Month: August 2018

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Image credits imdb.com

The movie opens with a rant about racism, denigrating the existence of blacks as equals in the society among whites. It is none other than Donald J Trump! err sorry, I meant his SNL alter ego Alec Baldwin. This sets the mood of the film, so if you are a Trump-ster, you have wasted your money. But you sit and enjoy the intelligent comedy played by the characters.
Then enters our protagonist, Ron Stallworth(John David Washington) prepping his nostalgic Afro hairdo, he becomes the first black police officer to join the force of Colorado Springs. Based of the true story, Spike Lee weaves the story from the past to present racism in America.
Ron starts of his duty in records room, who gets bored very soon, requests his chief to assign him a detective work. Due to his persistence Chief assigns him to infiltrate a Black Panther Activist movement headed by Kwame Ture. Ron accepts it as to socialize with his own community, which in turn finds his love interest; the head of the student union Patrice Dumes(Laura Harrier).

While he is rationalizing with his own kind that police are not pigs, who have tortured the blacks at every juncture concealing his identity. He stumbles upon an advertisement in local newspaper seeking members for a new chapter of KKK in Colorado Springs. He picks the phone and dials the number, the man on the other side asks why would he want to join? Ron goes, “I am WHITE man and hate all those N-word who are sleeping with our white girls and raping them”. I dare not spell that n word, Omarosa might be taping. He pronounces the word WHITE with southern accent, VOIIGHT as it can be. The jaws drop in the office as the rant continues from Ron over the phone, hating blacks. Spike Lee shows that how the rest of the white crew in the office are supportive of Ron except to one bad apple. There is always one that spoils the entire basket. Needless to say the KKK clansman is impressed by Rons views and gets accepted and intends to meet face to face.


Ron’s partner, Filip Zimmerman(Adam Driver) reluctantly agrees to be the face of Ron Stallworth, with Ron as voice, Filip as face the duo infiltrate the KKK, they learn the plans to bomb the Black Panther to eliminate the uprising and end up meeting the master himself, David Duke!

Lee has juxtaposed the KKK and Black panther meeting both being intense in their own right although I would say that the presence of Henry Belafonte is real moving. Lee brings in a full circle and gets that one bad apple on the tape and has him removed from the police force, thus saving the basket from contamination.

In the end Spike Lee ends the movie as a documentary highlighting the events of Charlottesville and President Trump delivering the speech ‘There were fine people on both sides‘ at the cost of an innocent life
Heather Heyer.

It’s worth mentioning here that throughout the movie audience is laughing at the jokes played by Ron and his colleagues over the phone with KKK, but when the commentary from Henry Belafonte is delivered there is a pin drop silence and tears roll down as Heather Heyer is commemorated.

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Selfie by Shweta Bachchan

 

selfie_RussianDaredevil_KirillOreshkin
Russian daredevil Kirill Oreshkin taking a selfie atop a hi rise building

I have conveniently dropped the Nanda at the end to make it more appealing. Yes it is Sr Bachchan’s daughter writing about Selfie. Not surprisingly very eloquent article; she hails from writers family, her father and grand father. Found it very interesting to note that she is totally against the selfies while she is surrounded by huge personalities.

Selfie was immortalized by Ellen DeGeneres of course promoting the phone she held at Oscars. The picture itself was beautiful with all the Hollywood stars posing  triumphantly for the shot, then it went viral on Twitter.

I am not so much against the selfies, but I tend to agree with Shweta on the self indulgence of we humans. Although selfie can be used as medium to capture everybody in the group, but like she says, why do it, if there several other tourists around you who would be glad to help you out. Builds human interaction and social acquaintance.

She also vents about the children taking selfies with duck face. Sure she being a mother herself would be annoyed by that, but it is still cute as long they are limited to children. Unfortunately lots of adults have never grown out of their childhood and progress into belfies.

Selfies has taken a sinister turn, which she is not addressing, the deaths related to Selfies is overwhelming. The picture posted above is that of a Russian daredevil Kirill Oreshkin has earned a name as Russian Spiderman for his selfies atop a hi-rise buildings. Call it daredevil or dumb move, one mis-step could cause his death. Other daredevils have not been so lucky who have succumbed to death, pricenomics lists such deaths in this article.

Mumbai police has posted a sign for Selfie daredevils,

Don’t make ‘taking a selfie‘ mean ‘taking your own life‘.

scores of people are dead taking a selfie near Marine Drive or Bandra seaface. Statistics have shown that India had almost 60 percent of deaths of all selfies.

Finally Shweta ends her blog with a satirical note, where she contacted her doctor for sunburns over the phone, to which her doctor responded, “Send a Selfie”, you can read her entire article here.