Psychokinesis [2018]

Deciding to watch some Korean movie in Netflix as it is free with Jio Postpaid plans, Google suggested Psychokinesis under best Korean movies in Netflix with 80% rated Fresh in rottentomatoes.com and 5.9 in IMDb.

Psychokinesis starts by showing Roo-mi as a successful fried chicken restaurant owner along with her mother as her father had abandonded them when she was 2 years old. Her restaurant along with other shops and eateries in the neighbourhood has been planned to be demolished by a construction company in order to build a large shopping center.  All the owners join together and refuse to be evicted so the construction company hires local goons.  One night, when the thugs forcibly evicts Roo-mi, her mother gets wounded in the head by the thugs.  In the hospital, Roo-mi's mother dies and at the same time, a meteor hits the earth.  The meteor substance gets mixed in a mountain spring from which Seok, Roo-mi's father drinks gaining telekinetic powers.

Roo-mi calls her father to inform him about her's mother death and Seok visits her and gets to know about the fight between shop owners and the construction company.  How he uses his powers to safe his daughter and the other shop owners from the construction company is the rest of the story.

What appealed to me in this movie is the exhibition of the super powers.  In other superhero movies like Avengers, where the super powers are used to save the world from annihilation, here the superhero with his limited knowledge of his super power uses to save his daughter and thereby the other shop owners.  Even with the super power, the director has portrayed the hero as an average human being who still abides by the law utlimately.  In the scene, where the construction owner confronts Seok and mocks his powers and his daughter, one may expect the hero to do something to hurt the construction owner.  However, he does not but only crushes her car completely just to let her know what he's capable of.

Next thing that appealed to me in this movie is the thin line that runs throughout the movie and binds the central characters: the father-daughter love between Seok and Roo-mi.  When the father explains that he chose to abandon them in order to protect Roo-mi and her mother, Roo-mi is not able to comprehend.  When Roo-mi explains how she felt when her father abandoned them, Seok is not able to comprehend initially.  In between, Kim an young attorney who supports the local shop owners bridges between the love between Roo-mi and her father is heart-warming.

With so much super hero movies in abundance like DC characters, Marvel characters, Glass, Hancock, etc, Psychokinesis is refreshingly new and different where the spotlight is less on superpowers and more on humanity.

Psychokinesis [2018]

Language:     Korean

Director:       Yeon Sang-ho

Writer:          Yeon Sang-ho

Cast:            Ryu Seung-ryong as Shin Seok-heon

                    Shim Eun-kyung as Shin Roo-mi

                    Park Jung-min as Kim Jung-hyun

Available on:  Netflix

India vs Sri Lanka 2nd ODI 2017

I started to watch the cricket match when India was 163/7 and the target was 231 with 17 overs left. Though Dhoni was still at the crease, I felt the target could not be chased. On the other end, Bhubaneshwar was batting. I decided, whatever may be the result of the match, let's watch it till the end.

Every first ball of the over that Dhoni faced, he would take a single and rest of the 5 balls Bhuvi faced, he would defend without scoring any runs. There was no rotation of the strike. I felt that since the balls remaining were close to 100, the batsmen would have felt to keep batting till the end, irrespective of what may be the winning equation.
Bhuvi was timing the ball very good, though he did not score any runs. He either ducked or left the short balls or bouncers. Dhoni was always rotating the strike and let Bhuvi face most of the balls. Bhuvi had scored 9 runs off 40 odd balls and Dhoni had scored 24 off 32 balls when I started to watch the match.

As the match progressed, Bhuvi gradually started hitting the ball from defending. The scoreboard was ticking but slowly.
On of the highest point of the match was Dhoni's luck when the bails did not fall off the stump when it had missed the stump. From 163, they reached 200 gradually. It was the 36th over and last over for Siriwardana and Bhuvi was facing the bowler. Out of nowhere, Bhuvi hit a six. The last boundary was hit around 80 balls ago. With that boundary, India was touching 190 runs.

Where the match literally turned against Sri Lanka was in the 40th over, when Dananjaya who was the chief wreck of the Indian batting was introduced for his second spell. Bhuvi hit back to back fours in his over. With that India touched 200 runs, needing 30 runs off 7 overs. In the 42nd over, Bhuvi again scored two boundaries which helped India reach 217 and Bhuvi reach 47.
In the 45th over, India reached the target and won the match by 3 wickets with a record partnership of exactly 100 runs for the eighth wicket. This is India's highest partnership for the 8th wicket.
Bhuvi had hit one of the classy half-centuries I had seen over a long time. What a fine time to get his maiden fifty and that too resulting in a win. I had seen Dhoni calm over the years in these kind of situations but seeing Bhuvi as batsman being calm and composed to chase a stiff target under tight conditions was a feast.

Photo credit: The Tribune

கொலை

ஒரே அடிதான் அடித்தேன். தலை தெறித்து இரத்த வெள்ளத்தில் கிடந்தான். கொலை செய்யணும் எண்ணமே எனக்கு இல்லை.  ஆனா கோபம் வந்துட்டா என்ன செய்றேன்னு தெரியல.  ஆத்திரக்காரனுக்கு புத்தி மட்டு என்ற பழமொழியை பெரியவங்க சும்மாவா சொன்னாங்க. இன்னைக்கு தான் இந்த பழமொழி புரிந்தது.  நினைத்து பார்த்தாலே பயமாயிருக்கு. நானா இப்படி செய்தேன்னு எனக்கே வியப்பாயிருக்கு.

The Legendary of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar

The last time I wrote about Sachin Tendulkar was before the World Cup 2011, asking questions why the Indian team, consisting of cricket gods like Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, was not able to win the World Cup Championship.  This time, with Tendulkar announcing his retirement, an article was published in the 'The Hindu' newspaper, last Sunday, under the Canvas section of Magazine supplementary, had made me write another post on the same topic. 

Titled 'The Man Who Became God' by L. Suresh, the article highlighted that only if Tendulkar had fans instead of worshipers  things would have ended differently.  The author goes on to say Tendulkar faced problems beyond his age and his failures on the field because he was elevated to a position above mortals.  Projecting him as god has ended up making him the target of critics.  The same critics were quite when Lara didn't pull his team when they caved in or when Ponting lost two Ashes series but did not spare Tendulkar as he was put both on a pedestal as well as a microscope.  Being elevated as god, it didn't matter when he took the team into the finals of World Cup 2003 but did matter when he didn't score a 100 in the finals.  It didn't matter when he, as the only player, notched up 50s and 100s but did matter when he didn't get his team to win.  The author ends the article by saying his retirement deserves better response since the question "Why?" cried out by half the population was drowned by a resounding "Why not?" from the other half.

As I read the article, I was wondering when was the first time Tendulkar was christened as the god of cricket.  I believe it was during the Coca-Cola Cup of 1998, a tri-nation series between India, Australia and New Zealand, when he scored back-to-back centuries, popularly know as the Desert Storm, helping India to win the cup.  It was the same time when Shane Warne claimed that he had "nightmares" at the thought of bowling to Tendulkar.  Tendulkar was credited for winning the tournament highhandedly.  Tendulkar's first century in that tournament helped India to get to the finals based on a better run rate and his second century helped to win the finals.

The next question pondered in my mind was why did we make him a god.  I believe it is not only because of his batting skills and his behavior.  I think it has been the culture of India.  Immortalization of a person has been the summit of exaltation for us.  Be it the field of music, cinema or cricket, we always had gods.  True to our worship, we had gone to the extend of creating clashes among us when one's god was compared better to another's god.  Even though it is humane that everyone has their own likes and dislikes, immortalization of their favorite heroes has always stirred commotions at a greater level.  I am starting to believe that whenever a immortalization of a mortal happens, there are grave consequences as an equal and opposite reaction.  Is it because the true Immortal does not have want any mortal to be portrayed as mortal that the consequences are violent, I do not know.

I agree with the author that if only Sachin's fans stayed as a fan instead of becoming a worshiper or let him remain a legend instead of making him god, I think maybe, he would have gone to bat without bearing the heavy expectation of the entire population to score a century every time  on his shoulders.  Maybe, houses of cricketers would not been destroyed after performing badly in a World Cup match.  Maybe, there wouldn't be a protest against anyone who has made remarks against man-immortalized-god.  Maybe, falling at the feet would happen only to the true Immortal and our parents and not any equally mortal man.  If only we had enjoyed any event as it is rather than making someone god, lives could have been better.

Image credits: msn.com, blogspot.com, mid-day.com

The Last Stand

Arnold Schwarzenegger does a lead acting role in this movie nearly after a decade, his last being Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.  I wanted to watch this movie long time ago when its trailer was released (movie was released in January 2013) but somehow missed it.  Only recently, I happened to watch the trailer again and so downloaded the movie and watched it.  The reason I wanted to watch it is because I liked Arnold's movies and the reason I am writing a post on this movie is because the way the movie was produced.  In the trailer, Arnold would come crashing on a diner's doors and the occupants of the diner would ask him,"Sheriff, how are you?" Arnold would get up with pain and reply,"Old". Though it was funny, I thought Arnold was cast according to his present strength and age and not as an invincible hero.

The movie was really simple and the action was sequenced well for a 65-year old character.  The plot of the movie is that a drug-lord escapes from the FBI, racing in a Chevrolet Corvette at incredible speeds and tries to immigrate to Mexico.  What stands between him and achieving his goal is the Sheriff of the Sommerton Junction city in Arizona.  Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Ray Owens as the Sheriff of the city and the city has only four deputies under him.  How Schwarzenegger defends the escaping drug-lord with his under-skilled deputies is the story.  There was no incredible or things-that-can-happen-only-in-film action sequences in the movie.  I was remembered of the Rocky Balboa movie where the coach of Rocky, when he decides to take up one last fight, advises Rocky that since he is aging he cannot achieve speed in his punches but can add power to his every punch and trains him for the same.  Rocky practices punching with holding heavy weights in this hands.  Similarly in this movie, Schwarzenegger is not fast as he used to be in his earlier action movies but his every blow makes the escaping fugitive land on his butts to the ground.

Another character whom I liked in the movie is FBI Agent John Bannister played by Forest Whitaker.  He has exhibited beautiful emotions - commanding when giving orders to transfer the drug-lord, sneering as a senior agent, surprising when a local county Sheriff ignores him twice, being satisfied that justice is served on arresting the mole agent and impressing when an ordinary Sheriff with his four deputies has defeated the escaping drug-lord.  However, every time the drug-lord wins over whatever obstacle the FBI agent places paints the FBI in bad light, earning sympathy for the agent.

I was surprised when I learnt who the director of the movie was, Kim Jee-woon.  He has directed this movie after finishing 'I Saw the Devil'.  This movie had extraordinary action scene as the cop would hit the psychopath serial killer with hammer, crowbar or whatever he gets in his hand that would break the bones of the killer and make him bleed profusely.  But in 'The Last Stand' there was nothing as such and the action sequence was really natural.  I believe the director has matched the action according to the strengths of the character in both the movies.  Kim Jee-woon has also directed the Korean movie 'The Tale of Two Sisters' and an American remake titled 'The Uninvited' was made.  This too had a brilliant story and screenplay.

I wouldn't say 'The Last Stand' is one of the best action movies but a movie that has a logical and natural screenplay and a must watch for Arnold Schwarzenegger's fans.

Fascination with Computers

To me, fascination with computers started when I was studying 3rd standard.  All computers were based on the x86 architecture and MS-DOS was the first widespread operating system at that time.  The computers were manufactured by IBM and the processor cabinet was not like tower type available these days but flat types like HTPC.  The cabinet was so sturdy that one can place the monitor on top of it.  The mouse was yet to be invented as MS-DOS was not GUI-based operating system so no pointing device was required.  The only pointing device I could remember in my childhood is the Light Pen.  Light Pen was the second best example for input devices next to keyboard in our text books.  I have come across this Light Pen so many times but have never seen a real one.  A fair imagination of the light pen I have is the Stylus that is being used in Samsung Galaxy Note.   I think the processor was a 16-bit processor and the speed of the processor was 5MHz.  The removable media that was widely used during that time was the 5¼" Floppy Disk.

WordStar was the word processor application, equivalent of today’s MS-Word.  Remember there were no pointing devices so navigation and all actions like highlighting, changing to bold and italics were all controlled by combination of keys.  To state a few, Ctrl + E moves the cursor one line upward, Ctrl + F moves the cursor to the end of the current line and Ctrl + G deletes the character to the right of the current position.  An expert in WordStar application is said to know all these shortcuts in those times.  Lotus 1-2-3 was the spreadsheet application, equivalent of today’s MS-Excel.  Internet was yet to become popular for common use and so no email client application during my childhood.  The programming language I first learned was BASIC which is an acronym from Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.  It is a high-level language and the most common programming practice was to start every code with 10 REM.  REM stands for REMARK and the first line usually had a brief description of what the program is about.

The main source of my fascination towards computers was not these applications or programming language but games.  With a 16-bit processor of 5MHz speed, you could imagine how games would have been a thrill but you won’t believe that there was one particular game that was an obsession to me.  It is the Prince of Persia released

in 1989. I believe some of you would remember it or even relish those playing moments. The game starts with a story that a wizard named Jaffar takes hold of the kingdom of Sultan when Sultan is fighting a war in a foreign land. Jaffar takes captive of Sultan’s daughter and the prince, the protagonist of the game, must defeat Jaffar and free the princess. The player plays the prince role. The game is a 2D game and there are 12 levels in the game. There is a time limit of one hour to complete the game. Jaffar will appear only in the 12 level and in each level there will be spike traps, guillotines and swordsmen. In the first level, the prince has to get the sword so that he can fight the swordsmen and finally Jaffar. Defeating Jaffar will be the greatest challenge because he will strike you instantaneously unlike the obese swordsmen.

My best moment in the game is in the level 4 where there would be a mirror and the prince has to jump right through the mirror. The mirror would break to pieces and the prince will run through it but at the same time, a shadow of the prince will emerge from the mirror at the same time he runs through the mirror. It is the doppelganger of the prince. This is a plot device as the prince would be thrown in the dungeon because of the

doppelganger.   The doppelganger will appear in the level 12 where he will take a sword and will be ready to fight against the prince.  If the prince hits the doppelganger with the sword, he will lose one life and so does the prince.  If the prince pushes him down the floors, even then the prince will die. The only way is to make the prince put the sword and the doppelganger will also put the sword and then jumping into him, the prince and doppelganger will become one. And to solve this puzzle was really interesting. Since I studied in the same school where my father worked, I got easily access to the computers in the lab and this is how I was introduced to this game. I used to compete with the watchman at my school. He was a Nepali and he helped me to complete few levels in the game. Even though Prince of Persia has been upgraded into many versions, my fondness of the first version still remains the same as I had in my childhood.

These days gaming are becoming an addiction and cause for violence among kids and teenagers.  I have read news of gamer playing for straight 40 hours and end up dying, students becoming murders to buy PlayStation.  I believe a lack of awareness about gaming is the reason for this kind of news.  Though I was introduced to gaming when I studying 3rd standard, I was not overexposed to it because I had access to computers only in the free time of the school hours and this facility was available only till my 5th standard.  When I bought a PC during my final year of college, frequent gaming was only for a season or till I completed one game.  I strongly believe gaming should be part of education, causing an awareness of the pros and cons of gaming and regular surveillance from parents till they are matured enough to be aware of it.  As long as computers are existent, gaming will be an entertainment and fun to persons like me. 

Horror

Those of you who know me would know how much I am fond of horror movies.  I don’t know when this inclination towards the horror movies started but there are few things why I prefer horror movies.  It gives me a thrill to know what horror the movie has in store for me.  I ask myself questions like would I be scared by the events in the movie, can the filmmaker scare or shock me, how much blood filled gory scenes would be in the movie, what disgusting ways can the director have in the movie to create the horror and so on.  And as always, I watch horror movies all alone by myself in my bedroom; with the only light coming from the screen and with earphones plugged into my ears.  Ideally I did not want any light or sound to distract me.  Of the movies I have watched so far, very few have indeed tried to scare me.  To state a few horror movies that entertained me are The Descent, REC, Paranormal Activity, Saw series, The Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn, Hostel, and Resident Evil series and so on.

A recent Google search led me to realize when my fondness towards horror movies started.  When I look back, I believe that it should have started when I watched the first horror movie in my life during my early teenage.  The movie was The Evil Dead released in the year 1981.  One of my dad’s friends gave us the VHS tape of the movie and we watched the movie at night.  I don’t know if you have watched the movie in your teenage because I could remember how frightened I was after watching the movie.  I remember I was scared to leave even the windows open during the night, fearing the ghost would enter our home through breeze, because that’s how the ghost would travel in that movie.  Most of the times, there would be dead silence in the movie and suddenly a sound would be heard.  When the character goes towards the place from where the sound had originated, it would either be a branch striking the window or a cat passing by.  When they sigh and get relaxed, a horrible face would show up when they least expected them.  The high-pitched female scream along with the discordant background music would add more shock to the viewer.

This retrospection did not happen because of any horror movies I watched recently but because of a director.  Few weeks back, I watched the movie For Love of the Game.  This movie is a drama sports film and has nothing to do with horror.  I really liked the movie primarily because I liked Kevin Costner (liked him from Mr. Brooks movie) and the screenplay.   I googled to find who the director of this movie was so that I could check out his other works, it was then I realized that it the same director who did this movie was the one who directed The Evil Dead.  His name is Sam Raimi.

Yes, Sam Raimi is the one who directed the Evil Dead series.  He is also the producer of The Evil Dead movie.  It was surprising for me to know that Sam Raimi also directed the Darkman series.  Darkman series were yet another teenage adoration for me and Liam Neeson, the principal character Darkman series, was already becoming my favorite actor (also I liked Liam in Pilgrim’s Progress movie) by then.  To add more surprise, Sam Raimi is also the director of the blockbuster Spider-Man films.  And again he is the director for The Simple Plan, another acclaimed crime thriller.  All these movies, I enjoyed to the core.  Unknowingly, I have liked all of Sam Raimi’s works so far and I was really blown out of water when I came to know this.  So, Sam Raimi has become one of the directors whom I look forward to his upcoming movies.  Apart from directing, he has also produced horror movies which were not in his direction: The Grudge series, Boogeyman series and 30 Daysof Night to name a few.   I am yet to watch his supernatural horror Drag Me to Hell and I will not be surprised if I liked this movie too.  I am also looking forward to his movie, The Possession, directed by Ole Borndeal, after watching its trailer.

And for the final surprise, Sam Raimi has confirmed that a remake of The Evil Dead would be made in the year 2013 but will be directed by Fede Alvarez.  And to quote the voice from the recorder in the Evil Dead movie: “I have seen the dark shadows moving in the woods and I have no doubt that whatever I have resurrected through this book is sure to come crawling... for me” is an apt reflection of my expectation for Sam Raimi and his works.