Back off Bharathiraja.

The recently held D40 event in Tamil Nadu, India, was meant to commemorate the South Indian Director Associations 40^th year. That was the intent, but the whole show ended up as praise fest for one single director whose last hit was when Bush was the US president. Senior.

What ticked me off was a short film that glorified him and began with the line (in Tamil): In 1977, Tamil cinema gained its independence…” The loving, nay, lusting tribute showed clips from his films, amidst recent shots of Bharathiraja, walking, sitting, reading, writing, thinking, making love to furniture, etc. If it doesn’t make you nauseous, it would certainly want to make you take another shower. Especially, when the narrator lovingly detailed a technique where our director intercuts a shot of the heroine 20 or so times with a shot of a flapping butterfly. The insect could be male, but Bharathiraja is not a certified entomologist.

One of the credits often offered to Bharathiraja, who have not denied it, is that he moved the camera from studio to the rustic village site as per the 1977 debut, 16 Vayathinile. In short, in actual location. Wrong. It has been done by the filmmakers of the past, just take a look at Bheem Singh's Pazhani, the paddy field is beautifully shot for Aarodum song. Ditto, Mr. Singh’s Bhagapirivinai. Want to go back? How about the fabulously popular Manapaara Madukatti song in Makkalai Petra Magarasi.

But they are only song sequence, you might say. Actually there are other shots where the director painstakingly have taken the camera out of the studio and laid the tripod on actual ground. The thing is, it was very costly, and labour intensive to take the camera out, and as with Hollywood in the early days most portion of films were shot in the studio itself. 1977 was rather late for “Look ma, I am at real location” praise.

Most of his films are just plain romance themed, love stories, couples from various background and age group facing objections. 16 Vayathinile talks of a forbidden love between a simple village girl and a handsome (70s effeminate way) doctor and a limping simpleton, or was it a simple limpaton? Likewise, Kizhakke Pogum Rayil, this time he added train, classical dance by someone who can’t dance for nuts, and introducing Sudhakar who will go on to be a successfulsmall time comedian in Telugu films. Puthiya Varpugal is yet another love story set in the village.

He took a break from village, came up with excellent Sigappu Rojakkal, one of the very few film of his that didn’t age, thanks to well preserved Kamal Haasan and awesome soundtrack. Not that it was original, but nobody has seen a suspense thriller ala Psycho before in the industry.

Then, it was back to village romance for Bharathiraja with Niram Maratha Pookkal, and, straying a bit unsuccessful with Nizhalgal which deals with unemployment and awful looking costume. The films songs were excellent and are still enjoyed today if one were to remove the image of Chandrasekhar flapping his bell bottoms.

I would go on, but I assure you most of his films later dealt with love between a young girl and a young man facing opposition, with religion, caste or anything Bharathiraja can grab and make it with his own style, where the hero and the heroines crank their collective heads up and down to laugh (he even made Sivaji Ganesan to do it, that criminal), have the heroines speak in Radhika’s voice even if it is Radhika herself and even when Radhika is not dubbing. You get the loud mouthed old women beginning with Ghandimathi, succeeded by Vadivukarasi and the most recent was, well, Radhika herself.

You get variety of characters that seemed original back in 1977, only to turn up here and there in form of other underpaid character artistes, sometimes blown up as in case of the dad character in Karutamma, a film that could have been a lot more awesome if it not the case of Bharathiraja imposing himself on everyone on screen and hiring Raja.

Oh did I tell that most of the films have a central character committing an act of violence, screaming, “Deeyy……”? towards the climax. Followed by another character waiting for the central character to return from jail.

One of the biggest crime he committed was to make Sathyaraj in Kadalora Kavithaigal a wimp towards the end when he started the film showing him to be a tough, lovable rogue. Somewhere, I get the feeling that Bharathiraja loathed tough guys, or probably bullied by one when in school. The toughest guy in 16 Vayathinile gets rock on his head, the hero is a wimpy limp. Any films with Sudhakar goes on to show that softies takes the centre spot, as with K. Bagyaraj’s self written Puthiiya Varpugal where the toughest thing he did was to grab the girl and elope. Kamal in Sigappu Rojakkal killed women, not M.N. Nambiar. Oh yeah, he killed a guy, K. Bagyaraj, a lowly waiter, in the loo. They did it to you there, didn't they, Bharathiraja?

Sivaji Ganesan in Muthal Mariyathai was not only henpecked by mealy mouthed Vadivukarasi, but had to endure the show of strength by lifting rock. Yes, the same man who roared as Veerapandiyan Kattabomman, swashbuckled as Vikraman, broke bones as Raja, shot fireworks from his third eye as Lord Shiva, and even few years before was a regular ass-kicking ageing hero, had to lift a papier mache rock to impress a young girl in that movie. That is Bharathiraja’s idea of macho.

His insecurity is spilled over another annoying trend he employed in his films: voiceover. By him. He has the gravely voice that does not suits his whiny heroes and as a result, in most of his films, it was the case of mouse that roared. In fact, the biggest crime (how many biggest crimes already?) was to dub Nizhalgal Ravi in one film where Ravi already had a perfect speaking voice. A beautiful voice. And Bharathiraja ruined it.

To be fair, Bharathiraja was instrumental in introducing many talents. Actors like Karthik, and greatest comedian ever to be part of the film industry, Goundamani benefited from appearing first in Bharathiraja. The director also spawned assistants who will go on to be fantastic directors of their own, like Bagyaraj and Manivannan who are wonderful on screen performers themselves. Manivannan, underrated he was, made some of the best thrillers to come out of the industry.

Not all his films are typical Bharathiraja mess. The abovementioned Sigappu Rojakkal was one, and there was Vedam Puthithu that presented a searing look into caste system, En Uyir Tozhan, a powerful meditation on politician/follower relationship, and the quiet Anthimantharai, an ageing romance affair which was better handled than Muthal Mariyathai would have stunk without Sivaji and Ilayaraja. Plus great local locations, especially the beachside ones.

Speaking of whom, ever since the partnership with Ilayaraja faltered, so did the popularity of his film despite, or is it, in spite of occasional alliance with A.R. Rahman. The greatest Bharathiraja film has never been made, simply because he is not that great.

Interlocked Action

The New Straits Times carried a news concerning a raging issue this morning. The opening para goes:

(Malay novel) Interlok will be retained as a literature textbook but sections deemed sensitive to the Indian community will be amended

And it explained:

Federation of National Writers Association (Gapena) executive secretary Abdul Aziz Mohd Ali said the body supported the ministry’s decision to use Interlok as a textbook.

He said the only acceptable change that could be made to the novel was to add a glossary for the word “pariah” to better explain it.

This was done especially after initiated by the hardworking, nay, overworking Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) party, which still does not sit well with the Hindu community, as the umbrella group Hindu Sangam expressed “outrage” according to online news portal Malaysia Kini.

They should be. How could they? I say don’t give up. Most of the protesters may have never read the novel, or most of them can’t even speak one full sentence in proper Malay despite living in Malaysia their whole life. Never mind, don’t give up.

In fact, I have further recommendations to make when it comes to unhealthy use of caste names in popular culture. Here we go:

Ban organisations with caste names

Believe it or not there are organisations or clubs in Malaysia that represents specific caste. And its very easy to spot them, just go through the Tamil language newspapers, they are always organizing a dinner, a tribute fest, or maybe ear piercing ceremony or something.

Apart from representing their community and doing anything for them, like putting up an advertisement praising any of its members for their great deeds, like opening up a restaurant, I feel there is no need to have caste name in their organisations. Maybe instead of _____ Organisation, you can change it to Organisation of Members, Whose Ancestors Used To Lend Money.

Ban movies with caste names.

Two of the biggest Tamil language films to come out in the 90s was Chinna Gounder and Thevar Magan. Blatant use of caste names. And never mind that the latter is anti-violence and pro-education, it has caste name in it. So, what else ban it!

In fact, you should ban any films with actors with caste name in it. And the biggest offender of them all would be late supervillain M.N. Nambiar, whose single name is a caste name. That means you have to ban about 267,851 films. Phew, you have work cut out for you, government.

Ban other books with caste names

How many other books have caste names in them? In fact, how many Tamil language books have caste name in them? Ban them! Don’t read them or try to understand the context of those books, just employ someone who can identify those names and urge the government to ban those books. Act now!

Ban websites with caste name in the content.

Online wikipedia has given explanations to various caste names. Ban them! How insensitive of the online encyclopedia to the Hindu folks. How can they even list those caste names in the online source for knowledge to the entire world!

Get someone to write a search engine program that can track down all the sites, apart from wiki, that actually has caste names in it and ban them all to hell.

Ban people with caste names.

My grandpa was a smart man, he knew this was coming so he refused to hand over his caste name to his children. In fact, his own children were too pre-occupied with Hindi film stars names** to give us caste names.

But there are a bunch of folks walking around with caste names with them. In fact, I personally know some who actually do not have it, on the account that their own parents had similar strategy as ours, but use it anyway for god knows what reason. Maybe it helps with their digestion.

So ban them. Arrest them. Lock them up and make them watch human rights films on the loop 24 hours 7 days a week. Humanistic films like Gorrila’s In The Mist.

I got many other suggestions, but right now I need to seriously talk to my dad, because his identity card says, Premakumaran son of Shankaran Nair. I got my black marker ready.

**Consider some of my cousins names: Malini, Suraj, Kalpana, Sanjeev, Devanan, my brother Shubash and think of 70s Hindi films. And of course, I owe Hirtik Roshan’s dad some royalty.

Note: You must be confused about the pix above. I did google image search for caste, it was one of the pictures that turned up. I swear.

In Trance-it: RIP Anand pt 2.

One thing I couldn’t believe was my cousin’s form. A vigorous active skinny lad, here he was doing the elephant thingy. Of course, I learned later that he used to take on that form in estate festivals and on Thaipusam events. Disbelief aside, I need to do fast thinking on what to do. The “Kali” was taunting Puruso, making snappy wordless sounds either asking Puruso to shut up and calm down, or ordering Big Mac with fries to go. I don’t know.

Bug Jeggan the Kali kept on making those sounds and there are signs of Puruso calming down, not before rising again, and calming down, and rising again and calming down, it was like watching a 8mm reel in loop. Only live. Only way creepier. In the meantime, Anand the elephant man was stomping his skinny knees around the flat, not giving too hoots that a supernatural drama was going on. He was oblivious to the whole thing, happily in his elephant kingdom.

…and yet, guess who chose the time time to make a dramatic entrance Yes, the last seen aiming badly Shanker, and like many bad sequels, he came back with vengeance. Well, technically that will not be his job, since this time he came with a burly friend, with, I suspect, intention to pummel Puruso to extinction. Oh yeah, great timing guys.

Naturally, when they saw what was happening, both of them looked as if they caught a panda making out with a snake. I had to explain them simply in Tamizh that roughly translates, “One got god in him, one got devil on him, and another might request for sugar cane”. The burly one, helpfully, suggested something they didn’t think of when they planned the beat the crap out of Puruso, “Call the cops,” he said, himself looking like he had wet himself.

Good idea, I left them in charge and the other housemates, and took the lift down. I know where police station for that block was. You see, sometimes back, Anand, the trio (Puruso, Murugia, Jegan) and I was waiting at the ground floor for another friend to arrive, to go somewhere (movie I think) when a police van dropped by. One of the cops asked us to get into the van. He was very polite. hey, maybe he needed our help to shift furniture or something. So, we got in, and they drove us to the station which was very near actually, got us out, and asked us to sit at the reception area. Nice and comfy looking reception. We sat down and treated it like a hotel lobby, legs crossed and me, forever a reader, looking for magazines to read.

Shortly after, another cop entered bringing a Malaysian Indian dude with a bandaged arm in slingshot, and various bandages on his face and body. The cop asked us to get up and stand in line. Bloody hell! We were part of identification parade. Luckily the culprit was not among us. The cop then asked us to go back and Anand asked, “How about transport?” Needless to say I had to drag my protesting cousin out.

Aside: Anand must have been serious about public transportation. During a movie at a full crowd screening, there was an emotional scene, where the entire village vowed that they want to go to the city and catch a culprit, Anand shouted, “Dey, who will play all your busfares?” End of aside.

Anyway, having been already acquainted with the police station, I got in but was tongue tied. I didn’t know how to explain, and my vocabulary power had already evicted my brain no thanks to the incident. Combination of gestures and words like “god, inside him”, the cop understood and asked, “Are they in trance?” Yesss! That’s the word. He said he will send someone immediately and asked me to go back. Oh crap, do I have to. Well, for one I have a cousin who thinks he has trunk and tusks, and I better attend to him.

Rushing back, I was shocked to see something. Well, it was nothing actually. Jegan was relaxing on one corner. Anand was massaging his knees and gave me a sheepish grin. Or was that an elephant-ish smile? But he looked okay, apart from sore knee. And Puruso? Well, he was okay too. Sort of.

He was stretched out on the floor, half of his belly facing down, and he was attempting to bite the corner of a Wardrobe. It’s one of those plastic cheap ones and his molars were scrapping the plastic sheet. Otherwise, he was not making any sound or giving the Bruce Banner-to-Hulk look. Maybe it’s a kind of a hangover.

I asked Murugaiah what had happened. He said they have solved problems among themselves. Yeah, it’s not like they had table talk or something right? Murugaiah said as Puruso calmed down finally (if you call that “calm”), Jegan returned to his form and he was not sure when Anand calmed down himself. I asked Anand, who was not sure himself.

It was about that time when the cops came. One was a Singaporean Indian, and the other Malay. Ah, help has arrived…or so I thought, because it is not the cop who will resolve the situations. The cause behind the incident is something nobody thought of, and we will find out, not here, not within the vicinity of the flat, but in the middle of a frickin’ jungle…

To be continued….

In Trance-it: RIP Anand pt 1

My cousin, Devanand (my dad’s sister son) passed away on 19^th January, 2011, and was cremated the next day, which happened to be Thaipusam day. His mother, crying her heart out, mentioned that his birthdate was number 1 (first of January) and he died on the same month, on a day numerologically totalled one as well, and he was born on Wednesday and died on the same day. That was not all the coincidences.

As sad I was, considering that he was close to us brothers and practically grew up together at some point, my best fond memories of him happened to be something to do with Thaipusam, the day he was cremated. I have long wanted to write about that incident, but I guess his own demise pushed me to do this. I shall do this now.

It was 1996; I was one year working in Singapore at that time, attempting to pursue accountancy (ACCA) and working as admin clerk. No, that was not the strange part. During weekends I used to meet up with my cousin and his hometown buddies who were all working in an electronic plant in Bedok (I was sharing a house in Holland Road). It was a more innocent time in Singapore, before it became home resident to batshit insane public nudes.

And so there we were, me after work, sitting and having dinner with my cousin. He was known as Deva to his friends, and Anand to me and his relatives. Conversation would get pretty confusing when one friend keep asking who the frickin' hell Anand was, and before he gets violent (alcoholic beverages are cheaper in Singapore), another friend has to assure that Deva and Anand are one and the same person, considering his actual name was Devanand. Oh, recently I found out that his employer, The Butcher, refers to him as Dave. Enough confusion let me get to the story.

So, there we were, Anand and his three hometown buddies, Murugaiah, Jegan and Puruso(taman), plus a few others from Malaysia working at the same plant. It should be pointed out that strangely Anand was not drinking, and his buddies were, namely Puruso and Jegan. Anand ordered iced Milo, and the drink came. There was conversation with another guy by the name of Shankar, which sort of got heated up. When you have bunch of Indians on a table with bottles of beer, the last thing you will see is signing of peace accord. So, this Shankar made Anand mad at some point, who suddenly sprang up ready for good ole’ fisticuff. Unfortunately, while doing that the Milo spilled on him. So, I suppose the idea of throwing punches with Milo on his crotch was a bit too undermining, so he just walked off back to his flat. So, I thought that was that.

Not so to Puruso. Not the close buddy of Anand who had second bottle of beer in him. Shankar excused himself to the toilet, and Puruso followed him. For some reason or other, I thought I should follow the latter, knowing well that he was not quite himself. Okay, that’s an understatement if you read on. In the loo, Shankar was doing his business, half drunk, so he was having trouble aiming at the urinal. Why I tell this is? Because Puruso walked right onto him, and this is a violation in Male Code of Conduct in toilet where you try your best to stay as far away from the guy in the next urinal.

Puruso started verbally assaulting him with words that I can post here for a simple reason that they were in Tamizh. Let say they involved variations of words defining pubic hair and private regions. I thought I better drag Puruso out of the loo before Shankar decides to realign his aim. While doing that, I had to calm him down and at times it works and at times it does not. And this won’t be the end.

The flat is about 20 metres away, but get him there I felt I was halfway the Mt. Everest. There was a lift mind you, and getting him there was a relief. And then it started….

…our friend, beloved Puruso, who was all the time bitching about Shankar, slowly started to lose his tongue, like I don’t know what he was rambling about. Definitely not Malayalam, his mother tongue, which happens to be what I speak at home. Swahili? Maybe, but alternating it with hisses? Weird sounds coming from throat. And him looking like Bruce Banner halfway becoming Hulk only with no extra muscle. Or shredded trousers. Something was wrong.

The flat they were sharing was a studio flat. No, it’s not meant for the Picassos or the Van Gogh’s. It was for piss poor Singaporeans, or alternatively, blue collar Malaysians working there. This one housed about six or seven of them, I can’t remember. There were only two rooms, and they were the kitchen and the bathroom. The rest was hall, and there was Anand, looking quite relaxed despite the Anger/Milo incident. He gave me the “what’s wrong with him?” look. I shrugged. He helped to bring Puruso in and seated him on a mattress already spread on floor.

Actually, not seated, because since he wanted to keep standing up, we have to push him down to make him lie down. The hissing and croaking sound continued…yes, I was definitely reminded of The Exorcist. If he was ever to do a 360 degrees with his head, I am ready to faint. I was still a superstition believing, Lord Shiva worshipping youth with secret desire to become a temple priest then. Trust me, freaky is not the exact word I was experiencing.

More and more housemates started to arrive and they were intrigued. At first. Freaked out would be the subsequent reaction. Soon, there were four of us attempting to push Puruso down. The hissing, croaking, and occasional howling continued. I remembered what they do during the festivals were folks would get into trance listening to pulsating percussions. To calm them down, their trance buddies or priests would whisper god’s name or something and they would step out of the spell and become normal again. I tried doing the same. Pressing the “third eye”, I chanted “Ohm Nama Shivaya” repeatedly.

Success! Yesss, it worked. He calmed down. If you think I should break out a champagne bottle, or beer bottle considering our financial situation, think again. Puruso was back and this time, remember Jegan, the other friend? Yeah, something weird happened to him, and suddenly he started to widen his eyes and stick his tongue out…far out…like it was touching his chest. Okay, I am exaggerating, but that’s how it looked like. He started to lift one leg, and having been to many religious festival, especially Thaipusam, I knew exactly what pose that was! Goddess Kali. And the other friend, Murugaiyah? He was crying.

Why? Well, sudden appearance of Kali is one, but my own cousin brother, Anand, was suddenly on his four, moving slowly around, and slowly lifting one arm up like Hitler with arthritis. What the hell was that? The tearful Murugaiah mumbled something about Lord Ganesha was inside him. Great. And now what?

To be continued….

Phone it in.

I realise lately that I need to get myself a new mobile phone, especially when each time I make a call or do text messaging, I have to reassemble it. When I look at it, a Motorola, I am reminded of how far it has come. My first phone, bought in late 90s was a Motorola Microtac (above pix), a piece of equipment that never forgets to remind you that the bulk in your pants is unfortunately not your superlative manhood.

My first encounter with phones of course began during my childhood but not at home, coz we were too poor to afford one. Calls had to be made from dad’s office, and that too for only emergency matters like, say, for example, death. Casual conversations were distilled in form of letters, which are now referred to as snail mail, and it usually take days to reach the other party, and so on so forth. That is, if it ever reaches. Sometimes the friends or relatives might actually be visiting you when the mail they wrote days earlier arrives. That’s embarrassing.

Anyway, the phones I saw were usually in relatives place. It was the type where you have to dial, like rotate the first number that you need to dial and wait for it to settle back to its original position and rotate the second number, till you are done. If, let’s say, you started during the breakfast by the time you are done, they’d announce the dinner. Thankfully, it was replaced with the ones you see nowadays, the ones with button, where you can tap on extremely fast and dial wrong numbers.

Mobile phones were never heard off back in the 80s, though I realise now they were around. It’s just we’ve never seen them. It was in the 90s when more folks started using and buying them, like my ex-boss, who got one of those big things now referred to as brickphone. You probably heard the jokes about how they can be used as battering weapons. They really are. The buttons are so hard to press, and you can use it only for phone conversation. You can’t stuff it in your pocket, and if you accidentally drop it on your feet, pray to your god that you can walk in couple of month’s time.

But things were about to change when “features” started to be added in. A form of time capsule you can look at would be the second Pierce Brosnan/James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies, where the Ericsson (before becoming Sony Ericsson to add Japanese fetish in) would do any goddam thing except having sex with the Bond girls. Unfortunately, twelve years on we are not driving our cars with a mobile phone, let’s not even talk about sex.

Still, we have gone a long way. Mobile phone almost control our lives these days, especially when the call is from wife. Okay, that has been happening forever, but damn it, wouldn’t you go panicking when the phone “tells” you that it’s out of battery? Wouldn’t it frustrate you when you walk into the lift talking to it and suddenly the coverage goes off and you go “Hello? Hello?” loudly while the others in lift look at you the same way they look at a snatch thief?

Soon, we’ll be doing anything and everything with our phone unless it involves intestines. But I am giving its future too much credit. Remember, once they thought the Zeppelin was the future of aerospace, till it got burnt, crashed and killed hundreds. We all know that it’s the aeroplane that have taken over and have since killed thousands.

We shall wait and watch the evolution of the mobile phones. In the meantime, I am would be looking for a model with feature such as writing blog posts.

Common New Year Resolutions You Should Quit Thinking About.

It’s the first week after new year, and boy are you tired of responding to inquiries about your New Year resolutions. This would be typical scenario:

Friend: Hey, what’s your new year resolution, bro!

You: First to lose weight, then_

Friend: I didn’t ask your Ten Year Plan.

See what I mean. Common new year resolutions are just that, common. You got to stop thinking up the same resolution every year that you forget three months down the road. So, you have only two days before the week is over and here are the resolutions that I suggest you lose fast and I’ll tell you why:

Losing weight.

It’s a myth. Can you remember the number of times you told yourselves that you are going to lose weight, and making much attempts, you actually lose some weight, and, you felt happy about it, went on celebrations binge, and end up looking like Jabba the Hut’s bigger brother? Yeah you know what I am talking about.

Remember attempting to lose weight is not a resolution item. It should be your lifestyle, like playing warcraft or picking up kids from school, or do certain archeological activities inside your nose. Saying that it’s going to be your resolution over and over every year till one day you realise that they are wheelchairing you to the loo in old folks home is not going to help with things. Especially when they need a forklift to do that.

So, think of some activities that can you can practice for the rest of your life, when it comes to eating correctly. Like eating sparingly, and get your wife or partner to bitch-slap you each time you help yourself that extra portion. Make sure you sign an MOU on that plan.

Quit smoking.

When I asked a friend what his resolution was, he said, resignedly, “the usual, quit smoking” almost as if he was complaining about KL traffic problem. Duh! Guys saying that they are going to quit smoking have the same honesty and sincerity as the guy who says, “really honey, it was just one drink,” when all the wife heard was, “runny want rink”.

Even the president of the might US of A is having issues quitting smoking as I write this. Maybe he has already, but does that mean you have to be in highly powerful position, and in full view of the public to quit smoking? I bet when Obama finishes his two terms, or kicked out after this term, the first thing he does is to take one big puff of Marlboro, the red one. Okay, maybe after he signs a gazillion dollar contract to write a biography, and then that one big puff.

As per the weight loss thing, this is your life man. I recall reading an Ian Fleming book where Bond declares to a chick that he is an authority on quitting smoking. Why? “Because I do it often” he says. So, you want to be an authority on quitting smoking? Good luck, I’ll see you after several burnt lungs later.

Get organised.

Yeah, I can see your desk that looks like not only tornado struck, but was trampled on by couple of bulls while doing their business, and immediately followed by a wild mongoose-snake fight turned into inter-specie sex. Wait, that’s my desk.

And what about time management? Yours truly’s time management is about as organised as a stray dog’s meal time. One way of getting organised and manage your time well is to use this Big Rock concept by Stephen Covey.

In a demo I saw in a video presentation, the bald leadership guru who looks like Telly Savalas' evil twin, as if Savalas is not looking creepy enough, asks a girl to fit in some big rocks inside a bucket full of pebbles. The rocks being important activities and concerns in life. She struggles of course, pressing and attempting to screw the rocks (important thing) into the pebbles (wasteful activities). He then helped by producing another bucket, where the girl immediately placed the big rocks on it first, and then poured the pebbles. First thing first.

But then, why the hell didn’t he tell about the other empty bucket. In life you get only one bucket, so start screwing the rocks in. All the best.

Strenghten your relationships with family and friend.

Look every year you gain new friends and family member, you also lose some friends and family members. Of course, most often than not its good riddance.

These are the days of email, skype, text messages, social networking etc. So, why worry, you are always in touch with your friends and family. Need to keep an eye on birthday wishes? Facebook can do that for you. Need to let wife know that you’d be late home without her nagging at you? Just text message. Need to tell your buddies that if they don’t confirm their presence for the upcoming reunion, send an email blast to all of them saying that those who does not turnup will be referred to, at that event, as something that rhymes with nick-beds.

I am going to be philosophical now. Look, we come to this world alone, and we leave alone. You can’t even take your EPF and insurance money when you shuffle off the mortal coil. Unless you fake your death, but that is a subject matter for a different article.

Man Madhan Ambu

In Man Madhan Ambu, Kamal Haasan proved once again that he can be a hell of a dialogue writer. That leaves fans of Kamal Haasan the actor cold because as a scriptwriter overall (in Tamizh films, dialogue writers are usually separate from screenplay writers), he wrote one of the dullest role for himself. This celluloid masochism takes a while to digest, especially for this writer who has been a fan for the last 27 years.

Anyway, the dialogue writer sure worked overtime, as the characters here, not unlike Woody Allen films, spend most of their waking hours talking. The dialogues can sometimes be awesome, and sometimes be done with simply because there are only two competent performers in this film, but more to that later.

Man Madhan Ambu is a baffling piece of filmmaking because when Kamal is in it, you expect magic. You expect stretching of boundaries, breaking of rules, and firm rooting in credibility and plausibility. In MMA, you get flimsy storyline wrapped in an almost three hour tourism promo video. Shot in France, Spain and Italy among others, as well as on a luxury cruise, this sure is one expensive brochure.

The story seemed to be related to that of There’s Something About Mary by Farelly brothers. But to credit the brothers for the private eye plot would be to credit Shakespeare for coming up with the assassination plot in Julius Caesar. But there is more just hiring of detective to spy on a lover, but there’s nothing new to it, and it includes easiest plot device that Tamizh films has been overusing for decades: coincidence.

Kamal plays an ex-commando turned detective, Mannar, who was hired by rich dude, Madhan (Madhavan) to spy on the latter’s lover film actress Ambujam@Nisha (Trisha), whereby the transaction involves paying for Mannar’s buddy/partner’s chemotherapy. Then, there are many other characters that comes in and complicates thing ala films Kamal wrote with Crazy Mohan in the past.

There are more misses than hits in the film which we see Kamal handling a role that can easily be done by any other decent hacks. True the hacks can’t do 25% of what Kamal contributed here, merely as an actor, but we have seen it all before. Trisha with her Buster Keaton demeanour rides on somewhat well-written role, and then there was Sangeetha, whose overwritten role made me want to get up and shout, “shut up, bitch!”.

One impressive moment involves a flashback sequence with song, shot in reverse. It was one of the best thing I had ever seen in films of recent times, but most of the best things I saw in recent times on film usually are quickly forgotten give or take couple of months.

But true saviour of this film is Madhavan. Descending from an uptight, possessive, arrogant affluent businessman to goofy alcoholic loser, Madhavan is a one man laugh fest all the way. I bet Kamal had already had Madhavan in his mind when writing the character, as I firmly believe; as of now, only Madhavan can justify it. Kudos to Kamal the writer and Madhavan the fabulous actor who, sadly, will not be recognised by most of the Tamizh film fans which are busy making stars out of low-graders and Kamal wannabes.

But there was something disturbing in my mind when I left the theatre. In one scene, there was a shot where the camera was positioned in front of Trisha’s stretched legs (she was wearing shorts), for a very long period of cinematic time. It reminded me of pork roast my wife did for Christmas. I don’t know why the shot exists. What was the director, K.S. Ravi Kumar (by the way) trying to tell us? What will the future generation of movie goers going to think, when they see this? In a Kamal film? And Trisha gets second billing during the credit scene, ahead of Madhavan. I give up.

The Age of Rock.

Tune in to MusicFM (95.3 for Malaysians) from lunch hour onwards on weekdays and you will encounter a barrage of hard rock songs, both English and Malay language. What’s so great, you might ask. Well, for one, you might know that I am a fan of rock music, mostly hard and metal variety. Not many know that. Once, when I played a heavy metal music on my desktop at my place, a colleague looked at me as if I was molesting a hamster.

Well, deep inside I am a rocker. Deeper inside I am also a slacker, but that’s besides the point. What I wanted to talk about today is the memory of the time Malay rock ruled Malaysia briefly in the 80s, despite the fact that 80s was mostly known for Synth pop, Michael Jackson, and an assortment of one hit wonders that sounds alike mostly. And MC Hammer. If you thought they were glorious days, you have not heard or met Boy George.

In Malaysia, funnily though, it was rock, not pop that made waves. I was living in a Felda-surrounded plantation where majority dwellers were of Malay extract, and the guys were furious rock fans. I mean seriously. Walk down the road and you see lots of pathetic Slash look alikes, piss-poor Dave Coverdale copycats and D-Grade Klaus Meine. They ain’t heavy, but they are rockers, or so they like to think despite the fact that all of us were consummate sambal belacan consumers.

But that is foreign influence. Thanks to the success of home bred bands like Search and Wings, suddenly there was a barrage of rock bands spurting out like frickin’ mushrooms after rain and cow dung. There were Lefthanded, Bumiputra Rockers (BPR), Iklim, Gersang, May, Xpidisi and many, many other bands with misspelled names

that ruled the airwaves, and thundered across the country holding concerts and indulging in Battle of the Band competitions after which conversations would go something like this:

A: Hey Mat.

B: Huh?

A: Hey Mat.

B: Huh?

A: Hey Mat

B: Huh?

These bands were just like their western counterparts, faithfully following the template laid by Led Zeppelin, though I recall an interview with the latter’s vocalist, Robert Plant, who did not take credit for the influence over, what he calls, “Screaming banshees in cod pieces”. The Malay rockers, consummate screamers they are, mostly dealt with slow or ballad rock. Usually they are much more radio friendly, compared to other fast metallic pieces usually found in the album. Actually, it’s the ballad rock which increasingly pointed out how much of a weenie the songwriter was, that killed the Rock era. Instead of singing about tying your mother down, or children of the graves, they sang about getting dumped by some chick. Instead of shouting about crushing the enemy, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women, they wrote songs about purity in ash (Suci Dalam Debu).

Above pix: Members of Superband Search and hair.

Anyway, what matters then was this: the influence. We were all aspiring rockers then, and that is why till today I am wearing pointy Cuban-heeled boots. Even for my wedding reception. But that’s me. My school mates were nuts about the then rock-influenced fashion. Hairs were long, and usually are voluntarily chopped off by the ever-helpful discipline teachers. Pants were so tight that you wonder they are hard core rockers or just came out of ballet rehearsal. Even the way one walks were influenced by rockers, but I suspect the swagger was from constantly attempting to reposition the crunched family jewels.

But one particular thing intrigued me now, when I look back. I have a very creative pal, Mohd Shah, who specialises in belt buckles. You know, those huge buckles with varied shapes, usually gigantically phallic so much so that they seemed to be making up for the shortcomings below the belt. So, this guy actually cuts these buckles off a metal plate and guess where these plates come from? Yes, he buys them from hardware store. Who am I kidding. He basically rips metal plates off, literally, from milestones by the main road. So, back in 80s if you don’t see the miles in the milestones from Kota Tinggi all the way to Desaru beach resort, you know who the culprit is.

Also intriguing was the rock speak of that time. Borrowing from Chinese, “I” became Gua (Chinese’ Wo that later sounded Wa) which is crazy because in Malay it means “cave”. The often used catchphrase was “Gua caya sama lu” which means I trust you, or literally cave trusts you. Often, the conversation is end with “sial” which is also strange, because it means, “curse”. “Gua caya sama lu, sial”. If it didn’t make sense, “sial” in a very short time, evolved into “siol”, which actually means “whistle”. Of course, I was not aware of the evolution, so once I asked a guy why he wanted to me to whistle after he said he trust me. He’s a crack addict now.

Okay, I was kidding. He is a good buddy, though I have lost touch with him, especially when I did attempt to whistle.

Speaking of which, there is also the joy of listening to the songs, very loud, over the walkman. Remember walkman? The box of a thing, where you “eject” the cover open so you can put the “tape” in it, and “press” “play” to play the songs until the spool gets stuck in the mechanism, which you have to “untangle” which means the only way to do it is to “cut” the tape and “stick” it back and play it again where the messed up part of the tape sound like the vocalist is gargling and singing at the same time, for which you should be very fortunate because the reel is not “stuck” again. Remember them walkmans? Where would we be without them.

Anyway, coming back to the radio show. By the looks of it, there seemed to be renewed interest in the rock bands of the past. Some of them are making comeback, one even claimed that they were wooed by fans through Facebook! That’s an awesome news. With lots of sappy syrupy pop stuff ruling the air waves now, it is a great breath of fresh air to see these rockers strutting their stuff. Of course, some of them may have to keep their pacemakers away from the huge speakers, but I welcome them with open arm. But I am not getting into those tight pants, I’m married.

New MIC President: Of shoes, style and performance

A newspiece the other day intrigued me, because a politician was talking about shoe. You see the only time shoe and politics is mentioned in the same breath is when both meet, or should I say, when the shoe becomes projectile. There is a long history of shoe and politicians, most prominently in Taiwan, and the best in the recent memory should be when a Iraqi journalist decided his shoe would improve George W. Bush’s diction.

But here’s the excerpt from the Star newspaper, with regards to a press conference given by the new Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) president, G. Palanivel who is replacing his predecessor S. Samy Velu. Samy who has been ruling the party with iron fist, transplanted hair and replaced hip, is finally moving on, leaving behind chair that contains three decades of dust and possible fart particles.

But before that, here’s what I have done. I have been a journalist before and covered many press conferences. For our stories, we would include usable quotes to support our lead (main angle) and leave out the rest of the junk (usually they are). Here’s me imagining what the rest of the quotes would be. The bold lines are actual quotes, followed by what I imagine he said:

“I cannot wear his shoes. He will always wear a different shoe. I will wear my own shoe. It’s not that Datuk Seri (Samy Velu) is stingy about lending his shoes, just that hygiene factor may contribute to foot diseases. My shoe is very different. In fact, it’s so different now I am not sure it’s even mine. Even the Disney logo looks fake, don’t you think?

“We have very different styles but we are both committed to doing what is best for the party. I mean look at our hairstyles for example. You know yourself what Datuk Seri’s hairstyle did to the party all this while (*wink-wink*), but my hair style is set to bring a lot more winds of peace, rays of serenity, and possible downpour in the afternoon.

“I have not given deep thought to being the eighth MIC president (since 1946) but I have been well-prepared. But the thing is, I know numerology a bit and 8 is not exactly a lucky number, so can I opt for 7 ¼th President or maybe One minus Ninth president? Please? Because I already got warning from my astrologer, who charges RM 500 per minute, which shows how authentic he is, who said I better not associate myself with number 8 or next year I might be selling Puttu Mayam.

“I may be low-profile but I have performed as a leader. If you won’t believe me ask the people in my former constituency, the last time they saw me President Nixon was making that visit in China. Nixon…is still…the president, right? As for leadership, I recently led a fraction and won many Teh Tarik championships. I am sure that all the MIC members will co-operate with me, put their heads together and come up with the decisions that I make.

“Samy Vellu has taught me how to handle the political ropes both directly and indirectly. Directly as in holding my hand and showing how to tie a knot, or how to build a rope bridge. Nothing sexual, okay? Indirectly as in through his various MMSes on him doing weird thing with ropes. I mean…next question?

“I have learnt a lot from him on how to handle various situations. About that rope thing, can you not quote me? Thank you. Now, there are many situations which I know how to handle. Being married with kids, I know situations. Yes, situations are like box of chocolates, you won’t know who finished it ahead of you. I watch CSI, and whoever stole my chocolates will pay with blood!!

“I do not have a personal or selfish agenda as I am not ambitious. You see when I was a kid I wanted to grow up and become a cardiologist for the lab mice. You call that ambitious? My school mate wanted to be President of Lithuania, now that is ambitious. Not as ambitious as my brother who wanted to assasinate Al Qaeda’s chef, but still?

“I do want to mobilise Indian votes, we must go down to the ground and meet the people. You know, like mobile library, mobile police station. I will have Mobile votes that we will drive to town to town, city to city, kampong to kampong and present use them for that extra votes. Wow, is that innovation or what?

“The Indian voters are coming back but more needs to be done, because we are not sure they are coming by boats or plane. Some say even flying saucer, and if so they cannot vote because they are technically Kaum Pendatang.

Dude, Where’s My Spage Age?

I have a scaled-down version of the Concorde aircraft on top of my car dashboard for sometimes now. Yesterday, that is after three years of driving with and one year of living with me, my wife asked what happened to the real aircraft of that model. At that moment, I wanted to turn to her and ask, “what’s my name again?”.

Explaining to her what had happened, I mentioned that the Concorde once represented the pinnacle of our technological achievements. Alright that was about the same time as bell-bottom, disco and pornstar moustaches, pinnacle of achievements in their respective departments. One step ahead of Concorde was to actually have passenger flight into the space. That’s how we saw future then. Also we thought we can travel through time, go on hyperdrive or do warp speed, get beamed from one place to another, but space exploration was the starting point.

Back then were in the midst of the dawn of Space Age. Space exploration was the in thing and was the future. Space themed films and TV shows were all over and every night, I imagine I was Hans Solo navigating through the asteroid fields with the Millenium Falcon, which I believe severely contributed to my now insomnia case.

I was so into space stuff that when I was 8 or nine years old, I memorised the names of all the planets, and I can recite them off the cuff. The proof is simple, when I was kid we wore no cuff. Lame joke aside, once even a teacher had to refer to me when she forgot the name of the planets (this was before google and wikipedia remember?). That enthusiastic we were about flights to space. I even do my own rocket flight thing by simulating a blastoff using my ballpoint pen and slowly removing the lower part of a ballpoint pen, the cap, the barrel, and anything else till it remains the tip that looked like a space capsule. All by doing the rocket sound with mouth, and I don’t have to say why many friends either stay away or reached for their hankie.

While parents wanted more boring profession like doctor, engineer and lawyer for their kids, us boys were thinking of becoming cowboy, spaceman (or astronaut) and in my case, cartoonist (really, even though back then I suck at drawing and colour blind and have the sense of humour of a butter cake, in fact there’s not much improvement thirty years later). But every kid I know admitted that becoming an astronaut and being in space was cool.

My assumption then was by now we were supposed to be so technologically advanced to the point that we should be surfing the space and unloading space cargoes, intead we are surfing cyber space and downloading internet porn. The spirit of exploration that got the world over gungho about going where no one would boldly go is now limited to writing blogs so bad that no sane publisher would publish.

Yes, somewhere along the way when we ascended from Industrial age to Space Age, slipped broke our crown, and fell into Information Age, where the need for attention and bad taste led directly into internet and the mobile phone . Instead of looking up at the space and stars, everyone is hunched over their mobile phone. Instead of dreaming of our own space exploration, we are dreaming about how much we can download at 4G. When we look at space stations, we think of how rain screws our satellite TV transmissions. When “thinking big” is preached, we think of blue-ray discs. And Big Losers. The Asian version.

Okay, to be perfectly honest it was through the same satellite TV I watched this excellent documentary called, The Black Sky: Race for Space about Burt Rutan, dubbed as “the man who reinvented airplane” and his team try to put a civilian austronaut into the space with the aircraft he designed called SpaceShipOne. This took place in 2004 actually, and the same aircraft was the basis for Virgin Galactic’s (yes, the same Branson’s outfit) first space tourism. A great endeavour from a private enterprise. Meanwhile, the governments, especially the US, is panicking over WikiLeaks. The Internet. Greatest invention of the 20^th century. Spawning youtubes of people picking their noses, Facebook accounts of sexual predators, twits of obnoxious celebrities (redundant, I know) and thousands of idiotic weblog writers, this author included.

We are now in Information Age, or is it Knowledge Era? In this era, everyone becomes smart and famous. Everyone gets more than 15 minutes, and if you think of Facebook accounts, that would be frighteningly forever. Space age is thing of the past. If you dream of becoming an astronaut there will be many lashbacks calling you not to wast their tax money which they have been evading anyway. If you urge for space exploration, they say time is better spent in fighting corruption, which is like attempting to annihilate cockroach anyway.

Prorities have changed. I can only be bitter about it, and so could you, especially those from my generation. Go ahead and sulk, while I post this link in my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Go get her, Tiger.

Recently my wife and I embarked on mini-movie marathon; films with plot involving rescuing looking for missing or kidnapped family members. It’s not that we are plotting something similar in real life, considering we are still cracking our head on whether or not to kidnap a cute stray cat near our apartment (Risk: They scratch). No, it’s just that we stumbled upon the excellent action fare Taken, with Liam Neeson embarking on a mission to rescue his kidnapped daughter, leaving behind trails of dead bodies and crashed vehicle (recipe for rescuing loved ones). Intrigued, I dug up copies of some of films with similar theme and here they are with my revisit reviews.

Commando (1985)

Tagline: Somewhere... somehow... someone's going to pay

Above pix: That’s not free-range chicken, Arnie.

Arnold Schwarzenegger (yes I can spell his name) plays a hunk of steroid laden beef on boots with passion for cigar and carrying lumber over his shoulder and this was before you get slaughtered for deforestation. He has a daughter, a young one and before you can say wait, is that Molly….she gets kidnapped. Arnie whose name in this movie is Matrix, I kid you not, is blackmailed into working with the bad guys to get his daughter back. Arnie being Arnie says screw you and goes back to get his daughter using what see

ms to qualify as weapons of mass destructions, and he carried all of them on him in the climax and by the time it ended you may have grown extra biological extension due to excessive display of testosterone (doesn’t apply to female viewers).

Here’s the trivia I found in internet on that scene, “Matrix goes into battle with an Valmet M78 light machine gun, an Uzi submachine gun, a Remington Model 870 combat shotgun and a Desert Eagle automatic pistol. He also commandeers an M60E3 belt-fed machine gun and an M16A1 assault rifle.” Yes, I heard a geek’s orgasmic cry.

Frantic (1988).

Tagline: They've taken his wife. Now he's taking action

Above pix: Wife? What wife? You free for dinner?

Harrison Ford movie with Roman Polanski behind the camera shot in the streets of Paris. Throughout the entire film Ford looked like he has a broom stuck up his ass (actually I stole this from a quote by Connery in dud Meteor, “why don’t you shtick a broom up my arsh, I’ll shweep the room on my way out”). Here, Ford loses his wife, or should I say she goes missing right before his eyes . No vanishing trick. We see him (not her) in shower, you see the wife in the background. It’s a now you see, now you don’t scene, though the pain would be to watch Ford topless.

This being a Polanski film, relied less on firear ms and more on Ford’s scowl, who never rematerialised as Hans Solo or Indiana Jones half way. Too bad, it would have been awesome, but Polanski makes cerebrally intriguing film so instead of going “awesome” on firepower, we go, “what’s Freudian about this scene”, or think about Polanski’s statutory rape case. Slow film. Okay if not for Ford’s star power. And that scowl.

Breakdown (1977)

Tagline: It could happen to you.

Above pix: I am not coming back to Disney, got it?

My favourite action star, Kurt Russell, stars not as an action movie stud but a regular bloke who loses his wife in some rundown redneck town…to a trucker to be precise. It seemed, the writer and director of this movie Jonathan Mostow got the idea for the film while driving through Las Vegas with his wife. You can quite predict what the ending he would have liked, except in the film the wife is rescued.

The film works because the suspense comes from Russell is someone you can relate to, unless you have built like Schwarzenegger or have committed statutory rape like Polanski. Russell only has his wit to use, but the climax involving the truck did turn him to action hero mode, but hey, it’s from Hollywood.

Taken (2009)

Tagline: Time is Running Out

Above pix: Err…Liam, you don’t shoot the audience. We need them, you see.

As mentioned, Liam Neeson loses his daughter and he had to get her back from some Albanian criminals. Being an ex-CIA he has instant access to technology, knows who kidnapped his daughter and goes straight to the heart of the matter in Paris. After crunching bones, shooting heads, and cutting bunch of folks, Liam gets his daughter but not without a broken arm.

In most part, the film works because if Neeson is told not to just think about his pay cheque, can act his pants off. Apparently he was told to do so and you can’t take your eyes off him, even if you can’t quite place what he was doing during the fisticuffs until you hear grunts and bones breaking.

All the four films involve the member of the opposite sex missing, the fairer one, the softer one, or should I say gals. Two wives and two daughters. That revs up the scare factor, and draws concern from the audience. Male audience want to be Arnie/Kurt/Ford/Liam while female members wish their spouses or dads were. As if.

All the four films have happy ending. Of course, it happens that way unless the lead roles are not American.

Few things cropped up in my mind after watching those films.

1. If you want Arnold to work for you, pay him shitload of money or give him a small country or something. Kidnap his daughter and now you pay lots of money for henchmen ‘s SOCSO, their widows’ compensation, and funerals don’t come cheap these days.
2. No matter how ordinary a bloke are you, when someone you love is kidnapped, you would automatically become an action star like Kurt Russell. Which means something like you hanging onto a truck which is already hanging threadbare at the edge of a bridge.
3. If you are former government agent or something, information comes to you in a jiffy, so that you can spend the rest of the time piling up dead bodies, and finally get your teenage daughter who is going to marry that boyfriend you hate anyway.
4. Arnie’s daughter? Come on…