Thanmathra

Film: Thanmathra

Director:

 Blessy

Writers:

 Blessy, P. Padmarajan (short story)

He asked the name of his daughters and it was answered. He asked it again and was answered again. This went for 1 hour and then the person asking answering the question was tired.

He started crying without any reason and started abusing people for no reason.

He forgot places,people ,directions,conversations,important events which happened in his life and ultimately himself.

The person whom I referring, was the grandfather of my friend Aniket. An Alzheimer patient in his late 70’s.

The character in the movie (Ramesan Nair)‘Thanmathra’ shows same kind of symptons.He misplaces a very important office file at his home, inside the refrigerator. Forgets whether he had shaved in the morning. Loses his sense of time and place. He gradually loses his memory and starts behaving as a child.Technically speaking, Alzheimer’s disease usually develop slowly and gradually worsen over time, progressing from mild forgetfulness to widespread brain impairment. Chemical and structural changes in the brain slowly destroy the ability to create, remember, learn, reason, and relate to others. As critical cells die, drastic personality loss occurs and body systems fail.

Whenever an individual’s body is affected by such serious ailments, then at that time he is not the only sufferer. His family too has to suffer along with the patient. It was not just the grandfather of my friend who was suffering during his illness but the entire family. The movie successfully portrays that piece of the story.Life becomes very stressful for Ramesan’s wife – Lekha and his children.

The tragic end of Ramesan makes you feel sad and depressed at the end of the movie.’Thanmathra’ a must watch for serious movie lovers.

A Good Year

A Good Year

Director:

 Ridley Scott

Writers:

 Marc Klein (screenplay), Peter Mayle (novel)

A friend of mine once told me that ‘You seek what you see’. Isn’t that true?

You see a wonderful car passing by the road and then you feel like owning it.

You see a posh apartment of your friend or a relative and the next day you want to furnish your home in the same manner.

In a similar fashion, people often say that olden days were much more beautiful than the present. ‘Old is Gold’. Nobody ever feels that the time in future will be golden. Childhood memories are always much more blissful. I think this state of mind justifies my friend’s statement of ‘You seek what you see’. We have seen our childhood and that’s the reason we want it back. Nobody has seen the future or has experienced it. So nobody says that the days in future will be golden and I want to seek the future.

‘Good Year’ is a movie in which the main character of the movie – ‘Max’ (played by Russel Crowe)spends his summer holidays with his uncle in the vineyard estate of his uncle in France. Later on, He becomes a materialistic investment banker in England. Life changes for Max post his uncle’s demise. Max being the sole beneficiary of the property goes back to the vineyards estate to sell it. But ultimately he ends up quitting his profession as an investment banker and starts living a normal life of a villager near the vineyards owned by his uncle. He recollects the golden memories he had spent with his uncle. The game of Cricket and Tennis that he used to play as a child. The finer details shared by his uncle about the making of a fine quality wine.

When the company chairman Sir Nigel asks Max to make a choice between’Money or Life’, he chooses the later. The wonderful time which Max had spent as a child in the vineyards estate overshadows the posh and luxurious lifestyle which he would have enjoyed in the future. Once again proving the idea that Past is always wonderful.

The passion of dedicated winemaker – ‘Francis’ and the romantic angle added by the introduction of ‘Fanny’ a café owner makes the story more interesting.

Deool (The Temple)

Director: Umesh Kulkarni
Written by: Girish Kulkarni

Indians are god fearing people.  Hindus have 33 crore gods. So for every 2 Indian Hindu we have one god. Any problem in life Indians try to find spiritual / religious solution. Promotion, marriage, business, wealth, house, etc for all problem  areas there is one or the other god designated to take care. No doubt religion / caste plays important role in politics. You will find godman with a copyright on some or the other god. 

Religion / God  / temple is a big business in India. Here are some statistics

Tirupati: The Tirupati temple at Andhra Pradesh gets visits from over 60,000 devotees every day.  The temple gets up to Rs 650 crore in donations every year. The gold on the deity itself is 1000 kg!

Saibaba Temple, Shirdi:  It sees millions of devotees from different religions and castes everyday. The temple has gold and silver jewellery worth approximately Rs 32 crore and silver coins worth more than Rs 6 lakh. The temple gets donations worth Rs 350 crore every year. 

Siddhivinayak, Mumbai: This is one temple frequented by commoners and celebrities alike. The income of this temple including donations goes upto Rs 48 crore every year. The dome over Ganesha is coated in 3.7 kilos of gold that was donated by a businessman. 

The Golden temple, Punjab: The holiest shrine in the Sikh religion has its walls decorated with wooden panels and elaborate gold and silver work. The palanquin that bears the Adi Granth is set with precious stones and has a golden canopy supported by silver poles. This holy place gets as many as 40,000 visitors a day. 

Vaishno Devi, Kashmir: This temple is one of the oldest in the country. It gets more than 4.5 million visitors every year and an income of Rs 500 crore annually. 

source: http://luxpresso.com/photogallery-lifestyle/top-richest-temples-in-india/6249/1 

Deool (temple) is a story of Keshya a god loving (not fearing) man. One day he has an hallucination that he saw  Datta (Brahma, Vishnu & Mahesh together) outside his village while taking a nap under a tree. This news spreads like fire. Politicians and villageers decide to take advantage of the situatio. They divert funds meant for hospital to build temple. This temple slowly becomes flourishing business. Every villager starts a stall outside village.  Money comes in the small village, simple lives of villagers changes.Whole village becomes part of the corrupt system except Keshya. Keshya realises that god must be suffocating in such an environment and he needs to be set free. He steals god's stone idol from the temple and immerses it in a river.

The film won National award for Best film, Best Actor (Girish Kulkarni) & Best Dialogues (Girish Kulkarni).

MUST SEE.

The Devil's Double

Directed by : Lee Tamahori
Screenplay by: Michael Thomas base on The Devil's Double by Latif Yahia

Latif Yahia a soldier in Iran-Iraq is summoned by Uday Hussein son of Saddam Hussein to be his body double because of their resemblance. Latif refuses, Uday imprisons and tortures him and threatens to kill his family. Latif has no choice but to accept the offer. 

The life turns to worse for Latif as he witnesses atrocities by Uday Hussein. Killings, rapes, torture is everyday norm. Uday commits many crimes like raping a newly wedded bride, killing Sadam's personal valet in a party, raping and murdering a minor girl and then killing her father, torturing athletes for losing, etc.

How long one can live witnessing things like these without doing anything about it? Latif one day escapes. Uday asks him to comeback, Latif does come back but to assassinate Uday. But Uday survives the assassination though it makes him permanently handicapped.

Dominic Cooper as Uday / Latif is remarkable. Film is worth watching which is aired on all leading English movie channels.

A world without Oil

 

Imagine what if tomorrow you get up and the newspaper has the headline that "R.I.P. OIL"

Oil has been so integral part of life that we can't do anything without it. Be it traveling, cooking, electricity, transportation, even our toothpaste has oil. Oil drives the economy of the world. Wars are fought because of oil. 

Oil of such a significance if vanishes one day how will it impact our lives? Yes I know it won't happen suddenly and we will find out alternatives to it but will we be able to replace it completely? Will the alternatives will be a cheaper form? Will it be renewable? 

Governments are trying alternatives like Biofuel, but with increasing population the bigger question that stares our face is which hunger do we satisfy? And in economy like India where agriculture is dependent on monsoon bad rains will not only mean scarcity of food but also oil.


This will happen one day for sure and we need to prepare our kids more than ourselves for this unfortunate event. May be we would be lucky enough to escape this but I doubt our kids would be that lucky.

But this is not going to happen suddenly. The scarcity will start taking affecting our lives slowly in the form of high prices not only of oil but also food, milk, electronics, etc. (We are already witnessing it).

May be what Mayans meant with the end of the world must be related to oil. (Only they got the year wrong or we interpreted the year incorrectly) Once the oil is over  government and administration may collapse,  civil war will break out, people will suffer hunger, patients won't reach hospitals, big corporations will shut down, may be existing civilization will collapse and new one will start taking shape.

This National Geographic documentary tries to find the answers and crystal gaze what will be our life after demise of OIL. 

Keep an eye on NGC for it's re-telecast. 

Inshallah, Kashmir

Director: Ashvin Kumar

I know Kashmir through movies. Kapoor and Chopras made Kashmir look like heaven in every film of their's. But in last two decades this heaven has been turned into hell. 

Inshallah, Kashmir opens with a young cartoonist showing his cartoon (a Kashmiri young boy tied and being tortured), the Kashmiri boy tells his mother not to worry it feels like home as Kashmir is no different from a torture cell.  

Then we hear series of heartbreaking stories of torture, rape, disappearances, fleeing and killing narrated by wailing relatives of the victims. 

The most shocking incident was of Kunan Poshpora where Army launched a search and interrogation operation one night. Many women were gang raped that night by the army. The government has dismissed these allegations as baseless.

I am no expert on Kashmir, but it will not take time to understand that Indian government has messed up Kashmir issue big time. The Kashmiris no longer trust government and rightly so. It's been two decades and Kashmir is still burning. Militancy, unrest has become a norm and now people seems to be tired and given up. The cartoonist tells his experience how he was detained by a female Police officer in Delhi because he was from Kashmir. She said you are from Kashmir so you must be a terrorist. 

We in other states take our freedom for granted but Kashmiris can't. They have been fighting for freedom last 25 years. But freedom from what? India? Kashmiri neither trusts India nor Pakistan and they don't have power to go alone. I hope one day beauty of Kashmir that we see in films is restored and people there get a feel of freedom and feel that they are part of India.

Recommended.

Che

Director : Steven Soderbergh
Written by: Peter Buchman, Benjamin A. van der Veen

Che a physician by profession was moved by extreme poverty in Latin America. He blamed capitalistic policies of the rulers who were puppets of USA and worked for the betterment of US rather than their own country. He wanted to change the world and the uplift the poor. He got an opportunity to do that when he was introduced to Fidel Castro by Fidel's younger brother Raul. He was influenced by Fidel's socialistic ideals and he decided to take part in Cuban revolution to overthrow Batista.

Fidel had a goal limited to Cuba whereas Che wanted to free entire Latin America from the clutches of Capitalisim. He decided to start a similar revolution in Bolivia. Che was banking on the support of the local peasants and the communist party of Bolivia. But he was not able to garner that support, instead local people turned into informants for CIA. Che also underestimated Bolivian army thinking that he will be encountering a non trained indiscipline army unaware that US was helping Bolivia with the army training. 

On October 8, 1967 Che was captured by Bolivian army. Next morning Bolivian President Rene Barrientos ordered execution of Che.

Che the film is a two part movie. The first part is an account of Che's role during Cuban revolution and the second captures his attempt to revolutionize Bolivia.

Recommended.