasanna (Kamal) to health in her abode, one thing leads to another and love blossoms. Prasanna i...

On being vegetarian….  3.1.10 Being vegetarian is a highly overstated virtue being propagated by its proponents to put the fear of God into the non-believers and cow them into submission. The same people will say “eat to live” not “live to eat”, but they lead their whole life by analyzing what they eat. When you eat to live, you also logically should eat whatever food is given to you, vegetarian or otherwise! Eat to live may mean being careful in what you indulge in – whether it is clean (prepared in a hygienic fashion, halal/kosher if you are a Moslem/Jewish), laden with cholesterol (to clog up the arteries), rich with carbohydrates (which will increase your abdominal girth and place you at high risk of getting a coronary event) etc. etc… Maybe if you are Gautama Buddha, you will eat whatever is served to you, whether on a platter or on a leaf so as not to offend the feeder. According to the Mahayana sect, the Enlightened one was fed contaminated (? tainted) pork meat which...

Actually, it all started when I started listening to this old 70s Malay song, "Bum Pam Bum Pam Parara" over the radio. A song that some students used to sing in school with altered lyrics - goncang, goncang parara..-mocking a burly guy named Guan Chiang! Then I discovered via You Tube that that song was initially sang in Greek by a Ari San in the 60s. Then there was a Hindi song with that same tune. Aris San A Greek (non-Jewish) singer who arrived in Israel as a young man in 1957 and within five years became a megastar, club owner, close friend of IDF commanders and politicians, and lover of countless movie actresses and singers. In Israelof the 1960s, everyone was singing Aris’s hits “Sigal” and “Boom pam” and the gossip columns were full of his forbidden love affair with singer Aliza Azikri. For his fans, Aris was the perfect combination of east and west. Then began the rumors that Aris was a spy, and stories of violence between him and Aliza. Aris left Is...

Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt, German 1998) Continuing the trend of Sliding Door and Blind Chances, I ventured into a German movie (dubbed) about Lola, who has to run to her boyfriend in 20 minutes with 100,000 marks. Lola's boyfriend, a petty thief, gets into trouble when he accidentally leaves a stash a cash of thr amount in a train in the confusion of helping a vagabond and spotting some cops. He had earlier collected the cash from some gangsters involved in smuggling. Lola was earlier supposed to pick him up from their rendezvous with the money but her moped was stolen.   Lola starts running and the story goes in three possibilities, each affecting different people and their lives differently, all having different endings. Essentially she runs to her banker father workplace to find him with mistress/co-worker, she either leaves empty handed after discovering their illicit affair or kills him or misses him altogether because of certain obstructions along the way. In the first end...

Thursday July 12, 2012 Heartless passers-by Reports by LOURDES CHARLES, CHRISTINA CHIN, STEVEN CHIEW, CHONG KAH YUAN and HAFIZ MARZUKHI GEORGE TOWN: Seven people walked past snatch theft victim Tan Kim Chuan (pic), 60, without lifting a finger to help her as she lay unconscious on the road with a cracked skull at the Rifle Range flats. CCTV footage showed her lying on the road for about seven minutes (see sequence of events on the right). Kim Chuan, who fell and knocked her head on the road in the 6.02am incident on Tuesday, succumbed to her injuries nine hours later at the Penang Hospital. Her sister Lay Yong, 63, wants the passers-by “to listen to their conscience”. “Those who saw her should have done something the least they could have done was shout for help. “How could they have just walked by? I am angry but what can I do?” Lay Yong said at the Penang Hospital mortuary yesterday . Tears flow: Investigating officer Asst Supt Wong Yeut Oon sharing Lay Yong’s ...