New Hope is one of the first films to be released among the six movies depicting the star war saga. Directed and conceived by the legend George Lucas, the Star Wars movies are iconic and have influenced generations, becoming a cult classic. This sci-fi space fantasy film debuted in 1977 is one of the top grosser at the box office also pioneering the production of endless movie merchandises and successful sequels.
As the opening line goes “in a galaxy far far away” a young farm boy Luke Skywalker comes across two droids R2D2 and C3PO. While cleaning the druids Luke accidentally triggers the holographic message in R2D2 in which Princess Leia has hidden the plans for the death star. The Death Star is a battle station designed and constructed by the evil Sith Emperor Palpatine and manned by his trusted lieutenant Darth Vader. Leia asks the listener to find Obi-Van-Kenobi a Jedi Knight to help her.
R2D2 followed by Luke finds the old hermit Ben, who reveals himself as Obi-Van-Kenobi and asks Luke to utilize the force to train himself as a Jedi Knight. Jedi are skilled practitioners of the “Force” who fight the unjust to maintain the balance in the universe. Their order are highly trained knights who use the light sabers to protect the weak. Luke returns to find his uncle and aunt murdered and his planet Tatooine under siege by the imperial forces. He returns to Ben and they plan to escape with the droids to join the rebel forces headed by Princess Leia.

They hire the good hearted smuggler Hans Solo and his co-pilot Chewbecca to ferry them across Tatooine in the space Vehicle Millennium Falcon. Meanwhile Princess Leia is imprisoned in the death star and is tortured by commander Tarkin to reveal the rebel army base. He threatens to annihilate the planet Alderaan. Leia pretends to cooperate but Tarkin destroys the planet anyway. Meanwhile the Millennium Falcon is trapped by the tractor beam of the Death Star and is forcefully captured. Hans solo, Luke and Obi-Van-Kenobi are captured. They rescue Princess Leia and flee the death star to the rebel base while Ben Kenobi is killed by Darth Vader.
Luke and Leia organize a daring guerrilla attack to destroy the death star. As their fighters attack the star, Darth Vader himself comes in to defend it. Soon thrilling fighting is engaged and ultimately with the help of Hans Solo the death star is destroyed by Luke Sky-Walker. Both Solo and Skywalker are honored by Leia and an uneasy truce prevails in the universe.
What can you say about Star Wars? The box office success is unparalleled in history spawning video games, books, sequels and toys. Both adults and kids are ensnared by this complex saga of love, hate and deception. Awards it has many, notable being the 7 Oscars, Golden Globes, Grammy and the BAFTA nominations. Nothing compares to the iconic value of the film which can be best described as an experience on its own with special effects and great dialogue.
Star Wars is a must watch for any citizen of the earth and denizens of other planets. As you may watch this thrilling adventure “May the Force be with you”.

Meteor is directed by Ronald Neame and stars Sean Connery and Natalie wood. This movie is one of the last flicks of the disaster movie genre’s of the 70′s. This movie is inspired by the MIT project Icarus which talks about deflecting meteors by a missile strike. A voice over at the end of the film credits Project Icarus as an inspiration.
It deals with the asteroid which is on the collision course with earth and the efforts of the scientists to deflect it. A meteor five miles in diameter is on collision course with the earth. While the scientists and politicians scramble to contain the threat, the smaller meteor fragments shower down creating wide spread destruction. Soon the two super powers of the cold war era, the USA and the Soviet union have to shoulder the responsibility of averting this threat.
The United States has an orbiting nuclear missile platform in space called the Hercules. The similar platform of the soviets is called Peter the great. Neither the Soviets nor the Americans are willing to admit to their existence.

Soon the US president disregarding the advice of his military think tanks goes on live national television and admits to the presence of Hercules. He urges the Soviets also to do so. These are the only two stations capable of attacking and deflecting the incoming meteor. Soon Dr. Bradley who put the above station Hercules in space is called upon. He calls his soviet counter part Alexei Dubov to assist him. He even agrees to Dubov’s suggestion of treating the orbiting missile unit as a theoretical thing since the soviets have not acknowledged its existence. The expert duo reach the head quarters run by commander Adlon to chalk out a strategy to deflect the meteorite. Bradley has an unenviable task of breaking the ice and distrust between the commander and Dubov.
Finally the Soviets admit to the platform’s existence. They pitch in with their support. Missiles are launched first from Peter the Great and then Hercules. In the mean time a meteor fragment has destroyed new York with the head quarters situated in the Sony Building also decimated. The world trade center and many buildings are destroyed. People are killed and survivors are trapped in the debris. Chilling moments happen when the survivors have to dig themselves out from the debris with the river threatening to breach the tunnels.
But up above missiles of both the nations in a rainbow coalition meet its target. The director to add to the suspense, times the survivor’s heroic rescue and the missile’s exploding happening at the same time. In the end, meteor Orpheus is deflected from the collision course and the Earth is saved. Dubov and his interpretor Tatiana Donoskyaya board the plane back to Russia with enormous goodwill.
But this movie generated no goodwill at the box office. It tanked at the hustings and brought down its production house, American International Pictures. It made the dubious distinction of being one of the fifty worst movies of the century.

Imagine a movie in which you see a set of characters being put in a weird setting where they can get killed by sudden moves, where there is no recollection of why they are placed in that location, and where answers need to be figured out, and tested out one by one (and where figuring out the puzzle incorrectly can result in serious injury or death). It would almost seem like the viewer only knows as much as any of the characters, and even the characters keep on changing personalities through the movie. Combine that with the movie being made by a newbie director, and being made on a low budget, and you can consider such a movie to be a ‘blink and miss’ kind of movie. Movies like this come and go, and you won’t miss much.
Well, Cube was nothing like that. The movie was a decent commercial success, including overseas (especially Japan and France) and is now considered a cult hit. The movie inspired 2 more movies – Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) and the prequel Cube Zero (2004). It was also nominated for a few awards (not the Academy awards though). The movie was a real low budget one, and had some complex mathematics involved if the viewers wanted to figure out what the logic being used inside the cube were.

Cube is the story of a group of people who find themselves inside a white room, cube shaped, with no idea of why they are there. When they compare their professions, there does not seem to be any commonality between them, with people being a police officer, a doctor, and so on. They resolve to move as a group and to try to escape, but are foundering about what to do. There are 6 doors in the room, one in each wall, one in the ceiling, and one in the wall. The doors lead to more rooms, and problematically, some of the rooms are booby trapped; entering could lead to a painful death – as happens to one of them when he enters a room and is sprayed in the face with acid that kills him.
The set of people are facing 2 main issues
- Quentin, the police officer and the one who seemed to be the most responsible is losing his head, and attacking the others in the group. On the other hand, Dr. Holloway, who seemed to be the most unstable at the beginning, begins to show a great deal of stability as the movie progresses
- The mathematics involving prime numbers to figure out which cube was a trap or not was complicated enough (until the idiot savant Kazan shows his great mathematical talent for doing these calculations), but then they learn that the cubes are also on the move, doing a complete movement before returning to their original position, and that the timeframe to escape is limited.

The Sirens of Titan was a novel that was nominated for a Hugo Award, published in 1959. It is acknowledged to be one of the best books by Kurt Vonnegut, even though he has several other famous books such as Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions. The book is not actually true science fiction in the mould of books by writers such as Asimov or Arthur C Clarke, more in the lines of satire, a satire on humanity. The book is especially critical of concepts such as religion, treating religion as a concept that can make its followers do weird acts, as well as how these concepts are used as a powerful weapon to influence people, and equally and weirdly, how people allow themselves to be influenced by such use of religion.

This novel was controversial, given its treatment of religion, and churches, and how the fervor of the book was seen to be almost similar to Marxist disdain for religion. At the same time, there are a huge set of fans of Vonnegut, who cannot understand the controversy about the book. The book should be seen as a funny and humorous look at overall society, and this book is indeed pretty funny.
The novel is supposed to be about the richest man on Earth (in the 22nd century), Malachi Constant, who is extremely rich, but whose life is mostly stagnant. In actuality, the novel seeks to portray the entire human existence, its civilization, its development, all this as something that was necessary only to help an inter-galactic traveller. This traveler, called Salo, from a place called Tralfamadorian, is a robot meant to carry a message to another galaxy. However, his ship breaks down, and needs a new part. And this is where the meaning of humanity takes on a different air, since the entire human existence and development was meant for the level of civilization to reach a point where this part can be manufactured and given to Salo.
Constant is actually manipulated by a strange set of events, manipulated by Winston Niles Rumfoord. Rumfoord is a person who knows the past, present and future, and can appear on different planets, primarily because his ship entered a strange phenomenon called ‘chrono-synclastic infundibulum’, something not defined, but which gives him strange powers.