So here I was browsing through a bookstore when I saw that they had a section for books on discount. Now I am always a sucker for good books at reduced prices, so off I went. There was this book lying there with a black cover that seemed to be about the US Supreme Court. Now I have always been interested in legal histories and constitutional law, and so I picked the book up. I have never regretted the move.
The book is called “Of Power and Right: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and America’s Constitutional Revolution“ by Howard Ball and Philip J Cooper (1992).
I am not a citizen of the US, nor am I affected by the laws governing the US, so why am I writing a review of the book?
The book presents an epic view of the US legal and social society through the goings-on in the US Supreme Court from the time of the New Deal to the removal of the race-segregation laws, and to the emergence of cases dealing with the rights of the state (government) vs. the rights of the individual. There are essentially 2 streams of thoughts about the power of the judicial system: Judges need to respect that the legislature is the expression of the will of the people and not try their own interpretation, vs. the interpretation that the role of a judge is to hold the constitution supreme and effectively use this as the benchmark for determining the validity of a law.
Justice Hugo Black was a believer in the first thesis (power), while justice William Douglas believed in the second one (right). The book details their initial career before their movement into the Supreme Court, and then really comes into its own. The interactions between the Justices, between the executive and the Justices, and the process (including persuasion and disagreements) used by the Supreme Court to come out with a judgement is all brought out in great detail, and helps to provide a high level of understanding. The cases dealing with the internment of the American citizens of Japanese descent during the second world war, the military tribunals dealing with German spies caught on American land, and specifically the most famous case of the racial segregation era (Brown vs. Board of Education) are all brought out in great detail in this book.
For a layman, the legal and judicial system is wrapped up in mystery when it comes to its intricacies. This book will go a long way in helping people understand how the judicial system works, and how the opinions of Justices drive the US Supreme Court.

One book that I have liked a lot is a book by Dick Francis called ‘Rat Race’. Now Dick Francis is an odd bird. He writes almost solely on horse-racing, but he writes good stuff. He was a champion jockey in the 50’s, and has written a number of books ever since.
One of the books of his that I really like is called ‘Rat Race’ (written in 1971). It is not a very complicated plot, but does involve horse racing to some degree (although tangentially). It is about a small-time divorced pilot who is not doing so well in life. He is almost perpetually broke, has to pay regular alimony to his wife, and works for a small charter airline where the owner wants to keep him down. He meets all kind of passengers on the way, many of whom look down on him.
With this background, the story starts escalating. One day when carrying a group to a race-track including a famous jockey, he senses danger and lands, only to see the plane explode a few minutes later. He starts investigating, even when dealing with the repurcussions of this explosion. He meets the family of the famous jockey, and gets romantically interested in his sister, and the sister feels the same. This part of the story is really an excellent sub-plot. The other sister of the jockey is terminally ill, and the way that the family is dealing with the upcoming loss and the resulting grief is an inspired piece of writing. One cannot but help feeling impressed with their courage and ability to handle grief.
The novel moves towards the investigation coming to a peak, with some inspired detective work from the pilot. In addition, the way that the love story between these two moves along with the plot is interesting. The last few pages is when the story climaxes. It is a good read.

This is a very interesting book, the first time I read this book (a fairly small novel), the concept struck me as pretty awesome. After I returned the book from where I had borrowed it, I just had to go and buy it (off eBay).
Isaac Asimov is very famous for his science fiction novels, and very famous for his Foundation and Robot series. This is a novel that has not somehow become that famous, and the story can be a bit complex.
Enough description about the book, here is a brief synopsis of the book:
In the future, mankind has learnt how to do time travel. With time travel comes the responsibility of making sure that changes made by the nature of time travel are controlled (for example, nobody should be able to go back earlier in time and make changes that have a colossal impact). So an entire organization is setup called the ‘Eternity’ which control the time changes allowed. This organizations exists across the centuries and only they control the movement in time up and down. When it is seen that a major war is about to break out or other similar disaster, the ‘Eternals’ calculate what is the basic minimum change required in an earlier time period so as to avert the disaster and go and make the change, thus preventing a disaster from happening.
The premise of the novel is that such changes prevent the natural development of humankind of innovation and technological growth (as an example, a prototype of a spacecraft goes disastrously wrong and the option is to remove this development from earlier in time). It may be cruel, but humans develop through adversity and through mistakes, and if these are removed, development also reduces. In the end, humankind never manages to move out of the home planet because the development of fast space travel never happens.
The novel moves to a place where there is a single person who can make Eternity continue or disappear, and he has to consider all these above facts before making the decision.

This is a movie that has been rated as the best English movie of all time, and if you watch it with a critical eye, one can see why. In this age of fast paced action oriented movies, it may seen as an anachronism, but the movie itself is spectacular. The creation of the movie itself was an event by itself. The movie is by accounts based on the life of the newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst. The picture painted in the movie of the lead character, Charles Foster Kane, was not a very flattering one, and Hearst did all he could to kill the movie. The movie did not find any mention in any of Hearst’s newspapers, the premiere of the movie was blocked, and in the end, the movie itself lost $150,000. And to make matters worse, it was the first movie by a young director, Orson Welles, at the tender age of 26.
The movie starts with the death of the newspaper magnate, Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles). While dying, he utters the word ‘Rosebud’ and this is caught on a newsreel. The producer of the newsreel views this, and curiosity unleashed, hires a reporter Thompson (Willian Alland) to dig into Kane’s private life and to discover the meaning behind the word. The movie is essentially about the discoveries that Thompson makes, and how Kane’s life is revealed through these flashbacks. He meets numerous people to get to the bottom of the mystery, with some people cooperating and some not.
The story of Kane’s life was not an easy one. He was born into poverty, and inherited wealth, at which point his mother sent him away to live with their banker. This incident was the turning point of his life, it made him what he was. In the end, he dies a massively wealthy and yet supremely arrogant newspaperman. He had broken relationships. In his quest for power, his ambition causes him broken relationships and the bitter feeling that eventually he is left all alone. And this was not necessary, he started out as an idealistic journalist trying to help the common man, and then set his mind to start on a political career, that self-destructed due to the opening of his affair to the public.
Eventually his attempts to attain the American dream of power, wealth, influence, and success crashed, and he died a loner of his own choosing, in a representation of his life’s emptiness. The journalist, Thompson who is investigating however is unable to find out the meaning of Rosebud, and gives up. However, viewers of the movie get to know what it is; as workers are burning many of Kane’s possessions, they burn his sled. The sled has the name ‘Rosebud’, and it was the sled that he was riding on the day his mother sent his away. And the movie pans onto on a gate with a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.
The movie is acclaimed for several thing, its nature of flashback narration, the effort taken to ensure that Orson Welles is able to look the age of the part, the acting style, his usage of focus, shadows. The movie was acclaimed at its release, but then forgotten, until the 1950’s, at which time it started catching the attention of critics. The movie was nominated for 9 Oscars, but the pressure from Hearst must have been considerable, it only won 1.

A lot of people will not believe that this movie is made on a real life person. But it is true, Lawrence of Arabia, made in 1962, was based on a true Lieutenant-Colonel T.E.Lawrence, who served in the British Army during the period of the First World War (from 1914-1918) and was in the Military Intelligence division. During this service, he did some extra-ordinary things to further the interests of the British in the War. He eventually died in 1935 in a motor-cycling accident.
The film is very famous, and regularly finds a place in the Top 100 films of all time. It was directed by David Lean and starred Peter O’Toole in the lead role. The film was also acclaimed for the musical score by Maurice Jarre and the cinematography by Freddie Young. It won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1962. The film and also Lawrence’s own writings about the World War, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, have been called into doubt by historian repeatedly, especially the accuracy about all that Lawrence is supposed to have achieved during the War.
The mission of the British in the Middle East during the First World War was to defeat the Turks, and the aim was to see if the Arab desert tribes could be united to fight against the Turks. There did not seem to be any other alternative other than the desert tribes, but it would take a lot of effort for them to defeat the entrenched Turks.
The movie is a treat to watch, especially on a large screen. It has great scenes of the desert, depicting the vastness and in many cases, the desolate nature of the desert. It can be a brutal place. The action sequences and the battle scenes are great, and very engrossing. The most important aspect of the movie is about how Lawrence is able to get the tribes to take on the Turks and defeat them, and how this entire quest changes his personality in an incredible way. The movie conveys a sense of history for the region, something that most people outside the region would have no idea about.
In the start of his quest, Lawrence manages to get to meet Prince Feisal (who is attempting a revolt against the Turks, who are allies of the Germans), and get him interested. In the first victory, Lawrence uses an army of Bedouin to capture a vital port city after a desert push that was though impossible. After this, he launches a guerrilla war, trying to bleed the Turks in many places and putting pressure on their supplies. After getting caught while scouting a Turkish held-city, he is severely beaten. This has a change in his feelings and he is now more open to massacres of enemy soldiers (something that the Arabs supported as a retaliation for similar action by the Turkish). Eventually his army of Arabs take Damascus, at which stage he retires from the effort. There will be many sections of the movie that can be disputed for its accuracy, but the movie by itself is a great movie.

Have you seen a movie likely to make a major impact on you ? Well, you may have seen some, granted. This movie is one that is a must see, there are very few movies that depict the futility and hopelessness of war like this one. For war mongers sitting at the back, this movie and the associated novel are a must see (and I am not trying to be political right now).
All quite on the western front has been on the Top 100 English movies list for a long time now, and it is in fact a very old movie. The movie is based on a book published in Germany by 1929 by Erich Maria Remarque called ‘Im Westen nichts Neues’. The book had incredible sales, selling 2.5 million copies in different languages within 18 months. The book in turned inspired the movie in 1930, directed by Lewis Milestone. The movie won the best Best Picture and Best Director award, and was the first talking movie to win an Oscar.
The movie was seen as generically anti-war and anti-German (being set on German soldiers) and was banned by the Nazis. There have been many movies set on war zones, and many of them glorify or justify the concept of war, but this was a vehemently anti-war movie. The movie stars Lew Ayres in the pivotal role of Paul Baumer, and stars Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Arnold Lucy, and others.
The movie is set in Germany, with a group of schoolboys getting encouragement to join the army by their professor (Arnold Lucy set in a jongoistic role) in the backdrop of a military parade happening outside. These are young enthusiastic boys, and encouraged by the charm of fighting for their country, the enlist. However, their enthusiasm soon dies down in the hard training that they undergo at the hands of their sadistic drill sergeant, Himmelstoss (the ex-postman). He makes them undergo a variety of hard training during the course, enough that when they are about to leave, they get revenge by dumping him in the mud.
These still enthusiastic new soldiers reach the frontline to the tune of enemy shells and are greeted by war-worn and highly cynical soldiers who are already fighting. The German army is already suffering from poor supplies and lack of food. At this point, another pivotal character of the movie, Sergeant Kat Katczinsky (famous for being able to find food) arrives with a pig and they all join in with gusto.
Their first mission, to string barbed wire at night. One famous scene from the movie is when they watch the truck leaving them and going back, a sense of poignancy. They get the first experience of a shell bursting nearby, and one of them shits in his pants. Kat offers them the most valuable advice at that point about what to do in case of shell attacks.
The first death - one of the new soldiers is blinded by the shell fire, and runs off in a panic towards the enemy side and is gunned down. To their shock, they are not allowed to get the body back, it’s foolish to waste another life to get a body back. After all, it’s just a corpse. They are already starting to learn about the waste and horrors of war.
At another time, they have to sit in a bunker with constantly exploding shells, and they start to crack. They have to co-exist with rats in the bunker, and to just to exist for days like that. In another scene of great profoundness, the French infantry charges and is held down by German machine-gun fire. Another touch of horror is brought forward to Paul when a grenade explodes in front of a French soldier reaching for the wire, and after the smoke clears, there are just the hands gripping the wire.
More horror, with close hand-to-hand combat between the Germans and French, and now many of the schoolboys have been killed.
The soldiers, directly involved in the war, start discussing it. This is a dialog, not very long, that captures the guts of the movie. They do not know why they are in the war, they did not know the enemy so hating them enough to have a war seems crazy, and they are sure that the French feel the same way.
War also makes people cold. Hence, when a person loses his legs, there are soldiers ready to ask for the shoes since the owner does not need them anymore. This is presented in a montage where the shoes are passed from one to another as the owners keep dying.
In another gripping moment, Paul encounters a French soldier who has jumped into his shell hole and Paul wounds him mortally. He has to stay there while the French soldier is slowly dying and it is a long wait. During this time, he becomes remorseful and tries to find out about the soldier’s family in order to help them. He brings more water for the man to sip, but the soldier has died.
The effect of war on a growing up man is incredible. Paul gets leave to go home, but is unable to connect with anybody over there, he has had too many different kinds of experiences. In his school, he meets the professor who is still encouraging new students to join the war. Paul refuses to give them an encouraging talk, instead talking of the raw emotions of the war; and they call him a coward. They are still young and enthusiastic.
When he joins back, more of his company has been killed. In a discussion with Kat, he lays down his feelings about home and his trip. As they are walking back, Kat gets hit by a splinter and dies, but Paul does not know. He only gets to know when another soldier tells him. Death and destruction has claimed almost everybody he knew.
The final passing. Paul reaches from inside his trench for a butterfly, and a sniper shoots him. And hence the name of the movie. On this day, when Paul was killed, there was nothing much going on, and hence the report back was ‘All quiet on the western front’. After all, what is one soldier’s life.
In the classic ending of the movie, all the dead soldiers are marching away towards a void in a ghostly column, killed for they know not what.

There would not have been a serious fan of science fiction movies or a follower of the best in cinema who would not have seen the science fiction classic ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Based on the short story, ‘The Sentinel’ by Arthur C Clarke written in 1948, the movie and a new novel based on the movie were written at around the same time, with the movie getting released first in 1968, and the book being co-authored by the movie director ‘Stanley Kubrick’ and ‘Arthur C Clarke’ soon after.
This movie is a very strange movie in many aspects, with barely 40 minutes of dialogs in a 148 minute movie. The movie in many many instances looks very stark, with very sharp scenes. With some delightful music, and excellent visuals, the movie is a treat to watch. The movie also leaves the ending sufficiently vague, and these are actually completed by Clarke in his subsequent novels, ‘2010′, ‘2061′ and ‘3001′. There has been a lot of bitching about the future shown in the movie in the sense that 2001 certainly did not see much of easy space flight, but the fact remains that the American space exploration programme, in its full fancy at the time of Apollo and the moon landings was shut down in the mid 1970’s. If there had been sufficient focus and effort put in that direction, such things would still be realistically possible.
The movie set a new pattern with extensive use of scores from the classical composers, both dead and alive. Kubrick shunned the use of movie composers, instead using works by Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)and György Ligeti.
The movie is so different from the others that the first spoken word is issued half an hour into the movie; try to think of 3 elements in the movie, with speech, music, or silence (pre-dominant in space). At any point of time, any scene had only one of these 3 elements present.
The movie essentially divided its critics into 2 parts, people either loved the movie or hated it. But slowly the movie picked momentum and gained an incredible amount of popular and critical acclaim, enough that it is now in the top 100 movies of all time.
The movie starts out with a tribe of primeval ape man struggling against the odds. One day they find a mysterious black object appears and they nervously go near it. In a kick start initiated by the monolith, Man starts to get intelligent and starts to develop tools. As he is able to use the bone tool, he is able to kill enemies, and thus ends the pre-historic episode in the movie. He throws his weapon in the air in triumph and the scene changes to that of an orbital satellite.
In the present time, the American base in the moon discovers an object buried in the moon a million years ago (dubbed Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1 or TMA-1), and Dr. Floyd, a research scientist wants to see it. They see a monolith, smooth after millions of years. With the first burst of sunlight falling on the monolith, it emits a screech, as if it is time to act now.
Cut to the spaceship Discovery 1 going to the moon. It carried 6 passengers, Dave Bowman, Frank Poole, 3 cryogenically frozen astronauts and HAL (the onboard computer). HAL is the pinnacle of super-computing, designed to communicate like a human, and very human like in its interactions. At this point, the movie starts to move into the dangerous territory.
HAL reports an impending problem in the communication system, and Bowman goes out of the spaceship to explore, but no problem can be seen. Mission control suggest that HAL is facing a problem, and in the meantime, HAL suggests waiting for the part to fail. Dave and Frank go into a pod, away from HAL, to discuss secretly about whether HAL is failing. Conclusion: if the problem repeats, they will disconnect HAL. Unfortunately, HAL is able to hear what they are saying; and now the movie shows the magic, the power of a computing device out to do harm.
Poole goes outside to repair, and steps outside the EVA pod, at which point HAL takes control of the pod and rams the pod at Poole, killing him. Dave, watching, rushed outside in another pod to try and rescue Poole; in the meantime, HAL deliberately disconnects the support system of the 3 cryogenically frozen astronauts, killing them.
When Frank tried to return, HAL refuses to open the door, revealing that he knows of the conspiracy to ‘kill him’. The voice of HAL, always soft-spoken does not hide the danger that Frank is in. HAL also makes it clear that the mission is so important that HAL cannot let Dave screw it up. Dave manages to enter the ship in a risky way, given that he does not have a support system and was exposed to vacuum for a short while. He has one purpose, to deactivate HAL. He starts doing so, and slowly HAL starts to die, all the while protesting about what Dave is doing.
The final part of the movie, with a recording explaining the monolith on the moon and around Jupiter. Dave wants to go out and explore the monolith, and exits the Discovery 1 in an EVA pod. He appears to travel vast distances, first seeming to arrive in a royal room, and goes through some strange experiences, finally seeing himself on his deathbed (through reflected glass) with a monolith nearby. As he tried to touch it, he transforms into a vision called a ‘Star Child’, a fetus like being, surrounded by an orb of light and in the Earth’s orbit.
The movie shows a number of devices that are now present such as flat monitors, glass cockpits in spacecraft, credit cards with magnetic strips, biometric identification

Forrest Gump was an incredibly successful movie. It earned a massive amount of money, more than $650 million on a budget of $55 million. Additionally, it pretty much cleaned up on the Oscars (and many other awards as well). The Oscars it won were some of the most prestigious ones, namely the Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor:
# Won - Best Actor (Tom Hanks)
# Won - Best Director (Robert Zemeckis)
# Won - Best Film Editing (Arthur Schmidt)
# Won - Best Picture (Wendy Finerman, Steve Starkey, Steve Tisch)
# Won - Best Visual Effects (Ken Ralston, George Murphy, Stephen Rosenbaum, Allen Hall)
# Won - Best Adapted Screenplay (Eric Roth)
It picked up a total of 13 nominations. Forrest Gump also won the important trio at the Golden Globe awards (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor).
The Best Actor award did a lot of put Tom Hanks right at the top of the heap in terms of money-grossing abilities and excellent performances. Just the previous year, Tom Hanks had won the Best Oscar for Philadelphia and has also given a superb romantic role for the movie ‘Sleepless in Seattle’. The two consecutive Oscars for Best Actor also made Tom Hanks the first Actor after Spencer Tracy in 1937-38 to win the Award for 2 consecutive years).

The name ‘Forrest’ itself has the potential to be very controversial. The name and the character are related to a famous General Nathan Bedford Forrest, very famous for being a great cavalry leader for the Confederate Side and also infamous for being reputed as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist hate organization. And of course the movie itself during very tumultuous periods of American history, with the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War and its massive protests, the rise to fame of Elvis Presley as a legend, the Watergate scandal, and the emergence of AIDS as a modern killer disease.
The hero of the movie is unlike most heroes; he has a low IQ of 75, a level that can classify him as dim-witted, but at the same time, there is an inner strength that keeps him going through his life. It’s this that keeps him going as he plays an unintended part in many huge events of American history. The movie also played an important part in the use of technology in movies; the scenes where Forrest Gump is inserted into many historical events were very well received and discussed, especially the meeting with Kennedy in the White House.
The movie starts from Alabama, where Forrest is shown sitting at a bus stop, telling his life’s story to fellow passengers who are waiting for the bus. This is the way that the story of the movie is told, and the movie also ends at the bus stop as Forrest escorts his son to the school bus. The movie is essentially a flashback, the story of the country told through the character of Forrest Gump. From the beginning, he was very inspired by his mother, particularly 2 sayings that she used to have: “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get” and “Stupid is as stupid does.” (Incidentally, as the movie became successful, these sayings came into much more wider usage).
Given that he was slow-witted and also had leg braces, Forrest used to come in for a lot of jibbing from other boys, and at one point, to escape them, he discovers that he can run and run (in the scene where he first discovers this, you can see his ability freeing him from the leg braces as they drop off). This running ability is on display frequently through the film; from the time when he impresses the coach and eventually makes the All American, to rescuing his fellow soldier in Vietnam, to finally meeting his love Jenny (played by Robin Wright) and his son.
His experiences are varied, and given that the movie actually exults in these experiences, it is almost necessary to mention them. Gump is supposed to have inspired the dance gyrations of Elvis Presley after Elvis sees him trying to dance while wearing leg braces. Due to Forrest making the All American team, he meets President Kennedy in the White House, but having drunk so many bottle of Dr. Pepper, he can only mention wanting to go to the loo when he actually meets the President (I really like this scene). He later meets President Johnson after getting the Medal of Honor for saving his fellow soldiers, and later still, after playing some great ping pong with China as part of ping pong diplomacy, he meets President Nixon. Nixon gets him moved to the Watergate Hotel (a better hotel than the current hotel that he was saying at) and Forrest causes the arrest of the burglars that eventually brings down Nixon.
There are some poignant scenes in the movie. All his life, he has been in love with his childhood friend Jenny Curran, but Jenny always had a much wilder life. She refuses every time, once leading him to do a 3.5 years across the country where he becomes a celebrity although no one is able to figure out why exactly he is doing this running. It is only after decades of knowing each other that they finally get married, but she dies shortly after of a Virus (speculated to be AIDS). And the movie ends with him dropping his son off to the school bus.
It is hard to pinpoint why people really liked the movie; there are some great performances by Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, and Mykelti Williamson. But the main reason is that people liked the story of a simple but honest man, and the movie captures a period of history in the United States that was very emotional and controversial. It universally acknowledged that the period from the 50’s, from the Civil Rights movement and the Supreme Court ordered desegregation, from Kennedy’s election (the rise of Camelot) and his assassination, the Vietnam War and mass anti-war protests, Watergate and the eventual forcing out of a President, all these were times of great change.
Watch this movie if you have not, and I am sure that you will have a reaction; you may like or hate the movie, but you will most certainly have a reaction.