‘THE DICTATOR’

WE LOVE TO RIDICULE POLITICALLY INCORRECT MOVIES

‘THE DICTATOR’

Laughing at a dictator’s whimsical ways should not come without guilt. At least, that’s what most of the reviews assume in their statement, ‘we laugh, we feel guilty & then we laugh harder’.

Is it necessary to feel a twinge of guilt because we are laughing at a cruel man? This movie is explicit, bold & sassy in its unshaven armpits & self-driven hand jobs. We do not laugh at Hitler & yet Charlie Chaplin bears a striking resemblance we conveniently chose to ignore. We do not laugh at Hitler, period.

Because that is what we do in real life. We do not laugh, we do sarcasm. It allows us a midway to ignore their atrocious actions & its direct victims. This film forces us to look in our own armpits. And see how badly we smell. Not stink, but smell. Stink is a polite word. And this movie does not do polite.

It serves China on a plate, cuts the US in front of the UN & gives a new dress to the dictator of Wadiya, democracy. It brings to light a rich man’s pedophile habits & our own hypocrisy of treating prim celebrities like virgins because hey, they are not standing in a dark alleyway luring clients like a prostitute. We love them so much we ignore all the scandals & adore their sex-tapes in polite Instagram comments. This movie throws it on our face like vomit & yet we are not able to stop chuckling. That is, in summary, The Dictator.

ACCENT IS THE HEROINE

When Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen rolls his tongue around the word Wadiya, possessive, lightly flicks the word constitution, unworthy, makes love to the word pointy & unwillingly touches the farcical democracy. You cannot help but orgasm.

WHAT IT NEEDS

Promotion.

WHAT THE PEOPLE THINK IT NEEDS

A coming of age of the dictator, by him changing his ways. But will it be real? If it did, it would be nothing but another glaring example of human hypocrisy. To want a social contract like Thomas Hobbes is obvious as its being one of the most dominant theories within moral and political theory throughout the history of the modern West. But this movie is made by Larry Charles, a feminist or a more aware person. He accepts that this way of life is an incomplete picture of our moral and political lives, and may in fact camouflage some of the ways in which the contract is itself parasitical upon the subjugations of classes of

THE MUMMY – A LOVE STORY IN CAIROS

THE MUMMY – A LOVE STORY IN CAIROS

“& then there was light”

And the underground chamber fills with bright sunlight bouncing on rustic mirrors. If this scene had been made in our 3d times, you would be standing in a chamber of secrets hidden underneath the beautiful sand. Dreamers still feel the rush in this 2d Egypt. This rush proves its worth.

“Americans!”

Beautiful because the director, Stephen Sommers hides the blood. A muscled half-naked mummy who says thank you to the girl with human emotion, a cowboy who never looks tan despite baking in the desert sun & a highly educated librarian team up to offer a serving of mills & boons. The viewers are able to ignore the fact that the villain is trying to kill the girl when he tries to kiss her in a mode of worship. This is not a creation, it is a recreation. A desert & camels version of the original, ‘The Mummy’.

This feature fiction does not feel old. Not least because the mummy is not wrapped in bandages but also because the visual effects of 2018 don’t outdate the magic done by Alex Laurant.

They carefully avoid anything fluid because humans have a tendency to connect fluids with gore. Alex kept the balance by not tipping off the movie to a horror genre. Its characters funny, the hero not outright courageous but somewhere in between, kept the audience from pointing out obvious historical mistakes. The movie progresses with the physical development of Imhotep, a skeleton to a skeleton with muscle & sinew, let there be a human body bit by bit.

You can see through the mummy, vital parts are missing. This is where it deviates from the norm, from other movies like Dracula or The Invisible Man. The grossness threshold is limited to a minimum by keeping the mummy dry & dusty.

(Dracula 1992)

They were riding on a dangling threshold to accurately match the final Imhotep with the skeleton but the risk eventually paid off.

WHY IMHOTEP STANDS OUT IN MEMORY?

Once you trust your director, you can fly. In Indian cinema, directors like Raj Kapoor could get a timeless movie out of first-time actors because they got physical directions to the T (Ram Teri Ganga Maili). Stephen gave Arnold Vosloo acute description, got him to behave like a physical mummy then his actions were matched with the animated mummy. Credit due to a beautiful marriage between makeup & computer effects. Watching him grow in a 2d theatre, you are scared but you are not, horrified. Because there is a cowboy-librarian love story to tend to. 

The Mummy also had a love story. 

Unlike other villains running after power in the afterlife.

Who are the minions of the mummy? The bugs. I hate the bugs. A major pie of the descendants of the homo-sapiens live in fear of the creepy crawly, evidence: sale of HIT (famous insect killing spray brand in India)

Nothing works for a skeptic, same goes for this film. But movie-making is all about imagination. And imagination is the single mother who time & again gives birth to new discoveries. But she is a single mother. She is ignored.

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A little less normal - Mental Health Care Act 2017

A new wave of change is hitting the country. We all are affected by the lives surrounding us. All of us know at least 1 name in our knowledge who suffers from a mental illness. As students of Law & Human Rights, we set out to study Mental Health Care Act 2017 & its repercussions straight from the experts. Special Feature: Parivartan Cafe, a place run by cured mentally ill patients. (Ahmedabad) Directed By: Priya Sogani