Directors Cut...

Yet another bad movie; this time in Malayalam... 'Pokkiri Rajah'. With a name like that, I was not expecting a 'Benhur'...' but is it not prudent to expect a minimal level of sane entertainment...but nooooo. This movie falls into a genre called 'stupid'. Not comedy, not action, not sci-fi, no ... this is a 'stupid' movie... At a video library, this is the movie you would get if you asked for a stupid movie... Now why did I watch it...!!! aah...!!!

a gun shot...


In our movies, a gun is a novelty item to be displayed often but seldom used. In the movie 'Lelam' M. G Soman takes a gun from one of the baddies and casually suggests the origin of the make. "Germana... allyoda?" now that was kinda cool, there was a godfather like charm and style. At the other end was a Suresh Gopi movie, where they seemed to loose or find the bloody Pivoting Knot or whatever of an AK 47 and do some crap with it. The presentation seemed odd and the whole gun affair was an overkill. I believe all our actors should read through Jeff Cooper’s gun usage techniques before grabbing one.

Anyhow, the most we can expect with a gun, is for the hero to display his expertise in ‘Tanju’ and grab the gun from the villain in a supposedly swift move which is shown in slow-motion. The confused villain has now lost his only gun. 

I think it has been quite a while since a gun shot was fired in a mallu movie. Especially during the final stand-off. Even if our hero has a gun, he resorts to fist fight… A classic example was Keerthichakra... Mohanlal was responsible for the death (on screen...) of that Tamil actor and widowed his wife, the good looking girl.

Our actors, heroes, rather superstars, have this intense desire to personally beat up all the antagonists; the villain, his side kick, his concubine, her mother and any cops in sight, unless, he himself is a cop in which case there will be a bad cop who gets beaten.

Now all this physical exertion calls for some sound physique which could portray the appearance of strength, stamina and athletic ability. But far from that, our heroes are usually fat, chubby, fair, globoids who wallow all around the screen.

Mollywood & Kollywood; 

In Indian, especially South Indian movies, the usual strategy of fighting the villain is by deploying some long, senseless, rhyming monologues which somehow manage to tire the villain who always appears to be hurt and shows his true sensitive side after the dialogue monologue ends… or the villain does not comprehend the meaning and seem confused... Sometimes, the villain would retort with an equally long senseless sentence which can hurt out heroes sentiments.

Nevertheless, towards the end, our hero can no longer take it… his wife was fucked, sister was raped and his mother was brutally murdered along with his father even before he was born… his only hope for a “and they lived happily ever after” dance sequence, is the heroine, who we had briefly seen in two songs (no wonder our hero forgot to protect her) is now taken captive. 

While she is being tied up and prepared for a tasty rape, yes… it usually takes less time to prepare chicken curry… the villain finally comes and delicately begins to lick or bite her, presumably, he wants to kiss her. No touching on boobs or anything of that sort… the worst can be a kiss on the lips followed by what appears to be an act of learning to swim on top of a woman… the reverence of removing her clothes often occurs only after some rolling and licking… but our hero somehow manages to reach the scene before she looses her bra and panties…

Another type of rape involves a game of ‘Kabadi’ with the villain and the chubby lady in a locked room… the villain usually bolts one door to convey the message that he is about rape her. Even if it is his place, unknown to him, the room has another door which is left open and the lady manages to escape through this door and runs straight to our heroes arms, legs, den whatever falls in the way, followed closely by the really stupid villain who is confronted by the hero…

And then a long and arduous fight sequence follows. Now, the hero forgets all about his age, blood pressure and BMI. What follows is a weird act of body exertion with gestures and flights that weaken once belief in the very existence of physics and physical endurance…

The pace of body movement is represented by a ‘swissshhh’ sound as the heavy hairy body cuts through the wind. When a punch lands on the villain, the force and fury is represented by a ‘loud Bushuuum’ sound, which causes the poor guys facial fat to flutter around a bit… cars, rickshaws, small shops, entire buildings, bridges, trees everything and anything that falls in the way is broken during the fight sequence… Finally, when the villain is tired (almost finished), the Bushuum gains an echo;

Bushuum, Bushum bushum, shum shum…

And there lay on the floor, the poor guy who was causing our hero so much of trouble through out the 3 hours and 15 minutes, the length of the movie being 3 and half hours with 15 minutes for fighting…

Back to 'Pokkiri Rajah'... well forgot what it was all about... not a memorable movie that is... but so much was my frustration that I had to type all of this to vent out the tears...

Not that all movies are bad; far from it some of the movies are exemplary…

Good movies as well as bad movies are being made today as it was made yesterday as was done the day before… Somehow, the number of good movies seemed to have gone down a bit… no worries with that though...

What worries me is the onset of really stupid movies which defies commonsense and sanity… this might be alright in some of our neighboring states but in mallu land, where in the great golden 80’s and early 90’s some of the best movies were made, this defines the start of a retreat, a slowdown in evolution, a large step backward…


If the sole purpose of a movie is for the producer to make money, then why not focus on porn…If the sole objective of any business for that matter was to make money, pimping would be the best job, prostitutes the best investment and a brothel the best enterprise…

The Boat Ride...

...the worrisome calls in the morning had got me home by noon to find little Isaiah, running around, all of joy... he seemed relieved from the pain and discomfort… 

Wifey continued with her work while I played with lil Isaiah... Though an active advisor of feminism and women’s liberation, enduring an idle afternoon while my wife was/ and acts ever so busy at work were uncomfortable for my male hormones… After some groaning ‘n moaning and nagging, I managed to make her pack-up as she went to make some tea, much to the relief of my male ego…

The excitement of the tea was amalgamated to a distinctively blurry boredom by a sad, painful and somewhat slow movie, “Tall Guy”… not a bad movie, but a slow and boring one… satire and dark British humor were in abundance but the exemplary cast of Rowan Atkinson, Jeff Goldblum and Ema Thompson failed to impress me this evening… The long and almost uneasy to watch sex scene seemed more memorable than the sum of the movie….

The dull evening was saved when little Isaiah, seemingly understood the dullness of the situation, and being too young to endure such boredom decided to jump to the rescue. His bright, witty, cutey cries of “ta ta” brought some joy to our face, especially to mine as I was trying hard to laugh at all the silly movie jokes, almost trying to convince my wife that it was a good movie…

If my wife is the devil… patience is the “cross”… and they never get along well… In just five minutes of “Tall Guy” she was giving me the ‘not so good movie’ look and glum face… 


Issus cries for a ‘ta ta’now meant that we had to take him out…Isaiah started pulling us out of our seats to get dressed… 

Our journey started without a destination… but after some thoughts, we decided to drive to the creek, Dubai Creek, where once I used to go walking with my Dad… Once at the creek, we decided to take a boat to the other side, have done this before but that was before we had a car… we both had NOL cards (bus pass) and we took a ride on a water bus!!! from Al Seef to some place on the other side… 

Little Issu seemed excited… the drone from the engine and the darkness outside did not seem to lessen his excitement… he was amused by the waves made by our boat… and the water beneath, which he understood to be the ‘boat’, since he was pointing to the water below and I was pointing to a passing boat while introducing him to this new sight of the world…

On reaching the other side, we once again made our pilgrimage to taste the worst ‘shawarma’ available… After the deed we thanked him with Dirhams and with the usual thought of “why… we should not have” we took an Abra to the next shore, another place on the same shore from where we started.

Abra has a lot of history and charm but very little in the way of safety… just two Lifebuoy’s… so in the case of the worst scenario, they expect two people to fall off board… that was optimism… 

On the next shore were plenty of cheap shops were we undertook some cheap shopping followed by some more cheap gift shopping… but we soon realized that it was not so cheap or we were so cheap that the goods there did not seem so cheap… 

Bargaining was tolerated and I bought a nice looking knife…

The whole place bustles with activity and if you try and imagine the place some fifty years back, it would still be a busy trade place, the Abra would still be there and even some of the shops… if the thoughts are in black and white, just give some color and you can easily see a certain crowded, charming, busy sea side port…

On our way back, we decided to take the RTA waterbus… rather, we decided not to take the Abra… 

Back at home, I continued watching ‘Tall Guy’ and... it was still not a great movie… finally… it ended and on the credits, I saw ‘Richard Curtis’ I had seen many of his movies and had liked most of them; Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bean, Notting Hill Bridget Jones's Diary, Love Actually, Mr. Bean's Holiday. Richard Curtis wrote the Black Adder, one of the most entertaining and finest act I have seen on tele.

And then to bed… 

It feels so much better to cuddle little Issu and go off to sleep… careful not to squeeze him too tight and wake him up… which will be a test of mammas patience….

Vaccination

A very useful application of modern medical science;


Little Isaiah is in a lot of pain. This one was for typhoid… and the nurse had warned us about the pain. He seemed alright while at the beach, where I should not have taken him… he was fine until after dinner, when he began to limp a bit… pained and in tears we got home soon…


Just the Afternoon, I had felt him so cute'n adorable, so precious as he hugged me tight while I dressed him... those tiny eyes seemed to have a lot of love towards me... I thought I could do anything to keep him smiling... and now,  I felt so helpless as he reached out his little fingers… lil tear drops running down his face… brown tear drops from the dirt and sand… it was on my shirt and on our bed sheet as he cried in pain… I felt it on my face as he lay on my shoulders, his face next to mine… his emoticon face bearing the cry smiley…


Our reassurance and worried requests to stop crying only made his pained cry sound louder. The noises we made might have irritated him…


Mamma was better than me... In her arms he found comfort as she tries to nurse him to sleep… mamma can be more than a spectator as she feeds him in comfort and rest… I still feel helpless and sad…


A fat friend of mine once said that being unable to laugh when you want to burst out with laughter and being unable to cry when those tears weigh you down are two of the worst situations in life... he was being fat and philosophical...


Being helpless is a sad state and being sad and helpless makes me feel so terrible…


As someone extremely uncomfortable with blood and pain, I had to act brave when I tool lil Ice for his first vaccination, he seemed to take it quite well, he was a little weak, but a tough little baby… This time though he seems a lil hurt, on his left leg…

Pro-Crastinus

Ode to Procrastination...


"Oh great one, blessed son of indolence … thy will shall I follow. Oh great master, at your feet lay me, your obedient slave… empty nights follow sleepy days… as I wile the evil time…"


Having started this blog in 2007, I waited all this while, till today 4th September 2010, for the opportune moment to post some text. In between I made two other blogs and wrote countless reports…out of compulsion… but this blog still lay in its grave waiting for resurrection… an empty blackboard waiting for a fools scribble…

Initially, I wanted to find the perfect day to start writing… a perfect incident to start writing about… so much had happened since then, marriage, the birth of little Isaiah, loss of a dear one, recession, employment, unemployment, termination… none of these could wake me up to the task…

The perfect day was even harder. Things should always start on a Wednesday, or so I thought, not on Monday, not on Friday, it should be a Wednesday. Tuesday seemed worst, Tuesday was neither here nor there and it seemed inauspicious with a ‘Tue’ at the beginning… that can’t be good. On the school the timetable, column with ‘Tue’ was the day you wished it was a holiday… it was the day when exam papers were handed out… worse still, it was the day when my parent visited the school… so ‘Tuesday’ was ‘Badday’ then.

Superstition and rituals were offspring’s of my own imagination. Two vile bitches who befriended me at a young age… The illicit relation had to end sometime and I decided to ditch them both for some sanity…

Being a nonbeliever was better… my morality was no longer decided by fear of hell or rewards in heaven; they were an outcome of my conscience and human empathy… qualities acquired through evolution…

After this, I did not need to find a special day, I might have wanted to make sure it was not a special day… not my son’s birthday, not the day when my salary came, not a weekend, not the d-day… but an invalid day… the thought is, to quote my dear sister, “every day is a good day, it is up to us to make it better…” and indeed, every day is a special day… so today, with the best wishes from PROCRASTINATION, I made a post on this blog…

Desire, Lust and Greed

Allow me to be inhuman and dishonest... let the darkness touch and caress me. Allow me this comfort; let me live like I want to... Allow me this luxury that no fool can afford... Let me be inconsiderate and selfish, vile and confused...

Oh dear lord, are you not the most righteous who proudly proclaimed to be the jealous one... Oh you should so understand my wants and desires, my lust and greed...