tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54506652024-03-27T18:16:35.288-07:00Drummer's DiariesA movie and book review blog A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.comBlogger841125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-66805580577110981682024-03-25T20:32:00.000-07:002024-03-27T18:13:24.567-07:00Bhoothakalam<p><span style="font-family: Lato;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">S</span></b>hane Nigam knows his strengths and chose the right story, location and director for his production house - Shane Nigam Film's maiden(?) venture. - Bhoothakalam. The angst ridden, depressed, down on his luck, angry and scared young man from Kochi is a role tailor-made for Shane. He is not going to lose his Kochi accent anytime, why even take a risk when he has a stake in production?</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_QS0OxWiePMOEhSURovS0zOG-cmCPqKCVV8rSFML0E0_JLKeJvRMfN1ALTkZoSyBsdfP2STyghl5OWFhHRLqsVHRjLoAbt1y4Dh7snk9TFjqiXGjtAC98qTUjM6U3klJPw24eT7CDTw8XanM8D-AS_udzmpychd4IaGWAl5TzbobSUl8TgYA/s800/bhoothakalam_shane_revathi.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_QS0OxWiePMOEhSURovS0zOG-cmCPqKCVV8rSFML0E0_JLKeJvRMfN1ALTkZoSyBsdfP2STyghl5OWFhHRLqsVHRjLoAbt1y4Dh7snk9TFjqiXGjtAC98qTUjM6U3klJPw24eT7CDTw8XanM8D-AS_udzmpychd4IaGWAl5TzbobSUl8TgYA/w640-h320/bhoothakalam_shane_revathi.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;">Bhoothakalam (</span><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">transl.</span></i><span style="font-family: Lato;"> The Past,) Rahul Sadasivan's second directorial outing after Red Rain (2013) is a slow burn psychological horror/ghost story. Shane and veteran actor Revathy play the leads as a depressed mother and an equally depressed son who got handed a load of generational trauma on top of his helplessness. They both have outdid themselves in the acting department, although when it comes to Shane I felt that he just had to act as himself on a bad hair day. For her role in Bhoothakalam Revathy won the Kerala state award for the best actor (female) in a lead role for the first time in her career, which has spanned almost four decades. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;">Bhoothakalam (2022) is one of the serious ghost stories I have watched in Malayalam after long, along the lines of Sixth Sense or The Others, but on a much lighter budget. There are no cheap tricks like jump scares or odd camera angles as it moves steadfastly towards a satisfying climax.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;">Just like Rahul Sadasivan's next film, BramaYugam (2024), Bhoothakalam too is plenty open to interpretation. Armchair psychoanalysts and hidden meaning seekers have the opportunity for the metaphorical peeling of a few psychological onions. This is considering both the lead characters have issues which need intervention by mental health professionals. Under those circumstances it is easy to explain away the supernatural as tricks of the mind, shared psychotic disorder, drug induced hallucinations and the like. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;">But I would rather watch Bhoothakalam as a ghost story it is. We have not had a good one for long and Bhoothakalam builds up slowly but surely towards a flash-freeze spine-chilling end.</span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-64843147647819019182024-03-22T18:55:00.000-07:002024-03-27T18:13:34.933-07:00Bramayugam<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: "Source Sans Pro";"><span>T</span></b><span style="font-family: "Source Sans Pro";">he age of black and white is here in director </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahul_Sadasivan" style="font-family: "Source Sans Pro";" target="_blank">Rahul Sadasivan</a><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;">'s The Age of Madness or BramaYugam. It was a brilliant idea to post-process the entire movie to monochrome black-n-white which not only elevates the story but also makes it easy for the production design team. If the </span><i style="font-family: "Source Sans Pro";">mana </i><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;">(</span><span style="font-family: times;"><i>translation:</i></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"> mansion) in the movie was in color it would have looked like a stage prop strongly giving off western false-facade vibes. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;">The cinematography by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shehnad_Jalal" target="_blank">Shehnad Jalal </a>is enchanting making the mansion a strong contender for the supporting lead. Here below is one of the powerful introductory shots from the movie where Arjun Ashokan's character, Thevan wandering lost in the jungle finally chances upon what looks like an abandoned mansion.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAX8rqZxI5ttwpyaRYznnwfUtSPuRB1PTvGIP44JdHswPB0A-r355j84XLeuh75whhecBNu3K1aD4qW9RmI2GavdkQfgKZqf6IY4BXwz-zQD7gbxeaYyBr7QkzBJvJRHdSeJwit7m8l4Iyfb5A-nUuo9eZG5ZaJtKSLaqtf-PXJhEA0L9Pg6A/s1883/bramayugam_mana.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1005" data-original-width="1883" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAX8rqZxI5ttwpyaRYznnwfUtSPuRB1PTvGIP44JdHswPB0A-r355j84XLeuh75whhecBNu3K1aD4qW9RmI2GavdkQfgKZqf6IY4BXwz-zQD7gbxeaYyBr7QkzBJvJRHdSeJwit7m8l4Iyfb5A-nUuo9eZG5ZaJtKSLaqtf-PXJhEA0L9Pg6A/w640-h342/bramayugam_mana.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;">BramaYugam, while it may not be considered as a horror movie in the traditional sense, is a quality period-horror or psychological thriller. The tight setting of the eerie abandoned <i>mana</i> and its jungle environs, the three main characters who are pretty much the only characters in the story and <a href="https://brownhistory.substack.com/p/tale-of-yakshis-merging-myth-and" target="_blank">a yakshi</a> to add an extra dollop of Malayali authenticity, all hold the well directed movie together. </span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Source Sans Pro";">The casting is on point.</span><span style="font-family: "Source Sans Pro";"> Mammotty essays the role of Kudomon Potty, the lord of the dark mansion with Sidharth Bharathan as the caretaker and cook of the mansion. Thevan is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Panar" target="_blank">paanan</a> or a traveling folk singer who had escaped the Portuguese slave traders in this 17th century Malabar tale, who seeks refuge in the <i>mana</i>. </span></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGt1jgTRPOh03aRo0MM0BVSCyWOmVTRKNqzTcxEqcZpaYamG0fztDVhy9CrXXMe1I-kSB9ocVfszjn-K9so4o54ty1EJmsgY51TOqsftJ2D3mSIlShupOUDh6iqZI2IcDGFV-ZSSfLWAqj1RVQFjfRmDmCeVr-U7FaTE3nT9spZgBF5gZC3dM/s2188/bramayugam_3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2188" data-original-width="1750" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGt1jgTRPOh03aRo0MM0BVSCyWOmVTRKNqzTcxEqcZpaYamG0fztDVhy9CrXXMe1I-kSB9ocVfszjn-K9so4o54ty1EJmsgY51TOqsftJ2D3mSIlShupOUDh6iqZI2IcDGFV-ZSSfLWAqj1RVQFjfRmDmCeVr-U7FaTE3nT9spZgBF5gZC3dM/w512-h640/bramayugam_3.jpg" width="512" /></a></div></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;">Arjun Ashokan's portrayal of Thevan is raw and intense, capturing the essence of a man trapped in a world of shadows and secrets. W</span><span style="font-family: "Source Sans Pro";">ith his half a century of acting experience </span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;">Mammotty leads the charge of the trio of characters, while Siddharth Bharathan's portrayal as the servant of the house is not far behind the other two either. </span><span style="font-family: "Source Sans Pro";">Amalda Liz's Yakshi who has no dialog and a few minutes screen time in the entire movie is the only miscasting (in my eye.) She has a very modern face for 17th century female vampire. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;">BramaYugam is a roller-coaster ride through a world where nothing is as it seems, and danger and dark secrets lurk behind every shadow. An atmospheric horror (or thriller?) movie that cleverly uses monochrome to take us back to a bygone era of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakshini" target="_blank">yakshis</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuttichathan" target="_blank">chathans</a>, it is a successful cinematic experiment and a must-watch.</span></div>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-71944837736115345452024-03-09T20:01:00.000-08:002024-03-09T20:51:31.222-08:00Love and Loss: Amy Bloom's In Love & Netflix's One Day<span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>R</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;">eading </span></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: large;">Amy Bloom's In Love </span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;">helped me understand <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/05/robin-williams-death-biography-dave-itzkoff-excerpt" target="_blank">Robin William's final act</a>. While there are nine states (Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Colorado, Montana, New Jersey, Maine and Vermont) and the District of Columbia which have right to die laws, you cannot have a physician assisted suicide without satisfying certain conditions. First, you have to be a resident of one of these states to have the right to die, more importantly you need to get medically assessed as having only six months to live. Which means you have to be almost at death's door to use this right-to-die card to have a physician-assisted suicide in the US of A. Incurable degenerative diseases like Lewy body dementia (that Robin Williams had) or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's that will slowly hollow out a person over years are not excuses good enough to have the right to die in any of the nine states or DC. This is where Switzerland steps in. Remember the name <a href="http://www.dignitas.ch/?lang=en" target="_blank">Dignitas</a> and <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/05/robin-williams-death-biography-dave-itzkoff-excerpt" target="_blank">Pegasos</a>, just in case.</span><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrelvF8iiQFDGQvoDWPGSW8FwMnuIGmPi0sd6tHkjm-Enm-OpS2t0y0AYcSqWAftREvdk4Y5O3TxZ0nBmae7duqKWaTgIIGEuceOc5Bx50uHd8kr2APN7RtmstXa4ADmd_Ei-4BwCkJPK_vcgA5w6hixVuvAeTey8ZYJwKNdgMgNadfWX4fXs/s754/amy_bloom_in_love_ameche.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="548" data-original-width="754" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrelvF8iiQFDGQvoDWPGSW8FwMnuIGmPi0sd6tHkjm-Enm-OpS2t0y0AYcSqWAftREvdk4Y5O3TxZ0nBmae7duqKWaTgIIGEuceOc5Bx50uHd8kr2APN7RtmstXa4ADmd_Ei-4BwCkJPK_vcgA5w6hixVuvAeTey8ZYJwKNdgMgNadfWX4fXs/w400-h291/amy_bloom_in_love_ameche.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;">Just in case was the reason why I decided to read Amy Bloom's In Love after I chanced upon a blurb about the book somewhere. Memoirs focusing on a single event in a writer's life and its aftermath is not my favorite form of non-fiction, but the information provided by the author and her style of writing kept In Love engaging for me.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;">During the same period I was going through Ms. Bloom's love-n-loss heavy memoir I also accidently started watching a chick-lit(?) series One Day on Netflix. Like Amy Bloom, Ambika Mod's Emma Morley is a bookish ethnic girl who becomes a writer and finds a soulmate in handsome, British upper class Dexter Mayhew.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="992" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpIr0k8x3SAFJEvHNCMeLBBNpxnfhIHuy2QJ989IRK9GbLDxDRiOi7nbUaDhQAtHakB4VT9NqJZMbsxRapQEhyqNiC5yYfZ0WPMeR2hEF0B6htZiarxIbDG6EOMLfjqmBFPCFxX6kbFZuVo_6E0YKT7iSLrVxN9YDj05OpdhdCMRqsbyp-gJI/w640-h426/one_Day_netflix_emma_dexter.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emma and Dex in One Day</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;">One Day is based on the book of the same name written by David Nicholls, and tells the story of Emma and Dexter who meet and spend a night together on their last day at the university in 1988 and decide to meet each other every year afterwards, on the same day. There was also a 2011 movie based on the novel, starring Anne Hathaway as Emma. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;">I loved the way Emma's character is written. Her one-liners are profoundly deep and funny. Leo Woodall's Dex is hurtlingly handsome and posh. They are from the opposite ends of the spectrum, both socially and intellectually and we, the viewers, desperately want them to be together, to see how it will all turn out. The writing and the script makes sure the audience are invested in Emma and Dex although the plot line of boy and girl from different sides of the track is an over-used one.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-48039392220394115602024-03-03T23:21:00.000-08:002024-03-03T23:31:19.322-08:00Reading Ramayana in the Roaring (Twenty) Twenties<p></p><span style="font-family: Lato;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">R</span></b><span style="font-size: medium;">amayana and Mahabharata are two great epics from the Indian subcontinent. Many of the thirty three million Hindu gods and goddesses make guest appearances in these two epics. Some like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishnu" target="_blank">Vishnu</a> gets to play the main characters in his two popular <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar" target="_blank">avatars</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama" target="_blank">Rama</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna" target="_blank">Krishna</a>, in these two mega mythological texts in Sanskrit. <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2388/2388-h/2388-h.htm" target="_blank">Bhagvad Gita</a>, the best known Indian scripture, is a part of a section of Mahabharata called the Bhishma Parva.</span></span><div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKcAqBqT7l1wDNP0ci0P7Y3v0ik5TxJl5nat-Z_7wtHASHHfDO8OInwaL1AG9axq8-q2C-XgjQ3CgStNECRfjchg_5XtUiAwu22I_KpIFZ3aRxVN3xGRFG4bi0NdXYoTW6yZ9XqUyD5WSUACyX2d-8yBJQSrU_9VJnavtTIBdXcAHcP38XXjc/s2048/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.29.58%20PM.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1858" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKcAqBqT7l1wDNP0ci0P7Y3v0ik5TxJl5nat-Z_7wtHASHHfDO8OInwaL1AG9axq8-q2C-XgjQ3CgStNECRfjchg_5XtUiAwu22I_KpIFZ3aRxVN3xGRFG4bi0NdXYoTW6yZ9XqUyD5WSUACyX2d-8yBJQSrU_9VJnavtTIBdXcAHcP38XXjc/s320/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.29.58%20PM.jpeg" width="290" /></a></div>In my mind Hinduism is the contemporary of Greek religion (Hellenism) and Indians worshipping the million gods is how West would have been, had it not been won over by the trinity of Jesus, Allah and Yhwh. Both Hinduism and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hellenistic-religion" target="_blank">Hellenism</a> are polytheistic featuring their main players in two opposing teams - Devas and Asuras for Hinduism corresponding to Olympians and Titans for the Greeks. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">Like Hades, Zeus and Poseidon, Hinduism has Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver) and Shiva (the destroyer), a slightly different yet similar take as the Greeks' dividing the Big 3 by assigning them the three realms of the heavens, the oceans and the underworld. </span><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">If the monotheistic Abrahamic religions had not overrun and relegated Greek and Roman gods to the mythical pavilion in the western world, I am sure we would have wished Zeusspeed instead of Godspeed.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjiI1gBR0n91toguT91cgueLGQz3cA05TdapYZ3xq48H1htm3uhy3waS2KkXybg-f_TjBn43xJgBIP56mOQk2WB6XwjOo5qhHBvoKH0C2nqpjSxkEaRFL700BifYtCpBYl0y-z2TP3LbgzFIWOgpGLXToJEdGz5qEa9kH5DxJGNsZFnV29nVQ/s2048/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.28.52%20PM.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1282" data-original-width="2048" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjiI1gBR0n91toguT91cgueLGQz3cA05TdapYZ3xq48H1htm3uhy3waS2KkXybg-f_TjBn43xJgBIP56mOQk2WB6XwjOo5qhHBvoKH0C2nqpjSxkEaRFL700BifYtCpBYl0y-z2TP3LbgzFIWOgpGLXToJEdGz5qEa9kH5DxJGNsZFnV29nVQ/s320/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.28.52%20PM.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>Why are we talking about these epics now? Recently in my search for coffee-table books, (that is what I mainly use the local library for these days,) I chanced upon an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Ramayana-Timeless-Epic-Redemption/dp/0744042178" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">illustrated Ramayana</a>. The last time I heard Ramayana (</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">def. Sanskrit</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">: <i>Rama's Journey</i></span><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">) in full was when my mother narrated me the whole story every evening over several months during my grade school days. Two score years seemed to be the right interval for a refresher.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrtN27a9VYRnclQbFdUNRuD-wkS0jOlcCHAP7L6AwI3mJ4TzehX9IllY2eOdTvmQkz9RsIgCBqCr6uFRpLB8wUvZuxR6029JkqboRUUhA8jKaPxzlAyUnCFTMMi0HQH__NQJLP3QELkMQyW1PiBRFN5xv-YWWzqm1b89p_NupDitDot3fCtts/s2048/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.28.22%20PM.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1270" data-original-width="2048" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrtN27a9VYRnclQbFdUNRuD-wkS0jOlcCHAP7L6AwI3mJ4TzehX9IllY2eOdTvmQkz9RsIgCBqCr6uFRpLB8wUvZuxR6029JkqboRUUhA8jKaPxzlAyUnCFTMMi0HQH__NQJLP3QELkMQyW1PiBRFN5xv-YWWzqm1b89p_NupDitDot3fCtts/s320/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.28.22%20PM.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.dk.com/us/book/9780744042177-the-illustrated-ramayana/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Illustrated Ramayana published by DK</a> is a well written, well put together, well illustrated book, suited for both the advanced Ramayana scholar, who can find plenty of things to nitpick or for a beginner like me. The illustrations which range from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raja_Ravi_Varma" target="_blank">Raja Ravi Varma</a> to Pahadi to Mughal paintings to glorious temple art from South India or Angkor Wat to Indonesia to performances and native art forms by artists from Thailand or Rajasthan(India) or Nepal, makes every page a visual treat leading the narration forward.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><span style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc8SdaaFvEaZgZk4sBeGbc_CeAnhqdo56gH1W9yyupcY5X7M8OUrt6fJvaUL9Vw_uPZZQ3HFp7lv4lflfeqQdNO8ORXJHZ3pCye2XhXYhBi-ESG7S4kqHuKSYS9LZmpp0aKmGjH_hu17ytw_NYWF6LvBuhNN2p60Lpf8gQ92gUmAhPmk_VDEk/s2048/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.29.19%20PM.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1185" data-original-width="2048" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc8SdaaFvEaZgZk4sBeGbc_CeAnhqdo56gH1W9yyupcY5X7M8OUrt6fJvaUL9Vw_uPZZQ3HFp7lv4lflfeqQdNO8ORXJHZ3pCye2XhXYhBi-ESG7S4kqHuKSYS9LZmpp0aKmGjH_hu17ytw_NYWF6LvBuhNN2p60Lpf8gQ92gUmAhPmk_VDEk/s320/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.29.19%20PM.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Like every great epic, there are thousands retellings of the epic in every region and every language South-East and East Asia. The book also draws from these alternate story paths and present them in conjunction with the original narrative, supposedly written in Sanskrit by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valmiki" target="_blank">sage Valmiki</a>. Valmiki, known as the first poet (</span><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">adi kavi</span></i><span style="font-family: Lato;">), because Ramayana is the first poem, like Alfred Hitchcock, has a weakness for cameos. In Ramayana he is a an important character in the seventh and last canto (or kanda in Sanskrit) called Uttara Kanda and he is also present in Bala Kanda as the narrator and the live-in tutor for Rama's twin boys - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_(Ramayana)" target="_blank">Lava</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusha_(Ramayana)" target="_blank">Kusha</a>.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiixp6ZQDeHFv7g86gD5hfON3h6U3dQ9CkSUlqIL26wFNoWCWnejonYZTfM4TaOMi67Sdh7qqzFtL9uQUppdqEISBV6V1WmRnDXswOg6i2Oo8VCN63aSa8dhTQvsJwSFEtVPB0mujVxlY6wAQfdIXOIKqgUTtXmZbSqM7pkvlpTq6ZHKcNuW_w/s2048/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.27.15%20PM.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Lato; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1346" data-original-width="2048" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiixp6ZQDeHFv7g86gD5hfON3h6U3dQ9CkSUlqIL26wFNoWCWnejonYZTfM4TaOMi67Sdh7qqzFtL9uQUppdqEISBV6V1WmRnDXswOg6i2Oo8VCN63aSa8dhTQvsJwSFEtVPB0mujVxlY6wAQfdIXOIKqgUTtXmZbSqM7pkvlpTq6ZHKcNuW_w/s320/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.27.15%20PM.jpeg" width="320" /></a>The oldest retrieved manuscript of Ramayana only contains 5 kandas and are missing the first kanda - Bala Kanda and the last one, Uttara Kanda. Because of the stylistic differences and narrative contradictions many scholars believe that these two were later additions to the epic and therefore Valmiki didn't write himself into the story. The five kandas, excluding Bala Kanda (1st canto) and Uttara Kanda (7th and final canto) are Ayodhya Kanda, Aranya Kanda, Kishkinda Kanda, Sundara Kanda and Yudha Kanda. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJuOp6rFoGtf0GzxzR_YPyrmFH2fHMJlbs6pPSjuLDo3p86KW7eEbgccvuUduO1zcpj0Rc4_TnK5wtxLpUU1wZb56gy3ohJ7hfiNQFVrn8lpaGSKjlVpGFRrgAeQfKo3OKGgCwuutRtB2vXEo2msCzfdpwRTPtbRRsXwzZM54e1o_GwezJx94/s1778/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.27.49%20PM.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="932" data-original-width="1778" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJuOp6rFoGtf0GzxzR_YPyrmFH2fHMJlbs6pPSjuLDo3p86KW7eEbgccvuUduO1zcpj0Rc4_TnK5wtxLpUU1wZb56gy3ohJ7hfiNQFVrn8lpaGSKjlVpGFRrgAeQfKo3OKGgCwuutRtB2vXEo2msCzfdpwRTPtbRRsXwzZM54e1o_GwezJx94/s320/WhatsApp%20Image%202024-03-03%20at%209.27.49%20PM.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Almost every religion that started in India - Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism have their versions of Ramayana. So does almost every country in South-East and East Asia, except perhaps Vietnam. Every one of them highlights the same ultimate and supreme ideal Rama stands for - "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma" target="_blank">Dharma</a>" which is what every human being should try to achieve - the right way of living through moral and virtuous conduct. Practicing dharma is the only way to get rid of our karmic baggage and attain salvation. A heavy message, nevertheless, a beautiful book.<br /></span></div></span></div></span><span style="font-family: Lato;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p></p></div>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-16012154633207230492024-02-16T21:06:00.000-08:002024-02-16T21:10:22.311-08:00Leonard Cohen: Songs and Films<p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><span><b>T</b></span>wenty years ago in
2004 was my first summer with Leonard Cohen. I discovered him for the first
time during those days of midnight sun in Alaska. He played while I was on the
road in my red Chevy S10, and his baritone ‘golden’ voice sang about sixties
girls like Marianne and Suzanne while I was at home.</span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvvgE8S9q314jixSrolAvoktFYuMyNuilwhFyUFWz5NPCNOCg0C07FnXE_lerrSsavrTaGz3sVifL8ZdcCR1YSC2HBbYmbqAvMC5U29qpkCRj7oQuUoVVJ7vqN0w6cR-ECr_Wvihm4gk-nIYG-iEmFTTQc-CiTssZTMrwWWaR4EGiF96N_Mrs/s982/youngLeonardCohen.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="786" data-original-width="982" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvvgE8S9q314jixSrolAvoktFYuMyNuilwhFyUFWz5NPCNOCg0C07FnXE_lerrSsavrTaGz3sVifL8ZdcCR1YSC2HBbYmbqAvMC5U29qpkCRj7oQuUoVVJ7vqN0w6cR-ECr_Wvihm4gk-nIYG-iEmFTTQc-CiTssZTMrwWWaR4EGiF96N_Mrs/w640-h512/youngLeonardCohen.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a young Leonard Cohen, writing poems in his bathtub</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""HelveticaNeueLT Std Lt",sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">While romance was/is
not exactly my cuppa, there was some kind of philosophical gravitas and
mysticism to this poet/writer turned-poet-singer, who climbed a whole mountain
side, to wash his eyelids in the rain (<a href="https://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/leonard+cohen/so+long+marianne_20082888.html" target="_blank">ref. So long, Marianne</a>), while he
was singing about his lady loves.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfGI5H4oFKQhWhE72r07jDwjNCn4wrD6qu1EpOqzV97VVGfwtYOajzeyJg7YK7Sy8IUUR-NN9r7hy8nK8acmEHYsEdkudiYtPd6mGobEI94npxjDky6sn9j_r1vgH6dLhTRJDxxC2ZyzxcpBnigvHftjsRf3xS0X8QTYrgg4dnMIp92XntWws/s1095/LeonardCohen.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="689" data-original-width="1095" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfGI5H4oFKQhWhE72r07jDwjNCn4wrD6qu1EpOqzV97VVGfwtYOajzeyJg7YK7Sy8IUUR-NN9r7hy8nK8acmEHYsEdkudiYtPd6mGobEI94npxjDky6sn9j_r1vgH6dLhTRJDxxC2ZyzxcpBnigvHftjsRf3xS0X8QTYrgg4dnMIp92XntWws/w640-h402/LeonardCohen.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-background-themecolor: background1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 3;"><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><span face=""HelveticaNeueLT Std Lt",sans-serif">Over
the years in addition to dipping into the deep well of Cohen’s soulful lyrics
delivered in his slow drag voice, I have had the opportunity to watch some
Leonard Cohen documentaries too. The first one “</span><span face=""HelveticaNeueLT Std Lt",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_and_Gentlemen..._Mr._Leonard_Cohen" target="_blank">Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen</a>: An Intimate Look into a Poet's Life (1965)” </span><span face=""HelveticaNeueLT Std Lt",sans-serif">showcasing Cohen as a
young poet is (IMHO) better than Netflix’s 1922 documentary “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallelujah:_Leonard_Cohen,_A_Journey,_A_Song" target="_blank">Hallelujah:Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song</a>” taking its title from Cohen’s famous song of
the same name. To me, Cohen is more that Hallelujah which has been done to
dust, with so many covers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""HelveticaNeueLT Std Lt",sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(1971_film)" target="_blank">Fata Morgana</a>(1971),
Werner Hertzog’s art-house psychedelic film features Cohen songs like Suzanne,
Avalanche against the stark sands of Sahara desert.</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://youtube.com/embed/-GTILG0h3KI?si=ZZ3hqgu38A-I8bFs" width="480"></iframe><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""HelveticaNeueLT Std Lt",sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Lato;">I leave you with one of his best lyrics, from his poem/song Anthem</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> -</span> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">“</span><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;">Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">”</span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c8-BT6y_wYg?si=CzEjPA3eRJqJYkKf" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-15017600536241539002024-02-11T22:58:00.000-08:002024-02-11T23:10:03.542-08:00Circe by Madeline Miller<p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">I met many Greek Gods for the first time last week. Thank you, Circe and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Miller" target="_blank">Madeline Miller</a>. I did not reach this far in life without hearing about Achilles' heel or Midas's touch or Herculean effort or Pandora's box, but they were just that - phrases, bearing the stamp of western civilization's greatest mythology, which was a gift from the Greeks. We all know what they say about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beware_of_Greeks_bearing_gifts" target="_blank">Greeks bearing gifts</a>.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifot9XO8olfBU73CU4UwkZCbVFPTrL5_dgW2Niu0mYNOuymVpmvOnAD8iagM-b385-UkhD-XvL_5b5mUCJOhd5uyrB-R_YPzQGAuX2bjjnvDecNbbEohf2IZd7SsvshfKhO8YpowZbzsSHKBy0zw2sv1Zln74TVW4LFGCAiiclrprR0BRpz0Q/s600/circe-madeline-miller.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifot9XO8olfBU73CU4UwkZCbVFPTrL5_dgW2Niu0mYNOuymVpmvOnAD8iagM-b385-UkhD-XvL_5b5mUCJOhd5uyrB-R_YPzQGAuX2bjjnvDecNbbEohf2IZd7SsvshfKhO8YpowZbzsSHKBy0zw2sv1Zln74TVW4LFGCAiiclrprR0BRpz0Q/w266-h400/circe-madeline-miller.jpg" width="266" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">This is the first book of fiction I have read in a long while and relished, even though it is very close to the genre of fantasy fiction I absolutely abhor. I am humbled once again by the realization that there are no absolutes, everything is relative. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">There are authors who are masters of retelling the classics. Madeline Miller is one of them. In Circe, she recasts the most infamous female character from Homer's The Odyssey and makes her a free woman, thinker, the maker of her own destiny and the world's first witch. Circe, opens with the sentence, "</span><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist</span></i><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">." Which was witch.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">Through Circe's magical life journey clueless readers like me get a crash course in who is who of Greek mythology. If I still don't get it, my son has recommended <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Jackson%27s_Greek_Gods#:~:text=Percy%20Jackson's%20Greek%20Gods%20is,myths%20in%20a%20humorous%20way." target="_blank">Percy Jackson's Greek Gods</a>, although I don't think I will need it. Madeline Miller is an extraordinary story-teller, her prose is lush and breathtaking. Circe is a beautifully written novel, where you as the reader gets a front row seat to watch the parade of gods and most of them are as human - fallible, vain and unique as we are.</span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-32089664424464699842024-02-03T21:05:00.000-08:002024-02-04T10:45:18.353-08:00Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhss0NHvdTvbjczuo8Zs-DPbXs7qrZ0-UF15B7GHs7Z9yIWfyVi-47lLdDvxzq4am0YjGuV8FmGVt8rKM_lJQQ-rrQOZqj-lo6IP4AbhnKCuzzncu6HdcAoXG20ApHpwr8ga19tvj6NxwGehBYU9yI66aWq76czuEdbyEkR6WyYJSWnhcxp-G0/s913/alice_doesn't_live_here_anymore_1974.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="596" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhss0NHvdTvbjczuo8Zs-DPbXs7qrZ0-UF15B7GHs7Z9yIWfyVi-47lLdDvxzq4am0YjGuV8FmGVt8rKM_lJQQ-rrQOZqj-lo6IP4AbhnKCuzzncu6HdcAoXG20ApHpwr8ga19tvj6NxwGehBYU9yI66aWq76czuEdbyEkR6WyYJSWnhcxp-G0/w261-h400/alice_doesn't_live_here_anymore_1974.JPG" width="261" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> <span style="font-size: large;"><b>I</b></span>t was like opening a time capsule from the seventies. The movie is earthy, with shag carpet, a Gen X latchkey kid and long haired dudes. Unlike period movies of the sixties and seventies made now, there is a raw, unpolished look to this interesting movie from 1974 starring Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson. I didn't even realize till I finished the movie that it was directed by Martin Scorsese.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We follow Alice, a single mother with a penchant for co-dependency and her precocious 12 year old son Tommy, in search of a place in the sun and a living wage, with their ultimate destination set as Monterey, CA. This movie's female-centric story and its mature treatment of the theme was something I had not have expected from Scorsese with his later movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Gangs of New York which are all very masculine. In fact when you think about it Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is an odd-one in Scorsese's filmography stretching to his most recent one - Killers of the Flower Moon. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The performances by the leads like Burnstyn (Alice), Kristofferson (David), Harvey Keitel and Alfred Lutter as Tommy are convincing and realistic. Alfred Lutter who reminded me of a young Bill Gates' went onto become a CTO many famous tech companies including Lynda.com</span></div><p></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-33356097977552716352023-12-30T17:06:00.000-08:002023-12-30T17:40:00.621-08:00My 2023 list of interesting TV shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime<p><span style="font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">----------------------------------- NETFLIX SHOWS ---------------------------------------</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Bodies</span></b><span face="Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"" style="color: #d1d5db; font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> </span><span face="Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"" style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">turns detective work into a time-traveling comedy, where four sleuths from different time periods in London team up to solve the ultimate whodunit. It satisfies my time traveling craving for the season.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span><b><span style="font-size: medium;">The Fall of the House of Usher </span></b>: The series <span style="font-size: 16px;">is a wild, haunted romp that turns Poe's classic tale into a dysfunctional sitcom-meets-horror mashup. </span></span><span face="Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"" style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> It's Netflix's way of turning horror into a comedy of errors, making Usher's fall a laugh-out-loud tumble into the absurdly supernatural.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Guns and Gulabs Season 1</span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> is like a crazy curry of '90s nostalgia and gangster drama. The cast is doing their thing, living on their own terms, and you can't help but be part of the ride. Raj and DK deserve a shout-out for the killer screenplay.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Kohrra</span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> is not your typical murder mystery. With knock-out performances and a screenplay that packs a punch, it's like peeling back layers of a mystery onion. Punjab's not-so-pretty realities like drugs, forced NRI marriages, and a sprinkle of patriarchy drama form the background of the story. The characters are a hot mess in the best way, fighting personal battles while solving the big mystery.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Beef</span></b><span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">: Starting from a road rage incident which then leads off to a cascading series of escalating incidents, 'Beef' explores the human condition with a raw, relatable touch. It is </span><span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">a gripping drama about two people living parallel lives in different circumstances. Money, status, and mental health are key topics covered in this series with a unique Asian American cultural twist</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">MH370 The Plane That Disappeared</span></b>: <span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The series navigates the complexities surrounding the disappearance of Flight MH370, shedding light on the emotional toll on families, the relentless search efforts, and the lingering questions that resonate globally. It's a poignant blend of investigative journalism and human narratives and expertly steers clear of sensationalism to present a respectful examination of an enduring mystery.</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Cunk on Earth</span></b>: <span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> A mockumentary gem that simultaneously pokes fun at and revels in the absurdities of our historical narrative. The comedic timing is impeccable, and Cunk's deadpan delivery (Diane Morgan at her comedic best) makes even the most mundane historical tidbits downright hilarious. </span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">-------------------------- AMAZON PRIME SHOWS -----------------------------------</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Dahaad Season 1</span></b>: <span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Dahaad is a stellar crime thriller set in the heart of rural Rajasthan, India, exposing the deep-seated biases and injustices ingrained in the region's culture. Sonakshi Sinha shines as Anjali, a determined police officer challenging societal norms. It is based on a true story, the series keeps viewers on the edge, skillfully unveiling the twisted mind of a serial killer. </span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">The Power Season 1</span> </b>is <span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">a thought-provoking exploration of societal upheaval in a world where women command electric abilities. </span><span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The writing strikes a balance between drama and the weighty implications of a world transformed. </span><span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Strap in for a journey where the real shocks aren't just in the superpowers but in the societal currents they unleash. </span><span style="font-size: 16px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The show adeptly navigates the complexities of <i>power </i>dynamics, instigating a paradigm shift that is both electrifying and deeply reflective.</span></span></span></span></p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat; white-space-collapse: preserve;">
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Wilderness Season 1</span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;">: Liv and Will, the seemingly golden couple, take their British charm to the Big Apple. The couple's cross-country trip to iron out wrinkles in their relationship turns into a wild rollercoaster of emotions, and suddenly, that dream holiday takes a detour into a living nightmare. 'Wilderness' isn't just a twisted love story; it's a journey into the chaos of relationships, proving that even the best-laid plans can go off the rails. Jenna Coleman is captivating and capitalizes on a well written female lead character, but most of other characters didn't the same kind of attention from the screenwriters.</span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Vadhandhi : The Fable of Veloni</span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;">: Eight captivating episodes centering around the mysterious death of a young woman, setting off a web of deception. SJ Suryah, in the role of Sub Inspector Vivek, skillfully navigates the intricate investigation, revealing layers of lies and deceit. Sanjana, portraying the beautifully haunting Velonie, adds a magnetic charm to the narrative, owning her role effortlessly. Vadandhi may have its flaws, but it's a compelling watch, showcasing the creators' mastery in crafting suspenseful narratives.</span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Hush Hush Season 1</span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;">, with its women-centric vibe, shines a spotlight on the talents of Juhi Chawla, Karishma Tanna, Shahana Goswami, Kritika Kamra, Soha Ali Khan and Ayesha Jhulka. The ensemble cast plays a crucial role in weaving a narrative that delves into friendship, secrets, and the highs and lows of contemporary women's experiences. </span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 16px;">When I look at my Amazon Prime picks I realize that these are all series which are either women-centric or has strong lead characters who are women. Prime also has more quality international content which is not just Korean.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 16px;">BTW this is how a blog post would look if it was written by generative AI, like this post was :-) Will be switching back to the human mode in the new year. Happy 2024!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsJbYE1bpdSY01pR5szrtkPA1sQcQxEPeC5ccKagHvpSw2WkUSSI9Qv1wqPf8wOV5vu87aXbzPg9yiLm-PTWyBiRkgXPALKz6NhnBvn-3YJ4-T1LpiaV6fq4H8jYKjQxhWwvDmRm5jF3hMUQ66LWBOOdkq5Z2-1Ju-OzIIjFWY55ITP3cH7jQ/s670/ai_meme.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="670" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsJbYE1bpdSY01pR5szrtkPA1sQcQxEPeC5ccKagHvpSw2WkUSSI9Qv1wqPf8wOV5vu87aXbzPg9yiLm-PTWyBiRkgXPALKz6NhnBvn-3YJ4-T1LpiaV6fq4H8jYKjQxhWwvDmRm5jF3hMUQ66LWBOOdkq5Z2-1Ju-OzIIjFWY55ITP3cH7jQ/w400-h331/ai_meme.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><b>Writing Credits for this post : ChatGPT 3.5, the free version.</b></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span><p></p></span><p></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-2585607528771993722023-12-28T23:01:00.000-08:002024-03-23T15:28:44.257-07:00Best Books: My 2023 list<p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><b><span>T</span></b><span>his is one of those customary end of the year lists. My 'book' reading habit is on life support so I thought it would be a short list I could easily convert into a quick post. I could put the blame of the slow demise of my book reading skills on aging, doom-scrolling internet forums where wisdom (debatable) is delivered through strangers' comments in 8.25 seconds or lesser, or my ADD. Or it could be because the same content delivered by books is now being delivered to the same dopamine centers of the brain the by streaming services?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">All the books I read, I consider my best reading of the year. Otherwise I would not have made it to the end as there are more books I gave up in the first chapter or two than the total number of books I read this year.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZeIqNGcWuDcMYsdDaxQBG47nnrRbYFcoMJoas8_N6eO8ZiEMvlvZm_x-cQYJass1m0Zqcu5UXX7lDB4zVRuC-3FlC-Kw5wNmcx8CEbr8H5AlQxuwoPZ2hdkOb8ByFNl2MmamucrrETwRP0qO09j9dVLYB03Xl4c6gI8ESLEwX9-2kz7IcsUE/s516/Deepti_Naval_Country_Childhood_Bio.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="345" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZeIqNGcWuDcMYsdDaxQBG47nnrRbYFcoMJoas8_N6eO8ZiEMvlvZm_x-cQYJass1m0Zqcu5UXX7lDB4zVRuC-3FlC-Kw5wNmcx8CEbr8H5AlQxuwoPZ2hdkOb8ByFNl2MmamucrrETwRP0qO09j9dVLYB03Xl4c6gI8ESLEwX9-2kz7IcsUE/w214-h320/Deepti_Naval_Country_Childhood_Bio.JPG" width="214" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">Here are the four books I read this year and all of them are remarkable because they were able to keep my attention till the very last page. There is also a bonus book - a book you should not read, even if you maybe interested in trains like I am.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><b><span><span style="font-family: Lato;"><span style="font-size: large;">Deepti Naval</span><span style="font-size: medium;">'s</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: large;">A Country Called Childhood :</span><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: large;"> A memoir</span></b></h4><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">Deepti Naval is one of my favorite actors and intellectuals of Indian cinema. A Country Called Childhood is my kind of memoir - it is not about trauma or addiction or tragedy or conquering adversity. It is about the actor's childhood in northern India, simple, and minimal yet resonant with images of the fifties and sixties India. This is how you should write about your childhood and this is how Indians writing in English should write in English.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: large;"><b><span>Tony Joseph's </span><span>Early Indians : </span><span>The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From</span></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">I have written a review of Early Indians<a href="https://drummersdiaries.blogspot.com/2023/04/early-indians-by-tony-joseph-book-review.html"> here </a> >> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555;"><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><i>The journalist author Tony Joseph focuses on the group(s) that migrated out of Africa, in three different waves, at three different time periods and became the ancestors of all the people currently inhabiting the Indian sub-continent. It is <a href="https://drummersdiaries.blogspot.com/2023/04/early-indians-by-tony-joseph-book-review.html">an extremely interesting and easy to read book </a>based on anthropological, archaeological findings till now and the explosion of DNA evidence and research papers published since 2015 based on these DNA findings</i>. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Balachandran Chullikkad's </span><span>Chidambara Smarana </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;">(Malayalam, memoir)</span></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balachandran_Chullikkad" style="color: #f70413; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Balachandran Chullikkad</a>'s memoir Chidambara Smarana (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555;">pub. 01/2001</span></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555;"><i>) reads like a struggling young man's journal entries from 1980-90's India. </i>The rest of<a href="https://drummersdiaries.blogspot.com/2023/09/chidambara-smarana-review-of.html" target="_blank"> my review here</a>.</span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRM0Q7Q69bY2-0WZF65Uw9SUoeND6fzrOX6WVGCsQ6GJx3QCVUfGwbljJ85t06cBC_DY7WLFpAZ1ZCPcTBCjM0xBtTGvy0g9xEvAY5ZGV4peruwPD6fTqiBJdG8hN_0QR6LpXxIREYsTClEpceLFicMGzfhV5WYpV0jVgrXHmoRjyym5uCbTU/s834/project_hail_mary_weir.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="611" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRM0Q7Q69bY2-0WZF65Uw9SUoeND6fzrOX6WVGCsQ6GJx3QCVUfGwbljJ85t06cBC_DY7WLFpAZ1ZCPcTBCjM0xBtTGvy0g9xEvAY5ZGV4peruwPD6fTqiBJdG8hN_0QR6LpXxIREYsTClEpceLFicMGzfhV5WYpV0jVgrXHmoRjyym5uCbTU/s320/project_hail_mary_weir.JPG" width="234" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: large;"><b><span>Andy Weir's </span><span>Project Hail Mary </span></b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;"><span>This is my first Andy Weir. Probably the last too. I was impressed by The Martian, the movie and thought I should give Project Hail Mary a try before it became a movie. Project Hail Mary is based on a good (not novel) concept with a Marvel-esque hero who is a modest middle school science teacher, written to succeed. This unassuming superhero </span>who wears his cape and underwear inside his spacesuit would have failed in real world without access to Youtube, Google Translate, Google Search, chatGPT and Wikipedia, but for the purposes of this book, all of these sites reside in his head.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">The bonus book you should <b>stay away from</b> if you have a liking for Indian non fiction and a sweet spot for trains is The Great Indian Railways: A Cultural Biography by Arup K. Chatterjee. The author seems to have been too wrapped up in his own 'brilliant' command of English, which was too pedantic, stiff and graceless that I had to give it up after a few pages. Here is Chatterjee starting a paragraph talking about something. It has to be about trains as the book is about them. I think this paragraph may even have something to do with train dining cars. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">"Second, it perpetuates the reification of labour. Accordingly labour forces of railroad history are meant to be usurped into a memory of personal aristocratic adventures. The motif of culinary details has a very subtle role in accentuating architecture, and those of architecture in establishing an enduring imperial monumentality."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">What the heck was that?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: medium;">This is the problem I have with many Indian writers who write in English. Their tone is pedantic and disconnected. Their prose is full of long winded sentences that lose their meaning on the way while the writers are busy showing off their mastery of Queen's English. They should all read Shashi Tharoor or Suketu Mehta or Deepti Naval. It could be their new year resolution.</span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-10062225887364114392023-12-26T21:05:00.000-08:002023-12-29T21:56:37.379-08:00Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha<p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span>Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha</span> (</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">transl. <i>A Northern Ballad of Valor</i></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">)</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">is Malayalam literary giant M.T. Vasudevan Nair's retelling of a sub plot from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadakkan_Pattukal" target="_blank">Vadakkan Pattukal</a> </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">(</span><span style="font-family: times;">transl. <i>Northern Ballads</i></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">)</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">, </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">directed by Hariharan. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammootty" target="_blank">Mammootty</a> essays the role of Chandu Chekavar, a negative character in the ballads, who was given new life and a positive spin by the magic of M.T's pen. In 1989, this film (along with Mathilukal) brought Mammotty his first Bharath award - India's national award for the best male actor in a leading role. It also won the best screenplay award at the national level.</span></span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAq7nqz3pOr9lPdwnxVAo38LV-vnjJ9FiVhUlUhEqc4bsm7ynTDEiKwzRdNzqRvsZYLtp02hTwmlr1t5I_B7kLLapvGezMjicB4OZeDL4EkhmYuBpBF4jDftz5HrFN-NAEmXSENOkoQw1bNoqpNOmlWrJwlZWvh48Nqs2Au_qJD-jwURiVaCY/s868/Oru_Vadakkan_Veeragadha_Mammootty_Madhavi.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="811" data-original-width="868" height="598" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAq7nqz3pOr9lPdwnxVAo38LV-vnjJ9FiVhUlUhEqc4bsm7ynTDEiKwzRdNzqRvsZYLtp02hTwmlr1t5I_B7kLLapvGezMjicB4OZeDL4EkhmYuBpBF4jDftz5HrFN-NAEmXSENOkoQw1bNoqpNOmlWrJwlZWvh48Nqs2Au_qJD-jwURiVaCY/w640-h598/Oru_Vadakkan_Veeragadha_Mammootty_Madhavi.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Lato;">Mammootty as Chandu and Madhavi as Unniarcha in Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha (1989)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /><span>Malayalam movies nor audience are big on historical dramas, unlike the rest of India or south India. It was an ambitious project for the eighties. Comparing the magnum opus-es of the present day like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponniyin_Selvan:_I" target="_blank">PS1</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baahubali:_The_Beginning" target="_blank">Baahubali</a>, the production design of this eighties movie is almost at the level of a school play. But the screenplay and dialog is beyond compare. The casting and the acting elevates the frames and takes your eyes away from the plastic bead necklaces and cardboard sets.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /><span>In addition to Mammootty, Madhavi and Suresh Gopi, Balan K. Nair, Captain Raju, Geetha, Rajalakshmi, V.K. Sreeraman, Sukumari and Sanjay Mitra play other important characters. The soundtrack had some memorable tracks that still maintains their irresistable charm, all these years later.</span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTsuPe90E_HC0hJLUh25RNQVZJlt2hgvoj9DlJyM7C79u-8gAy1OXWsDRc66UPmUHJ1PfQDiP3libxRYTFhqEzpVHXnMY8bzcZgDPXCYNqIaL2iXg3Tu0XrnFNEUVL7IP2gEdj5nYFk093oLY8ucXpwf4e4fCU1dyYG5SxlsHHU1mb1y3S4Gk/s1866/Oru_Vadakkan_Veeragadha_Chandu_Aarcha_Aaromal.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="897" data-original-width="1866" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTsuPe90E_HC0hJLUh25RNQVZJlt2hgvoj9DlJyM7C79u-8gAy1OXWsDRc66UPmUHJ1PfQDiP3libxRYTFhqEzpVHXnMY8bzcZgDPXCYNqIaL2iXg3Tu0XrnFNEUVL7IP2gEdj5nYFk093oLY8ucXpwf4e4fCU1dyYG5SxlsHHU1mb1y3S4Gk/w640-h308/Oru_Vadakkan_Veeragadha_Chandu_Aarcha_Aaromal.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Lato;">Madhavi as Unniarcha, Mammootty as Chandu Chekavar and Suresh Gopi as Aromal Chekavar</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">While Mammootty's Chandu is one of the most unforgettable characters in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/25/world/asia/kaathal-film-mammootty-india.html" target="_blank">Malayalam cinema</a> ever, the hero, the villain and the creator of this landmark movie is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._T._Vasudevan_Nair" target="_blank">M.T. Vasudevan Nair</a>. M.T, the author is quite a maestro when it comes to giving under-represented mythical and historical characters their due, by offering the readers/audience a different and nuanced perspective of the character through his work. Before resurrecting and reshaping Chandu Chekavar's traitorous destiny half a millennia after the original ballads (which were based on true life stories of the warriors of north Malabar in the medieval era) were composed, M.T had successfully broken the ground for such character facelifts in his brilliant novel, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randamoozham" target="_blank">Randamoozham</a> in 1984.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span>Randamoozham </span> (transl. <i>The Second Turn</i>) <span>is his retelling of the world of Bhimasena, the second in line of the Pandava clan in Mahabharata who was always pushed to the sidelines by righteous first-born Yudhishtira and the brave and glamorous younger brother Arjuna. It is one of my favorite Malayalam novels ever.</span></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLcWtak-jT7P-SMXXW8BrvEhiIkXklC02DqSDQRpwib9Nf4JOptzf-5pJbrewLPuNrVY314KuHysU67Lh1OsA0TcXDKV26Dp0in9ESKtmZuoingIgcUJxOvTH3aZgm8trPz6nob8rAwRwh1maNaTSDXWM5CvjdLSA0cgqYBI-fIIDpgLEu_yI/s2048/Oru_Vadakkan_poster.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1443" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLcWtak-jT7P-SMXXW8BrvEhiIkXklC02DqSDQRpwib9Nf4JOptzf-5pJbrewLPuNrVY314KuHysU67Lh1OsA0TcXDKV26Dp0in9ESKtmZuoingIgcUJxOvTH3aZgm8trPz6nob8rAwRwh1maNaTSDXWM5CvjdLSA0cgqYBI-fIIDpgLEu_yI/w450-h640/Oru_Vadakkan_poster.JPG" width="450" /></span></a></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">After re-watching Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha as an adult, I realize Chandu's cinematic and literary makeover was at the cost of shifting the blame to other lead characters. Aaromal Chekavar and Unniarcha drew the short straw in M.T's version of the story. I don't remember any of this kind of passing-the-buck happening in Randamoozham?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span>Aromal, the original hero of the ballad becomes</span><span> a one-dimensional guy much in contrast to the legendary multi-faceted hero that he was. Instead of </span><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urumi" target="_blank">urumis</a></i><span> and swords he should have been using, under M.T's masterful character correction, he is left with just an axe (to grind, with Chandu.) </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Unniarcha, the fabled warrior princess of Poothuram, is stricken by an acute case of <a href="https://betterbooktitles.com/2021/12/02/funny-men-writing-women-reddit/" target="_blank">men-writing-women</a> in Malayalam. As the story takes place in the medieval times the focus is less on women's body parts and more on their fickle emotions like deceit, pretense and cunning. These <i>universal characteristics of womenkind</i> are embodied by Unniarcha in the movie and Chandu's dialogs to Archa (written by M.T) are used to rub it in at turning points in the movie to paint her as the fall guy (gal.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Despite these persona revisions, Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha is a watershed movie for Malayalam movie industry. A native ballad, re-written for screen by one of the masterful talents of Malayalam literature, performed by some of the best actors in their prime against the backdrop of a spectacular soundtrack, no other historical or mythological costume drama has ever come close to it in terms of overall impact. In 1989 it was the longest running Malayalam movie in theaters ever, running for more than one year at Sangham theater, Kozhikode and the biggest blockbuster of the year.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-33914102140999094402023-10-08T16:25:00.002-07:002023-10-08T16:25:06.041-07:00Marty (1955)<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> <span style="font-size: large;">L</span>anded on Marty after Amazon Prime suggested I watch Marty next after watching Dead End. It was past midnight and Marty was only 90 minutes long and boasted 4 Oscars from 1955 including the best picture, best director and best actor. Why not? Marty it was, to top off the night.</span></p><p style="font-family: helvetica;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1yLZBrPh1o_-HGSFXB371FZknEBvzpZrwDGOLiyKUJkHWXL7EA_1m8esj8eSmS9H2sVL7mu415QUjOOUnSb1uxa1lmgndIgk_5pLeAv8LoJn5xOj6nZjIT82BaJAhItgm0igXBNCl6G2z0FMeRoJadjB8v67fRahAnGSz3yQNRTDzFQCtMqY/s934/Marty_1955.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="934" data-original-width="617" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1yLZBrPh1o_-HGSFXB371FZknEBvzpZrwDGOLiyKUJkHWXL7EA_1m8esj8eSmS9H2sVL7mu415QUjOOUnSb1uxa1lmgndIgk_5pLeAv8LoJn5xOj6nZjIT82BaJAhItgm0igXBNCl6G2z0FMeRoJadjB8v67fRahAnGSz3yQNRTDzFQCtMqY/w264-h400/Marty_1955.JPG" width="264" /></a></div>Marty is the story of Marty Piletti, a mid thirties bachelor butcher, living with his Italian American mother in the Bronx of the fifties. Like mid-thirties bachelors the world-over Marty too is harangued by his mother to marry and bring a girl home as soon as he can. But it is not easy for Marty, played by Ernest Borgnine, he is no Humphrey Bogart at forty five charming the socks of a nineteen year old Lauren Bacall. Marty is a stocky 35-year old butcher who ends up standing on the sidelines at the local dance hall the entire night on any given Saturday.<p></p><p style="font-family: helvetica;">As luck would have it on one of those Saturdays he meets the female Marty. Betsy Blair (Gene Kelley's first wife) plays Clara who is a high school chemistry teacher, which I believe must have been a quite nerdy occupation for women of that era, who at 29 is also having a hard timing finding a life partner. Blair was one of the actors blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Gene Kelley, her husband had to strong arm the producers and threaten them he would quit the movie he was acting in if they didn't give the role to Blair.</p><p style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></p><p></p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCuRdG3cl5qN3JLGAyiGFLZqcJSNFyWlke4QFLQI7yZMWQdCnE-wDQ63CAe-7R8VhyphenhyphentTe6SPAWUliiZHdmeeoBFk8lHKblsVwMOaJInQXXEveGQVVKRLec__XfBJiGt3jEsuhDfX75_QEgJXx6fhseuj-QFqLsb1vpQOx_aNxKUdyLVGOw53I/s1254/Marty_1955_Blair_Borgnine.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="943" data-original-width="1254" height="481" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCuRdG3cl5qN3JLGAyiGFLZqcJSNFyWlke4QFLQI7yZMWQdCnE-wDQ63CAe-7R8VhyphenhyphentTe6SPAWUliiZHdmeeoBFk8lHKblsVwMOaJInQXXEveGQVVKRLec__XfBJiGt3jEsuhDfX75_QEgJXx6fhseuj-QFqLsb1vpQOx_aNxKUdyLVGOw53I/w640-h481/Marty_1955_Blair_Borgnine.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ernest Borgnine as Marty and Betsy Blair as Clara in Delbert Mann's Marty</td></tr></tbody></table><p>This Delbert Mann movie feels like an international movie set in Bronx, where the inter-generational chaos of an Italian American joint family is on full display. Its relatability and down-to-earth script and cast might be why it became the first film ever to win the prestigious <span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif;"><span title="French-language text"><span lang="fr"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palme_d%27Or" target="_blank">Palme d'Or</a> when the award was introduced in 1955.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif;"><span title="French-language text"><br /><span lang="fr"><br /></span></span></span></p></span><p></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-18049718169639854632023-10-01T19:53:00.004-07:002023-10-02T10:52:46.783-07:00Ozhivukaalam: A review of Bharathan's 1985 film<p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">T</span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">his was a movie I watched in the theater when it was released, one ozhivukaalam (</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">transl</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"> ~ vacation or summer vacation</span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">), a rarity in our family. We usually never went to watch new movies as we had the film club membership which showcased older, classic or indie movies which were deemed worthy of our time and money (= zero money spent, as these were free.) I remember my mother took us to watch Ozhivukaalam, being the reader that she is, my guess is the irresistible combo of Padmarajan's script and Bharathan's direction might have been the draw for her.</span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEims2IT5qeZRGzyVzk-XVyouEu8gf42Ou0yuSUMyTWoO69RYKTYDE8YbpODj5WbbZIsxyZg31ZAmk2BLLw-6LxCPLQ_Vsa9dylsI-orBxxnC2C2zRC4lDBQ_ieit0diIo7gN6BVdSVLMu8Nx_-j1yYgQLbkIdmh4g4BEk0ckSHWF8-1G7hJVkE/s1697/Ozhivukaalam_Nazir_Sreevidya_Rohini.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="955" data-original-width="1697" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEims2IT5qeZRGzyVzk-XVyouEu8gf42Ou0yuSUMyTWoO69RYKTYDE8YbpODj5WbbZIsxyZg31ZAmk2BLLw-6LxCPLQ_Vsa9dylsI-orBxxnC2C2zRC4lDBQ_ieit0diIo7gN6BVdSVLMu8Nx_-j1yYgQLbkIdmh4g4BEk0ckSHWF8-1G7hJVkE/w640-h360/Ozhivukaalam_Nazir_Sreevidya_Rohini.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Prem Nazir, Sreevidya and Rohini in Ozhivukaalam (1985)</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">While I did like the idea of Rohini as a modern college girl I saw in the posters of Ozhivukaalam, I was not thrilled at the noticeable absence of Rahman. They were the teen heartthrob pairing those days, like Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Geller. Not only was Rahman anywhere to be seen, it had Prem Nazir and Sreevidya - an older pair whose chemistry I had no interest in cringe-watching. I don't think I was really impressed after watching it, except that Rohini's role as an independent thinking teen who got a video camera as a gift, I thought, might start a trend of all girls receiving cameras as gifts.</span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSs-6lMYtAK9GowTveUJWyiRJvMEIDdJvXuM1M9qOZDAuBsjfnh2AzBC-4qZueRTr6pUQNnhehXkjPQEnK9r691kM5BBCNpFQBHPFEaK3em-BHE2SHFhFitozuKfqeZNe2hkItuK0rXgiuemYdIhYiewIzeAHuh60qm_QIh3m_s1PEGTk0n7o/s1352/Ozhivukaalam_bharathan.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1081" data-original-width="1352" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSs-6lMYtAK9GowTveUJWyiRJvMEIDdJvXuM1M9qOZDAuBsjfnh2AzBC-4qZueRTr6pUQNnhehXkjPQEnK9r691kM5BBCNpFQBHPFEaK3em-BHE2SHFhFitozuKfqeZNe2hkItuK0rXgiuemYdIhYiewIzeAHuh60qm_QIh3m_s1PEGTk0n7o/w640-h512/Ozhivukaalam_bharathan.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Indian Railways featuring Rohini and Sreevidya</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Re-watching it again after almost forty years I realize it is a very modern treatment of a slightly controversial subject - remarriage of a widow. This would definitely be a boring movie for grade school kids. Padmarajan's script holds the movie tight and contemporary. The casting is perfect and the location - Vadakara Sand banks is even more so. In addition to the main cast of Prem Nazir and Sreevidya who play the older couple planning to get married and Rohini as Sreevidya's fiesty college going teen, Karamana Janardhanan Nair, Jalaja bring up the supporting cast. </span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihm6HSA44HKT76_Kktl9h4Fwj4rS0MsgqzpkWY4hTDN4pk1VE_3F9Yv66Fof-MNdZBMkPFUJNRqHao44OGuTxD_g3avgHChdeaUPe-KZ24eQH4dqgkCiZxSPbkKWnhHLXcnPKblWJScRbwTfBxYj9_pipBXWGxRjhQ4A6KOMZ83Qf9REnZ9cc/s1360/Ozhivukaalam_1985_malayalam_movie_review.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1052" data-original-width="1360" height="496" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihm6HSA44HKT76_Kktl9h4Fwj4rS0MsgqzpkWY4hTDN4pk1VE_3F9Yv66Fof-MNdZBMkPFUJNRqHao44OGuTxD_g3avgHChdeaUPe-KZ24eQH4dqgkCiZxSPbkKWnhHLXcnPKblWJScRbwTfBxYj9_pipBXWGxRjhQ4A6KOMZ83Qf9REnZ9cc/w640-h496/Ozhivukaalam_1985_malayalam_movie_review.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rohini, Prem Nazir & Sreevidya in Ozhivukalam (1985)</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Ozhivukalam is a well written and directed movie except for the twist at the end which anyone can see coming from a mile away, if they have watched a few Indian (any language) movies, which puts the movie squarely back in its era and palatable for the eighties audience.</span><br /><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-84430924380913447232023-09-20T22:02:00.001-07:002023-09-20T22:02:36.014-07:00Chidambara Smarana : A review of Balachandran Chullikkad's memoir<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balachandran_Chullikkad" target="_blank">Balachandran Chullikkad</a>'s memoir Chidambara Smarana (</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;"><i>pub. 01/2001</i></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">) reads like a struggling young man's journal entries from 1980-90's India. Characters played by Mohanlal, Sreenivasan, Mukesh and co. in the late eighties and nineties' Malayalam movies </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">would be Chullikkad </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">if they were devoid of their trademark humor and had overdosed on pathos. The glass seems to be half empty or almost completely empty through Chullikkad's lens/pen whereas </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasan_and_Vijayan" style="font-family: helvetica;" target="_blank">Dasan and Vijayan</a><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> saw it half full, almost abrim with the invisible possibility of more water that may fill and cause an overflow of good fortune at any moment. None of that optimism can be seen in Chidambara Smarana (</span><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">literal transl</span>~</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Memory of Chidambaram</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">.</span></i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">)</span><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8tXsGaRfhJs--hJusmpF3lczW1mdvuZHGF8F69JNfXRkMzqfwPzsH7M-SO_1sZjQMPfHXzZxueN2Fz9BkNpwSDvNiKPeYflzSoS7KhdO8911DQb-HvqlIxJsjaoAlxEMytRtoOx4B-u5vuw4AR7ucLDZmA1BN05oZjYoXJHvj93JdbRZ5cE4/s1484/Chidambara_Smarana_Chullikkad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1484" data-original-width="936" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8tXsGaRfhJs--hJusmpF3lczW1mdvuZHGF8F69JNfXRkMzqfwPzsH7M-SO_1sZjQMPfHXzZxueN2Fz9BkNpwSDvNiKPeYflzSoS7KhdO8911DQb-HvqlIxJsjaoAlxEMytRtoOx4B-u5vuw4AR7ucLDZmA1BN05oZjYoXJHvj93JdbRZ5cE4/w253-h400/Chidambara_Smarana_Chullikkad.jpg" width="253" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Balachandran Chullikkad was a fire brand young poet in the eighties and nineties Kerala. Although I was a reader of Malayalam poetry during those days, somehow I seem to have missed most of his poetry. I had read some of his contemporaries like V. Madhusoodanan Nair, Sugatha Kumari and Kureeppuzha Sreekumar but the only poem I remember of <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/tracking-indian-communities/such-richness-among-the-ruins/" target="_blank">Chullikkad is Ghaza</a>l. Over the years Ghazal had become a personal meme of sort which we would bring up any time there is a Hindustani singer in the frame, in front of a predominantly Malayali audience, "there goes Ghulam Ali, singing his wail of a ghazal."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A disturbing undercurrent I noticed in Chullikkad's writing is his sterile, almost impaired depiction of women. He might be afflicted with what could be the opposite of Oedipus complex - utter hate towards mother and motherly figures. According to my armchair psycho analysis conducted a couple of minutes ago with the aid of YouTube, this was probably as a result of his strained relationship with his mother and grand mother during his formative years. He never recovered, and not only that, there is a lack of remorse or wisdom that comes with age, quite unlike what you would naturally expect from a sensitive poetic soul like him. Not all poets are made equal, some are made like James Dean, Balachandran Chullikkad is Malayalam literature's OG rebel without a cause.<br /></span><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-54322316578655374742023-05-27T10:59:00.001-07:002023-05-27T10:59:46.094-07:00Neelavelicham the movie, Bhargavi Nilayam & a question for Aashiq Abu<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: large;">N</span><span style="font-size: medium;">eelavelicham </span>(</span><i>literal translation: 'blue light', poetically liberal translation adopted by the filmmaker, 'blue radiance'</i><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">) is a famous short story by Malayalam literary giant and a renaissance man of simple tastes, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaikom_Muhammad_Basheer" target="_blank">Vaikom Muhammad Basheer</a>. It has been made into a movie half a century ago, at the time the director A. Vincent had titled it "Bhargavi Nilayam", the name of the fictional abode of the ghost lady in the short story. Bhargavi Nilayam has long since become synonymous in the Malayalam culture and lexicon as any building that has been taken over by ghostly presence(s) overstaying their visa status on the earth. About a decade ago I wrote a one paragraph <a href="https://drummersdiaries.blogspot.com/2010/10/bhargavi-nilayam.html" target="_blank">review of the movie in this blog</a>, when what I really wanted to talk about was that movie's hero - Madhu.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_K8sDHxzdwPeOvTZcNsCe7Dp4tfteWdNPgcPm8wEXkqxUKo6oLPJv1zB2b26T0R7jgP7bh-JFHX8Tp3dUv5mKyAJOcHh1uNhyLyxu9csBE26Oc9S50xaheprgTTfJqFdNZm9PDz_jYrs5aqyzhzlcHArtwhPiJQVIzYja8ffXPBqqC774/s701/neelavelicham_bhargavi_nilayam_review.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="561" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_K8sDHxzdwPeOvTZcNsCe7Dp4tfteWdNPgcPm8wEXkqxUKo6oLPJv1zB2b26T0R7jgP7bh-JFHX8Tp3dUv5mKyAJOcHh1uNhyLyxu9csBE26Oc9S50xaheprgTTfJqFdNZm9PDz_jYrs5aqyzhzlcHArtwhPiJQVIzYja8ffXPBqqC774/w512-h640/neelavelicham_bhargavi_nilayam_review.png" width="512" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /><br />Not sure what <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aashiq_Abu" target="_blank">Aashiq Abu, the director</a> of this new take on the short story wanted to talk about by taking on the enormous risk of remaking an old blockbuster movie and a much-read short story of a beloved author. Everyone is going to have opinions and any fault is going to be magnified manifold and scrutinized to death. Maybe the man just loves taking risks in pursuit of honing his craft. This is what I like to conclude because I have always looked forward to Aashiq Abu's directorial outings and love to watch the technical improvement happening with each new release. Neelavelicham is no different in the technical department - production design, cinematography, casting, script are all excellent.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Tovino Thomas as Vaikom Muhammad Basheer has been styled and executed better than the suave Madhu who when you think about it reflected none of the life experience as a hotel manager, shepherd, sports goods agent, activist, watchman, fruit seller (to name a few) multi-faceted background of the real author. Roshan Matthews and Rima Kallingal's characters as the lead romantic pair is on par with Prem Nazir and Vijaya Nirmala's characters from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhargavi_Nilayam" target="_blank">the 1964 film </a>and have been scripted to be digested by a contemporary audience. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1oDZLFIyFReQYKrhUmOVXGHdVAS-EyVSX-a5tJuB72rZVnZhSs6aeLcU5UzcI5K8ODIYjjnkZ-4Pf8iZ_xGr1lMNSJwo_SzpHVrICw_Z--R5W070741kcQfj3lrMuSuJqO_TZwaVG2QmXfx4XTxCtHZUcqYbvpEsNYltYClsoQ6qydLwO/s1920/neelavelicham_tovino_rima_aashiq_abu_1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1oDZLFIyFReQYKrhUmOVXGHdVAS-EyVSX-a5tJuB72rZVnZhSs6aeLcU5UzcI5K8ODIYjjnkZ-4Pf8iZ_xGr1lMNSJwo_SzpHVrICw_Z--R5W070741kcQfj3lrMuSuJqO_TZwaVG2QmXfx4XTxCtHZUcqYbvpEsNYltYClsoQ6qydLwO/w640-h360/neelavelicham_tovino_rima_aashiq_abu_1.png" width="640" /></a></span></div><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The production design recreating the era of the newly independent India where the story is set is probably one of the best I have seen recently in any Indian movie and is a welcome relief compared to the staged sets of the 1964 version. Not to blame any of these on the 1964 movie which was made at an age and a time when actors lived and emoted in a different plane than ordinary people and that sort of disconnect and staging was the norm. It is most evident nowhere else than the villain character Nanukuttan essayed in the 1964 movie by the stalwart actor P.J. Antony in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface" target="_blank">blackface</a> makeup. In the 2023 version it is Shine Tom Chacko, without any black paint on his face, but with the essential villainy captured through his acting and the script. The director has taken the same care to make necessary changes to make it a suitable for a contemporary audience, trimming down the length and dialogs.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The only question I have for Aashiq Abu is, if this was your take of Basheer's story Neelavelicham why did you take on the role of an editor or a quality analyst instead of being the ingenious director I have credited you to be? Neelavelicham (2023) is a scene by scene, quality improved copy of the 1964 Bhargavi Nilayam. You, Aashiq Abu, who has always given a relatable perspective on life through movies (especially to Millennial and Gen Z audience) whether it be <a href="https://drummersdiaries.blogspot.com/2011/11/salt-n-pepper.html" target="_blank">Salt n Pepper</a> or 22 F Kottayam or Da Thadiya or Idukki Gold or Mayanadhi, what stopped you doing from giving us a fresh take on Neelavelicham, instead of making a low-effort photocopy, albeit technically brilliant?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-59809923204792581362023-04-25T19:43:00.001-07:002023-05-15T22:09:36.348-07:00Early Indians by Tony Joseph : A book review<p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDeHBn5B16gKa5tAhzd-3k2cICCGKqHVelvf7ea1-9D629_mbGg1M6gpH6KbrReck3PkOwHza9d_Mby-XFyVtk9VL7GYsJKdVl7BbooW-43xATXxDfPgO9RLuH4yLLf0Xk0jyiy9Hykq6FJ-h8XZ1W9z84iAMRcs9owwsg-kIb0aniy5uy/s499/Early_Indian_Tony_Joseph_Review.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="327" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDeHBn5B16gKa5tAhzd-3k2cICCGKqHVelvf7ea1-9D629_mbGg1M6gpH6KbrReck3PkOwHza9d_Mby-XFyVtk9VL7GYsJKdVl7BbooW-43xATXxDfPgO9RLuH4yLLf0Xk0jyiy9Hykq6FJ-h8XZ1W9z84iAMRcs9owwsg-kIb0aniy5uy/w263-h400/Early_Indian_Tony_Joseph_Review.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The oldest scientifically dated remains of a modern human aka <b>HOMO SAPIEN</b> - which is you, me and every human being currently alive on this planet, is<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><b><span style="font-size: medium;">300,000</span> years old</b>, found in Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. When you consider the enormity and scale of that timeline you will realize the most popular member of the religious trinity group - J.C and the original fashionista Cleopatra left the stage just a heartbeat ago. Only a mere 2000 years have passed since they handed over the mic to Jay Z and Beyoncé.<br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our kind, Homo Sapiens (this is important since there were several other kinds of human species coexisting 100 - 200,000+ years with Sapiens like Homo Erectus, Neanderthals and Denisovans), ventured out of Africa to Asia first and Europe later between 40 - 60,000 years ago. Americas being the last continent to be settled by the journeying biped Sapiens 16,000 years ago.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All people outside of Africa in the world today are descended from a single African woman of L3 haplogroup. In a similar vein all people outside of Africa (i.e. modern human = Home Sapiens) are descended from a single man of CT haplogroup. In short our differences are only skin deep and race is a powerful illusion that everyone of us has bought into.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The journalist author Tony Joseph focuses on the group(s) that migrated out of Africa, in three different waves, at three different time periods and became the ancestors of all the people currently inhabiting the Indian sub-continent. It is an extremely interesting and easy to read book based on anthropological, archaeological findings till now and the explosion of DNA evidence and research papers published since 2015 based on these DNA findings. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What Early Indians is not is, it is not an international pop-sci best seller like the Sapiens with its far-fetched and reductionist claims which made Sapiens the non-fiction counterpart of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, in my mind. Hot garbage, Early Indians is not. If you have roots in the Indian Subcontinent and if your attention span can hold for about 270+ pages, it does not have to be in one sitting, this is a book worth reading.</span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-50740951780858212892023-03-06T20:32:00.005-08:002023-03-07T19:22:17.141-08:00Mukundan Unni Associates : Where Karma Goes to Get Killed<p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="font-size: large;">I</span>n the absence of the specter of sin employed by monotheistic religions to keep their followers all <i>sheep-ly</i> and righteous, Indian religions and philosophy, use <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/karma" target="_blank">Karma</a> to enforce lane discipline on the morality highway. Mukundan Unni Associates (MUA) is the first <i>anti-karmic</i> Malayalam or Indian movie I've ever watched. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy7w4LKlpJYvr08Iz3GrAKD1bJ3Q6rHwl9dYpZxsIexuo5OfMWNHvtYjRoCvr8AYwxrll30iEWbpv1qcii3qepLGTgzJVogZOvQJdFPuxbw4_U_sumBOJFFYJZxox7o4uuM7p1ZUUrd6KFSXQayeu-TppCr0x3S441cEnnNw7ns9TXfjh-/s2048/Mukundan_Unni_Associates_Review.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1402" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy7w4LKlpJYvr08Iz3GrAKD1bJ3Q6rHwl9dYpZxsIexuo5OfMWNHvtYjRoCvr8AYwxrll30iEWbpv1qcii3qepLGTgzJVogZOvQJdFPuxbw4_U_sumBOJFFYJZxox7o4uuM7p1ZUUrd6KFSXQayeu-TppCr0x3S441cEnnNw7ns9TXfjh-/w274-h400/Mukundan_Unni_Associates_Review.jpg" width="274" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">Abhinav Sundar Naik's directorial debut is an unapologetic feature film, out to prove Hindu and (subsequent) Buddhist philosophy's first law of universal causation and effect has no street cred in the twenty first century world. The movie opens with this text, "human beings are mostly grey, but in some cases they are just black." If you are into armchair psychoanalysis as I am and have read aplenty about serial killers sporting the harmless guy vibe or have watched American Psycho or Nightcrawler, this one line should give you some idea how the protagonist of this movie is going to turn out, with a flat, dark, un-empathetic psycho/sociopathic edge, prone to plenty of mental monologues. The monologue voice-overs of the main character written by the director kicks a$s. It does not come as a surprise that during a low period in his life Naik is said to have <a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/entertainment/mukundan-unni-associates-director-abhinav-sunder-nayak-co-writer-vimal-gopalakrishnan-interview-9876381.html" target="_blank">watched Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler multiple times</a>, MUA is brimming with this <i>dark inspiration</i>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">Mukundan Unni, the lead of the movie, is a lawyer who prefers to wear the impeccable white on white 'uniform' worn by lawyers in India, but has a mind which is the darkest shade of black, just like a lawyers' robe. Vineeth Sreenivasan, who has essayed the title role is growing into these sociopath roles (LOL.) </span><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">Will Mukundan Unni stand the test of time and have the staying power of Sreenivasan Sr.'s Thalathil Dinesan? </span><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">From Ravi Padmanabhan in Thannermathan Dinangal to Mukundan Unni, Vineeth has been delivering some killer performances essaying the unrecognizable-psychopath-next-door. Other actors like Suraj Venjaramood, Jagadeesh, Sudhi Koppa, Tanvi Ram have meaty roles although their screen time is nowhere near that of the lead. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">The message of the movie is there is no message. But if you are one of those viewers who like message(s)-in-a-movie, try these - karma is still a b@#ch, but s/he is on vacation, there is only truth(reality) no consequences and feel free to engage in haymaking during daytime. </span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><br /></span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-15418763338584201612023-02-26T22:10:00.007-08:002023-03-07T19:22:30.656-08:0012 Angry Men<span style="font-family: Lato;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXNkK2aGTBlIWCrQtH88e4SnKKwnkDU7rAZ4enM3GxpChANz-QzB5Z6sfAXt2OM7mRJtTRRkEGRVB3LmnCqu8mPjlyaeDwJSBoeWyl7T3ro7cBKCTAEuxLUcQNsKE8D4A2JamzwIwrNACz8kiTSQgcbOojMNQ7AM8UxIWWbiqKTPUUf4Q-/s636/12_Angry_Men.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="462" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXNkK2aGTBlIWCrQtH88e4SnKKwnkDU7rAZ4enM3GxpChANz-QzB5Z6sfAXt2OM7mRJtTRRkEGRVB3LmnCqu8mPjlyaeDwJSBoeWyl7T3ro7cBKCTAEuxLUcQNsKE8D4A2JamzwIwrNACz8kiTSQgcbOojMNQ7AM8UxIWWbiqKTPUUf4Q-/s320/12_Angry_Men.gif" width="232" /></a></div><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: medium;">T</span>he Sixth Amendment to the U.S.Constitution guarantees the right to trial by a jury. In case of a criminal trial, the jury consists of 12 people, citizens drawn from all walks of life, who decide the verdict of the case. 12 Angry Men is Sidney Lumet's first directorial venture, shot entirely in a New York city jury room where 12 middle-class white men decide on the fate of young teen (maybe Puerto-Rican, maybe Italian, definitely someone from the wrong side of tracks) who is charged with murdering his father.</span></span><div><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;">The movie while it garnered 3 Oscar nominations was not a commercial hit at the time. Over the years it has gained quite a following and is often taught in high school business law classes, film schools and Youtube videos purporting to teach the art of persuasion.</span></div><div><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;">I've always wondered how juries reach unanimous decisions, considering most of the jury members are ordinary people whose closest brush with law might have been when they walked in front of a TV set playing Law and Order. More importantly the State has to <i>prove beyond reasonable doubt</i> that the accused is either guilty or innocent and all the members of the jury have to have be on the same plate. <span style="background-color: white;">Beyond a reasonable doubt” is </span><span style="background-color: white;">the universal standard of proof for criminal prosecutions in state and federal courts in the United States</span><span style="background-color: white;">. </span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;">O. J. Simpson would definitely thank the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment which requires the State to prove that every element of a charged criminal offense is beyond reasonable doubt.</span></div><div><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;">In 12 Angry Men, at the start of the jury deliberation there are 11 jury members believing the accused is guilty and one person and the 12th man, Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) is not convinced the accused is guilty. There goes the unanimous verdict and starts the 1.5 hr real-time deliberation which forms the 96 minutes of movie show time.</span></div><div><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;">The tight script by Reginald Rose is supported by phenomenal actors like Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, E. G. Marshall and others. It is a film that is totally reliant on dialog and performance and does a great job on both. As a film that is shown for the students at film schools, law schools, sociology and psychology departments, </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;">there is something for everyone whether it is c</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Lato;">amera and writing techniques or a study in confirmation bias or methods of persuasion.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div></div>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-886711719392571822023-02-12T23:15:00.003-08:002023-02-12T23:15:52.201-08:00Flowers For Algernon : Bouquets or Brickbats?<p><span style="font-family: Lato;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">F</span></b>lowers for Algernon, the Nebula award winning 1959 sci-fi novel by Daniel Keyes is a crowd favorite for the last half century. There were several reasons I should not have tried reading it, starting from my inability to read fiction as years progress being the main one. It did not help that the book belonged to category of 'scientific fiction' and was not written by a couple of SF writers that I could understand, namely Douglas Adams or Philip K. Dick. Nevertheless none of these stopped me from attempting to read this book, as the whole internet is ga-ga about Flowers for Algernon, I caught a case of FOMO. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxas1hHFTag7J093Op4Jv-WkUGZxGuDo5Co55fR99KdoMzbG5GXSGzUVl__7_-izpIi9hk-7Q_A7AbjjAKEGsrPBQdLAx6a3kYNPn3cg9skKyUeMRtTh8lEh0ava7AZPZWDUOQlDR8g0OcH6pR9vidA4R5r_bqEhjtQx59lRsKYZOMHl2u/s475/Flowers_For_Algrenon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="306" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxas1hHFTag7J093Op4Jv-WkUGZxGuDo5Co55fR99KdoMzbG5GXSGzUVl__7_-izpIi9hk-7Q_A7AbjjAKEGsrPBQdLAx6a3kYNPn3cg9skKyUeMRtTh8lEh0ava7AZPZWDUOQlDR8g0OcH6pR9vidA4R5r_bqEhjtQx59lRsKYZOMHl2u/s320/Flowers_For_Algrenon.jpg" width="206" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Little did I know this book is the American cousin of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, another novel that has been anchoring the book shelves around the world with un-shakeable gravitas and giving their readers self importance and reading participation trophies since it came out in 1993. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;">While The Alchemist has a global following like soccer, Flowers for Algernon is very American like 'American football' (the one that uses hands to play.) Keyes went as far back as Mark Twain to adopt Huckleberry Finn's lingo, which had made reading Huckleberry Finn a torture for a non-native English speaker like me, who had to read aloud the mis-spelled words to understand what Huck Finn was saying. It is the same with Charlie, the protagonist in Flowers for Algernon. The first several chapters, the one dimensional Charlie jots in his journal is torture for speed readers, grammar-nazis, spell-checkers and me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;">The novel also has a distinct fifties-sixties anti-feminist vibe to it, like the Catcher in the Rye or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A few chapters in, Charlie is seen progressing through his Holden Caulfield phase - a moody, self-absorbed, misogynistic male. There are archetypal female characters propping Charlie up as he goes up and down the slippery IQ slope. It was probably an edgy read in the sixties and seventies. It reads very dated as in outdated and uni-dimensional now. I was expecting a good cry at the end as this was supposedly the reaction most readers had in the end, after being profoundly moved by the plight of Charlie. I almost cried over the time I wasted reading Daniel Keyes essential soft-core reading for sixties dudes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-80019615257366501882023-01-31T23:30:00.001-08:002023-02-01T18:11:05.697-08:00Pakalkkinavu <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>T</b></span>ales of philandering playboys and gullible girls 'destroyed' by these men have provided fodder to many an Indian movie. Pakalkkinavu, (def:<i>daydream) </i> is a 1966 Malayalam film penned by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._T._Vasudevan_Nair" target="_blank">M. T. Vasudevan Nair</a> and directed by S.S.Rajan based on this general theme. <br /></span></span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-KRbtfAtGvxglx4xxPNePvApBxCwLacAyIkslhNDDSI0LfneWiyTo0k2t0d3qzEvdFaNzAQatXS-DNg2rVaZn2htOoSm56b8d_p4u7ZcLXg_IET7u_8ku_14Mv_-czItfmmurUUOIKnMYuGeAFd8-1uUnUm_scD2X0zoOWOe_4jEAemiz/s1491/pakal_kinavu_sathyan_nellikode_bhaskaran.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1042" data-original-width="1491" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-KRbtfAtGvxglx4xxPNePvApBxCwLacAyIkslhNDDSI0LfneWiyTo0k2t0d3qzEvdFaNzAQatXS-DNg2rVaZn2htOoSm56b8d_p4u7ZcLXg_IET7u_8ku_14Mv_-czItfmmurUUOIKnMYuGeAFd8-1uUnUm_scD2X0zoOWOe_4jEAemiz/w400-h280/pakal_kinavu_sathyan_nellikode_bhaskaran.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;">Nellikode Bhaskaran & Sathyan in Sathyan's mid-century modern apartment</span></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Other than M.T's characteristic protagonist, a young man from a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tharavad" target="_blank">tharavad </a>in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Valluvanad" target="_blank">Valluvanadu</a>, the story, the setting and the dialog are very modern compared to other Malayalam films from the sixties. This is the earliest Malayalam movie that I have seen/heard the word "cool" being used by the lead actor in the way we use it now, as a slang term meaning awesome.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Even the young man, played by a young looking 54 year old <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathyan_(actor)" target="_blank">Sathyan </a>is not the typical hero you see in M.T's stories. In fact both male characters in the movie, Sathyan's Babu and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellikode_Bhaskaran" target="_blank">Nellikode Bhaskaran</a>'s Chandran are atypical of the roles each actor used to play during their usual outings. Nellikode Bhaskaran has a meaty role in the movie, a far cry from the side roles I am used to seeing him in.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHJ0-4fbNIU6qYagqEENWC394BGevqeLWejjquQzDQqEUCQoxk1t32BQ7tVeMfalaW15cx76y7vmzfFRgWq_5lYcEsxrQObpa1QunQ1-aqyZ_tpVbqBkU8zSiLaJ2MmmRr8joR2VtZZATMKEgL4d7BgOpsup7V5GBRZDCAiIxRFLFcq0wP/s1634/pakal_kinavu_sathyan_sharada_bhaskaran.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1060" data-original-width="1634" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHJ0-4fbNIU6qYagqEENWC394BGevqeLWejjquQzDQqEUCQoxk1t32BQ7tVeMfalaW15cx76y7vmzfFRgWq_5lYcEsxrQObpa1QunQ1-aqyZ_tpVbqBkU8zSiLaJ2MmmRr8joR2VtZZATMKEgL4d7BgOpsup7V5GBRZDCAiIxRFLFcq0wP/w400-h260/pakal_kinavu_sathyan_sharada_bhaskaran.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sathyan on his motorcycle, Sharada and Bhaskaran looks on</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The movie starts with a motorcycle ride through the city of Bangalore where Babu is seen establishing his character as the rich scion who matches women on his pillion with his outfit of the day. It was an eye-opener for me that even back in the sixties, Bangalore was Keralites' idealized city where girls went to go wild and men were all dashing and debonair. In this city of daydreams, Babu is seen living in a hotel suite decorated with tasteful pieces of mid-century modern furniture. He drinks beer for water and plays savior to jobless youth like Chandran when he feels like it, with only one condition - no one is supposed to give him life advice. Keeping your mouth shut vs homelessness, that is an easy choice for Chandran.<br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A very young Sharada as Malathi makes appearance as Chandran's acquaintance. But the audience and Babu knows, try all he might Chandran is not going to get the girl. The girls usually have a incomprehensible fondness for dudes on motorcycles and Malathi turns out no different in the end.</span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt_cM8C326VwwK3usBm8ffa0yBgaBZpBi7zzIDV25f5853nOQqpOZdIGkRJnVB5CdBFRF-wwfRcy2YKNVPfw8BcdosugzFoqLc6m81ODjBVXlvR8xvPiWC2AaSjZt1KpLJU0rytk58424_8_CvO0dLpiqbjaXSK5u-svRRhziY1r2_7d1H/s1339/pakal_kinavu_sathyan_sharada.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="1339" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt_cM8C326VwwK3usBm8ffa0yBgaBZpBi7zzIDV25f5853nOQqpOZdIGkRJnVB5CdBFRF-wwfRcy2YKNVPfw8BcdosugzFoqLc6m81ODjBVXlvR8xvPiWC2AaSjZt1KpLJU0rytk58424_8_CvO0dLpiqbjaXSK5u-svRRhziY1r2_7d1H/w400-h230/pakal_kinavu_sathyan_sharada.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;">Sharada & Sathyan - 30+ years age difference separates the stars often paired togehter </span></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The second half of the movie shifts back to Kerala from Bangalore and in Malathi's place we have Vasanthi as Shaari, Malathi's younger sister. While it is melodramatic at some places as was the trend of the times, the treatment of the movie, including the ending is contemporary. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><br /><br /> <p></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-62133710287585277552022-12-30T19:49:00.006-08:002023-02-12T23:17:47.520-08:00One Hundred Years with The Problem of China<span style="font-family: Lato;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">O</span></b>ne hundred years ago, Bertrand Russell identified the potential, the promise and the puzzle that is China in his book "<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13940/13940-h/13940-h.htm" target="_blank">The Problem of China</a>." Russell is a multi-dimensional personality who has started to interest me during my recent expeditions in philosophy. I picked 'The Problem of China', on a whim to understand Russell - the philosopher thinker, born to an aristocratic English family, curious what he had read in the tea leaves about the slumbering dragon China was at the time. </span><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Bertrand Russell spent 10 months in China starting in the fall of 1920 to July 1921 teaching philosophy at Peking University. He arrived in China towards the end of the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Fourth_Movement" target="_blank"> May Fourth movement</a>. Chinese intellectuals were looking at Russell and other western philosophers like John Dewey to propose solutions for 'fixing' China. While Russell did not provide any silver bullet cures to fix the Chinese system, he remained a strong advocate of China in the West for the rest of his life.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUhWvAa_hvuA9uckjRGfniCuxVhdPAI3ErQNi8GstjyZtAg3grm2janifhKSlDCFXYM-Xvr8DSGr7d3a7I1wwgfpJ-j0pyFE38hYoYhsUTVRQWyqu2iGOoYFYQmw5DpHPtQBLaDI5WzegG7cCkkh-i3GTPfWtq8G5Ay7aAkvIe7dvXBIZ7/s1008/The_Problem_of_China_Russell.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="573" data-original-width="1008" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUhWvAa_hvuA9uckjRGfniCuxVhdPAI3ErQNi8GstjyZtAg3grm2janifhKSlDCFXYM-Xvr8DSGr7d3a7I1wwgfpJ-j0pyFE38hYoYhsUTVRQWyqu2iGOoYFYQmw5DpHPtQBLaDI5WzegG7cCkkh-i3GTPfWtq8G5Ay7aAkvIe7dvXBIZ7/w640-h365/The_Problem_of_China_Russell.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;">Bertrand Russell (seated on the right) in China</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;">1920s China is a version of China that no longer exists except in history books. Yet I found Russell's century old observations and analysis prophetic and far-sighted. It also gave me a hint why Chinese people and Chinese culture with its invisible roots still binding it to Confucianism would accept certain things that people living in other modern societies would not accept without a fight. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Excerpts from the book:</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span><span style="font-family: times; text-align: justify;"><i>"In China, though wars and revolutions have occurred constantly, Confucian calm has survived them all, making them less terrible for the participants, and making all who were not immediately involved hold aloof."</i></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: times;"><span>"</span><span style="text-align: justify;">It has been customary in China, for many centuries, for the literati to be pure Confucians, skeptical in religion but not in morals, while the rest of the population believed and practiced all three religions simultaneously. The Chinese have not the belief, which we owe to the Jews, that if one religion is true, all others must be false. At the present day, however, there appears to be very little in the way of religion in China"</span></span></i></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;">For the world of the future to be in balance, this is what Bertrand Russell proposed in 1922</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><i><span style="font-family: times;"><span>"</span><span style="text-align: justify;">in the long run, the Chinese cannot escape economic domination by foreign Powers unless China becomes military or the foreign Powers become Socialistic, because the capitalist system involves in its very essence a predatory relation of the strong towards the weak, internationally as well as nationally. A strong military China would be a disaster; therefore Socialism in Europe and America affords the only ultimate solution."</span></span></i></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Remember the paragraph below was written right after WWI. No historian could write about China without delving into its relationship with Japan.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: times;">"A war between America and Japan would be a very terrible thing in itself, and a still more terrible thing in its consequences. It would destroy Japanese civilization, ensure the subjugation of China to Western culture, and launch America upon a career of world-wide militaristic imperialism."</span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;">Here is prophet Russell again,</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: times;">"To sum up: the real government of the world is in the hands of the big financiers, except on questions which rouse passionate public interest. No doubt the exclusion of Asiatics from America and the Dominions is due to popular pressure, and is against <a name="Page_183"></a>the interests of big finance. "</span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;">Why are Chinese people the way the way they are?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: times;">"In Chinese poetry there is an apparent absence of passion which is due to the same practice of under-statement. They consider that a wise man should always remain calm, and though they have their passionate moments (being in fact a very excitable race), they do not wish to perpetuate them in art, because they think ill of them....In art they aim at being exquisite, and in life at being reasonable. There is no admiration for the ruthless strong man, or for the unrestrained expression of passion...</span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: times;">...Nothing astonishes a European more in the Chinese than their patience.....They think not in decades, but in centuries. They have been conquered before, first by the Tartars and then by the Manchus; but in both cases they absorbed their conquerors. Chinese civilization persisted, unchanged; and after a few generations the invaders became more Chinese than their subjects...."</span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Lato;">Russell's outlook for China from a century ago</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: times;">"China is as yet only slightly industrialized, but the industrial possibilities of the country are very great, and it may be taken as nearly certain that there will be a rapid development throughout the next few decades."</span></i></div>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-58262517525806673082022-12-18T18:22:00.001-08:002022-12-18T18:26:12.812-08:00We Didn't Start the Fire in 2022<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="ujudUb"><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>W</b></span>e didn't start the fire in 2022 either, but a few winds of change blew into my life. Adjusting my sails to the changing patterns of currents and events kept me away from updating this blog. The thoughts and reviews I would have otherwise gathered were thrown to the wind in favor of my efforts in keeping the bow straight on the boat of life. Here are some titles of movies, shows, books, events and places I crossed paths in 2022 captured using <a href="https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/billyjoel/wedidntstartthefire.html" target="_blank">the timeless template </a>provided by the master fire marshal, Billy Joel. See you in 2023.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span><br /></p>
<p align="left" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>Sky
Castle</span><span>, </span><span>Hail
Caesar</span><span>, </span><span>Forrest
Gump</span><span>, </span><span>Candy
Jar</span><span><br />
</span><span>Delhi
Crime Season Three</span><span>, </span><span>Devil
in Ohio,</span><span><br />
</span><span>Twenty
Five Twenty One</span><span>, </span><span>Oceans
Eleven n Twelve</span><span><br />
</span><span>The
Lincoln Lawyer, Rush Hour 1, 2 & 3</span></span></span></p><p align="left" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span><br />
</span><span>Surviving
Death</span><span>, </span><span>Russian
Doll, ‘83</span><span>, Moxie<br />
B</span><span>orrego</span><span>,
</span><span>Shards</span><span> of
Her</span><span>, and </span><span>Ozark
Season Four</span><span><br />
</span><span>Inventing
Anna, The Seven Lives of Lea</span><span><br />
</span><span>The
Tinder Swindler</span><span>, and </span><span>Archive
81</span><span> </span></span></span>
</p><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">
</span></span><p align="left" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>We
didn't start the fire<br />
It was always burning<br />
Since the
world's been turning<br />
We didn't start the fire<br />
No, we didn't
light it<br />But we tried to fight it </span></span></span></p><p align="left" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span> </span></span></span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>Prime Video, here comes Disconnect and Rushmore</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>Outer Range, Patriot, Reacher Season One</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>Gehraiyaan, Marrowbone, Jo & Jo, The Joneses</span></span></span></div><div class="ujudUb"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>The House of Gucci, The Virgin Suicides </span><br /></span></span><p><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>Tesla, Prometheus, Modern Love
Hyderabad<br />
The Wolf of Wall Street, Dead Again,
</span><span>Richland</span><span><br />
</span><span>Stanford</span><span>,
</span><span>TriCities</span><span>, </span><span>Goliath, Three Pines</span><span><br />
P</span><span>aper
Girls</span><span>, </span><span>Thirteen
Lives</span><span>, </span><span>Leaving
Las Vegas</span></span></span></p><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">
</span></span><p><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>We didn't start the fire<br />
It was always
burning, since the world's been turning<br />
We didn't start the
fire<br />
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it</span></span></span></p><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">
</span></span><p><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>Lionel Messi, World Cup, Stand By Me,
Startup<br />
Bad Vegan, Katla, and Minnal Murali<br />
Manifest Season
Four, Never Have I Ever<br />
Young Wallander, Anatomy of a Scandal</span></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span><br />
Hasan Minhaj, Trevor Noah, FIFA got
Uncovered<br />
The Man from Toronto, Boeing is in Downfall<br />
Darlings,
Take your Pills and The Vanishing<br />
I am Mother, Requiem, and The
Fame Game</span></span></span></p><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">
</span></span><p><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span>We didn't start the fire<br />
It was always
burning<br />
Since the world's been turning<br />
We didn't start the
fire<br />
No, we didn't light it<br />
But we tried to fight it<br />
<br />
</span><span>Read
a</span><span>way </span><span>Hoffman</span><span>,
</span><span>calls to Steal this Book</span><span><br />
</span><span>How
To Raise a Feminist Son</span><span><br />
</span><span>Rage
Against the Minivan</span><span>, </span><span>once
again Walden</span><span><br />
</span><span>Stranger
Things Season Four</span><span>, </span><span>Pieces
of Her</span><span><br />
<br />
</span><span>Hold
Tight,</span><span> </span><span>How
to Change Your Mind</span><span><br />
</span><span>1899,</span><span>
blown away, what else do I have to say?<br />
<br />
We didn't start
the fire<br />
It was always burning<br />
Since the world's been
turning<br />
We didn't start the fire<br />
No, we didn't light it<br />
But
we tried to fight it</span></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></p></div></div></div>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-90078851527895285482022-05-30T21:21:00.003-07:002022-05-31T17:44:41.531-07:00Oru CBI Diary Kuripp : Reviewing the diary entry three decades later<span style="font-family: Lato;">TL;DR : Re-watching Oru CBI Diary Kuripp thirty plus years later was somewhat anti-climatic. </span><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: Lato; font-size: large;"><b>O</b></span><span style="font-family: Lato;">ru CBI Diary Kuripp (</span><i><span style="font-family: times;">transl: A CBI Diary entry</span></i><span style="font-family: Lato;">) is a Malayalam police procedural movie from 1988. It introduced one of the iconic film characters of Malayalam movie world - Sethurama Iyer, a CBI officer (Central Bureau of Investigation, India's premier investigative agency, like the FBI in the U.S) and a master investigator par excellence. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibKJJjJ-mcZI1CX4M0Uqfy5bkl-Idpqq4aglAJ8i9anLKdCatJyoupGj0qCD6hwsAEt7P2z3kgl45RGN_xJjN3q4e9sPsBuWL_MKNuXwSFjqTPfoHzWc4CdUZgBi_1j62HeTlSfsjnXW922u0qFvznDryzuh2RJu8qG1Ng2Lqw5xuSk-7v/s910/Oru_CBI_Diary_Kuripp_SethuramaIyer_Mammotty.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" data-original-height="567" data-original-width="910" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibKJJjJ-mcZI1CX4M0Uqfy5bkl-Idpqq4aglAJ8i9anLKdCatJyoupGj0qCD6hwsAEt7P2z3kgl45RGN_xJjN3q4e9sPsBuWL_MKNuXwSFjqTPfoHzWc4CdUZgBi_1j62HeTlSfsjnXW922u0qFvznDryzuh2RJu8qG1Ng2Lqw5xuSk-7v/w640-h398/Oru_CBI_Diary_Kuripp_SethuramaIyer_Mammotty.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small;">L to R: Mammootty as CBI officer Sethurama Iyer, Janardhanan & Prathapachandran, Oru CBI Diary Kuripp (1988)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></div></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Oru CBI Diary Kuripp has a decent storyline, albeit slow paced. At the center was a murder that looked like a suicide which a corrupt nexus of policemen and rich businessmen were trying to quash. In addition to Mammootty as the lead, there were some memorable performances like Sukumaran's DySP Devadas and Captian Raju's DySP Prabhakara Varma. The script was alright, nothing I would go ga-ga about. At the time though it was considered a pathbreaker in terms of how the story was presented and had several one-liners that were often repeated and re-used in other movies and in real life.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;">One of the most recycled concepts from the movie was the detectives' use of a humanoid dummy to rule out the possibilities of suicide vs murder. Several movies, plays, comedians and even us little kids would bring up the need for using a dummy for anything that required any sort of investigation. From missing erasers to stolen vehicles to movie murders, the dummy test was an essential requisite to solve the issue at hand. The most famous nod to the dummy test is from another super hit Malayalam movie released later that same year, Pattanapravesham, <a href="https://youtu.be/Kcfbspo7UDI?t=1330" target="_blank">here it is @22:10 min</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwH2jr5uSBehgLKHLTlpPjKPUZBqx5fPqyMSpDNHXDJsSpC2p0RSReI_spn_MhVskPI2LlalgHpoOtJP9RSRzGyTIWrZoyLJW6qNiX7PyR4nsHeDPAv25jyfE3hj1bMWwX7nbJJr3ONVKNVQnFkK-61AEgK6tsV3MyZoSUHnUAXIBNzw1A/s988/Oru_CBI_Diary_Kuripp_Dummy.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="988" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwH2jr5uSBehgLKHLTlpPjKPUZBqx5fPqyMSpDNHXDJsSpC2p0RSReI_spn_MhVskPI2LlalgHpoOtJP9RSRzGyTIWrZoyLJW6qNiX7PyR4nsHeDPAv25jyfE3hj1bMWwX7nbJJr3ONVKNVQnFkK-61AEgK6tsV3MyZoSUHnUAXIBNzw1A/w640-h398/Oru_CBI_Diary_Kuripp_Dummy.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small;">Suresh Gopi and Mammotty - the CBI detectives attempting the dummy test from the terrace of the victim's house</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Oru CBI Diary Kuripp was so influential that it led to 4 sequels, the latest one released in 2022, called CBI 5: The Brain. In all the five CBI movies, Mammotty plays the same character, Sethurama Iyer at various stages of his life. The other movies in the series are Jagratha (1989), Sethurama Iyer CBI (2004), Nerariyan CBI (2005) and the last one CBI 5 released this year. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;">With the kind nostalgic buildup yesteryears' hits bring up, I was hoping to get the same feel for the first Sethurama Iyer movie I had experienced as a kid. But I had overlooked 30+ years of steady and diverse movie diet I had been consuming and the experiences of the person I am now. In fact some other Malayalam investigative movies from the same era like Padmarajan's Kariyilakkattu Pole (1986) or V. K. Pavithran's Utharam (1989) or Joshiy's Ee Thanutha Veluppan Kaalathu (1990) are investigative crime dramas that have aged better. In the last two Mammootty plays the role of the investigator. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="font-family: Lato;"><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Lato;">The biggest bone I have to pick with the movie is with the character of Sethurama Iyer. He is a la Sherlock Holmes with a government job (much coveted in India) and a Brahmin to the boot. The latter part is crucial in establishing the ace detective's credentials since no Indian worth the centuries of casteist indoctrination will dare to question the wisdom or intelligence of a Brahmin, since these qualities are god-given to Brahmins and therefore indisputable.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: Lato;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Although the older me is not happy with a brahmin detective I recently read that it was the business acumen of the actor </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammootty" style="font-family: Lato;" target="_blank">Mammootty</a><span style="font-family: Lato;"> (who btw is a Muslim IRL), when approached to play the lead, made the suggestion to change the character to that of a Brahmin detective. Originally the makers had named the character Ali Imran, a Muslim CBI officer. But Mammootty felt the film will be more successful and unique, if the lead character was a Brahmin. The man had foresight and knew the pulse of his audience. No wonder even in his seventies, his choice of scripts/roles is impeccable and he still rules the Kerala box office.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNYP6bPVdKT10mrBw0hQABhH-nClrzeOlFAdcsz8SeDhg_r4dFk47cTFXDn6lZfmamBT5cjHQqy5odV7lX012bTCwOIaYYLNYFDhMHih6Gg5b_mWzKMcp6JKnRJeXwlRf4yH_naT9laMLFfyjOHTXIXcvDVvwQA_M22L-HZObIrSuHOZ20/s832/Mammootty_Bhesshma_Parvam.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="832" data-original-width="671" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNYP6bPVdKT10mrBw0hQABhH-nClrzeOlFAdcsz8SeDhg_r4dFk47cTFXDn6lZfmamBT5cjHQqy5odV7lX012bTCwOIaYYLNYFDhMHih6Gg5b_mWzKMcp6JKnRJeXwlRf4yH_naT9laMLFfyjOHTXIXcvDVvwQA_M22L-HZObIrSuHOZ20/w516-h640/Mammootty_Bhesshma_Parvam.JPG" width="516" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small;">Mammootty as Michael, a 'retired' don in 2022 movie Bheeshma Parvam</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;">Whether Oru CBI Diary Kuripp belongs to the fine wine category or not, whether Sethurama should have been an Iyer (a Brahmin last name) or not, the CBI series of movies gave Malayalam movie industry a long running, unforgettable character with charismatic gravitas that fit Mammotty's acting style to a T. <br /><br /></span></div>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-54099185337150091262022-05-29T16:24:00.002-07:002022-05-29T16:31:10.202-07:00Stand by Me : One of the best coming-of-age movies ever<p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">W</span></b>e were all twelve once. If we had regular childhoods, I did, we know there is nothing like those endless childhood summers with our friends-in-arms. That pit in the stomach sense of nostalgia of things we lost as grownups is captured in the heart-tugging lines from Stand By Me - "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">I often make the mistake of forgetting how amazing a writer Stephen King is. He is so mainstream with his paperbacks overpopulating airport kiosks, that one falls into the trap of underestimating King's story telling abilities. Stand By Me is one of the novellas (The Body) from Stephen King's book Different Seasons. The director Rob Reiner said that this was the one movie among all his movies, that he connected with the most. Makes sense, the movie is set in late 50s and Rob Reiner was a 12 year old in 1959, just like the four protagonists in the movie.</span><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA5AE6NhCTeCKjc09hfCKRsMaJR-syQg0iTKgilb8xeaxbTSleyunZEgSzVJ5Ur-peDXzaEDgzFhxFra6PRT4B0Hg4Bz5jqFYCC3Qd72HmBPvJdbY4jeffRPKxxOlqZKgSd4zN55eyqi08zTUtKU3SZf-wCqgom1GNfgSRdp_d53tHOWnS/s1024/Stand_By_Me_River_Phoenix.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA5AE6NhCTeCKjc09hfCKRsMaJR-syQg0iTKgilb8xeaxbTSleyunZEgSzVJ5Ur-peDXzaEDgzFhxFra6PRT4B0Hg4Bz5jqFYCC3Qd72HmBPvJdbY4jeffRPKxxOlqZKgSd4zN55eyqi08zTUtKU3SZf-wCqgom1GNfgSRdp_d53tHOWnS/w640-h480/Stand_By_Me_River_Phoenix.png" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">The story follows the events of a couple of nights - Labor Day weekend 1959, in the lives of four 12 year olds in a small town in Oregon called Castle Rock (Rob Reiner named his movie production house Castle Rock later.) In the picture above from L to R they are - Gordie Lachance played by Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix as Chris Chambers, Vern Tessio essayed by Jerry O'Connell and Corey Feldman as Teddy Duchamp. </span></p><p></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7P4pbbXeCDR0r72Z9-grw_nfExXRQGP2C2kmmjDOVYg7lCj-jh9wgh5Ut4TAojAtWOS1kUBUkiCYQVA-I6Fbw9b5tabrQ36GxPj4DiRI3XA5yTUZydicqSsP1huPRM1kfEl8_2Kx572CABWRKV3l8D4aoTLU_0_UARRZAs5BgAOIbxS7/s827/Stand_By_Me_Poster_Rob_Reiner.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Montserrat; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="827" data-original-width="580" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7P4pbbXeCDR0r72Z9-grw_nfExXRQGP2C2kmmjDOVYg7lCj-jh9wgh5Ut4TAojAtWOS1kUBUkiCYQVA-I6Fbw9b5tabrQ36GxPj4DiRI3XA5yTUZydicqSsP1huPRM1kfEl8_2Kx572CABWRKV3l8D4aoTLU_0_UARRZAs5BgAOIbxS7/w448-h640/Stand_By_Me_Poster_Rob_Reiner.jpeg" width="448" /></a></p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">The Sixties was around the corner. Kids stayed out late till the sun went down, rode without seatbelts and on truck-beds of strangers' trucks and a penny had more value than what it cost to produce a penny. It was the search for some buried and lost pennies that led one of the characters, Vern to gather his friends and go on a quest to recover a dead body.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">The four kids go into the woods armed with the innocence and invincibility of childhood and emerge out of it robed off those powers. Although all of the four actors live their roles, the one that made the most impression on me is the late actor River Phoenix. His sensibility, commitment and passion shines through his portrayal of Chris Chambers - the intelligent and sensitive roughneck who wants a break from his family's ill reputation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;">Whenever I watch this movie it brings tears to my eyes not just because of the nature of the story, but it also reminds me what a big loss to the movie industry (and probably to humanity as well) River Phoenix's death was. I wrap this up with a quote by another one of the actors we lost young, here is Brandon Lee in his final interview, quoting Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, this quote is also Brandon's tombstone. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tz6GlbJgU1c" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: trebuchet; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: trebuchet; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-align: left;">Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really… How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless..."</span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Montserrat;"><br /></span></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-15517197933127253932022-03-30T22:11:00.000-07:002022-03-30T22:11:25.259-07:0083 : A movie review, reliving Prudential Cup almost 40 years later<p><span style="font-family: Lato;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">1983</span></b> Prudential Cup is my cup of frisson on demand. I just have to glance at the pictures of a grinning Kapil Dev holding the '83 world cricket cup or people overrunning the stadium at Lords to get auto-response goosebumps. As a grade schooler, I had my own scrapbook filled with newspaper cuttings of India's first ever win of a world cup of any sort.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBV2Q9VicU8qLQ7CRWWN6DMq3yPAP5tnVFDLXSX7wXhQDresj0v7zWqbidWJaIUT-kiPDgKuVNvK2SuKyEVWFo4-NWd54_a9K43jksG3DQuYZgwewa8QxSZd26j7rzjm0jvxHU4hT-DulDN6tgKEM_OPTjNHmsb6UOBetXcJ9ZNt1Kicxl/s984/KapilDev_Prudential_Cup_83.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="783" data-original-width="984" height="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBV2Q9VicU8qLQ7CRWWN6DMq3yPAP5tnVFDLXSX7wXhQDresj0v7zWqbidWJaIUT-kiPDgKuVNvK2SuKyEVWFo4-NWd54_a9K43jksG3DQuYZgwewa8QxSZd26j7rzjm0jvxHU4hT-DulDN6tgKEM_OPTjNHmsb6UOBetXcJ9ZNt1Kicxl/w640-h510/KapilDev_Prudential_Cup_83.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Whether India likes it or not, English and Cricket are the two lasting colonial legacies the British left the Indians with, in return for Kohinoor and centuries of </span>continuous<span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> looting of India's resources and treasures. Both English (the language) and cricket have stood India in good stead, have been important catalysts helping to </span></span><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">grow</span><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> the Indian economy and establishing India on the global scene. The British East India company is the reason why this blog is in English. My love for cricket is the reason for this post.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiT7wxp5J7aOAll-oefXcj6Gv8QTaudLcHdQRvBkt9pu27HTAeoKZ5vz1mc3F8oChmC6i3AdyVNMzyRQFrCBOHOoNSZy9EQL-Azrnntt5tfk_ka98Ie92nZ6wHCvy_8WKCm4eAcZF_8JhMP2tRYdoucTQYRR_iVN7PkAiqOVWGUUzShxAu/s950/Prudential_Cup_83_Indian_Team.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="677" data-original-width="950" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiT7wxp5J7aOAll-oefXcj6Gv8QTaudLcHdQRvBkt9pu27HTAeoKZ5vz1mc3F8oChmC6i3AdyVNMzyRQFrCBOHOoNSZy9EQL-Azrnntt5tfk_ka98Ie92nZ6wHCvy_8WKCm4eAcZF_8JhMP2tRYdoucTQYRR_iVN7PkAiqOVWGUUzShxAu/w640-h456/Prudential_Cup_83_Indian_Team.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;">Living deep in no-Indian (East Indian, not native American) country, I was waiting for a streaming service to release 83, Kabir Khan's retelling of India's 1983 Prudential Cup journey. Finally it aired on Netflix last week. The best part about 83 is the effort the director and his team have put in getting the details right. The players, their playing styles and mannerisms, the events and situations they find themselves in have all been depicted as close to reality as possible. I know, because they are in my newspaper clippings scrapbook :-)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;">Another redeeming point for the director is he succeeded in capturing the swagger and the intimidating presence that was the West Indies team of the late 70s and 80s. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXxqW-dOBj593yqcrfggYlNEHtPtEqD6ZfkLYazMWPXXe2s2mVhcbhyX8wfjcmzE4JdAMOm0MKFA1GZDyQq7vajXA4kedu77j_v6wkB8NjijFHgaKs9QFMc69R8RX0m4lzQ23H4whcZJUXHn7VQSvFNlHMbyjScBgppQgygp1zV6_J8IDI/s956/Prudential_Cup_83_Teams.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="956" height="470" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXxqW-dOBj593yqcrfggYlNEHtPtEqD6ZfkLYazMWPXXe2s2mVhcbhyX8wfjcmzE4JdAMOm0MKFA1GZDyQq7vajXA4kedu77j_v6wkB8NjijFHgaKs9QFMc69R8RX0m4lzQ23H4whcZJUXHn7VQSvFNlHMbyjScBgppQgygp1zV6_J8IDI/w640-h470/Prudential_Cup_83_Teams.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></span></div>Considering the kind of attention to detail given to the style and stance of the individual Indian players and the cool West Indians, I have tried to overlook the cringe inducing jingoistic or sentimental elements that a Bollywood movie cannot do without, which 83 couldn't get rid off completely either. A fictional </span></span><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;">ceasefire at the farthest outpost in the Himalayas on the day of the finals! I am just glad that we narrowly escaped suffering a patriotic song sung by soldiers in sub-zero temperatures. </span><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;">It didn't do well at the box office despite critics (and I) loving it. Maybe the current audience, mainly </span><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;">millennials</span><span style="font-family: Lato; text-align: left;"> and younger, could not relate to it? </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Lato;">The actors, including Pankaj Tripathi as the team's manager have given great performances. Kapil's Devils as the Indian team was called back then, are represented in the movie by Saqib Saleem playing Mohinder Amarnath , Tahir Raj Bhasin as Sunil Gavaskar, Jatin Sarna as Yashpal Sharma, K. Srikant played by Jiiva, Sandip Patil played by his own son Chirag Patil, Nishant Dahiya as Roger Binny and others. The greatest discovery for me though, is Ranveer Singh, who essays the role of the captain Kapil Dev Nikhanj.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Lato;">Ranveer Singh, with his penchant for outrageous outfits, has the persona befitting an offspring of a peacock and an eccentric fashion designer if such a coupling could have happened. I had never really given him much thought as an actor. In fact when they announced casting Ranveer Singh as Kapil Dev, instead of say someone like Randeep Hooda who is from the same area in India as Kapil Dev and is a sportsman in addition to being an actor, as a fan of Kapil Dev I was disappointed. </span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ01h5ewi4wsKguSHjlOBT4qMNuJoWV4pPUZdFv-8gtme66NOb-GkafmMszf7wszLUsZAMdZ-r-VZBIxP14yzqDJc12__l7CluJD6ww9VtP8lLzzlMcBlUBevxojrqTXYAu6LE5mI5un3MZdUyKbgfHPzr-9UpzbqihggbhtKkwI26X8uH/s805/Ranveer_Singh_As_Kapil_Dev.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="805" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ01h5ewi4wsKguSHjlOBT4qMNuJoWV4pPUZdFv-8gtme66NOb-GkafmMszf7wszLUsZAMdZ-r-VZBIxP14yzqDJc12__l7CluJD6ww9VtP8lLzzlMcBlUBevxojrqTXYAu6LE5mI5un3MZdUyKbgfHPzr-9UpzbqihggbhtKkwI26X8uH/w640-h354/Ranveer_Singh_As_Kapil_Dev.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ranveer Singh as Kapil Dev</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Lato;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then I saw Ranveer Singh in 83 as Kapil Dev. The entire production team and the actor himself have gone into so much detail getting into the skin of real Kapil Dev, that the audience is unable to see Ranveer Singh anymore. That's when I realized that Ranveer Singh has been proving me wrong with his every recent outing - whether it is Gully Boy or Padmavat or 83, the guy can act. At this point I would rate him as one of the best amongst the current bunch of younger Bollywood actors. </span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Lato;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Lato;">83 is not Chak De India, which is probably the best Bollywood sports movie in my book. But it is history. Kabir Khan's 83, while it could have been better, has done a decent job depicting a momentous turning point in India's cultural history.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.6667px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div><div><br /></div><p><br /></p>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5450665.post-72288424303218857302022-02-28T23:11:00.007-08:002022-03-01T19:37:28.526-08:00Munich: The Edge of War<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span>C</span></b></span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">arl Jung's theory of synchronicity is about </span><span style="border: 0px; color: #202122; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the </span><span style="border: 0px; color: #202122; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved. </span></span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The reason I bring up synchronicity is I believe I had a light brush with it through the movie Munich: The Edge of War. A couple of days after watching the movie, we are in a history-repeats-itself situation with Ukraine, just as it had happened in the movie and history in 1938.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Netflix released Munich: The Edge of War on Jan 21, 2022. Maybe it was a far-sighted move on Netflix's part where their geopolitical team was scouring current events to find subject material for new movies. The team identified Munich 1938 as a plausible candidate to make a movie that people can relate to in the current times, when we have Hitler-lite dictating over Russia and looming like a menacing cloud over Europe. <span class="owaSmartSuggestionRemoveOnSend" color="inherit" id="SmartSuggestionsKeyword437332" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Search for suggestions">Congratulations</span><span color="inherit" id="" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title=""> earthlings</span>, you were almost wrung out to dry by a global pandemic, how about World War III now? This is the roaring twenties, all over again, the excitement never stops.</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A sucker for war movies, I had to put Munich: TEoW in my watchlist soon after it was released. It sat there languishing like the rest of the movies in My List, awaiting for my scroll button to pause on it and click Play. The click Play happened near Valentine's Day, a season I keep aside for watching war movies. But with my movie watching ADD at its peak, the </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">bureaucratic</span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> nature of the movie felt a bit too slow for me and I left it there, after watching for about ten minutes. Then I picked it up again last week and finished it off soon after. </span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Going into the movie I had no idea about the Munich Accord of 1938 or Hitler's invasion of Sudetenland (former </span>Czechoslovakia, current whatever<span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">) , which was the precursor of WWII. I am familiar with most of the famous battles of WWII thanks</span></span><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> to WWII in Color (Netflix), but I am mostly clueless about the events leading up to the war, except having a general idea that Hitler's megalomaniacal territorial ambitions and the program of ethnic cleansing for racial purity eventually resulted in the war. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Munich: TEoW plays out during the days before and during the signing of the Munich Accord in 1938. It blends history with fiction, where the fictional lead characters are two young government officials who went to school at Oxford together and are now on the opposing sides of the geo-political divide. Both are seen trying to prevent a war, within their extremely limited spheres of influence.</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRO3V_ZMfUAU6I7DWNOg7e1dHSr_A3-gWo2Xzon9RGtd4AX1K_XBEOUvt4wF9eWXJR4HI63A0LrKG5oTxkmsXBIoncssQLrmYYQ8zswQNPGY4DAgx0Kufk6wiNBwZWBzKRGLKZRV3WZZobdjlr9_H8L4BFOYwrqDtu_tJa67iGKh-pt8PC=s800" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="325" data-original-width="800" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRO3V_ZMfUAU6I7DWNOg7e1dHSr_A3-gWo2Xzon9RGtd4AX1K_XBEOUvt4wF9eWXJR4HI63A0LrKG5oTxkmsXBIoncssQLrmYYQ8zswQNPGY4DAgx0Kufk6wiNBwZWBzKRGLKZRV3WZZobdjlr9_H8L4BFOYwrqDtu_tJa67iGKh-pt8PC=w640-h260" width="640" /></a></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Based on Robert Harris's best seller and directed by Christian Schwochow, George Mackay who according to me is the most German looking English man, plays the English civil servant Hugh Legat and <span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jannis Niewöhner</span> is his college-mate who is now a German diplomat. Then British PM, Neville </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Chamberlain has been given a makeover or a whitewash and is</span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> portrayed in the movie by the indomitable Jeremy Irons. The movie says that Chamberlain's much critiqued move was him deliberately allowing to tarnish his image in history for the sake buying time for the the rest of the Europe (or Allies as they will be called later) by sacrificing Sudetenland.</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1938 in the movie feels like a time just like we are in now. Europe is poised at the edge of war, triggered by the actions of a madcap dictator who looks and acts like a man who must have had his black belt in judo revoked recently. Instead of Sudetenland we have Ukraine, a democratic nation whose President - the (multi) Talented Mr. Zelensky, is fighting on the front lines with his troops defending their capital city - Kyiv. But unlike 1938, it is not just European nations who are joining hands to fight the aggressor - here is a sample of one of the Allied partnerships* of 2022. </span></span></span></span></div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"></span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjlDePaqPyMboDk9BEdQDbeAWr0653-ZvcRHwrWy52T03ofo6qmdHTtPx9JoRbd2RLue29l39tPYoR50VUQeFk-OZDZiTSr_4K32eq5lWSzKkaw2AT2OKOvsZqu9E8OlVOLSnQ4TpwiXmqalgUFiMpeg6_vxb7QyA-zFHshJrOqNIFjCE_f=s500" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjlDePaqPyMboDk9BEdQDbeAWr0653-ZvcRHwrWy52T03ofo6qmdHTtPx9JoRbd2RLue29l39tPYoR50VUQeFk-OZDZiTSr_4K32eq5lWSzKkaw2AT2OKOvsZqu9E8OlVOLSnQ4TpwiXmqalgUFiMpeg6_vxb7QyA-zFHshJrOqNIFjCE_f=w400-h400" width="400" /></span></a></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">*pornhub part was fake news</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;">Yes, here we are. Showing a significant reversal from their post WWII stance, Germany has invested 100 billion Euros for its military expansion. Poland is praying that German forces will march into their country and save their back side if/when the need arises. Switzerland has stopped signing its emails with the pronoun - 'neutral' which was specifically invented for them right after Napoleon's reign and has announced sanctions against Russia, causing Russian oligarchs scrambling to buy piggy banks. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Source Sans Pro;">In case we are still not convinced that this stuff is serious, Sweden and Finland who are the lesser known step-cousins of Switzerland and</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Source Sans Pro";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Source Sans Pro";">have never picked any sides just like their more well known cousin, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Source Sans Pro";">have also picked a side, joining the Pope, Poland and Anonymous. It is not Munich which is at the edge of war in 2022, all of Europe is at the edge of unity. </span></span></div>A Movie Watchdoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08871671218057215376noreply@blogger.com0