the Myopic Mind

Among Believers

2012-01-11T21:58:00.000-08:00

Islam undoubtedly is the most controversial and talked about religion of our times. Due to the so called International Islamic terrorism, the religion has become the hottest topic in our living rooms, which each one of us would love to talk about, but some time scared even to think about: thanks to the rising intolerance of its practitioners towards criticism. Ever since the infamous 9/11 attack of AL Qaeda in 2011, and the mercuric rise of Osama bin Laden into the Summit of the most wanted list of international Villainy, I was curious about the elements within this religion that creates most terrifying cold blooded terrorist on one side, and most calm saints on the other. What is the magic of this religion? How does it work? Being an atheist and serious non-follower of any kind of religion, I wanted one neutral approach in understanding the religion. What I most likely had been searching was an outsider’s unbiased view on it.

‘Among the believers – An Islamic Journey’ was an easy answer to start with. Naipaul was my favorite ever since I read his Booker winner of 1971, ‘In a Free State’.

This book is special as it’s not written by some genius couch potato, sitting and relaxing on his chair, but by some one who took the pain to travel around the world to study about the religion before writing about it.

Naipaul wrote this in the year 1981 after travelling around Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and

Indonesia

for seven months.

His journey starts in 1979 with a visit to Iran, where he visits the holy city of QOM and interviews number of famous authorities and practitioners of the religion.

There he meets, infamous Ayatollah Khalkhalli, the right hand of Ayatollah Khomeni who says,

“The mullah’s are going to rule now. We are going to have ten thousand years of the Islamic republic. The Marxists will go on with Lenin. We will go on in the way of Khomeini”

This was in the same year where Khomeini’s Islamic revolution succeeded in

Iran

after they over threw Shah to rule the country.

The intention behind each of such meetings, interviews, attending religious meetings and even talking to each one of the common men (Taxi driver, Restaurant waiter or who ever he comes across) that he meets there is clear. Naipaul wanted know, what religion (Islam) meant to them. That’s what a scholar does, and as it’s from some one who is essentially an atheist, the result is an unbiased report which is thoroughly trustable.

He goes to Pakistan and searches in vein for the hyped up ‘Islamic Bank’ (An Islamic idea of Banking with no Interest charged against cash loans) and he wonders, if it was an utopian idea which was never possible to implement, then what was the point behind the partition and forming up a separate Islamic country.

In Indonesia he visits ‘Pesantrens’ (traditional Islamic village schools) to understand what they taught in there to the villagers and how that teaching helped them to progress. The result of the expedition is controversial as he puts,

“The Sufi center turned school: the discipline of monks and dervishes applied to the young: it wasn’t traditional, and it wasn’t education. It was braking away from the Indonesian past; it was Islamization; it was stupefaction, greater than any that could have with a western-style curriculum. And yet it was attractive to the people concerned, because twisted up with it, was the old monkish celebration of the idea of poverty: an idea which applied to a school in java in 1979, came out as little more than the poor teaching the poor to be poor. “

Naipaul was very brave and we cannot take it like 1981 was, a haven of intellectual freedom and criticism on the religion was taken positively, though it seems to be much better time than our era of extreme intolerance.

(One of my favorite: Sir Vidia with his mistress- an old photograph)

Naipaul’s observations and his homework on the religion before he started his expeditions seemed to be deep. Take a sample from the introduction to the account of his trip to

Malaysia

“It was from India or the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent that religion went to south-east Asia. Hinduism and Buddhism went first. They quickened the great civilizations of Cambodia and java, whose monument- Angkor, Borobudur – are among the wonders of the world. These Indian religions, we are told, were not spread by armies of colonists but by merchants and priest. And that was the kind of Indian traveler who after Islam had come to the sub-continent began in the fourteenth or fifteenth century to take Islam to Indonesia and Malaysia.

Islam went to south-east Asia as another religion from India. There was no Arab Invasion, as in Sind; no systematic slaughter of the local warrior caste, no planning of Arab military colonies; no sharing out of loot, no sending back of treasure and slaves to a caliph in Iraq or Syria; no tribute, no taxes on unbelievers. There was no calamity, no overnight abrogation of a settled world-order. Islam spread as an Idea- a Prophet, a divine revelation, heaven and hell, a divinely sanctioned code- and mingled with older ideas. To purify that mixed religion the Islamic missionaries now come; and it is still from the sub continent –and especially from Pakistan that the most passionate missionaries come.”

I guess this is what missing from most of the books on religion. Religion is also ‘local’ and it’s different for each society. And this element needs to be reviewed better, before imposing certain rules and regulations on people who follow the religion. Naipaul studies the history first and then he observes the present. And he connects quickly what it meant to be and what it is now.

Naipaul criticizes the religion in an extremely honest but often flavored with that typical Trinidad’ ian arrogance of his, through out the book. He is unbiased and he is careless how others take his views. After all, he was born in Trinidad to a family that had Upper cast Hindu roots in India, had a semi-Christian upbringing, happily married to a Muslim woman, and was also infamous for finding some controversial way to unleash his verbal fury on anyone who dared to initiate an argument with him.

He ends the book this way,

“High words still; but in Iran and elsewhere men would have to make their peace with the world which they knew existed beyond their faith. The life that had come to Islam had not come from within. It had come from outside events and circumstances, the spread of Universal civilization.”

the Curious Incident of the dog at the night time....

2012-01-11T20:11:00.000-08:00

It was in my teens that I read 'Delilah'; a Malayalam short story of which I cannot recollect much now except that, the story was ended with an actual computer pseudo code depicting an infinite loop.

While True

Print "Delilah";

End;

Story was a modern adaptation of the Biblical legend of Samson and Delilah (?) and The context was like; Some one (Samson?) falls into a well and screams the name of his love, "Delilah" and the author wanted to convey that the scream went on and on and he thought the best way to describe this, was through a computer program with no ‘break’ statements written.

(Maythil Radhakrishnan)

That story was written by ‘Maythil Radhakrishnan', a computer geek turned writer who was also a genius in other fields like photography, entomology and so on. He also edited the science supplement of a leading English daily called 'Indian Express' in those days.Ever since ‘Delilah’, I became a serious ‘Maythil’ reader, who would go any length to collect his books and devour it in no time. I remember visiting a book publisher’s warehouse in search of his books those were printed in 70’s and disappeared from the book houses as no one liked to read them. ‘Maythil’ revolutionized Malayalam Literature with a series of books and loved to describe himself as the first eco-political poet of Malayalam. A big number of people were deeply attracted to that Neo-intellectual wave and I was on of them. We were called ‘Maythilians’ in our circles as most of our conversations were started or ended with a ‘Maythilian’ quote.

Many years passed and slowly my reading habit gave way to more interesting pastimes like 'chess'.

And now, after all these years I got a similar ‘Maythil’-ian kick from one little novel which I read recently.

That was, 'The Curious incident of Dog at the night time', a book written by the Brit, Mark Haddon, which was published in the year 2003, and won many reputed awards like ‘Whitebread- Book of the year’ , ‘Commonwealth writer’s prize’ and many other reputed awards and nominations.

(Mark Haddon)

'Unputdownable' is the word which I would steal from a regular book reviewer's terminology to describe the reading experience. The book is presented as a diary that a 15 year old boy keeps and it’s about his investigation on the mysterious murder of a dog in his neighborhood. As he uncovers, the truth behind this, he also unknowingly uncovers some facts which are much more mysterious than the dog and its death itself, which would also change his life for ever. Our hero is not like any other kid that you find in your neighborhood or in some Enid Blyton books. He is Christopher, an unusually talented boy, who is deeply inspired by ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (He loves Holmes, but he dislikes Arthur Conan Doyle as he thinks Doyle was a stupid as he believed supernatural things). What makes him more special is the fact that he suffered from Asperger’s syndrome which is a genetic disorder that falls under the wider spectrum of Autism. Children suffer from this disorder show intense interest in certain things. Wiki has an interesting article on this.

The back cover of the book reads;

“Fifteen-year-old Christopher has a photographic memory. He understands maths. He understands science. What he can’t understand are other human beings.”

Mark usually writes children fiction and this book was an exception; a book which can be thoroughly enjoyable to people of any age.

Just take some samples from the book.

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”

Let’s see how he debates with a priest on the existence of ‘Heaven’;

“I said that there wasn't anything outside the universe and there wasn't another kind of place altogether.

Except that there might be if you went through a black hole, but a black hole is what is called a

singularity, which means it is impossible to find out what is on the other side because the gravity of a

black hole is so big that even electromagnetic waves like light can't get out of it, and electromagnetic

waves are how we get information about things which are far away. And if heaven was on the other side

of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't or

people would notice.”

I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on

living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the

rubbish. “

(A child suffering from Asperger's Syndrome staring at
a molecular model that he is obsessed with-Wiki)

And in the same chapter, among all these grey verses of rationality, you suddenly find the lyrical beauty of his innocent thoughts on his dead mother.

“But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the

Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere”

I don’t intent to be a total spoiler here but strongly suggest this book to every one who loves a ‘different’ and quick read for a refreshing experience.

S-Chess: Have fun with Elephants and Hawks!

2011-10-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

Of course these are chess men. No prize for the guess. But, aren't these slightly different from regular chess men? An Elephant and a Hawk among our regular Knight, bishop and rook? They are not here by mistake, but part of Serirawan Chess, a chess variant dreamt by great Jose Raul Capablanca and brought to life by Yasser Seirawan. Former world champion Capablanca believed chess had no future and it was already 'played out' (even nearly 100 years back) He wanted to introduce two more pieces, One with the powers of a Rook and Knight, and the other with the powers of Bishop and Knight to make the game more complex, and called them 'Marshall' and 'Chancellor' respectively. He also insisted that the game should be played on a 10X10 board instead of an 8x8 one. Yasser Seirawan, with the help of his friend Bruce Harper Christened these new pieces 'Elephant' and 'Hawk' and designed them precisely that way. They called it Seirawan Chess or S-Chess. In S-Chess, the game is still played on 8X8 board, as they thought a 10x10 board would keep regular chess players away from it.

On his coming back to Elite Chess Scene after years of oblivion (he won a top GM tournament in Barcelona in style) , a four time US champ and former world junior Champion, now 51 year old. Yasser says,( in a recently published interview on Chessbase website) he was totally surprised by the progress in chess theory, where a Player wold make even a 32nd move Novelty, where rest of the moves are already part of theory and well known to all top players. And S-Chess is one noble attempt to keep the fun alive on board and to bring back true lovers of chess back to the game.

Read more on S-Chess, and have fun !! http://www.seirawanchess.com/

Johnny English Re-born - A disaster

2011-10-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

It was much awaited movie for the fans of Rowan Atkinson. But the movie turned out to be a serious, boring and extremely dragging experience. there was nothing funny about the movie. Story was inspired by Pink panther series and director was more keen on setting up a true bond styled extravaganza, forgetting the fact that what he had in his hand was Rowan Atkinson, not Pierce Brendan Brosnan. 'Bean' guy's not young any more and it surely reflects in the movie. Most of the scenes were those we had already seen and all those blonds, brown hairs, creamy thighs, ruthless killer grannies, never ending wheel chair races, had nothing to offer to improve our experience. If you expect a hilarious time like which Rowan produced with 'Bean the movie', or 'Johnny English- part 1', this would disappoint you. So, lets admit; 'Johnny English' is not reborn, and he would never!

Thus Spoke Mia-Thustra Vol-1

2011-08-21T01:39:00.000-07:00

*Baby Bear and the Snake

A baby Bear was playing alone. A big Snake came that way.

Snake caught the little Bear and tried to eat him. Little Bear was so scared and started crying.

Mother Bear came running.

But Snake was not afraid at all.

Then Mother Bear called Papa Bear.

He was so big and strong.

He took a knife and cut the snake into two pieces.

Mother Bear was so happy.

“Very good” , said she;

and drew two stars on Papa Bear’s hand.

---END---

*(An attempt to capture the imagination of my 3 year old: She told me this story few months back)

'Children of heaven', 'Boot polish' and the magic called 'children'!

2011-08-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

'Boot Polish' and 'Children of Heaven' do have something in common. But It was mere coincidence that I saw both in the same week..Both these movies, talk about the magic that only children can create, like seven million wonders they find in the world they live ,where mere mortal adults (a-dull-ts) manage to find only seven of them. Both the movies are about poverty, pride and self respect and also the amazing love and care the little siblings share. Boot Polish, a 1954 Hindi movie, produced by Rajkapoor and directed by Prakash Arora cannot be compared to Majid Majidi's brilliant Iranian work of 1997 ,'Children heaven', in terms of Cinematic Qualities or which ever ingredients that make a good Cinema. Indian mainstream Cinema of 1950's was often plagued by hyper-melodrama, extreme low budgets and their nondetachable mainstream theater influence. Of course, there was one 'Pather Panjali', from the great Satyaji Ray which was released in the same period. But, its unfair to weigh Ray and Arora on the same balance. Neverthless, Boot polish was nominated for Palm d'Or at Cannes. Coming back to Children of Heaven; Its absolute magic. A beautiful tale of Innocence and dreams on the backdrop of a pair of old shoes that was lost. Majidi's Camera is so beautiful and realistic that, You would love to see few shots, even when they are repeated umpteenth times.Children here in both the movies lives in poverty here but refuses to beg, live wiht what they got, and never fail to dream. Though the movie was nominated for best foreign film oscar in the year 1998 it lost to another foriegn movie; the italian classic, 'Life is beautiful'; another all time favorite of mine. The way Majidi ends his movie is another thing to note; which is another magical shot, which might be his way to tell us , 'things don't get better that fast'; where his Indian counterpart had to be contented with that typical Indian All-Present-All-smiling-Group-photo ending.

The great Indian 'Hangover'

2011-07-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

'Delhi Belly' may have nothing to do with 'Hangover''s story. But, with a treatment similar to Hangover and with that bearded, fat guy among the three protagonists, the movie somehow reminded of 'Hangover'. Movie, turned out to be outrageously bold, with that extreme usage of never ending verbal and visual filth. But, still there was something fresh about it. 'Delhi Belly' will be a refreshing experience, If one can, bear with those never ending farts and other disgusting sounds arising from the so called 'Delhi Belly' (one of those lead characters happened to have one real bad tummy). Just how RGV and his contemporaries liberated Bollywood from the firm clutches of its stereotypical formulas in the early years of this century, 'Delhi Belly' with its, extreme bold approach might open doors to a hyper-realistic wave in Hindi Movies. This could do real wonders, as there is already a cheerful group of young multiplex audience thriving there to accept 'change' with a new found sensibility and tolerance for creative art.

Tamizh Padam - Y not?

2011-07-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

Director- Amudhan

Y-Not Studio's Critically acclaimed 2010 Spoof film, Tamizh Padam was an amazing experience. For some unknown reasons, I always end up watching good flicks very late. Being an ardent fan of Hollywood spoof's like Scary Movie series, I shouldn't have missed this.Wikipedia identifies, at least 40 Tamizh blockbusters parodied in the move. Still, I find some movies Wikipedians probably had missed. Vijaya Kanth's evergreen classic 'Vaidehi Kathirundal' is one of them. We have one Vellachami with an overgrown beard, here too who would sing every night, but some cabaret numbers instead of the original melancholic classics. How about that Village, 'Thankachi Patti' where half a dozen elder brothers, competing each other in showering their affection on their younger sister? Was it the same village that was shown in Cheran's Pandava bhoomi? None of them are spared, even those Ramarajan flicks. Script has to be called 'Great'. Some of the plots were amazingly hilarious. I could feel, some one else was showing the same sarcasm I felt watching those originals on screen, in an amazing creativity. One of my favorite scene is where the 'Hero' introducing himself as hero to the Goons when they confront him with weapons. He uses, an id-card that says, 'Hero' to them, and they realize that there is no point in fighting with a hero and would start shaking hands with him, and let him off to pursue his noble mission of taking his lady love out of her house arrest,with their blessings. Another memorable scene is where the hero parts with his favorite bike to bribe a corrupted officer to get the only water tap in the village to be fixed. Fresh and original were the heroe's creative ideas to eliminate the villains. Especially the one that mimicked Kamal's famous 'Apoorva Sagodharangal' theme, was very funny. The cliche'd quick 'rag to rich' mechanism (remember, movies like Padayappa, Sivaji) were beautifully ridiculed. Hero, (Shown, living in a hut under extreme poverty: with huge LCD TV, Microwave oven, often having Pizzas and milk shakes) after his challenge to his lady love's father that the would become richer than him before asking for her hand, would become extreme rich in few minutes. Girl's father is shown, wondering, 'that quick? even before the ordered coffee came?' . To cut it short, Tamizh Padam was equal to watching all those stereo typed block buster Tamizh movies those were produced in last 50 years, in just two and half hours.You might miss, your Adrenalin rushing offered by the originals, but you would laugh your guts out, if you had that same 'Sarcasm' lurking with in you. Being a debutante, the director CS Amudhan's effort is something that to be appreciated by all serious Cinema fans. The lead played by the RJ turned actor Shiva was very cool and natural through out, making the movie an interesting experience.

1972 repeats?

2011-05-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

I should admit that I was surprised (unpleasantly)when I heard that Tamil actor Dhanush who also happened to be the son in law of arguably the most influential person in Tamil Nadu, Super star Rajanikanth, bagged Nation's most respectable award for the best actor. I have seen his debut, 'Thulluvadho Ilamai' followed with his much hyped up movies like 'Kadhal Kondein' and 'Pudhupettai' and I am not afraid to admit that, he never looked promising as an actor to me. As I hate to be ruled over by my very own collection of prejudices, I took an immediate decision to watch the movie in question; 'Adukalam'. Movie started brilliantly with a decent narration on rooster-fighting and it's history in the background of beautiful title graphics. Unfortunately this was the only thing which was rewarding. After burning midnight oil all I could find was a set of people who spoke Tamil in madurai Village accent and a lot of fluttering of Lungi's and a story that went like a kite cut loose. My quest went longer and longer to find out that magic moment of acting which swept the Award Jury off their feet and to my sorrow, there was nothing to find. Director Vetrimaran should have known that, all those movies that spoke Madurai Tamil didn't make a 'Virumandi'.

But there was a surprise package in the movie, and that's the character 'Pettaikkaran' (a fighting Rooster-Trainer), the godfather of Karuppu (dhanush) who turns a Villain in Jealousy of his disciple's over night glory. This character was played by Sri Lankan Tamil writer and political commentator V I S Jayabalan who's settled in Norway. His performance was absolutely stunning and it was difficult to believe that it was his debut as an actor. If Adukalam was ever going to win any award, that had to be Jayabalan, but Jury had something else in their mind. After MG Ramachandran the demigod of Tamil Cinema then, bagged the same award in 1972 for his film 'Rikshakkaran' , this has to be the second undeserved recognition in the history of Tamil Cinema.

Thats what Sarah found!

2011-04-26T03:47:00.000-07:00

I was just blog-hopping (or chess-googling) and found this from a blog thats seems to have written by a girl named Sarah.

"I was just killing time. It occurred to me that I didn't know much about the personal life of the most influential chess player of my lifetime, Garry Kasparov. So, I looked around and found that much of this personal information wasn't quite so easy to locate. What I thought would take me 5 minutes, took me a couple hours. And I wasn't even asking for much, just some basic facts.

Here's what I found."

http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Weinstein.html

Sarah got some nice pics there in her blog and she believes that Kasparov has three children Polina, Vadim and Aida from three different marriages. I saw this nice and rare pic of Kasparov with his eldest daughter Polina from a chess site.Another good pic was of a 12 year old Garry.

Congratulations, 'Le Tigre de Madras'

2011-04-17T23:57:00.000-07:00

World Chess Champion, 'Tiger of Madras' Vishy Anand is a proud father now. Aruna and Anad decided to name their bundle of joy that arrived 14 years after their marriage, 'Akhil Anand'. Hearty congratulations to Anand and Aruna. As a true lover of Chess and a big fan of Anand, I'm just eager to know how he's going to bring his son up? Will Akhil Anand start with a World under 10 crown?

read the full pictorial report here,
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7147

One match away from Mahatma?

2011-04-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

Cricket world cup 2011 is going to be end today and the entire India is waiting for the finals with an expectation that It will win the world cup once again after 28 years. All eyes are on the demigod of Indian Cricket, Sachin Tendulkar who is expected to make one more ton to reach ton of tons in One day Internationals. Today's Times of India read, 'One match away from Mahatma' pointing that, if India wins, Sachin is to be the Mahatma (or if he completes his 100 centuries?). Nation lives in complete frenzy. Media's hyping the game up more than ever. People are cancelling all their weekend plans for watching the game. TV viewer-ship going all time high, with electricity boards, promising the people that, they would postpone all their repair activities when the match being telecast. With most successful IPL to its credit, India undoubtedly is the new Mecca of cricket and Cricket players are over night millionaires. Cricket, a game played by very less number of nations, predominantly former British colonies, is a rage only in the Indian Continent. Though 85% of the world decides not to play the game, In India its nothing less than a new-age Religion, and almost every one has fallen fanatic about it.There's even a budding model named Poonam Pandey who has promised to bare it all for the Indian team if it wins the cup. She would do it in their dressing room, but wouldn't mind doing it in the stadium for the entire nation if the ICC allows her do so. (she didn't mention Government,she said, ICC. May be she thinks ICC is more powerful than the Government of India) . She even added that, her parents are extremely proud for her as she's doing it for the Team India.

Now, let's come out of the closet of the craze, and go once again through the semi finals that Pakistan lost to India. Was it a real hard-fought battle? Why there was no frustration on Pakistan players after they lost the game? Pak Captain Afridi stood there on the ground and said 'Sorry' to his nation but his expressions told something different.It was a far cry from being sorry. He looked like a new mother handing the baby to her husband with satisfaction in the eyes. He was definitely a relived man. What else could explain the Indian Maestro being droped of catches atleast four times? Why was'nt there any hurry in the Pak players to go agressive in slog overs? It looked like India was adjudged the winner long before the game was actually played. No wonder, that the Pakistan Interior minister Rahman Malik said, that he will keep any eye on the Pakistan players as he doubts them to fix the match. After all Pakistan players are known to be easily available for betting rackets and their foriegn coach Bob Woolmer was suspected to be murdered in 2007 for knowing little too much about such activities. Players including Mohammed Asif were suspended in 2010 for being part of Match fixing mafia. It was heard that, there was arrangements on minute details, like when the no-balls should be bowled to make sure that they lose the match with out provoking any suspicion.

Now lets wait for the grand finalee and though not an avid cricket fan, even I love my country to win the the Cup and I seriously wish the game will be a 'real' game.

A Perambra Phantasmagoria

2011-03-26T22:28:00.000-07:00

'A Perambra Phantasmagoria' could be the word to describe my experience of watching the movie 'Paleri Manikyam- Oru Pathira Kolapathakathinte Katha' (Story of a Midnight Murder), a 2009 Malayalam movie directed by Ranjth. Long gone days of my childhood rushed back in to the palette of my half-dead consciousness. It was more like taking a deep plunge into the abyss of lusty green memories which I pretend to have forgotten. Each character, every single place names used in the movie were busy ringing different chords in me. For the first time I could hear, my once own Malayalam dialect with the clean village accent at least from some actors, while some others of south Kerala background were struggling to flatten their much curled out tongue to match what's heard in this part of Malabar, especially in the villages and towns surrounding Perambra, a town thirty miles away from the historical city of Calicut which happened to be the cradle of European Invasion to India. When ‘Cheeru’(a very important character of the movie, played by the actor Sweta Menon) pleads to the Village Superintendent, ‘Nhale Rakshikkanam Thampayiye..Nhaankonnum Arinhoodaa..’ (Save us lord, we are innocent), the perfect Perambra Malayalam was coming alive on screen and for some unknown reason; I was delighted with a hidden inexpressible glee. May be for one moment I was thrown back into Perambra and was again a ten year old.

‘Manikyam’ was a pretty nineteen year old girl brought to ‘Paleri’ in marriage who was found raped and murdered after just eleven days. Corpse of a local priest was also found in the near by river the same night when Manikyam was murdered. This was way back in 1957 when the first communist party government was elected in Kerala, which was also a first in the world that a communist government getting powers by ballets and not by bullets. Manikyam murder happened to be the first reported murder in the Communist Kerala while the murder of the priest was ruled out as an accident. Rumors about the murders were many, but none of the accused was convicted. A local rich land Lord, infamous for his womanizing and criminal ways was believed to be behind the murder. Thanks to the big social awakening in their life, the police, the newly found government, and most of the people gradually forgot the fair one murdered. But there were still some People in Paleri who were brought up listening to the myths and mysteries about the incident which they carried in their heart, when they grew up. It took another fifty years before, a local Laureate T.P. Rajeevan, a reputed poet from Kerala decided to write a novel about it. He originally wrote in English but translated later into Malayalam which made waves when serialized in a reputed weekly. Now it was the turn of Ranjth; famous Script write turned director of Malayalam movie ,who also happened to have brought up in Perambra, to make a movie based on the novel and 'Paleri Manikyam' the movie was born.

Mammooty played three different roles, Harridas Ahmed, a self-driven private detective who comes down to Paleri for his own reasons to find the truth behind the Manikyam incident, MurukumKunnath Ahmed haji the criminal land lord, and also his well educated Gazal loving son Kabir. Among these portrayals, the character Ahmad Haji stands apart for the brilliance in characterization and performance.

Ranjith did something which most other directors never dared to do. He casted about thirty two stage actors of local background who had had never acted in a cinema before. This extra ordinary decision on the casting front really made the difference as most of the characters looked and sounded authentic and amazingly fresh. Its heard that more than three hundred stage actors in and around Calicut were interviewed and the team zeroed in to about thirty people.For example, the character of Velayudhan, the Man Friday of Ahmad Haji is played by Vijayan Nair' who made it a perfect debut giving life to one of the neatly etched out characters in the movie. He kills for his lord, and obeys him like a loyal dog but same time, secretly nurses his own criminal instinct. Its impossible to imagine, a Malayalam movie regular like 'Bhiman Raghu' or even Vijaya Raghavan playing it . Its heard that, Nazar the tamil actor was in T.P.Rajeevan's mind who thought would be the best bet to play Haji, but he was stunned by the stellar performance delivered by Mammootty when he saw the movie on the screen. It’s the debut for Mythili the 19 year old actor who brought innocent Manikyam alive on screen.

Philosophically there are two strong existences in the movie which represent the consciousness and the unconsciousness of Paleri. Ayidathu kumaran, the insane night wanderer is the unconscious side of Paleri. But he, in one point of time exposes himself as the only one of pure consciousness. This is where he says to haridas that the women with Harridans was not his wife, even though she was introduced to him as it was . The consciousness of Paleri was barber Keshavan, the communist who resigns himself from life, after delivering a closing statement like, 'I am not communist, I am not a believer, I am just a barber'. Barber keshavan played by Shrinivasan and his young days played by Mustafa were a treat to watch.

Movie makes strong political statement reflecting a generic critic wave against the communist rule and its hypocritical ways. Party is shown as the element which saves the culprit from the law even after committing a heinous crime, by accepting an expensive gift for the sake of the people of Paleri.

(Terrific Performance)

One of the strongest cinematic visual (at least to me) which Malayalam had ever seen is in this movie. That’s where Ahamd seduces Cheeru. Cheeru is called to Ahmad's house for sexual favors. And she boldly goes to his house with a mindset to deny the indecent proposal. But, the macho charm of the baddie Ahamd, the most powerful in the village, is sweeping her off her feet. Sweta Menon and Mammooty had wonderfully lived this scene. Ahmad greets her, standing in the field, opening the local liquor bottle with his teeth, same time pushing his big toe on to her navel, guiding it all way up to her skimpily covered softness. It’s like an ultimate bourgeoisie religiously performing the ritual of proclaiming his proletarian sex slave. Most outrageous attempt on the modesty of a married woman, but contrarily the appeal and magnetism of the man conquers her for ever. This visual statement definitely has got the high dose of cinematic seduction.

(Sweta Menon, the best role so far!)

Another Scene to comment here on is where Ahmed Haji punishing his worker on field by replacing oxen with the man, tying him to the plough making him run around the muddy paddy field with single oxen on the other side. It was a punishment for suspecting him to have stolen some coconuts from the land that Haji owned. When the victim collapses to mud, he leaves giving a statement ‘never ever look at my coconuts you son of a bitch’. Mammooty displayed amazing mannerisms on this scene. A perfect style of a period land lord from Kerala, chewing up a ‘beedi’ (a thin, leaf wrapped local made cigarette) gazing around.

Pokkan the village idiot, portrayed by Sreejith was another character to comment on.I have seen him playing similar roles in comedy skits in TV shows, and he has done a gread performance. Manikyam's brother, Adhikari, Poosari Thankappan and his dog, corrupted Police superintendent and most of the characters played by unknown actors were memorable. Sidhique's Balan Nair is confused with the accent some times but as usual did a regular good job. Sarayu, Haridas's girl friend, played by Gowri Munjal was just adequate though there were hiccups in syncing up the dubbed voice and her lip movement. Among numerous other actors who did the cameos, the character of Mollakka the Muslim witch doctor and also the ‘Manthravadi’ , his hindu alternate who do sacrifices (balikkala) for curing were seen to be close to perfection as the characterization, and the performance are concerned .Camera work, direction of photography, research on the period setting all seemed to be good. Techniques of narration were wonderful. For example, there is a scene where Harridans stands near the river and says, ‘Manikyam lived in Paleri only for 11 days and that was between these two boat journeys’, and In the background one could see, a boat coming in with a just married and blushing Manikyam to the village, and on the other half of the screen it’s the same boat that’s taking the corpse of Manikyam for postmortem to a remote town.

Movie also has got a hummable title song sung by the director himself, and also a Gazal in the climax scene.

Movie also has an Easter egg in it. There’s a single form of evil which is shared by all three characters, the good, the bad, and the ugly, regardless of their classification. All these characters are fond of other’s women in one or other way. When Kabeer lives in deep cover, Ahamd lived publicly in his ways, and finally Haridas in his most clean attire visits the village as part of the investigation with some one else’s wife leaving his own family back in a remote city, clubbing his trip with an adulterous pleasure drive.

In short ‘Paleri Manikyam’ is a gift to Malayalam Cinema which will be remembered for its aesthetic beauty if one can forget the un-realistic hyper melodrama in the climax. Mamootty lost the national award to Amitabh Batchan in the race which gets tarnished with active lobbying year after year. But this time it was highly unfortunate as it was a brilliant performance of him which was ignored by the jury. After all it was Amiabh Batchan again who denied the coveted national award to the Brilliant Malayalam actor Thilakan for his stellar performance in ‘Perunthanchan’ in early 1990’s. Thilakan was heard commenting like, ‘Acting is not like jumping from one Truck to another Truck’. He was clearly being sarcastic about Batchan’s pefromance that won him award. After all this is India, and personality and popularity not the talent, which are often accepted and appreciated.

Voodoos in the Woods!

2011-03-04T22:31:00.000-08:00

‘The Blair Witch Project’ (the original 1999 flick; not sequel, prequel or the parody) was there in my must-see list for long time. Thanks to HBO for airing it last night. A decade easily passed in the world of Movies, with different technologies and ideas to showcase since this movie was released, yet the aura of freshness in the style of photography used, and in the modest usage of equipments and cast, is not diminished. After all, this style is what elevated ‘Blair Witch Project’ into a higher position in the American chart of high gainers of all the time, grossing 248 million dollars worldwide. With a humble three men cast (if you can skip those who appear in guest) and just 20000$ spent on original shooting, this numbers which it grossed is quite impressive. It’s known that, the original shooting lasted just eight days with a usable footage of 19 hours, and it’s the magic of editing and sound mixing which took next eight months, eventually made a 90 minute movie of critical and commercial success.

Story line had nothing new to say, as its undoubtedly inspired from what we saw in (the most horrifying and disturbing movie experience I ever had) ‘1980 exploit classic, ‘Cannibal Holocaust’. Both the films unfold, by screening the video footage's of a group of aspiring film makers who were disappeared years ago. When it comes to the art of ‘Documentary Realism’, ‘Blair Witch Project’ can come no where near to the classic ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, which the Italian director Ruggero Deodato perfected to the level of most disgusting and disturbing reality.

But ‘Blair Witch Project’ is a great success in effectively using the realistic photography methods, like using unsteady night shots with white flash lights normally seen in home handycams, even with out any scenes of gory but still invoking the most exploited human feeling, ‘fear’. And for the same reason Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez deserve a good applause for their innovative thoughts setting up a new trend in movie making. What else could possibly explain the immediate parody 'The Bogus Witch Project' which satirized the original, and the flood of comics, sequels that followed?

White to play and win in eleven moves!

2011-01-27T01:18:00.000-08:00

It certainly does look like a page flew off from the Howard Staunton classic, 'The chess player's hand book' with all that antique and elegant chess notations(long before the boring and simple algebraic System was invented). But this is how the book, 'Through the looking glass: What Alice found there', the famous sequel of 'Alice in Wonderland' begins. (Yeah. I admit; I didn't know ) . May be after watching Tim Burton's latest movie adaptation of Lewis Carrol's classic 'Alice in Wonderland' , I just got curious about the book and the man who wrote it. Tim Burton's adaption is about the sequel, not the original book though the Movie name suggested that its about the original. Though the movie was all colorful and Johny Depp, the 'hatter' and Mia Wasikovska, the 'Alice' were fun to watch, elements of gore were more gory than children, the intended viewer probably could appreciate.Anyways,the beautifully animated, 'Cheshire', the evaporating cat was doubtlessly my favorite.

It seems like the entire literature world is arguing on to conclude whether Charles Lutwidge Dodgson(Lewis Carrol was his pen name) was in fact a pedophile or not even after 100 years of his death. Known to be a great creative photographer of his times, he found nude children, a subject of interest when it came to his photographic adventures. I may like to agree with those critics who believe that this assumption is a byproduct of viewing a 19th century creation with the eye of a 21st century critique. Let the arguments go on as long as the world has nothing better to do, but the unimaginable talent of Lewis Carrol will be remembered for ever for all his out of the world fantasies and creations which amused children and grownups for hundreds of years.

Schatten der Zeit

2011-01-15T22:19:00.000-08:00

'Schatten der Zeit' or Shadows of Time is not a movie to be told or to be heard, but to be felt. When a German film maker, fascinated by the charm of Bengali Cinema, decided to take a movie in Bengali, that resulted in a beautifully crafted unusual love story. The very word 'Love Story' would sound derogatory if used to describe this 2004 flick, as its beyond all such words. It’s about two souls who loves each other but not destined to live together. They would never unite unlike the typical Indian screen couple who would end up in marriage in a fairy tale fashion. After all fairy tales have this nasty way of concluding the story with a terrible incomplete note saying, 'Prince and Princess lived happily ever after'. Fairy tales remain fairy tales just because none of us attempt to complete the story from where it ends. After all who would like to see miseries of life in black and white when they get glittering colours to keep their eyes glued.

(Thumpa and Sikander, great performance)

'Shadows of Time’ is certainly not a fairy tale and ‘Ravi’ and ‘Masha’ would never live together but their love for each other would never end. Masha would spend her entire life in waiting for Ravi, where Ravi would live an incomplete life just like a Jigsaw puzzle waiting for the last piece to arrive. He would continue his search for her in occasions but goes back to his present like a kid to his mother. Searching for Masha is more like Searching for himself and this search continues his entire life time. Movie depicts four different phases of their life, a childhood in slavery, a struggling adolescence, well settled youth and a peaceful old age. The only aspect of their life which would never change with all those poverty, miseries, unexpected wealth for at least one of them, or even the uninvited wrinkles and grey hairs, is their love and passion for each other.

Florian Gallenberger, an Academy award winning German director attempted something which no one else tried before, to shoot a foreign movie in a foreign land with all foreign actors and in a foreign language. He came to India, done his research, wrote his script, took a course in Bengali language for himself and his German Crew, associated with a brilliant Casting director and picked the most appropriate actors for the job. There were 7000 children who were interviewed before finalizing the boy and girl to play the young Ravi and Masha. It’s heard that, even the lead actor Prashanth Narayanan (a Malayali Actor and a former badminton champion) had to undergo a Bengali language crash course before taking up this role. Aiswarya Rai and Vivek Oberoi include the list of actors initially considered for the lead roles. Thanks to the Casting director for doing the right thing in choosing the right people as I felt Prashanth, Tannishtha and especially Tillotama are impossible to be replaced.

Thillotama Shome as Deepa

Prashanth (Ravi), Tannishtha Chatterjee (Masha) and Tillotama Shome (Ravi's wife Deepa) were elegantly brilliant and Irafan Khan(Yani Mishra, Masha's husband) didn't disappoint too. The Child actors where amazingly good with Sikander Agarwal playing Young Ravi and Tumpa Das as young Masha. Biplab Das Gupta as a greedy villainy Factory manager has done some terrific performance too.

(Florian Gallenberger)

Photography, Art direction, background score, period sets (Story takes place in pre-independent India) and almost all other aspects of Cinema were just perfect; thanks to a world class European Crew with their Indian associates, doing all required work. It’s heard that it took just 12 weeks for the team including ten Germans to wind up the shooting of the film in and around Kolkata. The movie starts with a Car Journey which Ravi takes to an abandoned Carpet factory where he met Masha. The brilliant picturization of this car trip when the titles where shown reminded me of the way, Stanley Kubrik’s Classic horror movie ‘Shining’ which also begins with a beautiful aerial photography of a Car trip on the mountains.

It was Intentional not to disclose the story line as I seriously wish who ever stumble upon this tiny blog, would watch Shadows of Time. The storyline of this movie has seriously influenced ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, a pathetic commercial flick which got all undeserved attention and accolades with no class at all in its credits.

(Prashanth and Tannishtha)

Though the movie was made in an Indian Language and shot completely In India with all Indian actors, it was never released in India. Maybe, we don’t have any distributor in India who would take risk in distributing a class movie to a classless mass. We also have no option in India to buy this DVD as none of the DVD selling portals sells this in India. You can buy it from some foreign portals. This is where YouTube comes in, and you can watch the full movie whenever you please at free of cost. Thanks to the kind heart who uploaded it to YouTube.Piracy doesn't hurt as the movie was released six years back Thanks to Sony Pix channel for airing this movie or else I would have missed this forever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liNgqY8ld9k

One more Sunset!

2010-12-26T01:49:00.000-08:00

Your name is Justine

2010-11-11T23:56:00.000-08:00

'Your name is Justine' is a very touchy movie of the disturbing kind. A polish movie directed by Franco de Pena and produced in Luxembourg in the year 2005, has the debut of the actor Anna Cieslak who played Mariola, the lead character. Movie shows, how a jovial, happiness seeking, beautiful girl from a suburban Poland, thrown into forced prostitution in Berlin, Germany; seduced, betrayed and sold by her boyfriend.Lacking the courage to suicide, failing in all the attempts to escape, She tries to adapt to the new way of life. Mariola takes her vengeance by killing her boyfriend and comes back to her freedom after three years of imprisonment. As expected from any cross-border movie, 'Your name is Justine' makes its own passive and silent political statements.Portrayal of Mariola, with her journey from a beautiful adolescent life which she shared with her loving grand mother, to the violent sexual captivity in a foreign land and there on to a miraculous freedom by not accepting the defeat, was brilliant. When this performance's coming from an actor who was donning the greasepaint for the first time in her life, its definitely great. The name of the movie came from a scene when the ruthless German buyer of Mariola does a forceful christening saying, 'Your name is Justine'.'Your name of Justine' has striking visuals especially on the scenes where Mariola realizes she has no chance to escape as she was locked up in an abandoned building in a remote and disconnected locality. One of such scenes can be seen in the poster.

Raavanan: Vikram’s tribute to Mifune?

2010-10-30T07:11:00.000-07:00

Manirathinam attempts a Kurosawa with his bilingual flick ‘Raavanan’ and just like Kurosowa’s Man Friday Toshiro Mifune, he has got Vikram to bring in the less explored, human wild side into reel life. The Tamil version ‘Raavanan’ got at least some attention from the critics and the cine goers where as the Hindi version ‘Ravan’ was rejected equally by all fronts. I thought watching the Tamil version will be the right thing to do as the director himself had expressed his regret for making the Hindi version.

[Toshirō Mifune as bandit Tajōmaru in Rashomon (1950)]

Let’s talk about the theme of the movie. It’s a bold attempt to revisit the epic Ramayana with a different perspective and in modern settings. That means, bringing out the Rama out of wrongly projected Ravana and Ravana from the shell of much hyped out Rama where Rama and Ravana represent the good and evil in that order to the Indian consciousness. The Story shows how a bandit/Tribal Leader who has both his evil and good side in him, kidnaps the pretty wife of a Police Superintend as he seeks revenge for his wronged sister in the hands of police, and how she gets rescued in the end. The movie spends most of its time in showing the good side of bad guy and the bad side of good guy and has got this anticlimax where the wrong villain being killed by the wrong hero.

[M.T.Vasudevan Nair.]

The idea of altering and retelling a commonly accepted myth is not a fresh idea even in Indian cinema, as I can recollect how convincingly the Malayalam writer and Jnanpith award winner MT Vasudevan Nayar re-told one of the famous ballads in Kerala with reversal of roles, ‘Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha’ which brought laurels to Actor Mammootty and director Hariharan.

Kerala had an ancient tradition of settling out the disputes of the riches and the royals with a staged combat between two traditional martial art (kalaripayattu) experts with deadly weapons, the culmination of which will be death of one warrior. The ballad was about two such legendary warriors, Aaromal the hero and Chanthu the Cheat.

[Mammooty as Chanthu the traitor from the movie, Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha. he bagged national award for his performance.]

With his much successful and one of the best movie scripts ever written in Malayalam, MT Vasudevan Nayar transposed the Cheat into a hero and the hero into a coward. As this script what MT wrote was amazingly original which baffled millions of keralites when he successfully reversed the roles of most famous villain and hero of our ancient history, Mani Rathinam cannot say his was Original.

There are plenty of literature works in India, already attempted it and there was always a minority in India who believed in the goodness of Ravana and evil coward side of Rama and the Epic Ramayana itself suggested this fact, clearly visible to its non-religious admirers. BR Ambedkar in his book about Rama quotes from Ramayayana itself to list out all evil things committed by Rama and questions the logic in worshiping him. The Ancient Tamil Version of Ramayana, Kamba Ramayana suggests that Ravana was a teetotaller and man of heroic qualities and Sita actually admired Ravana.
Let’s come to the ‘Movie’ side of the Movie Raavanan. The Script itself is not good enough for a movie of this class intention. Manirathinam movies always suffered such silly but cancerous hyper melodrama which would remind you of some school dramas. Let’s look into some examples from some of his movies.

(a) Protagonist of the movie ’Roja’ shows his patriotism in rolling over a burning Indian flag to save it from flames.
(b) Hero of ‘Dil se’ hugs a woman suicide bomber with whom he is in love with, to let the bomb explode killing themselves, with a noble intention of saving hundreds of people.
(c) ‘Bombay’ with such loud straight out of comic strip characters of religious fanaticism.
(d) ‘Yuva’ with impossible and unrealistic dreams of the success of a young political party(Whole style of the movie was seriously inspired by Kurosowa classic Roshomon)

Raavanan has the following characters directly related to the epic Ramayana.
(1) Rama, ‘Dev Prakash’ Played by Pritviraj.
(2) Ravana, ‘Veeraiya’ played by Vikram
(3) Sita, ‘Raagini’ , Aishwarya Rai Bachan
(4) Hanuman, ‘Gnanaprakasham’ , Karthik
(5) Vibishana, ‘Sakkarai’ , Munna
(6) Supranaka, 'Vennila', Priyamani

[Abhishek Bachan as Ravan in Hindi and Vikram in the Tamil Version]

Apart from the characters which can be mapped directly, there are numerous wanted or unwanted characters like, ‘Singarasu’ the elder brother of ‘Veeraiah’ (Possible match from the epic is 'Kumbakarna', younger brother of Ravana) ,as usual mishandled by Prabhu. Prabhu has got the miserable magic of turning any serious character into a mere clown as he did in ‘Kalapani’ and numerous other movies. Priyamani who played the sister of ‘Veeraiya’ was perfect though her role was short. She doubtlessly outclassed Aishwarya Rai, who has got the burden of her beauty and has not improved as an actress ever since she appeared in manirathinam’s Iruvar. (Iruvar, no doubt; is the best movie he ever made) where she performed much better.
Manirathinam’s unquenchable penchant for hyper melodramatic climax killed the quality of the movie, which also exposed the serious gaps in the script. For example, when the SP dev and his special task force enters the wild forest in hunt for Veeraiya, they are spotted early, distracted or caught by Veeraiya’s men but, in the climax, Dev marches with his well armed battalion straight up to Veeraiya without any obstacle. Script questions the intelligent quotient of the movie goers by making Karthik’s ‘Ghanaprakasam’ to do monkey styled acrobats on trees to show that he plays Hanuman, the monkey god who was Lord Rama’s original messenger on his Project Ravana. There are miserable scenes like the one where the modern monkey god tells to Raagini (Sita) that he had brought a sign from Dev(Ram) as he spots her in the forest.
So what are those things which make you watch this whole movie with that school boy’s script and a former Miss world’s useless charm? One of the ingredients which would make you to cling on to your seat must be the cinematography by Manikantan and Santhosh Sivan in the beautiful locales of Karnataka and Kerala forests.

Remember that beautiful areal view of the boat-crash-kidnap scene in the beginning and also the Ravanan’s big dive from the cliff. Vikram almost did a Toshiro Mifune (though subtlety and originality of the latter was impossible to reach at, )with those wild grins and grunts. This is the best performance of him as an actor so far. Raagini’s attempts to escape from the captivity and the scenes of her physical duals with the strong macho antagonist, before she falls prey to the so called Stockholm syndrome (“a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, essentially mistaking a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness” )are very much reminded of, or possibly inspired by the academy award winning Ang Lee movie ‘The Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ keeping in mind that, comparing the great performance of Zhang Zhui and Chang Chen in such scenes with the mediocre show of Aishwarya Rai and Vikram will be a crime to commit. Performance of Prithvi Raj who played Dev can be considered just adequate but nothing more to talk about where as Karthik's hanuman was a better show. Music and score was good and in tune to the story line.

(Zhang Zhui and Chang Chen from the movie Crouching Tiger hidden Dragon.)

To summarize, Raavanan is worthy of watching one time, to enjoy the photography and Vikram’s well executed grunts inspired by the world cinema.

"Blindman, Blindman, what did he do? Stole 50 women that belong to you."

2010-10-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

Will we ever get tired of watching spaghetti westerns over and over again. No, No, No way! Westerns got those magical trigger happy rogue men on their sexy horses,dust filled surrealistic ghost towns, and that crazy background score which would freeze your blood. Women? do they exist? Yeah, they surely did, in 'The Quick and the Dead' which was a frustrated attempt to revive the long lost magic of westerns but in most of the cases, including 'Unforgiven' , they were just whores.

Legends of western; Lee Van Cleef, Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallah; all sharp shooters with those piercing eyes. Hmm, but what about a blind man? What he can do with out even having eyes in the world of quick guns? And thats the fun part in Blindman, the 1971 Tony Anthony starrer.

Are you a 'reality' seeker? go and watch reality shows and we are happy with our blindman and his amazing action.

It was more fun this time, as i saw it in italian with English Subtitles.

"Well Sweet mama, the sun don't shine on the same dogs ass all the time."

Rain Rain Go Away……

2010-09-23T07:25:00.001-07:00

(Poster of Ninja Assassin which showed a furious ‘Rain’. The Fury was only in the posters.)

What could be the title, if any one attempt to write a review on the 2009 Ninja Movie; much hyped-up ‘Rain’ starrer, the ‘Ninja Assassin’?
‘Cuts, stabs,flying limbs and a bath in the blood’?
‘Ninja Assassin’, no doubt is another miserable product from the age old ‘you-killed-my-father-I-take-revenge’ school of martial arts movies. Who was that, who defined martial arts as, “People Train hard for years to make the worst movies in the world”. I guess it was a witty pot bellied couch-potato's take on ‘Karate’.

Anyways, who’s going to blame the cast of this movie, when there is no story to be told in the first place. Did the movie succeed in showing the legend of ninja terror and their bloody way of life? I don't think so. Ninja Assassin portrays Ninja clans close to a comic cartoon strip. There’s a scene where the lead lady (A clichéd Caucasian female character, ignorant about Asian ways) is asked to change into a new cloth to escape from the chasing Ninjas; She asks,

( Sho Kozugi as Ozunu, father of the Clan, in one of the beautifully shot scenes in the movie)

“You mean they sniff like dogs?”
All what Ninja Assassin got is a pathetic cast. Except the Baddie ‘Ozunu’ played by the Jap Action Movie legend Sho Kosugi, every one acted so miserably. Lead man Rain, who won the MTV’s ‘biggest badass star’ award for his performance in this movie was amazingly emotion less in every single scene.On the female lead (Naomi Harris)? She’s in the wrong company here, and also helps to reduce the glam quotient of the whole movie. In another words, a better looking glam-dole in her place,wouldn't have hurt.

”Expression of No-Expression”

(Al Pacino in his iconic role as Michael Corleoni in Godfather 2.)

When asked about his brilliant performance in one of the greatest movies which Hollywood ever produced, Godfather II; Al Pacino reportedly told that, it was hard to emote emotionless. He had to play a ruthless but diplomatically calm underworld don ‘Michael Corleone’ who would not hesitate to kill his own brother, in order to protect the dignity of his crime-family/Mafia.

Al Pacino said, he tried to listen to Beethoven during the shooting of movie, to keep a calm composure to express a non-expression.
Rain had no such problem to be expressionless as he never tries to emote anything at all. Being one of the most influential popular Music Icons from Korea, he had had tremendous experience in appearing in the music albums and he probably took this as one of them.
Ninja Assassin shows, how an orphan named ‘Raizo’ from a Japanese clan of assassins turns against his own family. Movie unfolds in violent details, how he grows up to become a Ninja assassin with it’s painful training methods and how he matures into a Man who would dare to turn against his ruthless mentor and say, ‘This is not my family and you are not my father’. And there are plenty of cuts, stabs, sword play, flying Shuriken, Swirling Kusarigama and lots and lots of blood. And to summarise, that's all about the movie.
Ninja Assassin has got no grace even in depicting graphical violence. Compare this to Quentin Tarantino’s style in Kill Bill. Kill Bill had all those scenes of gory but with a class of its own.

(Christopher Lambert on the poster of ‘The Hunted’)

The 1995 flick ‘The Hunted’ was a much better effort on portraying the myth of legendary ninja assassins. Again, despite having a regular weak-turns-strong-beats-the-evil climax, it was thoroughly enjoyable; thanks to the cast of very talented actors like, Golden Globe Nominee John Lone and Japanese Academy Award Nominee Yoshiro Harada and also to a very good extend, the lead played by Christopher Lambert with that mysterious and famous myopic stare of his.

John Lone’s negative character ‘Kinjo’ had certain depth and definitely memorable along with Harada’s Character ‘Sensei Takeda’. Remember the scene where he cuts his samurai sword with his bare hands when the Airport Officials stops him from carrying it on the air plane.

Who can forget his magnificent sword play as his character massacres a big group of Ninja Assassins in a moving train, which was definitely the biggest attraction of the movie.

(yoshio Harada:Hunted: What a screen Persona!)

(‘Kinjo’ Played John Lone: Hunted)

If I could recollect, ‘The hunted’ also exhibited the much exploited sensual charm of Japanese women in a Hollywood angle.

(Kusarigama:Sickle and iron ball fixed on a metal Chain- a dreaded Ninja weapon)

A worst Ninja Movie similar to Ninja Assassin that I can recollect is ‘Way of the Ninja’ (?) which was more like a regular American Karate movie which would remind you of those old ‘Chuck Norris’ type. Here, the American hero is trained in Ninjutsu and he cleans off the baddies with this special skill for his friend; and the plot thickens when the Villain goes to Japan to hire another Ninja to wield against our man.
Lets come back to ‘Ninja Assassin’ from the memories of better/worst Ninja flicks and end this with a little nursery rhyme…
“Rain Rain Go away…”

‘A dosa that almost ate me’ or ‘The Great Kovai Surprise ’

2010-09-21T08:45:00.001-07:00

It was beyond all my imaginations. None of those wildest surrealistic dreams of mine, took me to anything closer to this, (Exaggerating: Never mind) which just happened in a yummier, crispier and filling manner.
This part of Tamil Nadu was new to me though I stayed years together in other parts of it. I never imagined, a city, where most of the people spoke my language, just few miles away from my state; could give me this shock on the breakfast table.
I was driving to cochin from Bangalore and hungry like hell when stepped into this Place in Coimbatore. Having skipped the dinner previous night, I didn't had to think twice for placing my order for my favourite ‘Paper plain Dosa’ for a crispy and filling breakfast. I kept smiling while the waiter tried to warn me that it could be slightly bigger than what i probably imagined. At the least, I should have realised when they placed two banana leaves instead of the regular single.

(my mother in law giving me an emotional support; sharing the question marks)

It took two waiters to bring it to my table, ensuring it would not even have the slightest damage possible,before their privileged guest touched it. The whole scene started to turn bit of embarrassing to me,when I could feel some eyes were turning to our table, probably to see, how this silly looking guy was going to devour that huge piece of edible wonder.

(Anandhas, Coimbatore where I had my Dosa Surprise! )

The Curse of being on ‘Bench’

2010-09-03T00:31:00.001-07:00

You belong to the big community of IT folks and you call yourself a Software Engineer. Though most of us know what we do, and what we did so far, or even what ever we aspire to do in the future cannot even come closer to the word ‘Engineering’ , we still prefer to call our self an Engineer. I think, I am a modern IT clerk who loves the engineering side of his big clerical side of work.That's the ‘You’ and ‘I’ about that.

And here goes the ‘Bench’ Part and the main part of this post.(‘growing roots part’)

(How bored a human being can get at. ?? (double question mark points to a massive blunder in chess.) (that's a bracket inside bracket thought: the ‘inception’ perspective))

‘Bench’ (you are a resource doing nothing or unbilled) changes everything. One fine day you realise you don't need to go to your work place, you got all the freedom in the world, and most importantly you are all yours for the whole day. The Possibilities are huge. Consider the following.Browse for an interesting movie with the cheapest ticket in your city from the ‘Now Running’ website and find another ‘doing nothing’ pal of yours to go with. Find out a musical concert (even if you don't understand the very word ‘Music’) or the latest art exhibition in the town (who cares the ‘Art’ when the need of the day is to kill time) and hit them. Recollect all your plans related to your hobbies which you preferred to bury with in the rustic walls of your collective unconscious. Say, you go and take chess coaching from some one who is ready to teach even a moron like you and prepare yourself for a rated tournament which is to be started in the coming month. Another idea is to start blogging for yourself and read it yourself when you have lot of time. Try moving around your home with a handy camera to capture those breath taking picturesque like the sewage line behind your kitchen or a crow sitting on the fence or a dusty train which goes on the track near your home. Just imagine, what an uproar you may create by uploading such magnificent visuals mixed with Beethoven or Bach into YouTube. Thus the possibilities of a bench day are amazingly rich and interesting.
Unfortunately, in most of the cases Reality doesn't get along very well with the pretty side of potentiality. You being a bencher realize the next morning that, all the crows and fences, the train, the sewage, (Even if they are mixed with Beethoven, Mozart or Bach) , the art exhibitions(or the visuals of somebody’s well kept inhibitions), those cheaply bought tickets of some contemporary crap, cease to be appealing to you and you are deserted with all your insecurities and all your disturbing emptiness what those gurus call ‘nothingness’ and you observe deep mourning watching silently that all your hobbies and pastime fantasies dying so fast before your eyes.
Coming Soon: ‘Nothingness: Myth or a reality? The Bench Side:’

Khosla Ka Ghosla

2010-07-10T03:20:00.000-07:00

When you have amazingly gifted actors like Anupam Kher,Boman Irani,Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shorey donning super realisitic roles, that definitely leads to a great comic entertainment. Yes thats true that no one probably had heard of Diwakar Banerjy before this 2006 flick of his, but this made him an interesting story teller grabbing some national awards as well.
The movie starts with a pre-dawn Nightmare which Mr.Khosla usually gets, follows with his funny gargling which irritates other members of his family. The Laugh riot starts right there, which would remain through out the movie, still making sure they dont deviate from the main stroy. With no parallel comic lines, no slap sticks, no unwanted characters, the story just unfolds into a great feel good experience.

Kher beautifully portrays the regular Indian middle class gentle man, closing to his retirement from the government service, who is trapped in the web of middle class worries and strict morality. Boman Irani, was just perfect in the role of Land Mafia lord Mr. Khurana, with an apt body language.After all he has got this mastery of dwelling into such moulds as we have already seen in movies like, '3 Idiots', 'Darna Mana hai' and 'Munnabhai MBBS'.

Tara Sharma probably had the worst voice a female lead can probably have in a regular bollywood setup, but this time, it just sounded perfect. Every single character, especially the entire Khurana coccus were a feast to watch.

Khosla Ka Ghosla is definitely a good movie experience especially for all those who dealt with land brockers and dealers atleast once in their life.

Ore Kadal

2010-03-27T05:16:00.000-07:00

'Ore Kadal' was not just any other Malayalam movie to miss. This DVD was on my shelf for more than a year before I decided to watch it. Thanks to my trip to Andhra as I got some fine free time to watch what ever it pleased. This could be the boldest attempt in the history of Malayalam cinema to show an adulterous relationship and the bitter consequences of it , in a serious manner. Story or the way of telling it, never try to glorify the relationship. Remember the way our esteemed director Mani compromised on the script, on showing the relationship between Anandan (a loose portrayal of the real life tamil icon MGR) and Kalpana ( the real life muse of MGR and another big name in the history of tamil nadu , Jayalalitha) in arguably the best movie he ever made, 'IRUVAR'. He had to come up with a foolish idea to glorify the relationship. The idea was, Anandan (who plays an actor) realizes that his new heroine looked exactly the way his passed-away wife Pushpa looked ,and develops an affection towards her. In one scene, you can even see, that Anandan urges his wife Ramani, (played by Gouthami) not to cast kalpana in his new film, despite her proven acting(dancing) skills. On the Contrary 'Ore Kadal' shows how a non-intellectual, moderately educated woman of lower middle class being seduced by the rogue charm of a socially isolated, pure intellectual who is much elder to her. This male chauvinistic protagonist has got a bad habit of denying the existence of anything except him and his ego unless it's academically or physically interesting to him. The Character Nathan or its portrayal by Mammotty never seemed to be convincing though. Even Ramya's character had nothing much to do but her character holds good, being just a female body to relive Nathan of the pressures of his carnal desires. Entire movie is driven by Meera Jasmin's performance, who played the role of the female lead. Meera could easily and successfully emote the moments of unbalanced mental equilibrium in a fine subtle way , shying away from all those stereo typical schizophrenic characters . This change was nice to watch. Another Character which looked realistic was her husbands' role played by Naren. Despite all these mediocre performances and depthless characters, Movie was a still a good experience, probably because of the strong theme and an experienced cast. The way the movie ends deserves a special remark. When the little girl (who happens to be a byproduct of the adulterous relationship)takes the stairs to her biological fathers' home, with that innocent dubious looks and tiny unsure steps, that conveys them all. The Name Ore Kadal, or ’The Same Sea' gets its real meaning there. Was It an imagery showing a small innocent girl child growing up into the abyss of endless suffering of a middle class Indian women Or was it something else, to say, ‘Searching for her Mother’ keeping the psychological meaning of the phrase in tact.

Poverty Sells!

2009-02-24T00:20:00.000-08:00

It rained Oscars for Slum Dog. Eight Awards from the apostile of International but predominantly American, commercial Cinema. A Great feeling indeed for indians, as its a long time after Bhanu Athaia bagged hers for the 1982 Attenborough classic Gandhi's brillant costumes, two other indians bagged Oscars. No complaints about Rahman's or Kutty's for their prowess in the music and sound,and at the least, I am no authority to talk about music. it was said, that Music is pure Mathematics.It's a magic what a specific propotion of notes produces.As I said in my previous post about the movie, Music was so much inside the movie and may be that definitely qualifies. I am no good in mathematics as well. So No talk about Maths and Music. Just one doubt. Did it deserve the award for the best film? Or is it just that the depiction of indian poverty still sells abroad, as it did at the time of Raj Kapoor's 1955 Cannes Nominee 'Boot Polish'(Directed by Prakash Arora) and Meera Nayir's 1988 Cannes Winner and Oscar Nominated 'Salaam Bombay'? I honestly feel, Slum dog wont stand a chance at Cannes. Lets wait and see. Would like to watch Salaam Bombay one more time, but I still remember, it was definitely a class apart from our very own slum dog. What about 'City of Joy'? The Om Puri flick in the background of a poor Kolkotha, based on Dominique Laperre's book with the same name ? Dont you think, its time to watch these movies once again at the time of Slum dogs?

"Anger Unbuttoned"

2009-02-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

Interesting Caption. TOI got the self appointed guardian angels of our 'sexless', holy heritage posing with some panties. What a wonderful idea sirji? Very interesting. Very very Interesting. There was an old joke about moral policing. "If electricity comes from electrons, will morality from Morons?". We got some graphical evidence right here. Enjoy these pics. The Hindu extremist group 'Sri Rama Sene' received thousands of pink panties with naughty inscriptions, in protest of their anti valentine propaganda from the consortium of loose, pub going women as a Valentine gift. But I am sure, if you were in their shoes, you would nt dare to pose for a photograph like this. Would you?

May be its a decent try to do the reputation make over from the power of violence to the so called 'Gandhigiri'? Look at them. You need true guts to pose for media this way. Another expected development is the sene, dropping their plan for sending Sari's back to the senders of 'pink chaddis'. Good decision guys.
A couple of thousands of saris (Much more exposing attire than Jeans and Shirt) which your members contribute cannot substitute at least 30.0000 Panties sent by the group of 'Lose, Pub-going' women. Beware, they are everywhere. Then why to waste postage expenses? May be this would prompt the Sene to mind their own good business.

In one of his short stories,Maythil Radhakrishnan, a true genius among Malayalam laureates says, "those who are wounded in sex, would deny Casanova". It explains the pub violence a bit. In his comic sounding interviews, Mr. Mutalik, head of Rashtriya Hindu Sene talks about the heritage of india. Some one please take him to Khajuraho and show him our holy sculptures depicting various sexual acts. Some one, please ask him to read the Sanskrit book 'Arthashastra' of Koutilya(Chankya), arguably the first written book on public governance so that he can see that 'Prostitution' was legal in ancient india. Chanakya was the Prime Minister and Chief advisor to the Emperor Chandragupta Mourya of highly respected Mourya empire of about 350 BC. Men were encouraged to visit Ganika's (Commercial Sex worker ) often and there was even a special department and a minister to take care of prostitution. There were written codes of conduct by the state instructing how the 'Ganika' should take care of her 'Guest'. A punishment system was also designed for punishing a Ganika, if she breached such written conducts. For example, If a Ganika decided to leave the profession,all her Gold ornaments had to be surrendered to the state and if she denied her service to any guest whom she didn't like, she was beaten up in public mercilessly. Number of cane beatings she had to receive on such occasions were clearly specified in the rule book under the section called 'Danda Nyaya' .(hard to recollect precisely as it was long back I devoured the book). Daughters of Ganika's were naturally forced into this state sponsored prostitution, and if one of those mothers was not willing her daughter to take up the same career, she had to pay a huge fine to the state. There were in numerous instances of polygamy and polyandry in our history including the cases where one woman having five husbands and still respected in the society. Inviting some one else to the house by the husbands for inseminating their wives with the good intention of producing some quality offspring was a common practice. Sex was not a taboo for highly respected practitioners and preachers of the religion. Otherwise we would not have books like 'Kamasutra' or 'Kokkoka Shastra' both written by Hindu Saints. These facts very much explain how sex was treated in ancient India. Now lets come to the pub going part. Consider the celebrations like 'Rasaleela' where women and men would drink and dance the whole night.(Still practiced in north side of India) You have got reference to this even in our epics. If one can believe 'B.R.Ambedkar' the respected creator of Indian law, he even talks about how a highly worshiped Indian God celebrated such eventful nights, ensuring his wife too participated in it, quoting some epics. So does'nt it make sense for our Saffron brigade to take a small session on history before preaching in lengths about our 'heritage'?

But I still don't understand, how the photographers got the holy warriors of 'Sri Rama Sene' posing this way with the utmost undies of some loose, socially unfit women? Was it not smart denying to receive any such nasty couriers? Anyways, thanks for the entertainment guys. You really made the world laugh.Thank you.

Slum Dog??

2009-02-14T03:45:00.000-08:00

A double question mark in an annotated chess game indicates a bad move. I used it here with a better Intention. I just don't understand why the movie 'slum dog millionaire' is hyped up so much. I just don't understand why its expected to sweep the Oscars? Its just any other egg-straw-ordinary movie with a regular happy ending, rag to rich story in the back ground of not-so-beautiful side of an over populated urban India. You keep searching for the reasons. And you find some points. Good technique of story telling. A slum dog scales his way up to a big fortune answering the questions shot at him from a 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' show. The difference here is, he finds the answers from his very life not from the books. Story unveils in the intervals of questions flashing back to the world he came from, and the bitter life he lived. Interesting? A near perfect cast who would suit the roles almost perfect and what else? A decent piece of music which is so much inside the movie. Anything else? Some hyper realistic (I am sorry, Cant use the word 'exaggerated') scenes from the poor, struggling and suffering side of India which would remind you of those neo-realistic Italian movies of the past. Movie has got some documentary styled perfection in the portrayal of bitter realities. But what else? Don't you feel the script looked more of a school drama? I felt so. Yes. Most of the actors have done the perfect 'behaving' . But still does it rise to the level of expecting 'Oscars' (Lets keep aside the topic 'whats so great about Oscars?'). I just compared this to 'Forrest Gump', a randomized sample from the Oscar winners from the past. And I did'nt find slum dog stands anywhere near by. Then what about this hype? You see Brad pitt, Angelina Jollie comes out of the theatre saying touching dialogues. You see Anil Kapoor dances around the streets of 'world Cinema' with an abundant joy of achieving something priceless?

Eminent historian Romila Thappar talks about historiography(the study of how knowledge of the past, recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted) the 'history of history' in one of her books on ancient Indian history. She says, there were lot of mistakes committed in 'Indology' of early 20th century because of the ignorance of the Western historians about the Indian way of life. They got confused and confused others by documenting their bad assumptions about India and its religious, social and political base which probably could be one of the reasons why some people abroad still think India is all about 'Maharajas','Magics' and 'Elephants'.
Same way, a foreign Critic who sees, slum dog would be very happy. Poverty, Corruption, music and a heavy doze of realism. But for an average Indian cine goer, Slum dog Millionaire is just like any other modern bollywood flick.

In a Free State

2009-02-14T03:32:00.000-08:00

I was reading Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Confessions of a Xenophile’ the other day, and could see him equally confessing about his admiration towards the Noble Laureate V.S. Naipaul and his works. I felt like reading at least one of Naipaul's works. The office library had his booker winner of 1971, ‘In a Free State’. A Political, Socio-Economical (Existentialism? I’m no critic. I can’t say. But definitely looks like one) work of serious fiction, which talks thru narrating the woes of immigrants who lose themselves, or searching themselves in vein in another part of the world where they don’t belong to. It consists of three different novellas of similar theme with a prologue and epilogue. One of these characters is not exactly in a search of a fortune but rather for freedom, and naturally he has nothing much to grieve about what he leaves behind. But when he eventually gets dwelled into the new world without much of a massive effort, he still falls into a philosophically meaningless existence. (One out of Many). In another tale, the man sacrifices his own happiness for the selfless indianite protector feeling (which would not quite work in the foreign atmosphere) towards his irresponsible sibling, and gradually leads himself to astray(Tell me whom to Kill). The third tale talks about a man who loses himself in another continent, being thrown into the world of ethnic struggles and getting involved a bit too much into the violent after-effects of a forced power transition, in a self driven fashion towards devastation(In a Free State). These tales don’t talk about any special immigrant. It’s about all type of immigrants and their woes. It could be an Indian in a white’s world, or a white in a black’s world. I felt Naipaul uses strong narrations with a flavor of Black humor and dry sarcasm. But one thing is for sure; that once you start reading it, you can hardly put it down. Especially the first two tales will assure you the simplicity and readability and It gets so complicated and so dry but yet readable when you reach into the main story ‘In a Free Sate’. You get confused why it’s called a novel as it’s a collection of stories where the individual characters never meet each other. But when you observe it as a whole, it makes complete sense. It’s a single story. It’s a story of people, who don’t require a name or about the people whose name don’t make any difference.
This is how the story ‘One Out of Many’ ends;
“I was once part of the flow, never thinking of myself as a presence. Then I looked in the mirror and decided to be free. All that of my freedom has brought me is the knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a certain number of years. Then it will be over.”

Leon- the Professional

2009-02-08T08:10:00.000-08:00

I was not sure when Leon was released(1994 ;-) Now I know) . I am not sure how many times this movie had been remade into Indian languages; bolly/tolly/molly/kolly-wood?? But I am sure; this is a little piece of classic action flick, one should not miss. Most of the stylish action movies tend to have that regular pick of romantic relationship with a spicy flavor of lust Interwoven to the main plot. But here you see an illiterate man who describes himself 'the Cleaner' moves around the city, cleaning the baddies with a little pretty girl child holding to his hand. The mysterious man may remind you of the classic 'Blondie' of GBU or the ‘Guitarist' of Desperado. He maintains a low profile to avoid the unwanted attention until she meets the girl which would give him a shocking transition from machine to a man. There is something mysterious about the relationship between these two characters. We see there's a father -child relationship as clear as a summer’s sky. But we still get a hilarious moment in the movie when the girl denies this fact to the world, with a little cute devilish grin of hers. I found Leon a superb work. Every single thing about the movie had flair of beauty in it. You see the beauty in the unexpected and often unwanted but still-not-ugly visit of Aphrodite in the adolescent child. You see an e element of tranquility in the act of calisthenics which our cleaner does time to time and there’s this serene beauty of relationship between man to the plant which in fact works as a perfect metaphor of all goodness our man carries with him. The absolute baddie played by Gary Oldman is better than the best, and i loved the way he confronts the girl in her quest of vengeance describing her to his compatriot as, the girl who had "good intentions to send me straight to the morgue" with an expressionless face.

The progression of the girl by learning the art of cleaning and the other tricks of the trade to survive was beautifully crafted. Remember the scene, where the girl whispers for Leon to open his door as she knew that her family was being massacred and it was the only chance for her survival and the art of emotional blackmailing she tries when Leon was not ready to adopt her. The same trick she repeats with the school principal shows how quickly she adapts to the massive changes in the path of her life. Was it not a perfect way to end a movie show Matilda planting the very best friend and soul of Leon in the school garden saying,’ I guess we would be happy here’ ? I just loved it. I even loved Danny ‘the keeper’ of Leon's fortune, who would boast all the time about himself as He’s like a bank. or even better than that. Leon’s a clean entertainer with an aesthetic sense of beauty. Natalie Portman, Jean Reno , Gary Oldman, Luc Besson ; a great team; and it worked so well.

The 'Tradition':: Fiddler on the Roof!

2009-01-19T14:23:00.000-08:00

Good, beautiful Stuff!! And "On the Other hand" :-) , I just loved Topol in his amazing brilliance and flexibility in reflecting, rather subtle emotions. His character, "the Milkman" was so wonderful, so funny , so mystical and have got great philosophical depth with an interestingly compromising approach to the life and its unexpected changes.

He's so sarcastic, so hilarious especially in his conversations with God.

Chaim Topol was nominated for Oscar in 1972 for his performance in this movie and had also won golden globe for the same. Its so learned that he had to get special permissions to attend award functions as he was serving israel army in those years.

For people who enjoy musicals like 'Sound of Music', 'Fiddler on the Roof' wil be a treat. And those who love the art of acting, Topol would be great catch. And if you don't fall into both of these categories but enjoy a good bit of camera work, you have got a great deal to be happy about as the movie was shot in beautiful locations in yugoslavia to get the feel of Jewish life in the tsarist Pre-Revolutionary Russia of late 19th century!

Thanks to my late Night shifts and the privilege of 'Work from home' facility, I have just seen my first movie of the year,2009.

"Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Make me a match,
Find me a find,
catch me a catch
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Look through your book,
And make me a perfect match..."

And I would love to watch it another ten times just to see him talking about 'Tradition' and what the 'Good book' says.... :-)

(have a look at Topol from the movie and in his real life snaps. He still lives in Israel and leading quite successful and healthy life.)

A Fine Example of Clinical Reporting - ;-)

2008-12-30T23:35:00.000-08:00

IF you still doubt what makes a tabloid different from a news paper, I got something for you. Another fine example on how TOI qualifies it self as the most widely read tabloid in india. They are still celebrating the unfortunate incident of the accidental civilian shooting in a big way. TOI have been quite busy with this for last three days. Somehow this time readers are not giving much attention to this. What ever be the case, after all its a tabloid's duty, to blow a tiny scoop out of all proportions to keep its regular readers hooked. Here you go.They got the pic of his goat too. May be another desperate attempt to stirr up a sympothetic wave towords the deceased. bad luck for TOI that the boy was not married yet, most probably he had no girl frieds too. Or else we would have already got glimpse on his probable family. Now lets wish TOI that the goat would do the trick. I am just wondering what the mighty TOI has got in its treasure to deliver us in the early new year morning? Picture of the first cigarette's butt which Mukarram smoked in his early teens?

Mukarram Incident: A Lesson to be learnt.

2008-12-30T02:12:00.000-08:00

TOI came with colorful pictures of Mukarram's grief stricken family, who was shot dead by the sentry when he trespassed a protected army installation in the midnight. It was the house of the biggest Army Officer in the City, a Brigadier who had got tight cover of security.
You see the pictures of relatives and friends who are furious on army's mistake on shooting him. Pages of the newspaper are filled with, testimonials on him, his childhood pictures and graphical descriptions and time lines of the unfortunate accident.
On a neutral perspective, there is nothing much to fuss about here. A young drag racer who used public road (which is the first offence) to display his biking skills with dangerous stunts was confronted by the police (this is their duty). Instead of surrendering to the police and pay the fine, he tried to flee(Second Offence).Any kid in the world would know, not a single traffic offender will be hang to death if caught. Third mistake was the biggest, where he chose an army personnel's residence as his hideout. He scaled the fence, scaled even the house, and from the terrace made frantic calls from his mobile. Despite constant commands from the sentry to surrender he didn’t obey and in fact made plan to escape with the help of his relatives, by bringing in a vehicle close to the building so that he can jump into it and escape. Vehicle comes in, honks and he scales down and runs towards the fence. What do you want the sentry to do this time? An athletic young man would be extremely difficult to be handled in such an occasion and it’s highly important for the sentry to catch him as he did not know about the intentions of the boy and more importantly the intentions of his calls standing on the terrace. Naturally he was shot. Low light, Moving suspect, and you cannot blame the sentry to lose his aim and shot him above his waist. It’s not over yet. Wounded boy still managed to come out of the compound and was taken by his relatives to a hospital. At least these people had to make sure that he got proper medical attention. Instead of that, they too flee from the hospital after taking him there. We all know how much attention Indian hospitals give to a accident victim without any responsible people with him. This time, it was not a natural accident. He was shot. He succumbed to heavy bleeding some time after. Now who were more irresponsible? The sentry who shot him on the wrong place or his family who brought him up in a wrong way (who were boasting about getting him a bike when he turned fifteen which is illegal in India) and his most irresponsible relatives who rushed in to save him, with an offensive idea , after a busy midnight supper?
In this time of national security crisis, we cannot expect trespassers to critical places to be left freely without any harm. If his parents were informed about this issue, they had to inform the police about this and take their son out of the mess. That would have been a wise decision and their grievant mistake of breaking the law cost a young man's life. Instead of blaming the sentry who missed his leg when opened fire, in fact his kin have to be blamed for taking the wrong step in trying to fish him out of big mess in a messier way which he himself had created.

Media has to be little more responsible. Why this hue and cry that a trespasser who is an adult was shot dead? TOI and other newspaper and their visual versions will be really happy as they got sensational news to celebrate for couple of days.
No doubt, it was terribly an unfortunate incident. But let this be taken as a valuable lesson for the young brigade of law breakers for whom, Adrenalin speak more words than what their brain speak. And for all irresponsible parents, this is to be taken as a lesson, so that they would keep an eye on their teen offspring’s on their post night activities.

‘Shoo’ing away Mr.Prez , and the funny side of it.

2008-12-23T04:03:00.000-08:00

Events, good or bad; Cartoonists and Animators have a unique way of responding to them. A better, stronger and creative way of reacting which would speak a cause, umpteen times more than an article or speech speaks. I did a small search and see what I have got.

Games – Flash Animators had a busy day following the attack.

This one looks like the most popular among forwards. Each one of us contributed with atleast couple of tries to take the toll to a mammoth numeric.
http://www.kroma.no/2008/bushgame/

And this one got a difference…

Here you play Mr.Prez, in his much applauded skill of dodging. Come on save him from those nasty dusty hurls….
http://blog.zanorg.com/index.php?perm=370

Nice Name….the Sock and Awe!

http://www.sockandawe.com/

Cartoons –Mild, Strong, Funny, Intelligent…..

A Pinch of History for Techies?

2008-12-19T03:34:00.000-08:00

Jameel ,an employee of MICO, Bangalore was arrested and had to undergo a grueling session of interrogation before he was released after couple of days with a clean chit from the cops. They said he had nothing to do with terrorism. That means he, just like you, me and billions of others in the universe who just happened to be happy that, the honorable President of United States of America got a less hospitable treatment in Iraq. But Jameel was little louder than us in his celebrations to create tremors inside his post-mumbai-traumatized colleagues to such an extent that they did not think twice before dialing for police assistance.
You can rule this out as an accident and comfortably ignore the amount of mental torture and social isolation he probably went through with cops browsing through all his personal email communications, call records, ripping apart the last bit of privacy from his rather serene home and family.
Times of India, most read daily in Bangalore came out with a usual stunt next morning. They had few IT techies reacting to the incident in different ways.
Question was, “How do you suspect someone as a terrorist in your office?” or of similar meaning and the reply was kind of unanimous except one answer I remember. Most of them said, “We talk about America or its president at coffee time, but casually as we have nothing against America. Then why should someone be emotional and so happy on this incident? He has to be a terrorist.”
I have seen people of similar mentality in one of the office I worked. One person just reacted saying ‘Sadham is a criminal’ overhearing our conversation in the lift. I was sounding skeptical about the cold blooded execution of Sadham by American dummies. When I intimidated him asking what he knew about Sadham, he preferred to answer me with a stupid smile and walked away.
These groups of xenophiles are widely seen in Bangalore, wearing American flags on their attire, mimicking American accent when they talk, or being passionate about the Americanism and even praising their warfare with abundant respect to their political policies, culture. Sometime I felt that they see Harrison Ford in George Bush, and America for them is what they see in Hollywood movies whose president will be just in time to protect mother earth from an alien invasion.
Let that be this way as America is the Lord for IT, but I feel it’s better for the techies to include a pinch of history in their reading along with their ‘Mastering’ and ‘Complete Reference’ series of bread winning skill set. And this would possibly help in saving Jameel’s from being victimized for the expression of freedom.
I even have a shortcut for this tri colored Bush fans.
Why don’t they sit and watch ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ for a change?

Searching For Bobby Fischer

2008-12-09T03:34:00.000-08:00

A Self confessed Chess Addict Bill Wall writes, “you are a chess addict, if your favorite movie is 'Searching for Bobby Fischer' or 'The Luzhin Defense'" and I guess he is right. And I also feel, You don’t need to be a chess addict like me, to love the movie 'Searching for Bobby Fischer' as it’s a very entertaining movie for everybody. Movie is about Josh Waitzkin, who was an US chess prodigy. Josh is inactive in chess circles now, and his last ELO was 2400+ with an IM grade. He was also a National champion in one form of martial Arts in the US. Those who own the software, Chess Master-10 ,can get a good idea of Josh where he gives video Analysis of own games in course of teaching the children the strategies of chess. He had come to Calicut, Kerala for world Junior championship and one of his games in that tourney (Josh Vs Suresh Kumar) is closely analyzed there in the program. This movie was released in 1993 and if you do torrents, it’s available in pirate bay in divx format. Fred Waitzkin (Josh’s Father) wrote the script, and in fact it was his book with the same title which was adapted for the movie.

Movie is about few things which a common man like you and me may not be aware of. It’s about the pleasure and pain to be someone exceptionally good in something. It’s about loving your kid and forgetting that he is a kid at times. It’s about chasing one's dream through your offspring and get yourself carried away.

In one Scene Josh's school teacher complains about his behavior at school to his parents saying "I know he may be good at the "chess thing. but..." and his father over-reacts to her like, "That’s not chess thing. It’s Chess. And he is far good in it than you or I can ever reach in anything". In fact he was comparing himself to Josh, reflecting his frustration in achieving nothing big in life even after putting efforts.
Josh loves to play blitz in the park just for his passion for the game with technically imperfect though strong passionate players. He loves to break hardcore rules of chess openings and would bring his queen at the earliest against all advices. But he is forced to leave this blitz sessions on the strict advice of Pandolfini, his coach. He is forced to train a lot and, slowly chess becomes more work than fun for him. Movie is a success as it’s beautifully portrays this painful transition, killing a player in the process of making him perfect.

Expectations are always burden and performance anxiety soon follows and you, me or everyone lose to it, and those face it easily, would make it big in life. Josh Waitzkin comes up when his people lose all hope on him, when his father reaches a level of maturity to accept it’s just a game, he comes up with winning the national title.

You see his friendly gesture, offering draw to the opponent though he knew he was clearly winning, proving it’s not win, lose or draw make a player, but passion for the game.

Searching for bobby fisher is remarkable not because of all these mentioned elements. It’s actually a search for Bobby fisher, the American genius, America’s cold and ruthless answer to the soviet domination in the game; the commies were the best with. The whole nation was searching for another Fischer and Josh was their answer, but without all ill famous ingredients of Fisher charisma, without his famous arrogance, killer spirit, hatred, josh was a soft and beautiful answer. No wonder he moved out of competitive chess and took up some other sports with the same passion.
Brilliant performances by all the actors including Ben Kingsley who played Bruce Pandolfini and Max Pomeranc who played Josh, cuter than cute with those wonderful innocent expressions. Joe Mantegna played a perfect ‘Fred Waitzkin’ with Joan Allen playing his wife to the best. 'Matrix 'fame lawrence Fishburn was also good playing Josh's friend from the park.Steven Zallion has done good job making it a very exciting directorial venture. One remarkable moment from the movie is the appearances of the 'Man who beat Tal’ in couple of times. Vasek Simek did a great effort, playing sad figure of Israel Zilber, a latvian champion Who beat World champion Tal but ended up as a blitz player who would take 5 dollars for a photograph or a game in the American park. But I guess it’s normal in US for masters to play blitz in the park, as I heard their National Champ and blitz great, Nakamura is a regular blitz man in the park.

A regular chess lover may get annoyed by the hyper melodramatic expressions of players on the board, for instance, the queening race in the King and pawn endgame where one player realize it at the last move that his opponent is going to queen with a check, as all national level players would easily resign in such positions at least couple of moves before it really happens. But this folly in the story would not be visible for those who are not so deep into the game.
Searching for bobby fisher is unavoidable for all chess freaks, with those thrilling blitz in the park, with those grueling moments for parents waiting outside the tournament halls, with that beautiful portrayal of fun and struggle in 64 squares of 'life'.

Rain Coat-if you were ever drenched....

2008-11-10T00:29:00.000-08:00

A bit cold Saturday night,back from an evening out with family and all I needed was a personal break from my routine official and social role-playing, with my favorite pass time called Cinema.
Luckily I had this Favorite Button on my rather dull looking TV remote which rarely failed in getting me something worth watchful. Of late my Regular browsing which would start from Star-Movies to my latest addition NDTV-Lumiere, had been replaced with a comparatively time saving Program-Filter and there I got ‘Rain Coat’. It was Sharp eleven PM, and with sleepy eyes, I saw some unusually fashioned titles of the movie unveiling. ‘Player :Aiswarya, Player : Ajay Devgan; Author & Direction :Rituparno Gosh’ and naturally I was hooked.
After couple of hours, two cigarettes and a pack of chocolates, I was bit shaken. A very famous O.Henry Story('Gift of Magi') beautifully retold in an Indian style with a decent performance from both the leads and it was indeed a feast to watch.
Melodrama concealed in the last scene was spoiled for me as I knew it was coming; thanks to my mate whose gender happened to have got this nasty hobby of plot-spoiling-narrations to their buddies, of the movies they see and the books they read. Still, I did not feel that I missed it. The Journey was beautiful and there was no specific destination after all.
It left me with a chain of thoughts for a while, wondering on the mysteries of this man-woman relationship. Though it was told a million times, there is still something new in it. Is it because the relationships itself tend to be something mysterious at times? Sometimes Love grows beyond the hormones, brain, social setups, and sometimes it grows beyond love itself, mystifying it again to a more complex level. May be this has to be felt and can’t be told. May be this is where the old saying gets its true meaning; “Loved and lost is better than never loved at all”.
Ghosh has done it well. Photography was good though it was not outstanding or even looked bit unnatural at times. Sound was pretty good though I can recollect one instance in the movie where when this woman steps in to the bath room and comes out continuing a conversation and the sudden cut in the volume-change in the voice was felt much unnatural but most of the time it was really good.When it comes to the acting performance, Annu Kapoor and Mauli Ganguly have done their part very well. Especially Mauli had a tough job of expressing something which she was not supposed to express.Devgan and Aishwary were good but many times one would wish if she did not have this burden of glamour on her shoulders.
Ghosh was careful in keeping the serenity of the story from falling into the not-so-beautiful ghettos of adulterous lust in Sheela’s Interactions with Manoj, still maintaining her wild intentions clear giving a different dimension to the relationships, which was felt more intriguing. It is on the edge but never actually slips maintaining the equilibrium keeping the viewers focused to the main stream.
The best part of the story is, here we don’t have this regular set of clichéd Indian romantic Pairs. They love each other, but at least one of them was greedier to be secured in life ruling out all possibilities of those Bollywood styled sacrifices for the cause of love, failing to earn the regular viewer’s sympathy for that matter. Later when they meet after many years, they both struggle hard to do this art of ‘make believing’ of their luxurious comforts, to each other, unknowingly unleashing the fantasies of their shattered hedonic dreams. This is what really making this movie very watchful. The black humor hidden in these grief woven scenes was felt very touchy.
Rain coat is highly advisable to all those who enjoyed the monsoon of love and got drenched heavily when it rained tears in some of those unpleasant days.

PHOONK - A True horror!

2008-10-04T23:48:00.000-07:00

The Ram Gopal Varma flick, 'PHOONK' comes from a banner called, ‘ OneMorethought Productions’ and I guess something seriously went wrong with the spellings; as it had to be ‘NoMoreThought Productions’.'Phoonk' is doing very well in the theaters, and the Telugu Version of it doing well too. RGV has all reasons to smile, and he has already made his plans for the sequels of this latest master piece.

RGV's 'Company' was pretty good and highly watchable though the plot was stolen from the movie 'Wannabe' and the score from the movie 'Payback', but 'Phoonk' turned out to be a real horror and the safe release and the successful running of it in our theaters raise serious questions.

Few of them are,

What's our sensor board doing?
Why do we find a movie like 'Phoonk' interesting?
Where are we heading to?

RGV and his crew are happy in introducing the black magic to the world of Cinema. His Celebrations sound more like the bram stoker's rejoice of the 1890's when Dracula was released to the readers of the dreaded dark Victorian Era terrorising them to their spines. Hundreds of years passed and technology has grown cent fold and we are still ready to accept a movie like 'Phoonk'? (Question: if you can take 'Exorcist' and 'Omen' , cant you take 'Phoonk'? Answer : We Indian Cine goers, unlike our western counterparts, has got a nasty habit of getting confused with the reel and real life. One can easily see instances where our reel-heroes becoming the ministers of the state milking their reel image. )

It’s a horrible experience watching , a dreadfully dangerous piece of dirt like ''Phoonk' gets released easily in India and even getting re-made in to another languages. That too first into Telugu? is it because the Telugu intellectuality questionable in the south?

What's this movie all about?

Story line is very funny. Must be written by a school boy with the help of his great grand mother in her death bed.

A happy and successful Construction engineer is the Main Male character in the movie who happened to be a hard core Atheist. Plot unveils showing, how this character who denies even the very existence of God, fails miserably to the unexplainable power of black magic and evil forces and realizes that there is something in the world to which, rationality cannot be applied and ends up in accepting the divine power of Almighty and his religion. His metamorphosis is because of the evil worship and black magic of his enemies targeting his loving cute daughter. He tries his level best with modern science and psychiatry and fails in curing her as she was not infected by a virus but what she had was a 'Boot Sanchar' . Life of his daughter was important, so he goes for the counter magic against the black magic and finally saves his daughter killing the devil worshippers. Beautiful, indeed. And can he go free ,after killing two people for doing devil worship? He can , as this is India and we still live in the mindset of 17th century.

'Phoonk' has got a clean set of good men, good women and another set of evil brigade using black magic against the good. And a Divine intervention of an insane looking tantric saves the good men from the unholy setup. And the real villain is ,the central male character of the movie who dismisses the false belief, forcing everyone to think radically. When this guy ends up in counter magic against the black magic to save his daughter and eventually admit the power of god and his miraculous actions, the curtain falls.

So who lose? The radical thinking, Atheism, Science and Technology. All these loose to a half cut lemon and a bunch of green chillies and some weird sounding chantings.

'phoonk' has got all the ingredients of a typical 'desi bakthi' movie. An atheist protagonist, group of white sari clad theist women, evil men, evil women, holy men, holy women and as an Addition here, 'black magic' joins the party.There's one point in the movie where the kid who plays the younger sibling of the Kid who plays the lead role, asking his sister,

"why did the people scare when they saw lemon in the house ? whats in a lemon?"

and the innocent girl replies,

"what else 'Lime Juice! '"

and movie eventually proves that, there is something more than lime juice in a lemon.

Imagine how many growing brains will be polluted by this movie and contribute towards creating a idiotic new generation who believe in black magic, unusual powers of lemon and green chili?

Now; behind any crime, there have to be a motive and conspiracy.Here the motive is clear, RGV wanted some easy money with his pathetically gifted crew (Other than Sudip and couple of people who did the side roles, there were hardly any actor in the movie who could emote or behave easily. Expressions of the Female Villain played by Ashwini Kalsekar were not terrifying, as they were more like the behavior of a person in emergency, with no toilets in sight) and a school kid who scripts for him. I strongly doubt a conspiracy behind this too. who wants to promote black magic here in India other than the Saffron brigade and its holy warriors of Hindutva? Remember their hue and Cry about elevating Astrology to a post graduate Syllabus. Who ever it is, this is the curse of being an Indian. lets live this pain, and walk back as fast as possible until the true ‘Rama Rajya’ Comes.

Beatrix Potter- a Fairy Tale Lived

2008-07-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

It was today's Google logo which guided me to Beatrix Potter. Potter was a pioneer among children’s story tellers and illustrators. A bit isolated but beautiful childhood of her was nothing shorter than a fascinating fairy tale. Animals, big farms, the mysteries of nature, even a pet bat (can u imagine?); no wonder she became a writer for children. It was sad to know that she was one of the early martyrs of gender discrimination which must have really affected her scientific career. She was blindly denied the membership of British Royal Society, though she was considered to be one of the best fungi experts among biologists.She had sketched hundreds of Fungi patterns by herself looking into the microscope and still had to end up as an amateur biologist only because she was born a woman. A natural environmentalist, who used a big part of her fortune to protect the country side where she spent most of her childhood in. After the tragic dismay of her fiancée, she focused on buying farms and lived in the astonishing beauty of nature, something most of us can only dream about.

This beautiful picture of a young 15 year old Potter caught my attention. One could feel the beauty of innocence in it.

The sketches of a nine year old Parker.

IOWA digital library has preserved most of her famous works in a beautiful digital flip-page form which worth a visit. Have a look at the screenshot and pay a visit to the site by clicking on the imaage.

The Metamorphosis

2008-07-26T00:51:00.000-07:00

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug”. This is how the divine Kafka magic starts and I am finally home to my reading days. After discovering the new passion of self induced, nicotine powered solitude, it was a pleasure and quite an easy task to find myself back again to the beautiful world of books. Thanks to those self invited, long lasting spells of non momentary depression which I had acquired and learned to live with recently, ‘The Metamorphosis’ turned out to be a mesmerizing reading experience where I was literally lost in the carefully crafted magical realistic setup. I had to pinch myself to ensure that I still live in the blunted but still a safe, human form. It was my late teens where I first heard about Kafka but the first attempt to read ‘Metamorphosis’ was a miserable failure undoubtedly because of my poor understanding of Real life situations and transformations which an average middle class adult goes through. Magical realism was also something which was not digestible for me in those days where a growing brain of my atheistic teen was always keen on dismissing the supernatural things in an impatient and merciless way to become a perfect rationalist. After years of wasteful existence with out books, I have now finally read this in a kind of sprinting pace. But the regret for not reading this in its original language prevails as I have come to know that it has been lost in translation to a much distinguishable extent when it came to English from German.

“Kafka often made extensive use of a trait special to the German language allowing for long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop - that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of certain sentences in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence. Such constructions cannot be duplicated in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text.One such instance of a Kafka translator's quandary is demonstrated in the first sentence of The Metamorphosis.(Wikipedia)”. Metamorphosis is considered to be the best talked about philosophical novella ever written especially on existentialism [Existentialism is a philosophical movement which posits that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to it being created for them by deities or authorities or defined for them by philosophical or theological doctrines]. As per wiki, “The apparent hopelessness and absurdity that seem to permeate his works are considered emblematic of existentialism”.

In a layman’s angle I could see that, Kafka was literally demonstrating how a person who was the most instrumental being for his entire family and for the individual lives of its members, becomes a burden to them due to a completely unimaginable and miserable accident in his life for none of his faults. The tragic side of this reading experience is the realization of the very fact that each one of us is a ‘Gregor Samsa’ at least in one point of our life time and we will never know when we may transform our self into an ugly derogatory being which the closest people of our life would love to get rid off. The point is as clear as water. A ‘Gregor’ is a ‘Gregor’ as long as he wakes up at the dawn, catches the earliest train, works all the day like a machine, and hits back home with nickels in hand. In short, a Gregor is a Gregor only when he is a Gregor. When he (or for the same reason each one of us) ceases to be being ‘Gregor’, he has to be ready to get thrown off. Idea is quite simple. Every living thing in the world, (human being is not exceptional) struggle for an individual survival with in or out of the robust crust of their relational bonds which he or she is attached with. Gretta has a life to live and the same with Mr and Mrs Samsa. The importance of the lives of these three individuals cannot be belittled or ignored only because of some miserable thing which happens in the life of Gregor though he had been scarifying his own happiness for giving happiness to them.

Metamorphosis is an amazingly matured piece of literature works which one can go through once and live with the thought provoking reminiscences of it's reading experience there after.

The Alchemist – How boring a book can be?

2008-07-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

Many months, possibly even years passed after I decided to read the book ‘The Alchemist’ and its today that I finally finished reading it. It was beyond all my imagination that a little cute looking book with such an intriguingly interesting title can be this boring. A much hyped out ‘fable about following one’s dream’. I was so excited about Paulo Coelho’s way of writing after having read one of his beautiful works, ‘by the river Piedra, I sat down and wept’. That one had everything; Love, relationship, confusion, destiny, Sacrifice, Words those poke into the softest side of your heart and it’s not odd that a reader expects a similar magic from the Author.So sad it turned to be that Alchemist has got nothing, hardly any beautiful lines, which you would like to underline with your pencil to read again and again. On Contrary, all the book has got are Omens, Weird sounding dreams, Worst interpretations from the nature, the great Lord and his blunt messages, the stupid alchemy, a tasteless desert and a boring caravan. ‘Ok fine!’ you might ask, But what when all of these rotten ingredients mixed up in an Alchemist’s pan?. Good question dude, Coelho got them all, he mixed ‘Elixir of life’ into the composition and blessed it with the sorcerer’s stone, bud did the lead turn to pure Gold? . No, my buddy, it did not. It’s the same old lead which was bit blackened due to the hyper dose of childish mysticism. I bought this book a painful thrice; one for my sister, one for a dear friend of mine and the third, for myself and I am happy that I read, ‘River Piedra’ before I actually read ‘Alchemist’, Otherwise I would have preferred never to read a Coelho again in my life.

‘Under Suspicion’ ,a great movie experience

2008-07-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

A Gene hackman, Morgan Freeman classic drama, ‘Under Suspicion’ was literally a great movie experience. Hackman could effortlessly portray the changing expressions of a noble man who is falsely accused of committing a nasty crime and has to undergo a painfully grueling interrogation session, lead by an old buddy of him played by Freeman. He is stripped off all his colorful decent attires of nobility to a mere pedophilic, straying, cheap old juvenile rapist though he had no connection with the actual crime. He is set free at the end at the cost of his lost privacy, ripped off secrets and the respect he saved by leading a gentle life through out. Freeman was amazingly good in playing a honest officer detective with a responsible father of young girl children dwelled into the uniform.

A beautiful technique was used for story telling where instead of showing silly flash backs time to time during interrogation, here one could actually see the events where the detective stands or walks in the crime scene observing every minute details. Freeman’s character says to Hackaman’s often, “Ok Henry, Lets go to the park once again”, and you see both walk around the park with out actually moving out of the room. I made a miserable miss to the Great Wimbledon final between Nadal and Federer while watching this movie, but to be honest, I don’t regret.

Bike Trip Bangalore-Chittor:: Phone Camera Pics

2008-01-15T02:42:00.000-08:00

It was an interesting short Bike trip from bangalore to chittoor and back .A small total of 400 Kms. The sudden climate change in and around Bangalore made it difficult and interesting with its beautiful January fog and chill.SE-K810-i was handy in times but the frustration of not owning a DSLR just got multiplied as i was perplexed on the the astonishing beauty of nature and my inability to capture even half of those pretty scenes was highly devastating.

Bangalore-Chittoor - 12th Jan -8Am onwards

(Somewhere near K.R.Puram on 12th Morning)

(near Kolar on 12th Jan.08)

(Chittoor Sugar Factory on Sunrise and Sunset ,15th,13th Jan,08)

(Chittoor, On starting off to bangalore on 15th,Jan,08 7Am)

(somewhere on way back to Bangalore)

My Sky and their Sun

2007-06-17T07:03:00.000-07:00

(Chittoor, Jan-14,07)

(Calicut, Oct-2, 06)

(Chittoor,Oct-24, 06)

Mia Culpa

2007-06-16T22:14:00.000-07:00

the Village

(calicut -2-oct,06)

Devine Mystery

My Foot! /"The descrete charm of Bourgeoisie"

Married for Life

An Egg-straw ordinary Space beyond Earth

( 17 June 2007 )

Answering Mr.Saurabh Saksena

2007-06-12T04:45:00.000-07:00

(Find Saurabh's view in IBN, "The Curse of being a hindu in modern India".)
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/the-curse-of-being-a-hindu-in-modern-india/42312-3.html

I completely disagree with the author, especially on his hue and cry that, there may be some Muslim causality in Gujarat but there were Hindu causalities too. Thousands of Moslems were murdered. Killing their innocent children, Raping and murdering even their pregnant women by Hindu extremists were not the real issue in Gujarat. The most shocking reality in Gujarat riot was, the careful planning and execution of mass murder and annihilation of Moslem existence by the Gujarat government lead by Narendra Modi himself with their police used as a supporting aid to the murderers. Author is comfortably settled abroad and its no wonder that he feels Hindus are a minority in India and are being sidelined. If there is no Hindu fascism in India, there would not be any minority terrorism too. They are closely related and co-existing. Hinduism is not a religion and it does not have any set of rules and the propagation techniques as Semitic religions do, and the problems and issues which we face now are coming from the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of this very truth by the extremist Hindus. We don’t need any saviors of Hindutva in India. If this ancient style of living with its very own polytheism and in numeral contraries with in itself could survive thousands of years, it would sustain with out any of these protectors and their holy wars. What really Indians need to do at this given point of time is to reject these self appointed holy saviors of Hindutva, learn about our civilization and try to live peacefully. Moslem terrorism is acting in India on political interest of ISI, not on their religious interest. It’s high time for the responsible Hindus to wake up and realize.

Morality Redefined

2007-06-01T04:28:00.000-07:00

Three Paragraphs here are deleted as I am convinced that, India is no more a country assuring the freedom of expression. It’s more like a fascist Germany or Stalin's Russia where you or me have to be really careful when posting something on net even though you feel you are absolutely right.
When did the Indian gods start wearing dress? We have a healthy tradition of nudity, and if all of those Buddha, Jain, and Hindu religious divinities are coming for a get-together, it could easily beat any Australian nude beach in style. And ironically the self-appointed cultural saviors of our times, mainly the Hindu extremist fascists are on prowl, protecting the Indian heritage by destroying the nude paintings and attacking artists. Some of the Art historians blame this redefinition of moral understanding on the celebrated painter Raja Ravi Varma for adorning the nude immortals with luxurious outfits where some others like to believe, it’s the calendar makers of the early 20th century from Sivakasi (A Tamil city well known for its printing industry) directly responsible. And arguably, those popular Indian epic movies, portraying fully covered gods and goddesses in rich costumes would have contributed towards this cultural adulteration. In south India, It was NT Rama Rao, M G Ramachandran, Raj kumar and Prem Nazir who almost substituted the unseen faces of Hindu gods and made use of it to reach the unshakable stardom and some of them, even to the political summits in Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala respectively.

There are no historical traces where any Indian king or administration tried to cover the nudity of the ancient statues or sculptures unlike their Roman counter-parts who used an artistic idea of using fig leaves made out of marble or metal, to cover the shame. Instead we were always proud of our towering sculptures of nude gods, ready to accept the holiest Sanyasis who prefer not to have even a thread on their body when appear in public, but on contrary to this interesting tradition, most of us tend to get mad on innocent cupid struck couples who sit little close to each other in a park. Those who ever went through the great history of India would have an idea of Chanakya's 'Arthasastra', the first ever book on public administration and civil code. It can be seen in the book that 'Ganika vrithi' or commercial sex work was a legal profession in the country then, and there was even a special department on the same straight under the government. He even describes the code to follow and goes even to the length of describing the methods to punish the ganika (the whore), if she denies the service to any customer or if attempts to opt out of the profession. This style of ‘free sex’ might have helped to keep the society in peace with no recorded accounts of juvenile rapes or other brutalities from those days, where it is plenty seen in the sex suppressed modern India. The ancient theoreticians of love making were all Hindu Sanyasis like Vatsayana and Kokkoka.

Let’s hope for a better tomorrow where there won’t be any moral policing by the uneducated, megalomaniac political morons who take the law into their hands causing the arrest of artists (Arrest of Gujarat painter for portraying nude), destruction of museums (Shiv sena’s destruction of Sivaji museum in Pune), and the barbaric streaking protests (VHP’s half naked parades against the theatres where the movie ‘FIRE’ was screened) against the freedom to express, and even torturing young lovers in the park for a mere kiss.(A regular Shivsena drama on every valentine's day).

Let me quote an interesting article on the issue which came recently in an English daily (TOI , 31’st May, 07, P12) by Vinay Bharat-Ram, though I am not sure if it's legal to re-publish it in the whole, so giving the link here.

(jB, 1st June, 2007)

Art Imitates Life
(Hindu India embraced erotica long before M F Husain)
(Vinay Bharat-Ram) find this here....

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/LEADER_ARTICLE_Art_Imitates_Life/rssarticleshow/2087679.cms

An eyefull of eye with a bit of sunset

2007-05-25T23:41:00.000-07:00

A PebbleScape

2007-05-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

one pinch of sky

2007-05-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

when it rained in Kodai

2007-05-25T23:12:00.000-07:00

Self Portraits

2007-05-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

Abstracts on Wood

2007-05-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

the Invitation

2007-05-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

Dream Shattered

2007-05-25T22:01:00.000-07:00