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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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)

Read More

Leila : Netflix TV show review

Sometimes the specter of a dystopia is too real and close for comfort. There is no hiding from the fact that we live in portentous times. USA, Russia, China, India, Brazil - the masochistic monarchs (many democratically elected)  who preside over these critical nations of the Earth make me wonder whether we - the human kind, are in the first chapters of a Stephen King horror novel or an Atwoodian dystopia. Wish I had been born a boomer like my parents and done with my time on this planet before whatever Idiocracy that might descend upon us. 

Leila - the Netflix series by Deepa Mehta, is India's take on its dystopian future, life in a pure Hindu utopia - Aryavarta. The production design is commendable considering they didn't construct elaborate sets, rather used what is available along with a smattering of CGI and still came out with a convincing presentation. The Indian utopia/dystopia (depending on which side you are on) in Leila is based on a religion,caste based categorization of the masses.  It has more similarities with Hitlerian version of a pure-bred paradise than the gender based subjugation explored in The Handmaid's Tale. Leila's take, I believe, is more relevant and timely from an Indian (and current global) perspective than the Margaret Atwood's tale of subjugated maids.

Great casting - Huma Qureishi, Siddharth, the lead pair thrown together by circumstance make a powerful impression.  The supporting characters are also well etched out. Leila, got a lot of flak in India for its purported Hindutva bashing. I like to think of it as a possible outcome, an alternative reality that will come into existence if we keep on making bad choices while selecting our leaders. And yes, WATER, like it is shown in Leila, is going to be resource over which future wars will be fought, long as we keep on denying climate change.

Read More

Ishq, Malayalam movie review 2019

Ishq is unsettling. The fine print of its subtitle – ‘not a love story’ warns the audience to get rid of their preconceptions about the title – Ishq (means love or passion), at the opening credits. Even with that ominous heads-up the movie starts off pretty tame with two young lovers – Sachi (Shane Nigam) and Vasudha (Ann Sheetal) sneaking texts and phone calls as they carry on their semi-long distance relationship.

The film makers have boldly attempted to address the issue of moral policing prevalent in every-town, India. In a society and culture still squirming and yearning to be free from under years of traditions, patriarchy and conventions, Ishq is a young couple’s encounter with this formidable wall and its aftershocks.

Shane Nigam has been getting a lot of tortured young hero roles – from Kismath and Eeda, to Kumbalangi Nights and Ishq. He is inching closer to being typecast with every new movie. Maybe it is his vulnerable, barely legal looks with a hint of rebellion, that leads to these type of roles land on his plate. This is wishing him he choose wisely as he goes forward.

Ann Sheetal, Shine Tom Chacko and Leona Lishoy have essayed their roles brilliantly. It was harrowing to watch the incident which became the crux of the movie without reaching for the remote. The torture the lead couple was undergoing was palpable. Good work director - Anuraj Manohar, script writer (Ratheesh Ravi) and editor (Kiran Das)! These central moments along with the ending left me a bit disturbed. The creeps-in-the-car scenes unsettled me with their sheer terror that was so subtly executed. The climax was upsetting because this was not the triumph of feminism I had wished to see. But then again had the hero turned into a feminist instead of the heroine, where is the shock factor, right?

BTW Anuraj Manohar, why the name Ishq? This is the third movie by the name of Ishq that I have seen in the last 25 years albeit they were all in different languages. Love/Ishq transcends languages, eh?

Read More

The JFK Enigma and the media products it spawned

John F. Kennedy was fascinating in his death as he was in his life. The mystery of his assassination continues spawning new stories, podcasts, books, movies and keeps the midnight oil burning for thousands of conspiracy theorists. Everyone, especially if you live in the United States, gets lost in the fog of Kennedy mystery, at least once. If you get hooked, there is no telling that the unsolved mystery of the late President's death won't comeback to haunt you on an idle Saturday afternoon.

I have been to Dealey Plaza in Dallas once. The grassy knoll, the brick buildings flanking it and the smooth curve of the black top had seemed to me like a serene hideaway tucked just beyond the reach of urban throes. It was hard to visualize a Presidential assassination happening there.

With the recent release of all confidential JFK files, which according to our current President should put all JFK conspiracies to rest, there is more attention on the case which never left America's consciousness. I did some reading and watching related to JFK assassination and here are my notes.

Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale is a work of gargantuan proportions covering Lee Harvey Oswald's life - Kennedy's purported killer, in two separate sections - Oswald in Minsk and Oswald in America. Mailer went back to Russia in early 90s after Gorbachev, Perestroika and Glasnost made landfall in USSR and he was able to access a lot of information than before and discuss with 'newly talkative' people about Oswald's time in Russia. In the end it tows the Warren Commission line that Oswald was a disillusioned loner who acted alone. But Mailer never intended his book to solve the mystery of Kennedy's assassination, his work was a study about the evolution of the purported killer - Lee Harvey Oswald.

Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison in JFK

JFK, the Oliver Stone movie, which I re-watched recently provides a believable counter point to Warren Commission's bureaucratic fact finding mission. It brings out the discrepancies in the Warren Commission findings and showcases New Orlean's District Attorney Jim Garrison's work trying to unravel the Kennedy assassination mystery.

Garrison might have been one of the few true and honest investigators of this case for which he became a victim of a smear campaign, probably paid for by the CIA. But to my relief, Jim Garrison re-emerges victorious on the other side after all the plots to bring him down fizzle out. This led me to the best seller he authored which became one of the books on which Stone's JFK is based on - On the Trail of Assassins (1988). The other work that provides material for JFK, the movie is CrossFire : The plot that killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs.

Killing Kennedy is another movie starring Rob Lowe as JFK. Lowe's resemblance to Kennedy in the movie is uncanny, and in many places he appears more handsome than JFK. Nothing sensational about the movie, it is built up on the single shooter theory as is depicted in U.S. history books.

11/22/63 by Stephen King. King, one of the best writers practicing the art of fiction in our age could not stay away from the JFK charisma either. His novel, 11/22/63 is a fictional work of epic proportions where the protagonist (from Maine, of course) gets pulled into the JFK assassination through a time travel vortex. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. But do not read or watch 11/22/63 (Hulu has come out a TV series of the same name) to provide a new and reasonable theory that will put an end to all other conspiracy theories. King's work agrees with Warren Commission findings of Lee Harvey Oswald being the sole assassin of Kennedy and builds the story around the premise of trying to stop Oswald.

To round things off I listened to Conspiracy Theories podcast and Gone podcast from Parcast Network. The podcast revealed further botch-ups that happened after Kennedy was assassinated - how rules were broken by his staffers taking his body for post mortem back to Washington, when as per the rule it should have been done at the hospital in Dallas where he was taken to after he was shot and how his post mortem was performed a pathologist, who has never done any post-mortems before?! This is the American president we are talking about, how could this happen to such an eminent figure ? In the movie JFK I remember one character saying, if they could kill Kennedy, what are you and me to them? Then the original post mortem notes were destroyed soon after they were written and was never found again including Kennedy's brain which disappeared after the post mortem. The most crucial piece of evidence that Kennedy's body could provide, his brain where those fatal bullets struck, disappeared under high security. WTH?!?

Robert Kennedy's assassination by Sirhan Sirhan (another pawn) five years later in 1968 is as mysterious and unsolved as his elder brother's. It is as if someone at the top was bent on removing the Kennedy 'contagion'. RFK, I think was the brainy brother, JFK being the handsome one. In an alternate reality where both Kennedy brothers are alive, I wonder what it would be like. In 11/22/63 Stephen King paints a discouraging picture of this parallel universe if it ever existed.

Read More

Super Deluxe: Tamil Movie Review

Blue and ocher. Blue walls and blue outfits contrasting with rust, mud and bronzed faces. As a visual person it was the color scheme of Super Deluxe which caught my eye first. The urban grime becomes sell-able with swishes of blue and bronze.

The vibrant color palette is just a start. Super Deluxe is all about quirkiness. I have noticed that all off-center movies have signature color schemes. In Thiagarajan Kumararaja, the director of Super Deluxe, Kollywood has the beginnings of their own version of Wes Anderson or Coen Brothers.

You do not see many such successful idiosyncratic attempts in Indian regional language movies. A recent one I remember is Lijo Jose Pellissery's Double Barrel. Despite being a visual treat it couldn't impress the box office with its colorful eccentricities. Hollywood and Asian movies excel in this genre like Little Miss Sunshine, Everything is Illuminated, any Wes Anderson or Coen Brothers' movies or Takeshi Kitano movies.

Super Deluxe is a multi-narrative film. If done right, it will keep the audience hooked to the very end till it leads them to a confluence of all the threads. Super Deluxe mixes the multi story threads with a fair dose of hyper-reality and delivers a winner.

The cast is impressive. Vijay Sethupathi as the trans-gender woman is probably a first for Tamil movies. He crushes it. Fahadh Fazil, Samantha Akkineni, Bhagavathi Perumal, Mysskin, Ramya Krishnan and all the kid actors excel in their roles.

Read More

A review of Prithviraj's and Mohanlal's Lucifer

What is in a name? Mohanlal by any other name would be just as magnificent, then let's call him Lucifer. Lucifer is a sophisticated sobriquet with devilish undertones and would appeal to the masses for its coolness quotient. The man has carried off exemplary titles like Ravanaprabhu, Narasimham, Pulimurugan, Madampi, Paradesi, Nattu Rajavu, Neerali, Peruchazhi, Bhagavan, Villain, Udayon and Odiyan with great success.

It is perfectly alright if we have to introduce an unnecessary character to tie the name Lucifer to the movie's leading man and the story. Indrajith does an excellent job as slightly off-the-rocker journalist though. Collateral damages to the script and credibility are totally irrelevant when you are making super hero movies. I've given up on Murali Gopi scripts after Tiyaan.

Prithviraj, the new director on the block is a man synonymous with style. He has injected himself into the plot as the dashing international assassin with the killer looks of Backstreet Boys, Sayed Masood. He kills it with style and a couple of sentences in Hindi. The story line could have done without this lady-killer, but this is Prithviraj's directorial venture, who would say no if he desires to play a two-bit part? I would not, not to such eye-candy.

All said and done Prithviraj respectfully relinquishes the screen-space to the greatness that is Mohanlal. But not without inducting few other style icons into the boys club - Tovino Thomas as the heir apparent and a suave and smooth villain - Vivek Oberoi. It is a hunk-fest, if you can ignore Mohanlal. Manju Warrier is an important piece in this political drama but as a woman, she is cast in the damsel in distress mold, just like other underlings - their sole purpose is to put themselves in dire situations and patiently wait for Lucifer to rescue them.

As Malayalam cinema's one and only white man savior (post 2000s) Mohanlal aka Lucifer arrives without fail to rescue his helpless sheeple. He is the hero Kerala deserves, but not the one it needs it right now - try telling that to Malayali movie-goers. The flick of the mundu, the underside of his footwear, the jeep, his 360 degree vision, scowling jowls - are all used in the right measure to establish Lucifer's super-hero status. CGI crowds roar as he performs feats of exceptionalism with or without firearms or plucks a dialog out of thin air and delivers centuries old political wisdom to a bewildered opposition.

This is a Prithviraj's play-it-safe movie, I hope it is because it is his first film as a director. He uses all the elements that will keep the box office ringing, including the choice of Mohanlal for the hero. The established brand-recognition of Mohanlal and the assurance of success it gives, is hard to ignore for a newbie director with deep-pocketed producers to back him up.

The way I see it, it is a world-wide trend. As nations get swept up in the conservative wave where power is concentrated in a few people or the top 1%, every movie features exceptional lead characters with super human abilities, touted as the only ones who have the power to change the world. Mohanlal movies of late are all of this genre, only thing that he is missing from his Hollywood counterparts is a latex suit. These movies reinforce in the mind of their audience that community action or collective effort cannot bring about advancement, it can only happen if you have powerful, exceptionally talented individuals on your side. They could be called Satan or Dark Knight, but long as you are in their good books, you are safe.

On another note, I really wish Mohanlal had gone on vanaprastham after his 1999 movie Vanaprastham. IMHO, it is his last good movie. Twenty years of great movies from a great actor, then twenty plus years of mediocre to bad movies from an actor sliding down the acting scale.

Read More

Njan Prakashan

Njan Prakashan is very much a Satyan Anthikkad movie, with occasional strokes of brilliance from Sreenivasan's pen. Sreenivasan continues being Sreenivasan. Njan Prakashan's script is Sreenivasan's opportunity to speak his mind, deliver a social commentary to the masses, packaged in a  wholesome Sathyan Anthikad movie. He does not waste the opportunity, although with the intermittent voice-overs in Sreenivasan's voice it is established that it is an older person's take on the current Kerala society.

Sathyan Anthikkad is the Head of Wholesomeness in Malayalam movie industry, he will not have it any other way. The audience is guaranteed they can take home the feel good vibe after watching an Anthikkad movie, this one is no different. It is funny and light-hearted, almost tricks us to ponder about the variety of human personality types on this planet. Somewhere towards the end it runs out of ideas to liberate P.R.Akash from himself, so Sreenivasan, Anthikkad and Co. recruit Grim Reaper as the villain, very much in line with pre-1980s Indian movies.

P.R.Akash, Fahadh's character is the new generation M.A.Dhavan. He is a caricature of a man and Fahadh delivers without much effort. Nikhila Vimal's role is much smaller than I had anticipated. Devika Sanjeev is a find. Anju Kurien could've used less make-up for a girl who harvests 30-40 lbs cassavas with her bare hands. 

A light entertainer, I found myself smiling most of the time I was watching this movie. What else is a lazy Saturday afternoon flick supposed to do?

Read More

The Big Country & The Assassination of Jesse James by Coward Robert Ford

The American West is the stuff of myth and legends. While East coast was all about the original boat people aka the Puritans and the blue bloods, the West was the indefatigable frontier that drew in the itchy feet adventurers and crazy eyed outlaws.I have been enamored by the landscape of the West, despite having no birth-right citizenship connections to it.

The wide brown expanse of semi-aridness playfully taunted by rolling tumbleweed, sweeping hills dotted with cattle or the majestic outcrops of rock that have hid many a vigilante - the once famed frontier of the US of A is indeed poetry in landscape mode.

Recently I had a chance to watch a couple of beautifully shot Westerns, made fifty years apart.

The first one is1958's The Big Country. The wide angle shots of this outdoor epic directed by William Wyler (dir. of Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur,...) makes the title very appropriate. Shot in Mojave desert using a large screen cinematography technique called Technirama, the movie starred Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives (won the supporting actor for his role) and Jean Simmons. It is often called as a Western for people who do not like Westerns. It even has a New-Englander pacifist - Peck's character James McKay for a hero.

Jerome Moross composed the remarkable score for the movie which has been reused several times in ad campaigns and such - it is a musical piece that captures the essence of all Westerns.



While looking up the shooting locations of the movie, I found an interesting page - Orvis Cattle Company & Ranch.

About the story of the movie, you can watch it yourself if you want to know. I liked Burl Ives' Rufus Hannassey, the best. Peck as McKay was overly Gandhian for my taste, but great performances by all actors nevertheless.

---

Then from 2007 came this visual poem of a Western - The Assassination of Jesse James by Coward Robert Ford. This is the first movie I could truly feel sympathy for a character played by Casey Affleck - the anti-hero to Brad Pitt's anti-hero - Jesse James, a notorious outlaw at the time. Affleck is a perfect fit for the hero-worshipping mumbler turned Judas, Bob Ford.

Roger Deakins' cinematography is evocative of vintage photos with blurry edges. The vast wheaty prairies and the still life shots of life in the old West with close-ups of complex characters is a visual treat. The sombre, nuanced nature of the narrative is aided by the intermittent voice-overs, like that of a historical observer.

Directed by Andrew Dominik, the sweeping frames of the movie is one of the few characteristics it shares with the classic westerns. It is a slow-burn film, delving on and developing its characters in an un-predictable way although the ending is self-evident from the movie title.

Maybe because it was the presence of Brad Pitt in the leading role, I felt it had something common with slow sweeping crescendo of the movie, Tree of Life by Terrence Malick.

Read More

John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley: In Search of America

John Steinbeck says he was born lost and takes no pleasure in being found. It feels good to be lost with Mr.Steinbeck, one of the greatest story tellers America has ever produced.

I took a road trip with Steinbeck last week. He was in his 'tricked out' truck camper -Rocinante, with his dog Charley, cruising along the sixties streets of change, on a coast to coast journey to catch an America that was fast making itself scarce. Travels with Charley is a simple travelogue, a journey of discovery with a strong undercurrent of philosophical rumination, penned later in life by a wise and experienced writer.

John & Charley. Pic courtesy: NY Times Bettman/Corbis

At some point in the 2000s Bill Steigerwald, a journalist tried to retrace the path taken by Steinbeck across America and found many factual and temporal discrepancies and came out with a verifiable conclusion that many meetings and events in the travelogue were figments of the great writer's imagination. I knew this before I had started reading and I had approached the book as a sort of part travelogue - part memoir - part a mirror held onto sixties America by one of the most deserving and critical mirror-holders available in this country at that time, with some liberties of finessing taken by the author. Which published author does not?

There are several passages and statements of reflection and insight in this little travelogue. Here are a selected few. Remember these are the first years of the sixties, the book actually ends with Steinbeck describing the Kennedy inauguration which took place in a snowed-in Washington D.C in January of '61, although much of it could be true even now.

"....the big towns are getting bigger and the villages smaller. The hamlet store, whether frocery, general, hardware, clothing, cannot compete with the supermarket and the chain organization..."

".... for all of our enormous geographic range, for all of our sectionalism, for all of our interwoven breeds drawn from every part of the ethnic world, we are a nation, a new breed. Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners... The American identity is an exact and provable thing...."

If you like road-trips, which is the only way of real way to get a feel of this modern nation state built upon its network of highways, freeways, arterials and local streets, you surely must have felt what Steinbeck describes below,

"...I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation -- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move...."

“..You can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory...” 

Steinbeck's prose also does not fail elicit chuckles as we tag along with him.

“And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.” 

“But it isn't hunger that drives millions of armed American Males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove. Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don't quite know how.” 

“Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.” 

Read More

Bad Times at the El Royale

Mid-century modern architecture. The Dude aka Jeff Bridges. Retro hippy California captured in amazing production design.Tautly suspenseful. These factors did me in, even before the movie started I was a fan.

This Drew Goddard movie is a loopy mystery built on the much used story device of a bunch strangers coming together in a strange place for a short period of time. But the adherence to the stock formula ends at the beginning once the scene is set.

The characters are unconventional, the twist and turns unpredictable and you can't help but rooting for the Dude even though you are an atheist and he is in the guise of a priest in this movie. The only single bell hop and mostly absent caretaker of the motel, Miles, is played by Lewis Pullman.The rest of the quirky cast is made up of Jon Hamm as the traveling vacuum cleaner salesman and the amazing singing and acting talent of Cynthia Arivo as the single African American woman who is on her way to audition as a backup singer for Supremes in Vegas. Then there is Dakota Fanning as the hippie Emily Summerspring and the charismatic cult leader Billy Lee - played by a mostly shirtless Chris Hemsworth.

To find later (after watching the movie) that the entire El Royale motel was built inside a warehouse in Vancouver with set design, color palette, architecture, and even singular details like bar stools or the distance from the bar to the reception made to match up with exact measurement of the movement of characters and the aesthetics of the movie was mind-blowing. Martin Whist, the production designer deserves a ton of credit for the amazing setting. The El Royale motel is also an important character of the movie and merited all the attention and detail it received, of course it has its hidden dark secret too. The California-Nevada state line running right through the hotel is an interesting element of the story.

Bad Times at El Royale has a captivating story line, engaging actors and an incredible set for film noir fans with a finesse modern technology can afford us now. 1969 looks better than it ever was at this border line between sunshine state and sin city.

Read More

The Audacity of a Rich and Connected Narcissist: Elizabeth Holmes and her Monumental Fiasco called Theranos

Thank you John Carreyrou for an un-putdownable expose on one of Silicon Valley's greatest screw-ups.Also highly commendable are the brave ex-Theranos employees like Erika Cheung, Tyler Shultz, Ian Gibbons and others who risked their lives and careers for divulging the information they were privy to in order to protect the lives of ordinary Americans. 

The Silicon Valley startup Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes was willing to put millions of lives at risk with fake blood test results while lying through the teeth to federal agencies to make her scam company a success. John Carreyrou started following the scent of this sham of a start-up, first through the investigative pieces he wrote for his employer - The Wall Street Journal. But a scam of such monumental proportion could not be contained in a couple of articles and it became the book Bad Blood: Secret and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.

I remember the days when Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos founder and CEO, was everywhere - from NPR to Hillary Clinton fundraiser. Media loved her - a female founder of a highly successful Silicon valley startup, probably the only one of a startup of this stature. A girl (19 year old when she started the company) - rich, powerful, intelligent, blonde and beautiful - a girl who broke into the proverbial boy's club, what is not to like, right? She had the right credentials for a start-up CEO - she was a Stanford drop out, under thirty and hungry for success, plus she wore the black Steve Jobs turtle necks, to play the part from neck to the boot.

To me, reading the book, articles and her interviews, Elizabeth Holmes comes off as a rich and connected narcissist who thought she knew more than 99.99% of humanity and could con them with miniaturized blood tests (which she couldn’t miniaturize because there were reasons why the people with experience in the industry had not done it yet) because in her mind she was the once in a blue moon tech-entrepreneurial genius – along the lines of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. And there were rich white men confirming her genius and expressing approval by contributing millions to her vaporware dream.

She was a charismatic charmer who had populated the board of Theranos with the aging American stalwarts ranging from George Shultz and James Mattis to Henry Kissinger who fell for her so-called new-found technology hook, line and sinker. Her investors included Larry Ellison, Kraft family, the Waltons, the DeVoses and Rupert Murdoch. With such big names backing her who would have the nerve say this company is perpetuating a sham which is nothing bigger than a middle school science project.

With billions in funding and billionaires backing her up, Elizabeth Holmes recruited the best and brightest in the industry but Theranos forever remained a revolving door. The brlliant minds enticed by the charisma and 'vision' of the CEO were found leaving after a few months or a year burnt by Holmes' outright lying and ruthlessness and the company's unethical practices. She was also aided in this process by her boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, twenty plus years her senior, but just as cunning and ruthless. The two kept their relationship secret from the board of the company for the longest possible time while Balwani continued being the President of the start-up.

Bad Blood is an excellent investigative revelation which documents the fall of a rich, powerful and a ruthless bully, lawyer-ed up to the gills that not a single person, unless you are a billionaire yourself with billions to spare, would ever dream of going against. If you like stories where the underdog (in this case the tortured employees and deceived patients) trounces Goliath in a story with a happy ending, this is it.

There are lots of videos on Youtube featuring Holmes and Theranos, if you are interested. There is also a film coming out soon based on the book starring Jennifer Lawrence as the controversial founder of Theranos.

Read More

The Tale of Four Pegs & Other Poems : A poetry review

The Tale of Four Pegs & Other Poems is the debut poetry compilation from Anand Haridas, a journalist turned writer based in Kochi, India. The poet is a friend of a friend. Two degrees of separation, not distant enough to divert incoming friendly fire after a scathing review that I had in mind.

The book is available on Amazon. You can buy it here and I won't get any commission from the sales.

I do not have any idea how to do a poetry book review. I ended up going through each poem and composing my own new poem stringing together my take on each - few words or a line per poem. It seemed to be the only way to do justice to a versified creation. Although if you have not read the book the review below would not make any sense to you.

Here goes,

We get a peek into your think pad, it is honest and clear, though at certain places

metaphors are muddled or similes reckless, you could have taken out the traces

of construction equipment – conjunctions, explanations crowd your unpretentious core

diluting the profound and the mindful down to just another garden-variety heart-sore.

We partake in your pegs¹, the fourth as you had predicted shows a sapient promise

traveling from you to you, we stop at the traffic light caught in the night rain’s fuss²

run over by a wagon train of your thoughts, in a deluge of imagery laden droplets

a few-thousands-more-than-needed hoofed histories, albeit all well framed surrogates.

You give us a lift on your bike,³ your glasses accidentally misplaced,⁶ no worries, forgettable

is the scenery if not for the mongrel and the shawl wrapped figure.³ The bonsai is noble⁴ 

for a tree stunted, lonely and lost, finding its way through the symbolism of your words

nonetheless we lose our bearings on a bridge to nowhere⁵ where a fog of memories girds

your night. Fatigued we take the last flight on the wings of your migratory books,⁷ the ride

up, unexpectedly unusual,⁹ wormholes into Che’s OBE hovering over your death side⁹

where surreal verses sideswipe with singular views,³ you’re reborn in a tearful glass of wine¹⁰

we meet your muse and the sailor’s mermaid at the ship wrecking yard,¹¹ as if by design

the sailor is at sea (still) stateless¹¹, short on memories the forgetful lighthouse beacon

beams a glassy-eyed calm,¹¹ unsure whether we can handle another reincarnation season

we get shimmered in your monsoon pale, sunny raindrops pelt glitter - dramatic¹²

not so the scantily scaffolded summer splintering flecks of winter,¹² they’re radio static.

Smoke rings taunting death pass us by incognito,¹³ on their way to meet your demons¹⁴

we recede silent to make room for your vapory journey, yellow meteorites even wee ones¹⁵

can’t beguile us back, we team up to enumerate the foliage, with your pied piper traveler,¹⁶

to be preserved for after, much after the ambulances are done collecting fare from the maker¹⁷

on the home stretch, the gutted nest is mournfully moving,¹⁸ the blue god’s ominous dance

paints anticipation,¹⁹ broken reeds and spoken Nos²⁰ leave us without any redeemable chance

at a befuddled bank where grounded boats wait for ferries²¹ to take them to light (for real?)

let the unease gush, wounds scale healing word wines, do a twice-over, heart the unheal.

Notes:

• the part of the poems I liked are italicized; 
• reference to the poems are denoted by numbers,^superscript their order as in the table of content;

Read More