Heroes Recancelled

 

Some good news came out this week, they are going to cancel the horrible, terrible TV series Heroes Reborn. I can’t believe this, but this new reboot/sequel of the original Heroes series is probably the most hated show on American TV right now. Its amazing how one can come up with such and exciting (albeit, borrowed) story concept with multiple promising premises, and then screw it all up and serve nonsense. Ten years ago (really, that long ?) when the original Heroes TV series premiered, it was the most watched show, and won many awards. They essentially took the humans-mutating-into-evos storyline from X-men, but gave the charachters a little more sense, and how they would try to fit in the modern world. But just after the first season, all hell broke loose, they lost direction, kept on adding more and more super-humans/evos, and finally admitted they had no idea how to take the story forward.

So when I heard about the new miniseries Heroes Reborn, I was a little sceptic, and a little hopeful. It started off ok, but very soon the cracks started to develop. Stupid writing, horrible actors, multiple unnecessary plot lines, and so many many new evos all filled up the screen. It was difficult to care about the charachters. Lets face it, kids are bad actors, so when the protagonists are going to be kids, they should have al least chosen credible actors. The original Heroes had go that right, it had great actors, and not too many bad guys.

When everyone is special, no one is.

But there was one episode of the new series which I particulary liked, episode 8 “June 13th Part Two”. That episode gave me hope, because for once they got something right. First, Masi Oka is there as Hiro Nakamura. He carries the two baby heroes back into 1999 ! And he becomes the foster father to Tommy, and trains him in the art of time-travel. Tommy knows about and improves his power, but then they are attacked. So for his own safety, Tommy travels to another place, and has his memory removed about everything he knows. This episode tied up a lot of loose ends, explains Tommy’s powers, and his dilemna at the start of the series. There is also som nice sequences with two Noah Bennets, and some other wierd Japanese game story. Noah and Tommy get their memory erased, so they know nothing of what happened. The stage was set, all that was needed was to  use Tommy’s and Malina’s powers to save the world. Again.

@Tim Kring. Please let the series die. Bringing it back up is just going to make it worse.

Here come the poorly made remakes–Bangalore Days

 

 

 

They have released the trailer to the Bangalore Days Tamil remake. And people who have watched the original are not happy. The rants have started on youtube and elsewhere.  The first thing that hits them, and me, is the wierd casting choices. With all the abundant talent in the Tamil industry, the choice of actors for this movie looks miscast. Bobby Simha stands out for being the wrong choice for Kuttan, and his dialogue delivery confirms it. And Rana plays Hulk in the movie. And that other girl, well her dubbing is all over the place. Its fun to read the comments on the youtube video, a bunch of tamil fans defending the remake, and all the mallus in the world sort of condemning it.

I am predicting there is going to be at least one dance scene which was not in the original. And maybe some unwanted stunts. But even with the bad casting, the story and screenplay is strong enough to see the movie through, no matter which language.

Google Doodle marks Nobel Prize winner Har Gobind Khorana

 

The Google Doodle for January 9th celebrates Har Gobind Khorana, the Indian-American biochemist, on what would have been his 96th birthday. He is most famous for his Nobel Prize-winning research on how the genetic code of a cell, or the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, control the cell’s synthesis of proteins.

Who is Har Gobind Khorana?

Har Gobind Khorana was born on the 9th of January 1922 in a village called Raipur in Punjab, now part of Pakistan. He lived in India until 1945 when he was awarded a Government of India Fellowship. This allowed Khorana to travel to the UK and study for a Ph.D at the University of Liverpool where Roger J. S. Beer supervised his research.

Dr. Khorana then spent time at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich with Professor Vladimir Prelog, returned to India for a brief period and then back to England where his interest in proteins and nucleic acids came to fruition in Cambridge.

In 1952, a job offer took Dr. Khorana to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he worked with Dr. Gordon M. Shrum, Dr. Jack Campbell and Dr. Gordon M. Tener on the subject of phosphate esters and nucleic acids.

As the Google Doodle describes, it was at the University of Wisconsin that he and two others received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for discovering that the order of nucleotides in our DNA determines which amino acids are built and in turn, the proteins that are created for essential cell functions.

Dr. Khorana is also renowned for constructing the first synthetic gene and received a multitude of awards during his lifetime, including the National Medal of Science.

Today’s Google Doodle was created by Bangalore-based illustrator Rohan Dahotre and celebrates Dr. Khorana’s work in DNA.

And Then There Were None (2015)

 

Just finished watching BBC’s 2015 interpretation of the Agatha Christie classic : And Then There Were None. And I think this is by far the best adaptation of the famed novel. Everything from the screenplay, casting to location of the show was spot on, if this the way they produce such dramas then we are eagerly waiting for more. But I particularly  enjoyed was that they wrapped up the story in three smartly written episodes, a more profit drive producer/director would have stretched the story unnecessarily to at least 10 episodes and destroyed its fabric.

Jolly spot on:

1: The original ending. The novel has been adapted numerous times to stage , films and TV, but most of them have changed the ending so that not all of the visitors to the island die. In order to give the viewer a happy ending many of them changed the story so that Vera and Phillip end up together. But BBC chose the original ending, though they slightly modified some of the methods.

2: Cast.  The cast of this show was spectacular. They got strong , capable actors for every role, even to the flamboyant Tony Marston. Sam Neill of Jurassic Park fame as the colonel and Gorman from Forever as the detective were winners.  But I guesss everyone loved Aidan's Phillip Lombard and Maeve's Vera.

3: Screenplay. The screenplay used flashbacks often , to show the backstories of all the visitors. It was fun going back and forth their stories. I expected multiple flashbacks during the climax, to show the viewers how each victim was targeted. But there were none. Instead, the Judge just talks to Vera and fills in the gaps for us.

4: The set. The island, the house, the setting inside, the cars, train, right down to the clothes and food, it was perfect to tell the story. The actors spoke with different accents, perfectly for their statuses.

I started reading Agatha Christie I think in 1993 (boy, its really been than long ?), when our school got  a new batch of freshly printed paperbacks. Of course, they were all abridged versions, so much of the blood and gore had been tuned down, and the talk of infidelity and affairs were only alluded to. It would be another few years before I chanced upon some original unabridged versions, and really saw the author's craft.  And Then There Were None is my favourite of Christie's work, and I have  watched many adaptations of it. The story is of ten strangers stuck on a deserted island and murdered in a closed room mystery with no explanation. There is even a Hindi language Indian/Bollywood adaptation, but it was peppered with songs and dances, and it was only six people murdered on the island. The 9th was the hero, he lives, and saves the girlfriend (10th), and even the butler and his sister escapes. Truly a lazy adaptation. The 2004 movie Mindhunters was a un-credited , telling of the same story in modern times, very nice watch.

So here's to the next generation of Agatha Chritie fans, and to more adaptations of her work.

2015 in movies: fantastic year for sequels ; and to 90s movies

 

I don't watch movies very often, but confession: I watched more movies this year than ever before ! This year moviegoers got to watch the sequels to the movies of the 90s, a new generation of movie makers taking over the mantle.  From Mad Max to Star Wars, and Ethan Hunt to James Bond, it was a whole truckload of movies across genres and timelines.

The first such sequel which attempts to restart a 90s era franchise was Mad Max: Fury Road. Yes, I still can't believe this movie came out this year, it seems such a long time ago.

 

The next feast to the eyes was the (probably) most awaited movie of the year,  Jurassic World.

The third biggest sequel this year was of course Star Wars: Force Awakens. I know the original did not come out in the 90s, but this is one of the earliest trilogies which came out, and millenium falcon was not scene for decades.

Many other franchises also released sequels this year.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation came out half-way through the year.

The 24th James Bond movie came out this year, named Spectre.

But the sequels, well they just kept on coming.

Fans of Fast & Furious got the 7th instalment of the franchise, Furious 7. The re-used plot lines to this genre was mocked in a parody film: Superfast.

The Marvel universe had multiple offerings this year, the biggest impact was via Avengers: Age of Ultron. They also had Ant-Man. But then they released the horrible horrible Fantastic 4 reboot, which was the biggest dud, and which some critics called a spectacular failure on so many different levels.

 

And hopefully the last of the Hungergames movies too came out this year.

 

And space junkies were gifted with another space movie, this time set on Mars.

 

I love animation movies, and this year turned out to be a feast for the child in me. (and you.) It is just me, or has it become easier to make animation movies now ? Multiple studios released long awaited movies using everything from stop motion animation to cutting edge computer animation.

Everyone's favourite animation studio, Pixar had a double offering this year. Two so very different movies set in two vastly different settings. First was Inside Out, set in the mind of a teenage girl.

But then, they released the Good Dinosaur for thanksgiving (thanks , Pixar !), where the story is set in an alternate history where dinosaurs are not extinct.

But this did not stop other studios from testing the waters either. The first animation movie to come out this year was stop motion from Aardman, Shaun the Sheep.

The Minions movie came out half way in July, telling the prequel to the Despicable Me movies.

Then there was the Peanuts movie.

And then…the monster movie Hotel Transylvania 2. Phew !!

 

 

 

 

But then , the year had duds too , proving that even time tested stories sometimes will fail if not properly done.The biggest dud of the year was the 100th (something like that) Steve Jobs movie. The clue here was it was loved by the critics :-)

And the spectacular failures of Fantastic Four reboot, and the Gem movie.