JL 50 - A TV series starring Abhay Deol

 JL 50 is a commendable first attempt. This is the first time an Indian TV series have tried hands at the material that is usually found on The Twilight Zone. I am a fan of the Rod Serling's original series from the 50s and the 60s, not so much its new avatars. There are several The Twilight Zone episodes which could have served as inspiration to JL 50 like The Odyssey of Flight 33, The Arrival and The Last Flight.

Time travel, worm holes, parallel universes are not something Indian movies have handled well. One of the reasons could be the money required for creating believable VFX. Another could be, even when Indian movies tackle science fiction it ends up being a masala musical, like the time travel Tamil movie starring Suriya Sivakumar - 24. JL 50 used the excuse of being a TV series for not including any songs which would have been mandatory had it been a movie. At slightly longer that two hours total, this TV series is only as long as a typical Indian movie.

The best things about JL 50 are, the cast and the location. Calcutta/Kolkata, the first capital city of British India is a location tailor-made for time travel stories. With its yellow Ambassador taxi cabs, rickety trams and narrow inner city streets, it is a city still caught in its past. Paused at the edge of disintegration back to an older age, it is easy to recreate Calcutta from thirty-forty years ago in the current Kolkata. The makers of JL 50 make use of this chameleonic aspect of Calcutta to their advantage.

The cast led by Abhay Deol as CBI officer Shantanu and Pankaj Kapur as physics professor Das are outstanding. Ritika Anand, one of the producers of the series has a pivotal role as Capt. Bihu Ghosh, the pilot of the ill-fated JL 50. I see it as a nod to the female commercial pilots in India, especially Durba Banerjee (first woman commercial pilot to fly Indian Airlines in 1956) who is also from the state of West Bengal. (Calcutta is the capital of West Bengal.) India had female commercial pilots (Prem Mathur in 1947 was the first commercial woman pilot in India) and Women Pilots Association long before United States had its first female commercial pilot - Bonnie Tiburzi in 1973 for American Airlines.

Returning back from the aviation history tangent to JL 50, the story and direction of the TV series is by Shailender Vyas. While there are some plot holes and goofs in the story line, as a viewer who had always wanted to see a desi take (or more) on The Twilight Zone, I appreciate Mr.Vyas taking up the challenge of making an Indian sci-fi series. With an open-ended ending, I hope he will be back with more and please make sure to include Abhay Deol - he is more than half the reason I enjoyed this series as much as I did.

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Kilometers and Kilometers

The title of this 2020 movie comes from Mohanlal's famous dialog in the 1980s film Mazha Peyyunnu Madhalam Kottunnu. It is his answer to the general knowledge test question posed by the U.S returnee character played by Sreenivasan, "how many kilometers from Washington DC to Miami beach?" Ans: "Kilometers and Kilometers"

The concept of Kilometers and Kilometers, I suspect, comes from an idea originally propagated by the former chief minister (of Kerala) E.K.Nayanar that rape is as common in the U.S of A as drinking a cup of tea. ROFL. Indians' general perception of the West is, it is a society with loose morals, non-existent familial relationships and wayward lifestyle. Indians consider themselves the polar opposite, the ultimate moral righteous and the defenders of family relationships. 

In the U.S we see a different flavor of this cultural superiority complex in God Bless USA and other populist takes on American exceptionalism. Either way if you have not traveled and been to other countries or exposed to their cultures, you end up thinking your culture is the gold standard.  Kms & Kms was created faithfully adhering to that standard.

The overwhelming theme of this road movie, where the lead pair (Josemon played by Tovino Thomas and the U.S tourist Cathy played by India Jarvis) travel on a motor-bike from Kerala in the south to Rajasthan in the north western part of India, is cultural chauvinism. 

The development of characters was easy-peasy for the story/script writers - Deepu Pradeep and Jeo Baby(who is also the director.) They just dipped into the brimming vat of stereotypes and pulled out a few - there's the unemployed do-gooder and the older son who carries the burden of his entire family Josemon (aka new-age Vatsalayam Mammootty), the clueless American tourist Cathy, the Malayali with a heart of gold who has been banished to a harsh northern territory, Veer bhai (aka Sunny Joseph) ready to help any Malayali with some Malayalam and a shoulder to lean on. And then there is Basil Joseph as Kuttan. Basil is a relief (to me, love his self-deprecating, comedic presence) although he is barely there after the first quarter of the movie.

Tovino and India are believable. While this is not a film that calls for hard hitting performances, it is easy to believe Tovino as Josemon, as someone with broken English trying to turn a quick dime chauffeuring the gullible tourist. It is a light watch, long as you have the remote in your hands, I would say, go for it - you can always fast forward the bits you don't like.

 

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The Frozen Ground : Anchorage's own Hollywood movie

Years ago when I was working in downtown Anchorage, most days after my lunch I used to take a walk from downtown to the water's edge (Cook Inlet.) The year was 2011 and I remember it was not summer. Every other season in Anchorage kind of felt the same - cold and grey, it had to be one of those indeterminable seasons. 

3rd Ave leading to Hilton was closed to traffic on that particular day. There were a lot of old and vintage cars parked curbside. We knew there was a Hollywood movie being shot in our city. This was the first time I was this up close and personal to a Hollywood movie location. Along with my friend who was with me on that afternoon we skirted around block and tried to get a better view from another side. Unfortunately we didn't catch any glimpse of Nicholas Cage or any other actors who were purported to be in the movie. Yet we were excited, a Hollywood movie in our city, that was a first. The movie is The Frozen Ground. I happened upon it on Netflix yesterday and watched it in one go.

 In the background of the title is the hazy urban sprawl of Anchorage

Ever since reality TV series took off, Alaska has been a reality TV hot-spot. The only true last frontier state remaining in the United States has provided ample fodder for the escapist lifestyle fantasies promoted by reality TV. From series like Alaska State Troopers and Ice Road Truckers to Palin clan's reality series (Sarah Palin's Alaska, Bristol Palin: Life's A Tripp) to homesteading families in Alaskan Bush People and many more, there has been no dearth of reality TV material from Alaska. 

But it is a different reality when it comes to feature films. Most of the Hollywood films with stories based in Alaska are shot in Canada, mainly in British Columbia. Thanks to Film Incentive BC Tax Credit. Why can't Alaska institute something like this, you know you can't always rely on oil.(Oh just found that there is one , and The Frozen Ground utilized it) These so-called Alaskan feature films will have few aerial shots of the real Alaska and maybe a few scenes filmed at landmark locations, other than that they are all Canada. I am  looking at you, Insomnia. The Hollywood remake of the famous Norwegian movie of the same name supposedly takes place in small town Alaska and starred Hilary Swank, Robin Williams and Al Pacino. It was entirely shot in BC except for a few frames shot at Bridal Veil Falls in Valdez,AK.

The other Hollywood movie, based in Alaska and shot in Alaska that I can think of is Into The Wild. Adapted from Jon Krakeur's book of the same name documenting the real life story of Alexander McCandless who hiked across N.America and finally found a home in an abandoned school bus in the wilderness outside Fairbanks,AK, Into The Wild's Alaskan parts were shot in Cantwell, about 50 miles south of Fairbanks. Oh yes, there was also Big Miracle - the Drew Barrymore movie about a whale rescue in Point Barrow. For this movie Anchorage and Seward stood in for small towns on the North Slope. It was imminently forgettable.

Back to The Frozen Ground. It tells the story of the real life serial killer, Bob Hansen (played by John Cusack), who terrorized the ladies of the night, walking the streets of Anchorage from the 1970s to the early eighties. I had a colleague who worked in my team who used to frequent Hansen's bakery for donuts (in 1970s.) She said the man gave off no signs of being a serial killer and was just another ordinary looking guy. 

A faraway shot of the Anchorage skyline, a bit more close and you would see it is 2010s Anchorage and not the 1980s.

Despite its 300K+ population, Anchorage is still very much a small town. Anchorage operates at a maximum of about 2 degrees of separation, six degrees is too much when half of the State's population lives in the city and its suburbs. Even serial killers can be just an acquaintance of an acquaintance like you can see in the example above. Some people even claim to be able to see foreign shores like Russia from their backyard.

Alaska Public Lands Building on 4th Ave serves as the APD HQ in the movie, which is less than half a block East of the current APD headquarters in the LIO building.

 

 A considerable amount of shooting took place on the 4th and 5th Ave, west of the Sheraton building. The shot below is at the intersection of Barrow St and 4th Ave looking east, where Bob Hansen is seen picking up one of his victims in the movie.

The film crew converted the store fronts on 5th Ave into strip clubs and other night-life enterprises. A lot of action in the movie happens on a couple of blocks on 5th Ave. In most of these scenes, the sidewalk outside seemed more crowded with people than you would expect on a night-out in Anchorage. But I am not complaining.

The Frozen Ground : Shooting Location on 5th Ave

I am immensely grateful that the makers of The Frozen Ground decided to shoot the movie on location, remaining truthful to the places and people, especially all the victims like Eklutna Annie whose remains are shown to recover from the sandy banks of Eklutna river, near the Knik Arm. This was the same place her remains were recovered in 1980.

          Aerial shot of Hansen (John Cusack) on Knik River bridge , Old Glenn Highway

Nic Cage plays Jack Halcombe the Alaska State trooper in charge of the investigation. His character is modeled on the real life investigator,Glenn Flothe. The movie also has Vanessa Hudgens, 50 Cent (he is one of the producers) and Dean Morris (aka Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad)

Hansen is an avid outdoors man and a pilot, which is not uncommon for Alaskans. Alaska probably has the most pilots per capita for any U.S state. He is often seen in the movie taking off from Merrill Field in his little bush plane, sometimes taking his victims along, probably before letting them escape in the wilderness and hunting them down with his gun like game.

All the actors have given solid performances. It is not your typical Hollywood movie, maybe reflecting the director Scott Walker's New Zealand roots. The script (also by Walker) and the movie are taut. There are no frills or cheap thrills which is probably why it failed at the box office recovering only $5.6 million of the $20 million production cost. It reminds me a lot of the Icelandic and Norwegian police procedural series like Trapped or The Valhalla Murders, set in a similar snowy grey landscape.

The film is dedicated to all the victims of Robert Hansen - he had attacked and raped 30+ women in Anchorage and killed at least 17 of them. At under two hours, it is a quick watch. Give it a try, just the amazing performances by all the actors will be worth your time. If you are from Alaska or have ever lived in Anchorage, you should watch it, no excuses.

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Irakal (The Victims)

 Another K.G.George gem from the early eighties, Irakal is the debut film of Ganesh Kumar. I didn't have much of an impression of Ganesh Kumar as an actor till I saw this movie. He makes a pretty decent debut as Baby Matthews the youngest son of a wealthy Christian business family and a closet psychopath - as in he has not come out to the family yet about his psychotic tendencies.

L to R Gopi as the Bishop and Ganesh Kumar as Baby Matthews

I remember a K.G.George interview where he mentions he had modeled Baby's character on Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son and heir apparent (before he died in an untimely air crash) of India's former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Irakal came out, eight years after Emergency - which was a period of almost two years starting from 1975 when the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi placed the entire country under a state of emergency. It was alleged that Sanjay Gandhi who had no political position ran a police state terrorizing the administration and the people using his mother's position and influence.

L to R  Ganesh Kumar and Ashokan in Irakal

All the characters in the movie are perfectly fleshed out and the script is taut. Actor Sukumaran who produced the movie also plays the role of the alcoholic middle son - Sunny Matthews. Thilakan plays the big daddy rubber baron and family stalwart, Matthews or Mathukkutty. Srividya is the oldest sister and the only girl in the family, and Radha plays Baby's love interest. Venu Nagavalli as usual loses the girl and meets a gory end. Ashokan also gets to play a small part as Baby's local acquaintance.

Irakal was awarded the best ever original Malayalam screenplay thirty years after its release. But the movie was not a commercial success when it hit the theaters in 1985.  It is said that Sukumaran had to make a couple of commercially successful films to recoup the losses he suffered in producing Irakal. It is a very mature film for a discerning audience, probably not the regular movie-goer's cup of tea. 

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Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback

 Movies about movie industry are fascinating to a curious audience. If that intersects with true crime or unsolved mysteries genre, it is even more captivating. Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback ( eng: Lekha's Death - A Flashback) directed by K.G.George, takes place in the Malayalam movie industry of the late seventies. It is loosely based on the suicide of a famous Malayalam actress of the time - Shobha. There were also rumors at the time it was not a suicide, but an accidental murder framed as a suicide. 

Many S.Indian actresses at the time came from poor families. With a few years of dance or music training in their kitties, these girls along with the rest of their family boarded trains to Madras to try their luck in movies. Of the hundreds who came to Madras with movie star dreams only a handful made it to the top and their path to stardom often was no picnic. In LMOF, the director K.G.George tells the story of Shantamma, one such girl from some village in Kerala. 

The first step to becoming a S.Indian movie actress is to change their real name into a fashionable pseudonym. This trend was more common 40-60 years ago, than now. Thus Shantamma becomes Lekha. Lekha (Nalini) is egged on by her over-zealous mother, played by Subha, who is bent on making her daughter a star at any cost. 

The costs she had to incur en route to stardom are enormous - from having to sleep with various powerful men to having to support the entire extended family through out her working life. Again this is a story typical of many girls' journeys in the south Indian film industry at the time. The character Lekha is one of the lucky few, many others find that their pinnacle of growth reaches a plateau as a  background or cabaret dancer.

The greatest similarity between LMOF and the life of the real life actress Shobha, is the affair Lekha has with a film director, Suresh Babu (Gopi). Shobha had an affair with director Balu Mahendra while he was married to his first wife which ultimately culminated in her marriage with Mahendra. Even during his short-lived marriage with Shobha, Balu Mahendra often spent nights at his first wife's place saying the he had to take care of his nine year old son. These are depicted as such in the movie, except that Lekha and Suresh Babu are not married, it is an ongoing affair in the film. Suresh Babu's attire is an exact copy of Mahendra's unifrom at the time

Nalini as Lekha and Gopi as Suresh Babu

Shobha didn't go through the struggle Lekha did trying to achieve stardom. Shobha's mother Prema Menon was already a supporting actor in Malayalam and Shobha had also been a child-artist in several films. The struggle part of Lekha's story is the stereotypical uphill battle faced by female artists in the industry at the time. 

A scene from Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback. Subha, Nalini, Nedumudi Venu (R to L)

The story, screenplay and direction of LMOF is by K.G.George. Shobha's suicide and the mystery surrounding it might have been irresistible to the director who was always beguiled by the unpredictability of human mind and the fragility of relationships.

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Swapnadanam : A Malayalam movie review

Broody, black and white shots of Swapnadanam come up in my mind at least once whenever I go down the rabbit hole of dreams, psychoanalysis, Freud, Jung and the whole shebang. Not that I go down this route very often. The reason is the title of the movie - Swapnadanam in Malayalam means journey through a dream. 

I saw this movie for the first time when my age could be counted on the fingers in one hand. It felt dark, eerie and strange and it stuck to my mind. I watched this movie several times afterwards at various film society screenings. In the seventies, Thiruvananthapuram served as a hatchery for several film societies tied with ISRO and my Dad used to be a member in a couple of these. The most famous among them were Soorya, SPARC, Vikas and Vishwas. Soorya film society and its 'chief operating officer' N. Krishnamoorthy went on to become a sort of a cultural institution in Kerala. These film societies had a fondness towards award winning indies, art house and international movies.The movies will be rerun several times during the years that follow after initially procuring them. There would be at least one movie each day to watch for free at Tagore theater, if you were up to it. Remember this was before television became common place in our part of the world, pre-1985.

Swapnadanam won the National Award for the best movie in Malayalam in 1976 and managed to poise delicately on the fence between art-house and commercial movies. It was also the first film by renowned Malayalam director, K. G. George. A personal point of association for me was, the main shooting location was a house in our neighborhood, although I was not present on this earth when this movie was shot right next door. It is a sprawling, gorgeous house, fit to be in Selling Sunset in the Seventies, and belonged to a son-in-law of an ex-state minister (K. R. Elamkath.) 

I feel like that the house is as much a character in Swapnadanam as the actors in the movie. The rambling airiness of the mid-century modern built structure directly contrasting with the gloomy, brooding nature of the protagonist. 

Below is a shot of the house from the front yard, you can vaguely make out the actors (left to right) Rani Chandra, M. G. Soman and Dr. Mohandas who plays the lead character Dr. Gopi

The film explores the state of fugue where the Dr. Gopi, a young newly married physician flees his home, leaving his new bride and ends up in different city. He has forgotten his identity and ends up in a mental asylum where under hypnosis he narrates his life story to a team of psychiatrists. 

Along with direction and photography, the casting is absolutely perfect in this movie. I don't think Dr. Mohandas appeared in any other movies after this one. He was a great fit for the introverted physician, Dr. Gopi.  Rani Chandra, the lovely actress who was taken away from us in an Air India air crash couple of years later, won the best actress award (state) for her work in this movie. M. G. Soman, Mallika Sukumaran, P.K. Venukuttan Nair, Prema Menon and P. K. Abraham  play other important roles.

 

Mallika Sukumaran and Rani Chandra

K. G. George was just getting started with his series of psycho-social movies with Swapnadanam. I ended up watching (or re-watching) 3 early K. G. George movie back to back last weekend. These films are rather heavy, introspective and certainly not what you would enjoy with a side of popcorn. If you, dear Malayali, are in the mood for a serious film with a glass of whiskey, try out a K. G. George movie like Irakal or Adaminte Variyellu or Yavanika.

L to R  Mallika Sukumaran, Rani Chandra and Dr. Mohandas

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After Selma

 Edmund Pettus Bridge is silent, quietly bearing the weight of history. Last month on July 26, the man who lead the march for voting rights across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, crossed the bridge one final time in a casket draped with the star spangled banner.(Photo below.)

John Lewis, once a 25 year old civil rights activist  who led the march for voting rights at Selma in 1965, went on to represent Georgia's 5th district five times and was the sitting Congressman when he died a month ago. 

But what happened After Selma? In John Lewis' own words - he was always in some kind of fight - for freedom, equality, basic human rights, the fighting never ceased. Selma was just the beginning. That is the truth for millions of African Americans and people of color. Although the marches at Selma, more than half a century ago led to passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, racism and racists still find ways to enact legislation and infiltrate the corridors of power to suppress the representation and voice of minorities.

In the light of upcoming elections, Loki Mulholland's documentary After Selma is essential watching for all American citizens. The 45 minute documentary, is an excellent primer on how the contemporary voting system is rigged to disenfranchise minorities. It is time well spent in the last few months before a highly contested Presidential election where we are getting exposed to more novel, underhanded techniques like taking away sorting machines from USPS to delay mail-in votes and no one bats an eye-lid as if it is the most common thing to do before an election.

The world's greatest democracy is just as corruptible as any other democracy in the world. American exceptionalism is not the anti-dote to the systemic rot in U.S's political machinery. The rot and racism was never in-your-face like it has been in the last few years. But practices like gerrymandering, unethical Voter ID laws and a bigoted criminal justice system biased against the people of color leading to their mass incarcerations have always been working tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the racial imbalance and discrimination intact.

Here is a gif I clipped out of the film which explains how gerrymandering works in a few seconds

Loki Mulholland, the director is the son of white civil rights activist and freedom rider Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. He had made an award winning documentary on her younger years as an activist and sit-in protestor called An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. This along with his other award winning documentaries - The Uncomfortable Truth and Black, White, & Us are available on Amazon Prime (US.)

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Netflix's show Stateless and some companion thoughts and figures

.....As you return home, to your home, think of others
(do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
(those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
(those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
(say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).

from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's poem Think of Others, translated from Arabic.

There are 80 million refugees or displaced people in the world right now. The crisis of displaced people was the largest and the most immediate human crisis we had to deal in the 2000s before Covid19 took center-stage. There have been hard-hitting documentaries on the refugee crisis like Fire at Sea, Island of Hungry Ghosts and Lost Boys of Sudan but not many feature films or TV shows.

Stateless - the Australian TV drama series, co-created by Cate Blanchett, Tony Ayres, and Elise McCredle for Australian Broadcasting Corporation is one of the first of its kind. It brings us a fictionalized, inspired-by-true-stories documentation of refugees and asylum seekers at Australia's immigration detention centers (at a particular one called Baxter at Port Augusta) in the mid-aughts.

Making a successful pitch for a TV drama series on displaced people is not an easy task. Sometimes the producers have to depend on the generosity of a Hollywood celebrity to be able to get their series off the ground. Thank you, Cate Blanchett, for giving life-breath to Stateless, acquired by Netflix and now streaming to your living room. Ms. Blanchett is an UNHCR ambassador and she joined the project as an executive producer to secure funding.

One commonality of all the displaced people in the 21st century is, they are not usually white. Most of the displaced people are from Asia, Africa or S. America. In a saner and brighter yesterday, they were regular people doing regular jobs - teachers, engineers, factory workers in their home countries before some political turmoil, mob lords or war decimated their way of life and their children's futures. Forced to flee their homes, their journeys to a better life is often chock-full of unbelievable hardship. These are not the people who have the luxury to 'Netflix and chill' (meme meaning not intended), so a show about them has to be tailored to the people who will make up the audience.

The producers had to make sure that there was something in the TV show that appealed to the white audience - who form the majority of viewership for streaming content in the western world. Stateless opens with a white woman running across the prickly dry Australian outback. She is what the producer Tony Ayers calls a Trojan Horse. The producers made a strategic and deliberate choice to enter into the story with a middle class white Australian woman for the sake of audience (white) who could easily relate to someone like themselves. The character on the run is Sophie Werner (played by an excellent Yvonne Strahovski), a flight attendant. The character is loosely modeled on a real-life person, Cornelia Rau - a white Australian flight attendant who was mistakenly detained for 10 months at Baxter immigration detention facility.

The fact that Stateless got to be made is commendable. It introduces some of Australia's finest immigrant acting talent to a global audience. Fayssal Bazzi, a first-gen Australian immigrant of Lebanese descent plays one of the major roles as an Afghan school teacher who with his family of two daughters and wife tries to seek asylum in Australia. Iranian-Australian actor Phoenix Raei,  Egyptian-Australian actor Helana Sawires and newcomer Afghan-Australian actor Soraya Heidari play some of the important characters in the show. Asher Keddie and Jai Courtney along with Cate Blanchett and Dominic West in brief but impactful roles make up the rest of the cast.

Stateless will make you think of others. Maybe it will even make you cry for them and despair at your helplessness to even light a candle of hope. If you are looking for a companion piece for this drama series there is Immigration Nation, a docu-series on Netflix which is a look into U.S's immigration enforcement and the treatment of asylum seekers at ICE detention centers.

Or you if you want to stay on Down Under and want to see where Australian government went from Baxter (closed in 2008), you can watch the Island of Hungry Ghosts, available on Amazon Prime (US.) It is a documentary about a local trauma counselor and asylum seekers housed at Christmas Island facility. Post 2010 Australia has been moving most of its immigration detention operations to its own offshore Guantanamos for housing asylum seekers and boat people away from mainland. In purgatories like Nauru, Christmas Island and Manus Island even the children are showing signs of giving up on life and exhibiting suicidal behavior.

I leave you with an UNHCR infographic - click here or on the image to open in a new tab. Food for thought or to discard.

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Sushant Singh Rajput: A Tribute

SUSHANT SINGH RAJPUT

1986 - 2020

Bollywood actor, amateur astronomer, physics and space research enthusiast, National Physics Olympiad winner, engineering drop-out, life-long learner, philanthropist, humanist, friend, brother, son

And now the party must be over
I guess we'll never understand
The sense of your leaving
Was it the way it was planned?

And so we grace another table
And raise our glasses one more time
There's a face at the window
And I ain't never, never sayin' goodbye

One by one
Only the good die young
They're only flyin' too close to the sun
Cryin' for nothing
Cryin' for no one
No one but you

(from the song No One But You - Only the Good Die Young by Queen, the only song the band recorded after the death of Freddie Mercury)

Sushant Singh Rajput at Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai

Pewdiepie on Sushant Singh Rajput (Youtube link)

Who was Sushant Singh Rajput ? Here's an article from the magazine The Week by Karthik Ravindranath

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Guruji Oru Vaakk

Jobless youth were some of the frequent protagonists in 80s Malayalam cinema. Probably because the directors and writers of most of these movies rose from that cadre, before they found their life's calling/work. Guruji Oru Vakku, written by Venu Nagavalli trains the lens on three jobless young men (played by Ratheesh, Nedumudi Venu, Mohanlal) doing some petty thefts and getting by. Before long Nedumudi Venu will be playing Mohanlal's Dad or Thampuraan (small time king/chieftain?) But as of this movie, Nedumudi's generational promotion is still a few years in the future.

The three youngmen are progressing merrily on their aimless adventures when they run into a mentor - Madhu in a guest role. He gives all of them some money to reinvent themselves and fixes a time exactly a year later for a status update.

After that it is all melodrama, lesser said the better. Venu Nagavalli being the writer we can expect at least one death in the family before the movie ends. The writer does not disappoint.

Seema, Manochitra and Sukumari form the female supporting cast in the movie. The famous Fort Kochi locale which we have seen in so many new-gen Malayalam movies first make the appearance as Seema and Sukumari's residence in this movie.

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Thusharam

This was a movie I so wanted to watch as a kid. Because it had snow. It was shot in Kashmir. In India people used to associate Kashmir with beautiful winter scenery and snow, inaccessible and exotic to majority of India’s plains dwelling population. Kashmir was a popular shooting location for Bollywood movies in the sixties and the seventies.  In the 1980s and 90s the number of Indian films shot in Kashmir drastically came down as it became less safer and more expensive to shoot in Kashmir as a result of the Valley’s disputed territory status and frequent militants/army skirmishes.

Thusharam was the first ever Malayalam movie shot in Kashmir. Thusharam means snow or dew drop. Unlike Eskimos with 50+ different words for snow, we equatorial people only have a couple of words for snow. These words also stand in for anything that remotely resembles snow – fog, dew, slush, sleet, you say snow we say ‘manjchu’ (or ‘thusharam’ if you want to be fancy.)

Till date there are only a handful of Malayalam movies shot in Kashmir valley. I.V.Sasi was a quite an adventurous director, with his stories and themes set in exotic locations. Ezhaam Kadalinakkare (Beyond the seven seas) was another 1980s I.V.Sasi movie set in a foreign location – United States of America and the first Malayalam movie to be shot in the US of A. I did get lucky to watch that movie on big screen as a little kid, where I saw Niagara Falls for the first time.

Back to Thusharam, the story takes place at an Army base in Kashmir. Jayan, a famous Malayalam actor was originally cast as the hero of the movie. Jayan died while shooting a stunt sequence for another I.V. Sasi film, Kolilakkam. This paved way for the introduction a new hero to Malayalam movie industry – Ratheesh Rajagopal. Along with Ratheesh there is Seema (I. V. Sasi’s real life wife and a major Malayalam movie actor of the 80s), Balan K.N air, Jose, Johnny, Rani Padmini, Kunchan, Nellikkode Bhaskaran and others.

The story is a revenge drama that involves army personnel. The revenge is extracted by kidnapping the heroine. I am not heavily invested or critical of Malayalam movie stories of the late seventies or early eighties. They reflect what audience appreciated at the time and to me they offer a window to the life that existed in the background.

It was fascinating to see ordinary Kashmir neighborhoods and city streets from forty years ago. Bollywood movies shot in Kashmir in those days only showed the best profile of the region with rolling snow-covered hillsides and shikaras floating on Dal lake.  Kashmiris in Thusharam look authentic. In the more recent Mallu Singh movies, Kashmiris would have been played by Malayalis in pherans talking in perfect Malayalam and heavily accented Hindi.

The story line is taut, although with more fight sequences and loud BGM than is necessary. But that is 1980s Malayalam movies for you. Entertaining, nevertheless.

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John Jaffer Janardhanan

After countless searches to fill “My List” with movies and shows to watch on Netflix, I usually reach an impasse. There is too much stuff on Netflix that I like and I cannot decide which one to watch. The only way out of this deadlock is to switch to YouTube. On YouTube I usually end up watching old Malayalam movies, usually the first one YouTube suggests.

That’s how I landed upon John Jaffer Janardhanan (1982) This masala potboiler directed by I.V.Sasi is a remake of the Bollywood film Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) Many movies from the Indian subcontinent from 1960s to 80s had successfully exploited the formula of lost and found families and siblings. Some of the most famous ones are - Waqt (1962 Bollywood) and it remakes (Kolilakkam – 1981 Malayalam being one of them), Talash (1976 Pakistan), Amar Akbar Anthony (1977 Bollywood) and its regional remakes,  Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973) and it regional remakes (Himam 1983 Malayalam was one of the remakes.)

The formula goes like this. A family of 2-3 kids (usually male siblings) and their parents are scattered to the four winds by the cruel hand of fate. This literally happens in John Jaffer Janardhanan where the mother of the family gathers her 3 kids in a forlorn spot and then goes out seeking food and help. On the way back she gets blown away by a localized cyclone or something similar(a very local weather phenomenon for sure.) She is thrown off course and struck down by the force of the gale and a broken tree branch while her 3 kids wander off crying and are picked up and raised by kind strangers.

At this point the formula calls for a song. All the three kids are shown growing up in different households subscribing to different religions and social classes. During this song the mother might become blind or handicapped, practically rendering her useless for anything other than pining her days away thinking about her lost kids. The father is shown becoming a Don or a mafia boss or a rich entrepreneur. In the five minutes, that takes for the song to end everyone will be 20 years older.  Now we are ten minutes into a 180 minute movie.

The next  two and half hours we see the three brothers engage in their professions, court girl friends from their respective religion and sing some more songs. One is usually a crime fighter or a cop, another one is a criminal but with a good heart and the youngest is usually a singer / dancer. In John Jaffer Janardhanan, Mammotty is the oldest brother – Janardhanan, the police officer. Ratheesh is the middle one raised as John at a church orphanage and is a small-time crook. The youngest Jaffer (Ravindran) has been raised as a Muslim and is a qawwali singer. All three have a rare blood group and are always up for voluntary blood donations.

Swapna, Madhavi and Sumalata play their girlfriends. All they must do is act pretty and coy and have the right connections to the right characters. K.R.Vijaya is the mother. She was the default mother in these types of movies, who was adept at losing her kids whenever the winds picked up. Balan K. Nair plays the father who becomes a mafia don. 

Finally there is the bathrobe clad, pipe smoking villain. In Malayalam this role used to fall on the capable shoulders of Jose Prakash or K.P.Ummer. In JJJ, it is Jose Prakash who draws the short straw. He is also the thread that brings all the separated siblings and their father together. Their common quest to bring down this villain also serves as the cinematic tool to unite them.

As film progresses, the brothers are united one by one through even more ludicrous acts of fate than the one that separated them in the first place. The same happens with their father and mother. In the last 10 minutes, there is a long fight sequence followed by a teary-eyed but joyous family reunion. All is well that ends well.

Trivia that I get fascinated by: The entire movie is shot in studio (indoor and outdoor) or in and around Chennai. As a post 2000s movie aficionado, I could feel something lacking in the ‘atmosphere’ of the movie. The familiar Kerala landmarks and landscape that I am used to seeing in Malayalam movies were missing. The shooting location of Malayalam movies had not yet shifted from Chennai to Kerala when this movie was made, although it would happen in the next couple of years. Most of the female actors are also non-Malayali. Swapna (Manjari Dhody) is a Punjabi while Sumalata & Madhavi (Vijayalakshmi) are Telugu.

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Irrfan Khan says The Story is Yours Now: A Tribute

Like a coworker who you run into occasionally in the hallway, with a comforting smile confirming things are just as it should be on this little marble of ours, Irrfan Khan was an un-intrusive coziness that permeated all the films he acted in. He is one of those people (albeit a celebrity), an incredible human being, you feel lucky to have shared your time on earth with, at the same time he was also passing through.

Irrfan, to me was less of a movie star and more of an acquaintance I had never met. An acquaintance who had the potential to turn into a friend, if one of us was brave enough to break the ice.

Fair winds and following skies, Irrfan, to your next port of call.




If you want an intro to Irrfan's body of work, here is an article from The Atlantic

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Lowkey aka Kareem Dennis - Hear him out, folks

Living in an idiocracy. Freedom fails democracy.
The emperor has no clothes, but the lone kid is comatose
The idiot rules the idiot box, his country is a tinderbox
Hey Mr. Ninety nine percent, welcome to your genocide,
Right, you’re on the wrong side, of the infamous great divide


Spoken word poetry must have had it roots in chants and stories, accompanied by rudimentary percussion, sung around primordial camp-fires. Long before we had written code or hieroglyphics to record our histories and songs down, the first rappers and story tellers were rapping their tales off, generation down generation.


I have a major case of tin ear. Because of this affliction it is usually not quartets or sonatas performed by a grand orchestra or any wailing violin that draws me in but the dance of poetry through the beats and the words. Give me a street rapper busting his soul with rhythm, rhyme and beat, that is the music that can tear through my tinpanum and bring out tears from my soul.


I met the bard of our century in a Youtube video. I was several years too late to come across this unflinchingly brutal young rapper. If you don’t know him already, please welcome, Lowkey aka Kareem Dennis, one of the most meaningful artists of our times. Born and raised in Britain, half English half Iraqi, this spoken word artist, rapper, activist and a well-deserved bearer of human conscience, Lowkey is not known much in the US. It feels criminal and a big loss to the people on this side of the Atlantic that such a great poet, artist will never be mainstream here. American media won’t play him or take him to the top of the charts, for he is not signed on by labels or brands. In his own words, “You can never top my fire in the booth, I don’t need a label I’m signed to the truth” 


Here is a rapper and a genuine human being whom I can show my kids to introduce them to rap. A messenger of our true reality, who does not cuss. What?!?!!! Is he for real? How can Lowkey be a rapper without employing the essential fifth element of rap – cussing? How can he be a true rapper without demeaning women in every line and without throwing in guns, gangsters, bling and booties in every stanza for good measure?


Here are some of Lowkey’s memorable tracks with a bit of the lyrics from each. There is more from where this came from – YouTube

AHMED

Toddler lying lifeless on the beach with his back bent
Arms spread, reaching the direction that his dad went
If he made it here, would have been bullied for his accent
He was captured by the ocean, paralysed and frozen
While these parasites sat and typed, analysing clothing
Now for resources we all compete beyond the talk of war and peace
And talk of porous border there is corpses on the shore of Greece
They found a teddy next to where his body was found
The sea swallowed him, politics has swallowed him now


OBAMA NATION

Kill a man from the military, youre a weirdo
But kill a wog from the Middle East youre a hero
Your country is causing screams that are never reaching ear holes
America inflicted a million ground zeros
Follow the dollar and swallow your humanity
Soldiers committing savagery you never even have to see
Those mad at me, writing in emails angrily
Im not anti-America, America is anti-me
Is it Obamas nation or an abomination?
Is it Obamas nation or an abomination?
Is it Obamas nation or an abomination?
Doesn't make any difference when they bomb your nation


CHILDREN OF DIASPORA
Since the middle passage either sink or you swim
Bleach the pigment of skin and pray its privilege trickling in
Are we missing the link?
Diasporas the reason MJ did to his nose what they did to the sphinx
And why Marley made the most classic of art
The reason Gabby Douglas didn't put her hand on her heart
The reason Malcolm Little changed his name to X
The reason the President's melanin remain a threat
Ahmed made a clock, they arrested him and mangled his name
But the root of the word is to thank and to praise
Racism manifests in many cancerous ways
We must rally for change in these most tragic of days
Cos Emmett Till didn't have a weapon, but they still got him
Tamir Rice never had a weapon but they still shot him
Alton Sterling never had a weapon but they still shot him
They call them first world diaspora problems 

Respect.

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Best Books I Read in 2019

Below is a list of the best books I read in 2019 in no particular order. Only one of them was published in 2019.

When Breath Becomes Air (2016) by Paul Kalanithi : I am in awe of people who create works of literature while battling the demons of disease. Tragic and powerful, the author lives on in our thoughts even when he is dead, long after his breath has become air. Fair winds and following seas, Paul.

This Land is our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto (2019) by Suketu Mehta: An impassioned plea from one of the best immigrant literary voices in the US of A.It is non-fiction, based on author's research, but it is one hundred percent an emotional appeal piece.

Girl at War (2015) by Sara Novic :Told through the eyes of a 10 year old tomboy turned child soldier, this debut novel by Sara Novic is a fictional account of the conflict in the Balkans in the 90s. I have not read many books about the Balkan conflict, nor did I associate the Serb-Croat-Bosnian civil war with child soldiers. This was an eye-opening, entertaining and relatable work. Highly readable.

Bad Blood : Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018) by John Carreyrou : A in-depth expose about a Silicon Valley startup founder. It's such a great work of investigative non-fiction that when I recently watched the HBO documentary (The Inventor : Out for Blood in Silicon Valley) on the same subject I found the documentary tepid and underwhelming. Here are my thoughts on Carreyrou's ground-breaking book.

Travels with Charlie in Search of America (1962) by John Steinbeck : Take a road trip in a tricked out camper with one of the greatest story teller's America has ever produced. The year is 1960. Your co-passengers are John Steinbeck and Charlie the dog. The mission is to search for the real America. Here are my thoughts after riding with the man and his dog.

Green River Running Red : The Real Story of the Green River Killer - America's Deadliest Serial Murderer (2004) by Ann Rule : 2019 was the year I got introduced to Ann Rule, America's number one true crime non-fiction writer. Between 1982 and 85, the Green River serial killer murdered 50+ women around Seattle area. Ms.Rule delves in to the lives of each and every victim and the police officers, in addition to the life of the killer himself. While speed-reading it sometimes become difficult to connect the dots, but I think this is the only way to present these crimes - giving  importance to the victims and the people who worked hard to solve the cases.

Everything Happens For a Reason (And other lies I've loved) (2018) by Kate Bowler : Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, questions about the part God plays in this deadly mortality play and a few funny insights form the crux of Kate Bowler's memoir. While not heart-wrenching or emotionally gripping as Paul Kalanithi's it is an interesting piece of a near-miss death experience from a Christian perspective.

Pretending to be Normal (1999) by Liane Holliday Willey
Be Different : Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian (2012) by John Elder Robinson : At this very late stage in life, I realize I might be not be normal. But then again, the true average is the rarest to find, every one might be in one spectrum or the other.

My Life of the Road (2016) by Gloria Steinem : This is the first book I've ever read of Gloria Steinem's - one of feminism's primary crusaders. Here is my two-bit take on the book.

Gone Without a Trace (2017) by Mary Torjussen: Your significant other vanishes without a trace and you do not know what is going on. It's hard to do a complete scrubbing in this digital age but somehow this SO achieves that and leaves the girl to figure it out all by herself. One of the few pieces of fiction I consumed this year, with the focus on yet another unhinged young woman protagonist, along the lines of The Girl on the Train and I Let You Go.If you must read fast-food-fiction, this will fit the bill.

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25 Best Indian Films on Amazon Prime : Summer 2019 List

Amazon Prime has stepped up its game to woo the global Indian audience. Prime is pushing out many Indian movies (all languages) at the same time as their DVD releases and is also beefing up its collection of older Indian movies. This could be a real blow to the pirates.

Indian movie industry - Bollwood together with the regional movie hubs is the largest producer of movies in the world. With the world's largest movie going public, third largest in terms of ticket sales revenue (blame/thank the lowest movie ticket prices in the world) and a huge diaspora spread across the globe, no wonder Amazon is focusing on tapping the Indian audience market.

I have made a list of post-2000s Indian movies which I consider are some of the best Indian movies available on Amazon Prime as of July 2019. I watch movies in four languages mainly as these are the ones I can understand without subtitles, so the movies in these four languages - Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu make up the bulk of my list. I have watched every one of films in the list below and deem them immensely watchable.

Virus, Malayalam film by Aashiq Abu (2019) is a fictionalized account based on true events about the outbreak of Nipah virus epidemic in the southern Indian state of Kerala. (Language: Malayalam)

Kumbalangi Nights (2019) a story about a dysfunctional family of four brothers in a small island hamlet of Kumbalangi, Kerala.(Language: Malayalam)

Premam by Alphonse Puthren (2016)is a film exploring the phases of love in the life of a young man, one of the highest grossing Malayalam movies of all time. (Language: Malayalam)

Bangalore Days (2014) : The original Malayalam hit about the lives of three cousins in the city of Bangalore, directed by Anjali Menon. It went on to be remade in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi (under production.) (Language: Malayalam)

Sapthamashree Thaskara (2014) : A Malayalam heist movie about seven thieves directed by Anil Radhakrishna Menon. (Language : Malayalam)

Dil Chahta Hai : A bro movie, a Bollywood comedy about 4 young men, could be seen as the part one of the next movie in the list, Dil Dhadkane Do (Language: Hindi)

Dil Dhadkane Do (2015): A Bollywood road trip movie by Zoya Akhtar. A good intro to contemporary Bollywood. (Language: Hindi)

Gully Boy : India's version of Eminem's 8 Mile. (Language: Hindi)

3 Idiots (2009): A Bollywood comedy. (Language: Hindi)

Chak De India (2007): A well directed and scripted Bollywood sports movie. The only big name in this movie is Bollywood super star, Shahrukh Khan in a very different-than-his-usual avatar. (Language: Hindi)

Kapoor and Sons (2016): Family drama directed by Shakun Batra (Language: Hindi)

Newton (2017) : A little peak into the working of how elections are run in the world's largest democracy through the eyes of Newton Kumar, a feature film directed by Amit Masurkar. (Language: Hindi)

Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (2009) : India's Office Space? Directed by Shimit Amin, starring Ranbir Kapoor. (Language: Hindi)

Karthik Calling Karthik (2009) : Psychological drama set in the world of young urban Indian professionals. Not your usual Bollywood movie, infinitely entertaining nevertheless. (Language: Hindi)

A Death in Gunj (2018) : A haunting coming of age story directed by Konkona Sen Sharma. (Language: Hindi)

Talaash (2016) : An excellent Bollywood psychological thriller with top name actors, directed by Reema Kagti. (Language: Hindi)

October (2018): A beautifully melancholic movie about young love, life, loss and acceptance. (Language: Hindi)

Alaipayuthey (2000) : A Tamil romantic drama directed by Maniratnam (Language: Tamil)

Dhruvangal Pathinaru (2016): An offbeat suspense thriller directed by Karthick Naren.(Language: Tamil)

Peranbu (2019): A brilliant film exploring the relationship between a father and his grown-up, disabled daughter. (Language: Tamil)

Pariyeram Perumal B.A B.L (2018): A young man's life in rural TamilNadu as he navigates a caste-stratified society.(Language: Tamil)

Arjun Reddy (2017):Self titled movie about a sexist alpha male character. Was a huge hit in Telugu, remade in Bollywood, a landslide blockbuster there as well. Such movies make you realize that entertainment  has to cater to all types of audience. (Language: Telugu)

Fida (2017): A simple love story, if you want to see a typical South Indian entertainer, this is a good one. (Language: Telugu)

Mahanati (2018) : A biopic about the first South Indian female super star - Savitri. (Language: Telugu)

The Japanese Wife (2018) : Directed by the acclaimed directed Aparna Sen, a beautiful cross-cultural love story.(Language : Bengali)

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