It's All In Black & White

People don't have any idea what's black money. Guys remember last month when you checked out of that hotel, the receptionist asked you if you need tax bill and you said you didn't need bill with a smirk? The Rs 2000 that you paid became black money the moment it was gone from your hand.

Or that Rs 100 you paid for a pirated dvd on roadside yesterday. That became black money and is now on its way to help drug Lords & terrorists break our nation apart.

Or that medicines you bought without tax bill and that electronic shaver which you bought from smuggled goods store. The money that you handed out is black money now.

You bought a piece of land showing paper value 5 lakh and paid 40 lakh. 35 lakh that you paid has now become black money...

That donation you paid without receipt to secure a seat for your kid in that posh school and that 500 that you paid the policeman to escape from his long hands has also became black money.


What happens is that all this amount moves out of the mainstream economy. Then it starts it's journey towards its masters. Because once it moves out of control all transactions that use this money will be nefarious,  illegal ones. Finally it reaches the coffers of hoarders. For hoarding money, obviously you need bigger denominations like 500 and 1000s. Now when these denominations are banned, suddenly all these currency gets worthless. But for all those who have genuinely earned white money, government has given chance to deposit in banks after revealing source. 

But it becomes impossible for black money to get legitimised because it's tough to reveal sources. May be a small portion may escape.

Now government has a clear account of how many 500& 1000 Rs notes is in circulation. It has to just check how much is returned to it. Remaining is a deficit which government can compensate by printing new currency. And this currency can be used for developmental and beneficiary purposes.

So any unaccounted money acquired illegaly gets back to government in a single stroke.

Splendour of Sushi

The original plan of American documentary maker David Gelb was to make a movie about the many Sushi masters and Sushi restaurants in Japan. But once he went to the sushi restaurant of 85 year old Jiro, ate there and met with the owner, he realised the scope for an individual movie. Thus was made an incredible documentary titled Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Jiro believes in working hard, doing same thing day after day, mastering his choice of occupation and creating something better than what he made yesterday. We all believe in same things, but he lives his beliefs. The documentary is an ode to the working style of Jiro. Thus he made his little sushi place with just 10 seats located inside a subway, a three Michelin starred (it's a big deal, these Michelin stars) restaurant. You need to book a month in advance and the cost of the food is astronomical. They serve only sushi, no appetisers or drinks and a proper meal will last only 15 minutes. Still people love the place because the best sushi in the world is served there.

The best thing about the film is the frames of masterfully crafted sushi dishes made by Jiro and the exhilaration of the people who eats it. But what make the movie satisfying is the people who are behind the endeavour. Other than the perfectionist Jiro, we meet his elder son Yoshikazo, who works with his father. He has a tough time but he endures it in a devoted fashion. Then we meet the apprentices who are as devoted. Jiro's second son has opened another sushi bar, actually a replicant of his father's in another part of the city. It's also a 3 Michelin starred place. Customers who cannot bear stern nature of the master while serving, go to the soft mannered son's place.

We meet Jiro's suppliers who are as knowledgeable and passionate. Selecting the best catch of fish, fit for the best sushi bar in the world need such skills. The guy who supply rice has an interesting anecdote to share. Grand Hyatt hotel asked him for the same variety of rice sourced for Jiro. He denied them. He says Jiro is the only person in the world who can cook that variety of rice perfectly. What's the point in selling rice to someone who can't cook it..?

Jiro and team are really worried about what they feel is the biggest threat to them- overfishing in seas. They already are affected because day by day it's getting difficult to obtain the high quality fish that they need to sustain their name. Many exquisite species are already extinct and it's getting difficult to get replacement. Jiro and his son appeal to curb deep net fishing that indiscriminately kills even the non adult fish.

The movie ends with a scene of Jiro serving food to 10 member party. He does it like a conductor of a symphony, elevating the simple act of serving food to an art form. He is so skilled that he can synchronise his guest's timings by adjusting the size of the sushi that he carves for each guest. And while serving for left handers, he serves it right on their left hand to ensure their comfort. In the end he acknowledge the contribution of team mates who as per him has the most difficult job on the world.

Do yourself a favour and watch this movie once, it's worth every bit of your time.

Kaashmora: Lil' Bit This, Lil' Bit That

Contrary to what it's makers want you to believe through the trailer and posters, Kaashmora is not an epic fantasy like Baahubali. It's more of a horror comedy movie. But it has elements of fantasy, crime and action embedded in it. I felt that it was a wrong move. The plot had many positives, but instead of fixing on what it really wants to be, they let the whole thing to run amok. So the result is an incoherent movie.

Karthi plays a dual role, that of both the protagonist and the antagonist, thus very much limiting the screen time and importance of all other characters. Except of course Nayanthara, who makes the best of the limited scenes she got, by looking gorgeous and kicking ass. Vivek who appears as Karthi's father also shone like a shooting star. Most of the other guys didn't had any idea of the purpose they were serving being in the movie.

As protagonist, Karthi's role is similar to the ones he has already specialised in many of his commercial hit films, that of a fast and smooth talking con man, which was predictably hilarious. As antagonist, the role that is hyped in trailer and posters, he gets to show-off himself and he did it commendably well. The comedy was the best thing about the movie. Most of the jokes were laugh-out-loud quality and even the ones inserted in between the tedious horror set-pieces were pretty good.

As I told initially, movie faltered when it attempted to go to places where it wasn't supposed to. The first half was pretty interesting but the second half suddenly left whatever was built in the first, and started telling a story by its own. Many characters and incidents introduced in first half is abandoned in second without any payoff. That was one reason why the flash back of the villain, though looking wonderful on screen, lacked any emotional resonance for me. It was tough for me to root for or even care for many characters. I would say Kaashmora is missed opportunity,  like most of the recent Tamil movies that arrive piggybacking on the hype of multiple get-ups of its stars.

The Zombie Train to Busan

Zombies are fictional demons, undead creatures surviving on human brains. Derived from Haitian mythology, zombies were around in Hollywood from some time. But it was George Romero's Living Dead series that established the present zombie characters. Hollywood zombies are generally ugly, walks in a slow pace and those who are bit by them also become zombies. Breaking out of zombie apocalypse is a general theme in zombie movies.

Unlike other popular movie demons like vampires, werewolves and various Nicolas Cage characters, zombies doesn't have a personality. They are ugly, dull and uninteresting. So it becomes a challenge to make a zombie movie. To succeed, either you have to go in full exploitation gear with graphic violence and nudity or you need something extra, a quirky plot twist or a different concept that doesn't depend on zombies alone. Some movies like Night of the Living Dead used sublime social commentary to achieve greatness, while some others like Shaun of the Dead used satire and comedy.

Recently I watched such a movie titled Warm Bodies which is basically a zombie rom-com. As in many zombie movies, a zombie apocalypse is ongoing and a tiny group of humans are resisting them. A zombie named R kills and eats the brain of the boyfriend of Julie, a human. He starts developing feelings for her. As bizarre the plot may sound, Warm Bodies is an interesting movie. Violence is not on-the-face kind and the movie itself is pretty cute for one involving romancing a zombie.

And that brings us to the topic, the South Korean zombie movie that I happened to watch last day, Train To Busan. Now one thing that I noticed about Korean movies is that they never go for a middle path. Its always extremities for them. Here also, the two hour running time is fully packed with extreme action and emotion. Everybody runs around and fight each other with zombies multiplying rapidly around them. We never get time off to think about what's happening on screen. Some of the zombie effects, especially in climax, reminded me of World War Z, but this one is infinitely better than the Brad Pitt vehicle in all aspects.

With all the action and melodrama crammed up, there were a few miss steps in the movie too. Some decisions made by characters seemed too improbable in the situations. Many of them were made up just to ensure that zombies reach the main characters when the director wanted them to. The movie tried to send some messages across about being unselfish and spending more time with kids, but all those were either totally muddled in the action or rendered pointless by the end.

Time Loop Time Loop Time Loop.... Repeat Endlessly

Time loop is a much repeated plot device, especially in Hollywood movies. But if made into a tightly structured, no/minimum plot holes movie, there is nothing more stimulating to the intellect. By time loop movies, I mean the ones in which events that happens in a particular time frame repeat continously.

I don't consider time travel movies like Time Cop where someone lands in past or future and alter the present, though such movies too eventually have to deal with the puzzle of looping time. You will get my point if you recall Terminator movie franchise as a whole. So that puts brilliant movies like Predestination, Looper and not-so-brilliant ones like Time Cop (it's bad-ass, not brilliant) outside our scope.

In time loop movies, most of the time, atleast one character gets aware of this phenomenon and learns to adjust his behaviour and use it to his/her/their advantage. Such movies use time loops as a plot device.





There is another category of movies in which time loop is introduced as just a narrative device. Here, the looping of time doesn't happen in actual. Sometimes the makers try to show different point of views by repeating the events.

One movie that comes to mind is Vantage Point where an assassination attempt on the US President is shown from the POV of different characters. Each loop introduce us to some new facts that adds on to our understanding of the plot.




Sometimes the makers try to visualise how a minor happening can alter the outcome greatly. German movie Run Lola Run directed by Tom Tykwer is one such brilliant gem of a movie. In this film, a girl has 20 minutes to get some cash to save her boyfriend. Three scenarios are enacted where Lola runs to arrange cash and all three has drastically varied results due to slight variations in her behaviour. The director leaves certain ambiguity as to whether she is aware of the situation.




Now if we check out the movies where protagonist(s) are aware of time loop, the choices are great. We have Source Code, a science fiction thriller starring Jake Gyllenhall, who has to solve a terror plot by living the last 8 minutes of the attack continuously till he makes a breakthrough. And he has to do it by occupying the body of a stranger.




Groundhog Day starring the effervescent Bill Murray as an arrogant weather reporter who is forced to cover an event that he despises is the first blockbuster featuring time loop concept. In this feel-good comedy, the protagonist has to relive countless times the Groundhog Day, a yearly tradition in a small town. It's a hilarious movie.

In the summer blockbuster Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise learns to fight dangerous aliens by living and dying in a loop.




Most of the movies that I covered here uses huge budget, elaborate sets and sophisticated special effects to help with the narration. But ARQ, this new movie that I watched last day ingeniously puts itself forward using minimum budget, just handful of characters and a rundown garage as it's set.


In a world were all energy sources are depleted, an engineer invents a perpetual motion machine which triggers a time loop. He wakes up from a dream to see his long-gone girlfriend by his side and four invaders soon turns up. He is killed and wake up again remembering the previous episode. Now each time he tries to unknot the puzzle, he gets killed only to wake up again.

What makes ARQ stand out is the number of twists that the makers introduce in each segment. Every guess work and every expectation of viewers are thwarted systematically when the motives and back stories of each characters are revealed one by one.

Are there any other movies you feel that I missed? Are there any Indian movies that feature time loop? Feel free to comment.