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The Crow’s Egg – Movie Review

22 Oct 2016 32 Comments

by Ritu in Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, film, pizza, Poverty, review, Slum, The Crow's Egg

You know those days, when you aren’t well, and you sit there browsing the hundreds of channels, looking for something to watch. You’re tired of the boring repeats of sitcoms and cooking programmes, and all the other inane shows that are playing at that time.

Then something catches your eye, and you think you’ll give it a go… and it ends up being the best decision you made that day.

It happened to me today.

I had been reading, and my head was bursting with words I had read, so I switched on the TV. The kids were out, Hubby Dearest had gone to drop them to football training, and the house was silent.

And this film was playing. The Sky box gave me a prompt to start it at the beginning, and after reading the little info that you get on the screen, I thought “why not?”

This was how I discovered The Crow’s Egg, or Kaaka Muttai in Tamil.

A South Indian, tamil language (no, I can’t understand or speak Tamil, but the subtitles were great!) film about two young brothers who live in a Chennai slum with their mother and grandma, their father locked up in prison for an unknown crime, awaiting bail.

If you are expecting Slumdog Millionaire, there are a few similarities, like it is about two brothers, and they live in a slum. But it is a bit of a comedy, as well as a chance to view into the lives of the slum dwellers, and how they are viewed by the upper echelons of Indian society.

These two go daily to a tree, distract the crows, and then steal eggs, to ‘drink’ them. The family has no money spare so mum can’t afford to buy chickens eggs, so they figured this was the next best thing. They are known to all their friends as Crow’s Egg the Elder and Crow’s Egg the younger.

The land where their special tree is, gets sold to developers, so they, along with other slum friends, have nowhere to play.

As the days go by, a new pizza parlour is erected in this space, raising a lot of curiosity from the local children.

The film follows their journey to actually try and buy a pizza themselves. There are funny moments, cute moments, and some really sad moments within the film, showing how these innocent slum children are regarded by many.

Such a cute scene when the grandma tries to make them a pizza out of Dosa mix!

The boys are totally likeable. I found myself really willing them to get their pizza! Bless them, the things they did to earn money and scrape together 300 rupees to buy one! They didn’t want anyone’s pity, but fate lent a hand. How they got clean, new clothes… a classic scene!

Class and society divides, social media, poverty… only some of the issues covered in this light hearted film, but the message is delivered in a pleasing format.

I shan’t say too much more, if you are to watch the film, I don’t want to spoil the end, but you do end up hanging on to the edge of your seat, to see whether they ever get to try that elusive pizza!

Bad Moms – A Review

18 Sep 2016 54 Comments

by Ritu in Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Bad Moms, Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, film, review

It’s been quite a weekend for me. For a change, this mum actually had a social life! Not one event, but two!

Friday night was a party to celebrate 0ur Good Ofsted report, and yesterday my good friend took me, along with two other mums, to go and see Bad Moms for my birthday treat!

Oh, what a fantastic film! It’s not often that a film resonates almost completely with me, but I spent the film either nodding in agreement, or pissing myself laughing at what was happening!

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We have a working mum who is juggling a home, and family life, two children, a jerk of a husband, and a part-time job which has become very full time.

There is another mum, who has spent her mothering career as a single mum, and has embraced the ‘slutty mom’ tag she has been given.

The final mum in the main trio is a young downtrodden housewife with 4 kids under a certain age, with an overbearing husband.

Then you get the PTA mums – you know the kind, the ones that appear to be perfect at everything, the ones who influence the thinking of all the other mums. Woe betide you if you do not conform to their idea of perfect mothering!

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Here you have Alpha mum, Total Suck Up mum, and Hanger On Mum.

I won’t tell you lots about the story, but suffice to say, all four of us enjoyed it immensely and came out of it feeling like great Bad Moms! It’s a total feel-good movie, but as a mum, you will relate to so much of it! (Hubbies and dads, might be worth watching…)

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All I’ll say is ‘Get your tits up!’ (You’ll understand once you watch the film!!!)

Next stop… Brigitte Jones Baby!

Men, Women and Children

18 Aug 2015 29 Comments

by Ritu in Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, film, Harsh Reality, Reality, review

Have you heard of this film?

I haven’t but don’t be surprised, I seem to wallow in classics, and kids movies most of the time so I miss great new releases and catch them up when they are deemed classic!

Anyway, back to the review in hand. I was browsing the Sky Plus On Demand service and this was on so I thought why not, and I am glad I did.

A film revolving around the online world, social media, gaming and technology and RL (real life).

It showed the amount of interaction people had via devices, rather than face to face, and how you could go from being innocent, and think you’re helping, to being controlling, and losing your child’s respect.

There was a mum who wanted to be an actress, but never did, who took over her child’s ambitions, and set up a seemingly innocent website of her girl, which ended up getting exploited, and the big message there was that whatever you put online is there forever, you might shut down an account or site, but all it takes is one download onto someone else’s device for something you posted to come back to you…

There was the mum who was so overprotective that, though she let her child use the various social media sites, and a mobile, she had the whole set tracked, and she would ‘clean’ her girl’s activity daily… a tad over the top… but I can understand to an extent why she felt the need…

And her daughter who was fed up of being spied on by her mum…

Then you had the boy who lost all interest in RL and gave up a successful football career to start gaming, and his interactions and thoughts became dark…

The girl who looked to the Thinspiration sites to lose weight so she could attract the popular boy…

The couple who were in a stale relationship, and they both found pleasure via an online route, that became very much real..

Then their son, who from a young age was so used to looking at porn, that when the time came for him to actually put his knowledge into practice, couldn’t do anything as his over exposure to inappropriate sexual content had retarded his ability to react normally to a girl of his own age.

It all made me think… it really made me think about my children, and what they see, or what they might see/do on the internet, when they are given more freedom. I guess to some extent we are lucky. As parents in this day and age, we probably are more au fait with what is on the net, and how things work, but when we were younger, our parents probably wouldn’t have had a clue.

It is our responsibility to educate our kids as to what is right and wrong, what is appropriate or inappropriate, and also to get their trust so they don’t feel we are snooping, but that they are able to happily come to us with questions, and to check whether things are actually ok.

My children are young, but they are growing up. I have a 10 year old who, at the moment, still thinks girls smell, but that wont last for long, he’ll be in secondary school before you know it, and exposed to all sorts that we can’t control, so it’s up to us to make sure he understands what is ok, and what isn’t.

I do recommend watching it, it will make the cogs in your mind turn a little harder, and probably make you wonder what your kids are watching/doing/who they are talking to straight away!