&rediff NewsApp&
NewsApp (Free)Read news as it happensAvailable on &
& && &&My Big Father does not work
My Big Father does not work
The success of any story depends on its novelty. The novelty can be in the form of narration, characters or the circumstances in the story.
Director Mahesh P Sreenivas's quest for novelty begins and ends with the casting.
He tells the story of a father and son, where the father is a dwarf. Thus, he names this Malayalam film, My Big Father. But we have seen Jayaram in many social films where he shared peculiar relationships with his father and played actors ranging from Thilakan to Innocent.
The novelty of this film is the father, played by the two feet tall Guinness Pakru (his name appears in the Guinness Book for being the shortest actor to appear as main lead in a feature film).
Kunjumon (Pakru) lands up in Kochi with an infant in hand. He approaches a teashop owner played by Innocent, with a recommendation letter, who says there is no scope for him there as the shop is on the verge of closing down. By the time the credits end, the business has turned around and the infant has grown up.
The boy grows up to be a strapping young man Alby (Jayaram), dancing on the beaches of Goa with his father and a bunch of dancers for company.
We see that the father too has 'grown up,' sporting a handle bar moustache with salt and pepper hair. He is now the owner of a successful catering firm, managed by his former employer.
Everything is hunky dory with some inane humour passed on in the name of entertainment.
The impending conflict comes in the form of a vow taken by Alby that he will not marry a girl, who laughs at his father.
Alby falls in love with a girl Ancy (Kaniha), whom he spots in a shopping mall, and they get married. But things do not move smoothly, making Kunjumon suicidal.
It seems the recent successes has made Jayaram push his luck by recklessly selecting projects that do not work. My Big Father is one such example. The film just does not excite you.
Rediff Rating:
in Chennai
MOSTRECENT
Stars spotted! &
Reader Paresh Jain sends us a photograph.
Met a celebrity? photos & videosExactly three days following the tenth anniversary of the Bush administration shutting down the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the Fifth Circuit Court dismissed the appeal for the Holy Land Foundation case, affirming the conviction of my father, the co-founder of the HLF who’s serving a 65-year sentence for his humanitarian work.
On Wednesday, Dec. 7, the three-judge panel, based in New Orleans, filed their opinion, concluding that “the district court did not clearly err.”
Upon hearing this news, it initially all rushed back to me at once, nostalgia on overdrive. I saw the relentless accusations by pro-Israeli lobby groups, the pressure by pro-Israeli politicians and the defamatory news reports in the 1990’s. I saw the raid on the HLF in 2001, the pre-sunrise arrests and “material support” charges in 2004, the first trial and hung jury in 2007, the second trial and guilty verdicts in 2008, the sentencing in 2009. I saw the plethora of prison phone calls and visitations. And finally, I saw my father being transferred in 2010 to the Southern Illinois city of Marion’s Communications Management Unit—what The Nation has called “Gitmo in the Heartland”—and where my father’s significantly diminished phone calls and visitations are scheduled in advance and live-monitored from Washington D.C.
The case of the Holy Land Five comes down to this: American foreign policy has long been openly favorable towards Israel, and therefore, an American charity established primarily for easing the plight of the Palestinians became an ultimate target. As my father said during our 15-minute phone call on Thursday, “The politics of this country are not on our side. If we had been anywhere else, we would’ve been honored for our work.”
This month could have marked a milestone. The leaders of our country could have learned from our past. The day the towers fell could have been a time to stop fear from dominating reason instead of a basis to prosecute. The HLF would have continued to triumph, providing relief to Palestinians and other populations worldwide in the form of food, clothing, wheelchairs, ambulances, furniture for destroyed homes, back-to-school projects and orphan sponsorship programs. And more notably, my father would not have been incarcerated. My family and I would have been able to call him freely and embrace him without a plexiglass wall.
Yet my father was charged under the ambiguous Material Support Statute with sending humanitarian aid to Palestinian distribution centers known as zakat committees that prosecutors claimed were fronts for Hamas. He was prosecuted despite the fact that USAID—an American government agency—and many other NGO’s were providing charity to the very same zakat committees. Instead of the Fifth Circuit Court taking this fact into account and transcending the politics of our time, the language used in the opinion, drafted by Judge Carolyn King, echoed that of the prosecutors:
“The social wing is crucial to Hamas’s success because, through its operation of schools, hospitals, and sporting facilities, it helps Hamas win the ‘hearts and minds’ of Palestinians while promoting its anti-Israel agenda and indoctrinating the populace in its ideology.”
Even more disappointing is the Fifth Circuit Court’s opinion regarding one of the main issues in the appeal: The testimony of the prosecution’s expert witness, an Israeli intelligence officer who, for the first time in U.S. history, was permitted to testify under a pseudonym. The opinion states:
“When the national security and safety concerns are balanced against the defendants’ ability to conduct meaningful cross-examination, the scale tips in favor of maintaining the secrecy of the witnesses’ names.”
I refuse to let this language bring me down, especially knowing that the battle for justice continues. In the next few weeks, defense attorneys plan to ask the entire panel of appellate judges to re-hear the case, and if that petition is denied, they will take it to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, my father waits in prison. This Thursday, when I spoke to him, it had been the first time in several weeks since he received a phone call ban for writing his name on a yoga mat, which prison officials saw as “destruction of government property.” I told him that during the tenth anniversary of the HLF shutting down, the name of the charity is still alive and that he will not be forgotten. My father is my pillar, whose high spirits transcend all barbed-wire-topped fences, whose time in prison did not stifle his passion for human rights. In fact, when I asked him about the first thing he’ll do when he’s released, my father said, “I would walk all the way to Richardson, Texas carrying a sign that says, ‘End the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.’ ”
Noor Elashi is a writer based in New York City. She holds a Creative Writing MFA from The New School.
More articles by:
previous -
Melvin GoodmanDave LindorffSteve Horn - Itai VardiAndrew SmolskiMichael J. SainatoSam HusseiniDavid KriegerGareth PorterAnn GarrisonJoseph GrossoMel GurtovRobert FiskADRIAN KUZMINSKIJeffrey BlankfortFred GuerinPeter BelmontColin TodhunterThomas MountainLuciana BohneNozomi HayaseMichael J. SainatoMike WhitneyMark WeisbrotKim C. DomenicoDavid MacarayColin TodhunterBinoy KampmarkJudy GumboMedea BenjaminMatthew HannahLinn Washington Jr.Pauline MurphyMartin BillheimerWinslow MyersKenneth SurinPatrick CockburnJames BovardGregory ElichRobert FiskDavid SwansonJulian VigoJeremy BrecherWilliam HawesBinoy KampmarkLee R. Haven
Send to Email Address
Your Email Address
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.操作成功！
操作失败！
2015年 知识清单(第4题)
&Andrew, my father’s younger brother, will not be at the party, ________ the family’s disappointment.
A.very with
<pletely in
【正确答案】
【答案详解】
&&“to one's+情感名词”to one's surprise/joy/regret/disappointment /delight/astonishment/horror/relief/shame等常用作状语，放在句首、句中或句末，修饰整个句子，表示结果，意为“使某人惊奇／高兴／懊悔……的是”，这类介词短语前还可用much加强语气。
相关知识点