Corrupt Political Leader Found Guilty & Sentenced

Just felt that I had to add my 2 cents worth about the stunning news that seems to be on every news channel in India at the moment (mum & I have seen news reports on 6 to 7 ourselves). The news is that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa was sentenced today to four years in prison after being convicted in an Rs. 66-crore disproportionate assets case by a special sessions court in Bangalore. The alleged illegal wealth includes 2,000 acres of land, 30 kg of gold and 12,000 saris.  Three others were also convicted in case. Jayalalithaa, chief of the AIADMK, was also asked to pay a fine of Rs.100 crore. Jayalalithaa ceases to be MLA and CM and goes to jail tonight.

Her conviction has triggered massive protests across the state, with AIADMK workers targeting DMK supporters. Tension prevails as protesters burn effigies of DMK President M Karunanidhi, MK Stalin and MK Alagiri. AIADMK workers tear DMK party posters in various places including in Chennai and Madurai and pelt stones in Ambattur, salem, Cuddalore, Srirangam which is Jayalalithaa’s assembly constituency. Shops and commercial establishments down shutters in various parts of the state as protesters damage vehicles parked alongside roads, stoning and then burning buses. Theatres closed, malls shut in Tamil Nadu and one of her supporters tries to set herself on fire.  Normal life disrupted and the state has declared a holiday for a week. The Home Ministry has issued an advisory to the Tamil Nadu government asking it to maintain law and order. Kerala has suspended bus routes to Tamil Nadu (which is usually a heavy route).

This has been a long time coming; the case against her is 18 years old and almost everyone knows she is guilty of corruption from even before that. This just shows how corrupt our nation is – it has taken this long to ensure that justice prevails and the idiots who support her and destroying property & causing damage & nuisance are imbeciles and should be arrested and fined themselves. Sheesh!

X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a 2014 superhero film based on the fictional X-Men characters that appear in Marvel Comics directed by Bryan Singer. It is a sequel to the 2011 movie X-Men : First Class and set in the future as well as the past (1973). The film stars an ensemble cast, including Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Nicholas Hoult, Shawn Ashmore, Peter Dinklage, Evan Peters,Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart and was made on a budget of $200 million!

In the future these Sentinel robots created to seek out and kill mutants and are getting the better of them. Kitty Pryde’s group are chased and almost defeated when she uses her ability to send a person into the past to move them away from the hideout where they were attacked. Pryde’s group convenes with Storm, Wolverine, Professor Xavier, and Magneto at a monastery in China where they hatch a plan to stop the creation of the technology that set in motion the evolution of the current Sentinel robots. In 1973 Mystique assasinate millionaire scientist/inventor Bolivar Trask, the creator of the Sentinels, for his attempts to capture and imprison the mutants. Following the assassination, Mystique was captured, and her DNA was used by Trask’s company to create Sentinels, whose ability to adapt to any mutant power makes them almost invincible. Xavier’s plan is to have Kitty send someone’s consciousness back to 1973 and stop Kitty from killing Trask. Wolverine is chosen as only he has the ability to heal himself; the procedure to send someone so far back in time is very taxing on the body.

Wolverine is told to contact a younger version of Xavier and have him contact Magneto as well. So Wolverin in his younger body (he doesn’t age but in this time period he doesn’t have the metal claws) he goes to the mansion but finds it almost deserted and barges in when Beast tells him that the professor is not at home. Xavier is a hung over version of himself after most of the teachers and students were drafted for the Vietnam War. Xavier, now a broken man, is overusing a serum which allows him to walk and suppresses his telepathy. After finally convincing Xavier & Beast of who he is and where he has come from and explains the plan, the trio recruit a young mutant with super speed named Peter Maximoff, and infiltrate the Pentagon and break Magneto out. The whole sequence in the Pentagon is awesome and pretty funny! Meanwhile Mistique has freed a few mutants working for the US army in Vietnam & investigates Trask’s office and discovers he has been capturing mutants to use in experiments. She goes to Paris where Trask, having failed to get funding from Congress, is headed he Paris Peace Accords to sell his Sentinel technology to Communist nations. Before she can kill him Beast, Wolverine & Magneto arrive to thwart her attempt Magneto tries to kill Mystique to ensure her DNA cannot be used for the Sentinels, but she jumps from a window and is injured when a bullet hits her leg.

As the world has now seen these mutants fighting Trask gets his funding approved by President Nixon (where did they find this actor who looks just like him) and Trask’s scientists recover Mystique’s blood from the street. Meanwhile, Magneto—who has recovered his telepathy-blocking helmet—intercepts the prototype Sentinels in transit and laces their polymer-based frames with steel, allowing him to control them. Xavier stops taking the serum and gains his mental powers back while losing the ability to walk as it is felt that his powers are needed to stop Mistique. At the unveiling ceremony for the Sentinel robots Magneto lifts a large stadium from the ground and lays it as a barricade around the White House and has a sentinel attack Beast & Wolverine. Wolverine is pierced with metal rods and dumped into the river Nixon and Trask, accompanied by the Cabinet, Secret Service officers, and Mystique (disguised as a Secret Service member), are taken to a safe room. Magneto has the safe room pulled out and prepares to kill Nixon but Mistique disguised as Nixon, incapacitates Magneto with a plastic gun. Xavier is able to appeal to Mistique to let Trask live and she finally leaves, followed closely by Magneto. Mystique’s actions are seen as a mutant saving the President, leading to the cancellation of the Sentinel program. Trask is arrested for trying to sell American military secrets. In the future, the Sentinels who had found the X-men’s hideout attack and kill off several of them but just before they can kill Xavier, Kitty, Magneto & Wolverine the scene changes and every one disappears from the monastery.

Wolverine now wakes up in his future self in a new & changed future and finds Iceman, Rogue, Colossus, Pryde, Beast, Storm, Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Xavier alive. In 1973, Mystique impersonates Stryker and takes custody of Wolverine. So I guess the time-travel (sorta element) changes their future. And oh, kudos for them showing a scene of TOS era Star Trek in which Captain Kirk is talking about time travel! Bravo! Great action flick with lots of scifi elements and never a dull moment. I think it’s an 8.5 outta 10!