Month: December 2016
2016 In Review : A Personal Look Back
So just one more day to go, 2 including today, to 2017. 2016 has been good and bad. I wanted to take a look back at my 2016 and see what was the year that was.
January was about the same as December 2015 – a whole lot of working hours. Coming in to the office at 8:30 am and leaving after 8 or 9pm. Putting in a lot of hours and leaving for home tired and not doing anything much. February was good because I took a little staycation; 4 days leave plus my weekend. I didn’t do much; I did visit Lulu Mall for the very first time and enjoy my visit there. While I was in the giant mall I checked out several mobile phones from Samsung and decided to move to Android from Blackberry after coming to the realization that BB was going to be difficult to get the apps that you want plus their good models are very expensive. By the end of February I bought a new phone and moved to Android.
February 28th – the day I went to a movie theatre for the first time in 11 years!!! And now I can’t stop going! I go for atleast 2-3 movies in a month. In March I also started using Uber on a regular basis and prefer that to any other form of transportation at the moment. March also saw me visit Gurgaon (large suburb of Delhi) for work related purposes and it was my first visit to the capital region. I was there for 12 days and during the weekend I was able to visit a couple of awesome malls and enjoyed a few craft beers at two craft breweries/pubs. I will always treasure my visit to Gurgaon. In April due to work being done at our apartment building to remove the old elevator and replace it with a new one, mom, dad and I stayed at my sister’s apartment nearby. That lasted for almost 5 weeks. Good thing was I got to play with Barfi the pug a lot. I also started doing a lot of the supermarket shopping for home and I rather enjoy it.
I was able to become friends again with a colleague who I had a falling out with in October of 2015. It’s not the same but at least it’s much more friendlier now. June and July saw two new batches come and join the process I work for. So until late August we were quite busy. That continues in October, November and this month too. I got close to a few new people. My health took a bad turn in October with the mother of all fevers and a chest infection that refused to die out for several days. That has continued with the regular shift that I am in now. And yes the dreaded thing happened – I fell in love with a girl I cannot possible get. She is much, much younger than me. I love her dearly, I adore her and I want to be with her and make her happy, make her my whole world. But I know I can’t. It is a terrible feeling to go through but I have started becoming miserable. I don’t think that I can tellĀ her how I feel because why do it if nothing can be done. And yes, even I wouldn’t encourage it because of the age difference.
Being a lonely guy is bad enough at 40. Now being in love with a girl you cannot say that you are in love with is even worse. It just happened. I was close with her and it instilled a desire and yearning in my heart and I knew I loved everything about her. I miss her when she is not near me. I hope things get better in 2017. You have to be a better year.
Heads Or Tails?
RIP Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds, a leading lady in Hollywood musicals and comedies in the 1950s and 1960s including “Singin’ in the Rain,” died on Wednesday shortly after saying she wanted to be with her daughter Carrie Fisher. The 84-year-old Oscar-nominated singer-actress passed away hours after being rushed to the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles after suffering a stroke, her son, Todd Fisher said. Her death came just one day after her daughter Carrie, the 60-year-old actress best known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, died of a heart attack. He said the stress of his sister’s death “was too much” for Reynolds. “She said, ‘I want to be with Carrie’,” Mr Fisher added. “And then she was gone.” Reynolds had fallen ill at her son’s home in Beverly Hills, according to celebrity website TMZ. They were reportedly discussing funeral plans for Fisher. Joely Fisher, Carrie’s half sister and also an actress, had taken to Twitter to wish Reynolds well before the death was announced.
Reynolds was a superstar early in life. After two minor roles at Warner Bros. and three supporting roles at MGM, studio boss Louis B. Mayer cast her in “Singin’ in the Rain” in 1952, despite Gene Kelly’s objections. She was 19 with little dance experience, and she would be appearing with two of the screen’s greatest dancers, Donald O’Connor and Kelly, who also co-directed. She was nominated for a best actress Oscar for her role in the 1964 musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”, which was based on the life of a Colorado woman who rose from poverty to riches and triumphed over tragedy, including the sinking of the Titanic. Reynolds received an honorary Oscar in 2015, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, but was too ill to attend the ceremony. Her granddaughter, actress Billie Lourd, accepted the statuette in her honour. She also received a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild that year.
Reynolds also has several hit records to her name, and topped the charts with the 1957 song “Tammy” from the film “Tammy and the Bachelor”. She was married to Eddie Fisher, the singer and actor, from 1955 to 1959, and together they had two children- Carrie and Todd Fisher. Fisher left Reynolds to marry Elizabeth Taylor, the actress, and Reynolds was married and divorced twice afterward. In 1973 Reynolds starred in a Broadway revival of the musical Irene and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical. In 1969 she starred in her own television show The Debbie Reynolds Show, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. She was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in A Gift of Love (1999) and an Emmy Award for playing Grace’s mother Bobbi on Will & Grace. Reynolds was a noted businesswoman, having operated her own hotel in Las Vegas. She was also a collector of film memorabilia, beginning with the landmark 1970 MGM auction. She was the former president of The Thalians, an organization dedicated to mental health causes. Reynolds continued to perform successfully on stage, television, and film into her eighties. In January 2015, Reynolds received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In August 2015, it was announced Reynolds would be the recipient of the 2016 Academy Awards Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Turtle Soup
RIP Carrie Fisher
American actress, writer, producer, and humorist Carrie Fisher died at the age of 60 on December 27, 2016, after going into cardiac arrest during a transatlantic flight four days earlier. Fisher was known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars film series. Her other film roles included Shampoo (1975), The Blues Brothers (1980), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The ‘Burbs (1989), and When Harry Met Sally… (1989). Fisher was also known for her semi-autobiographical novels, including Postcards from the Edge and the screenplay for the film of the same name, as well as her autobiographical one-woman play and its nonfiction book, Wishful Drinking, based on the show. In later years, she earned praise for speaking publicly about her experiences with mental health and drug addiction.
Fisher was born in Beverly Hills, California, the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. Her paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Fisher made her film debut in the Columbia Pictures comedy Shampoo (1975) starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn, with Lee Grant and Jack Warden as her character’s parents. āStar Wars,ā released in 1977, turned her overnight into an international movie star. The film, written and directed by George Lucas, traveled around the world, breaking box-office records. In April 1978, she appeared as the love interest in Ringo Starr’s 1978 TV special Ringo. Fisher appeared with Laurence Olivier and Joanne Woodward in the anthology series Laurence Olivier Presents in a television version of the William Inge play Come Back, Little Sheba.
Fisher appeared in The Blues Brothers film as Jake’s vengeful ex-lover; she is listed in the credits as “Mystery Woman”. While in Chicago filming the movie, her life was saved by Dan Aykroyd when she was choking on a Brussels sprout and he performed the Heimlich maneuver on her. She appeared on Broadway in Censored Scenes from King Kong in 1980. The same year, she reprised her role as Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back, and appeared with her Star Wars costars on the cover of the July 12, 1980 issue of Rolling Stone to promote the film. She also appeared in the Broadway production of Agnes of God in 1982. In 1983, Fisher returned to the role of Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi, and posed in the Princess Leia metal bikini on the cover of the Summer 1983 issue of Rolling Stone to promote the film. In 1987, Fisher published her first novel, Postcards from the Edge. The book was semi-autobiographical in the sense that she fictionalized and satirized real-life events such as her drug addiction of the late 1970s and her relationship with her mother. It became a bestseller, and she received the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best First Novel. Also during 1987, she was in the Australian film The Time Guardian. In 1989, Fisher played a major supporting role in When Harry Met Sally…, and in the same year, she appeared with Tom Hanks as his wife in The ‘Burbs.
Fisher appeared in the fantasy comedy film Drop Dead Fred in 1991, and played a therapist in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). During the 1990s, Fisher also published the novels Surrender the Pink (1990) and Delusions of Grandma (1993). In the 2000 film Scream 3 Fisher played a former actress, and in 2001 she played a nun in the Kevin Smith comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. She also co-wrote the TV comedy film These Old Broads (2001), of which she was also co-executive producer. It starred her mother, Debbie Reynolds, as well as Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, and Shirley MacLaine. Besides acting and writing original works, Fisher was one of the top script doctors in Hollywood, working on the screenplays of other writers. She also appeared as General Leia Organa Star Wars: The Force Awakens and had completed filming for Star Wars: Episode VIII before her death. Fisher was survived by her daughter, her mother Debbie Reynolds, her brother Todd Fisher and her half-sisters Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher.
Sully
Sully is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Todd Komarnicki, based on the autobiography Highest Duty by Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow. The film stars Tom Hanks as Sullenberger, with Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Anna Gunn, Autumn Reeser, Holt McCallany, Jamey Sheridan, and Jerry Ferrara in supporting roles.Ā The film follows Sullenberger’s January 2009 emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River, in which all 155 passengers and crew survived with only minor injuries, and the subsequent publicity and investigation.
The film follows the investigation into the events of January 15, 2009, when three minutes into a domestic flight from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte Douglas International AirportĀ at an approximate altitude of 2,800 feet (approx. 850 m), the Airbus A320 strikes a flock of birds, disabling both engines.Ā As US Airways pilots Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles check and see that without engine power and judging themselves unable to reach nearby airports, Sully decides to ditch the aircraft on the Hudson River.Ā He manages to land in the Hudson and the crew evacuates all passengers without casualty.Ā He calls his wife and lets her know what has happened. The press and public hail Sullenburger as a hero, but the incident leaves Sullenburger with symptoms of PTSD shortly afterwards, and he repeatedly imagines the plane crashing into a building.
Afterwards, Sully learns that preliminary data from ACARS suggest that the port engine was still running at idle power. Theoretically, this would have left him with enough power to return to LaGuardia or land at Teterboro. Furthermore, the board of inquiry claims that several confidential computerized simulations of the flight have concluded that the plane could have been landed safely at either airport with no power from either engine. Sully, however, insists that he lost both engines, which left him without sufficient time, speed, or altitude to land safely at any airport. He realizes that the NTSB is leaning towards considering the cause of the accident as “pilot error” and that would mean the end of his career. To save his reputation he arranges to have the simulations rerun with live pilots, and the results are relayed to the public hearing. Both simulations result in successful landings, one at each airport. At the hearing Sully tells that the simulations are unrealistic because the pilots knew in advance of the situation they would face and of the suggested emergency action, and had also been able to practice the scenario several times. The board accepts that in real life the pilots would have taken some time to react, and run their emergency checks, before deciding to divert the plane.
The two simulations are re-run and relayed to the hearing, this time allowing a 35-second pause before the plane is diverted. The simulated diversion to LaGuardia ends with the plane landing onto the lead-in lights short of the runway, and to Teterboro with a crash into buildings before the airport. The board also announces that analysis of the port engine, now recovered from the river, confirms Sully’s account that it had been put out of action by the bird strikes. They therefore conclude that Sully acted correctly in selecting the best of the options available to him, which in the event had saved the lives of everyone aboard. At the end of the hearing First Officer Skiles is asked whether he would have done anything differently, and he replies: “Yes, I would have done it in July.” to much laughter.
Exceptional well done and directed and ofcourse well acted by the cast with Hanks at the helm. He does it with the least amount of drama and brings a rich sincerity to the role. It’s a sedate yet very interesting and involving film. I give it 8.5 outta 10!
Food Review #136
Fish n Chips Lunch at Couchyn – this style is breadcrumbs coated fried fish with a few French Fries. Beer on the side ofcourse, especially when you are in Couchyn.
ROSHAN’S ELEVEN : Favourite 2016 Movies
Ok, I haven’t seen a few movies released in 2016 that I do wanna see but as we are in the last week of the year and I don’t see myself being able to go and watch a new one in the theatre before Jan 1st or get a copy of a film in the next 4 days, this list is probably safe. Let’s get cracking and in order my favourite films released in 2016 in order are :
- Captain America : Civil War
- Deadpool
- Star Trek Beyond
- The Conjuring 2
- Sully
- The Jungle Book
- Batman vs Superman : Dawn of Justice
- Doctor Strange
- Zootopia
- Moana
- Don’t Breathe
Sunrise Viewings
How often do you get to (or have to) be awake for sunrise? Tell us about what happened the last time you were up so early (or lateā¦).
I wake up usually now after 10 am on a weekday, except for Mondays because of my work shift. Sleeping at 4:30 am – 5 am means I wake up close to 11 am. On Sundays and Mondays I usually wake up between 8 and 9 am depending on how late I have slept the previous night. But it is usually no later than 9am. So waking up for the sunrise is not really a possibility for me unless I sleep late on a weekday or wake up early unexpectedly on Sunday or Monday.
I do usually love sunrises and even sunsets and the latter I do get to see quite more often. On some odd day when I either can’t sleep or wake up early I have on occasion gone to the balcony to view the sunrise and take in the glory of it. I think being awake at that time and being out with the fresh air blowing in your face and viewing the light changes in the sky is an awesome feeling and whether you are alone or with company, it doesn’t matter.
Prompt from The Daily Post at WordPress.com
RIP George Michael
Pop star George Michael has died at the age of 53 due to heart failure. The English songwriter who sold tens of millions of albums as a member of the duo Wham! and on his own, was found dead on Sunday at his home in Goring in Oxfordshire, England. George Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou in East Finchley, London, on June 25, 1963, the son of a Greek Cypriot restaurateur and an English dancer. In 1979, he and a schoolmate, Andrew Ridgeley, played together for the first time in a ska band called the Executive. That didnāt last, but they continued to make music together ā nearly all of it composed and sung by Mr. Michael ā and began releasing singles as Wham!
Michael was one of popās reigning stars in the 1980s and ā90s ā first as a handsome, smiling teen-pop idol making lighthearted singles like āWake Me Up Before You Go-Goā with Wham!, then arriving as a grown-up pop sex symbol with his 1987 album āFaith.ā Michael wrote supple evergreen ballads, like āCareless Whisperā and āFather Figure,ā as well as buoyant dance tracks like āFreedom ā90ā and āI Want Your Sex.ā For much of his career, including his best-selling albums āFaithā and āListen Without Prejudice Vol. 1,ā he was also his own producer and studio backup band. Much of his music drew on R&B, old and new, but his melodic gift extended across genres. He won a Grammy Award in 1988 for āI Knew You Were Waiting (for Me),ā a duet with Aretha Franklin, and āFaithā won the Grammy for album of the year. In Britain, he was showered with awards, and in 2004, Britainās Radio Academy said he had been the most-played performer on British radio from 1984 to 2004.
In 1998, Mr. Michael came out as gay after being arrested on charges of lewd conduct in a menās room in Beverly Hills, Calif. He had long lent his name and music to support AIDS prevention and gay rights. During interviews in later years, he described himself as bisexual, and said that hiding his sexuality had made him feel āfraudulent.ā He also described long struggles with depression. During the 2000s, Mr. Michaelās output slowed; his last studio album of new songs was āPatienceā in 2004. In later years he put out individual songs as free downloads, encouraging listeners to contribute to charity. But in 2006, 25 years into his career, he could still headline stadiums worldwide.
It’s For The Best
Jason Bourne
Although I was never a big fan of the Bourne movies, I appreciated them for what they were – intelligent, well thought out spy films with a lot of action and fight scenes interspaced between the dialogues and intrigue. This one though, bored the heck outta me. Jason Bourne is a 2016 American action thriller film directed and written by Paul Greengrass and film editor Christopher Rouse. The fifth installment of the Jason Bourne film series and the direct sequel to 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum, Matt Damon reprises his role as the main character, former CIA assassin and psychogenic amnesiac Jason Bourne. Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Julia Stiles, Vincent Cassel, Riz Ahmed, Ato Essandoh and Scott Shepherd also star in the dud.
What did I like about the film? The story about his past and how Bourne was recruited into Treadstone. That his father, CIA analyst Richard Webb created Treadstone, but tried to prevent them from recruiting Bourne. Under Dewey’s orders, the Asset killed Richard Webb and staged his death as a terrorist attack to persuade Bourne to join Treadstone. The car chase scenes with a heck of a lot of destruction to vehicles and property is amazing though a bit too much and unrealistic. The fight scenes, which have been a major asset in the past films, are awesome too. The long fight between Jason and the Asset in a sewer is extremely well done. What else? Nothing much. It’s a film big on action scenes and nothing much else.
I couldn’t get into the newer characters and I found myself not really caring if Bourne was killed or lives to go back to his 10 year life off the grid, making his living fighting illegal fighting rings around the world. The new girl, CIA cyber head Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) shows some promise and intrigue in her role but everyone else is instantly forgettable. There is no charisma or much else in entertainment. I was really bored throughout the film with the exception of the car chase (though I am not blown away) and a couple of fight scenes. When the heck have you ever seen a movie with Tommy Lee Jones in which he isn’t memorable? Congratulations, this is it! It would have been good if Julie Stiles’s character made it through the film. I dunno what else to say. An hour after I watched the film, I forgot most of it. 5.5 outta 10!
A Little Bump On The Head
Yesterday we had a close call while coming back home. When I say we I should say me and the Uber driver and when I say yesterday it’s actually early this morning after work and on my way back home. Firstly though I was ready by 4am to leave I had some problem with the Uber app on my phone. I couldn’t connect the ewallet app PayTMto Uber and hence couldn’t book a cab as I don’t have cash with me. I tried and tried to reconfigure it but it just wasn’t getting through.
I waited for almost an hour. I was not feeling great as I had this chest infection and sitting in the place where I was sitting I also started shivering. A very young girl colleague of mine, who I adore, and who had left at 3:30 am kept me company on Whatsapp saying that she wasn’t going to sleep until I reached home safely. I told her not to wait up for me and to go to seep as I didn’t know when I could fix the app and that I would manage. She wasn’t taking no for an answer. Another colleague came by and saw me shivering in the small room and offered to get me her phone to book the Uber and it worked. By 4:45 I got the cab and got into it. However…
We almost had an accident while coming home at around 5-5:15am. Some drunkards riding triple on a bike hit the car. They were trying to overtake the car on a narrow section of the road that is still having construction. First time the driver swerved to avoid them as they tried to overtake us just before Lissie Junction. Then again they sped up and this time hit the car. I had a little bump on my head as the driver braked suddenly. Those idiots went on by. We waited for a minute or two and then continued on and I reached home.
Sweet Recollection
Which good memories are better ā the recent and vivid ones, or those that time has covered in a sweet haze?
I love them both – the recent and vivid ones which you can replay in your mind over and over again. I have had a few good things happen this year and I count them as very precious to me. I wish I could experience them over and over again and again. Since they don’t happen like that, I play them over and over in my mind and treasure them. It’s good to have photos to remember them and look at them and relive them in your head.
How about the older ones that, as the prompt says, time has covered in a sweet haze. You look back and you smile and wonder how silly those days seem and yet how sweet and wonderful they feel in your memories. Was I ever that young and innocent, was I ever that full of wonder and cheer and awe of things in life? Was I ever so content to just enjoy the silly, simple things of life? Simple to me and us now but which meant a great deal for me when I was younger.
I love them all. They are what I fondly recall and when my time comes and I died they will be those that I will look back on in my dying last breaths.
Prompt from the Daily Post at WordPress.com
You Can Never Get Away
Music Reflects My Mood
Elevator music….I’m sure that you are used to it. Some of us travel in elevators almost on a daily basis. At work, the mall, our apartment buildings. Some have popular tunes and stuff that changes with the season. Over a particular holiday they may play music and songs that are a custom during that festival or day. My office building had elevator music that is usually hit songs, sometime even rock songs.
It should be common and the only time you would pay attention to them is when a song you love is playing and you want to sing along. I’ve done it and I’m sure a lot of you have too. In my building we had an older elevator which didn’t play music at all. In April of this year they had the elevator replaced with a more modern one and one that plays music. Initially it was an instrumental version of a classic Hindi song (I forget which one but I do know it) and it was ok. As you exit it says “Have a nice day” and you smile as you leave the building. Well ……
A few weeks ago they changed the music to one that is more melancholic and sad, a piano piece with some keyboards as well. It makes me sad. It’s also because I’m a lonely guy who comes home at around 4:20-4:30 am after my work shift. It’s also because I find myself in the rather embarrassing situation of being in love with a girl – yes a girl – who is waaaaay too young for me. And she is close to me, works in the same place as I do and I infact I trained her for a several days and gave her coaching and feedback for a while. So we also chat on our phones almost on a daily basis and as we leave the office (she leaves 30 minutes before me) and before she falls asleep at her home, I text her and await her texts back.
And as I look at her texts and wait for replies this music plays so I associate this feeling and her with that music. As I enter my room and feel all longing inside me and know that I can never tell her how I feel about her, I feel even more lonelier and sadder about the way my life has gone. So I can’t sleep for about an hour or so and I watch some tv until I finally fall asleep.
Rogue One : A Star Wars Story
Although not part of the “episodes” and not centered around this one family of Skywalkers (who people online jokingly refer to to as the single family that keeps messing up the galaxy with their dram) Rogue One : A Star Wars Story is set in the same Universe and is a sequel that sits in wonderfully just before the events of Star Wars Episode 1 : A New Hope. A 2016 American epic space opera film directed by Gareth Edwards and written by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, from a story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta, it is the first stand-alone film in the Star Wars Anthology series. Rogue One stars Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen and Forest Whitaker.
The story follows the efforts of Jyn Erso, the daughter of the unwilling designer of the Galactic Empire’s superweapon, the Death Star, and her quest to retrieve his plans for destroying it. Jyn, sees her mother killed and her reclusive scientist father Galen Erso, being taken away by Imperial weapons developer Orson Krennic to complete the work on the unfinished Death Star project. Jyn was instructed to hide in a secret place near their home and is found by Rebel extremist Saw Gerrera who takes her in. Just what is it with Star Wars and lead characters being separated from their parents? Anakin, Leia & Luke, Rey and now this chick? Kinda seeing a trend over here.
Anyway she grows up and along the way is separated from Saw who felt she might be safer without him. Fifteen years later, Imperial cargo shuttle pilot Bodhi Rook defects, and smuggles a holographic message from Galen to Gerrera on the moon Jedha. Jyn is freed from Imperial captivity by the Rebels, who plan to use her to track down her father, telling her they will extract him. Along with them is a reprogrammed imperial droid K-2SO travel to Jedha. However, Rebel General Corssin covertly orders Rebel officer Cassian Andor to kill Galen rather than extract him. There they meet blind warrior Chirrut Ćmwe and mercenary Baze Malbus, Jyn finds Gerrera, who is holding Rook. Gerrera shows her the hologram, in which her father expresses his love for her and explains that he has covertly compromised the Death Star’s design so it can be destroyed, directing them to find the plans at an Imperial high-security data bank on the planet Scarif.
Grand Moff Tarkin meets with Krennic on the Death Star and expresses skepticism about the project and its management. As a demonstration, Krennic uses a low-powered shot from the weapon to destroy Jedha’s capital and crush Gerrera’s insurgency, forcing Jyn and her group to flee with Rook; Gerrera elects to remain behind and die. Tarkin congratulates Krennic but then uses security breaches under Krennic’s command as a pretext to take control of the project. Krennic travels to Mustafar to seek support from Darth Vader and the Emperor, but Vader rebuffs his appeal. The Rebels track Galen to an Imperial research facility on the planet Eadu, but Cassian chooses not to assassinate Galen. Confronted by Krennic and his troops, Galen admits responsibility for the leaked information. A Rebel bombing raid begins, and Galen dies in Jyn’s arms. The Rebels escape in a stolen Imperial cargo shuttle. Jyn proposes a plan to steal the Death Star schematics from Scarif, but the Rebel leadership does not trust her so she, Cassian, K-2SO, Chirrut, Baze, Bodhi and a few other volunteers use the stolen Imperial shuttle to raid the data bank.
In a huge fight all the rebels are killed but Jyn to transmit the Death Star plans to the Rebel command ship. Tarkin fires the Death Star to destroy the compromised base. Krennic dies in the blast while Jyn and Cassian embrace just before they are killed by the ensuing shock wave. As the Rebel fleet retreats, an Imperial fleet led by Darth Vader intercepts some of the Rebel ships before they can jump to hyperspace. Vader boards the disabled Rebel flagship to retrieve the plans, cutting down the defense party only to watch a small starship escape with them. Aboard the fleeing ship, Princess Leia declares that the plans will provide hope for the Rebellion.
Though I found the story to be good and the visual effects and cinematography excellent I wasn’t as into this film as a lot of others. I liked a couple of the characters but there is very little character development and when they all die it isn’t traumatic. The film seems to be another reason to add to the expanding SW franchise and make a lot more money. I just didn’t feel it. 7.5 outta 10!