THE MAZE RUNNER

I caught this sci-fi movie last week and was sure glad I knew next to nothing about the movie before catching it because I was really impressed by it. I didn't know the storyline and didn't know who were acting in it but after the movie, I was excited enough to go online to find out more about it.

Starring a pool of mostly teen actors Dylan O'Brien, of "Teen Wolf" TV series fame, Aml Ameen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ki-hong Lee, Will Poulter, Blake Cooper, Kaya Scodelario who was the only female, I hope this movie becomes a sleeper hit. The only actors I knew of are Dylan, who I really liked as a secondary character with his good acting and humour in the "Teen Wolf" series, and Will Poulter, who I seemed to recall playing the bad boy in movies such as "The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader".

As with many recent movies, this is one of the movies of a trilogy. Written by James Dashner and published in 2009, this movie tells the storyline of a boy who woke up in a elevator cage from underground, with no prior memories of how he got there and what happened to him prior to the event, in an unknown place surrounded by a moving maze. He was one of many boys, known as Gladers, who woke up in similar circumstances monthly over a period of years with all necessities such as food sent up to them by their unknown captors with each captiive boy. The boys remained at the base camp because they couldn't find a way out of the maze, which changed configuration every night and which housed mysterious creatures known as grievers. Unlike all the boys before him who fell into their comfort zone following an established order and hierarchy of leaders and followers who run the place, Dylan as Thomas questioned their complacency, willingness and resignation in staying on in the unknown place held by unknown captors and created a series of events that rocked the community of boys who were divided by his actions. Suddenly, there was a change in the captors plans who eventually sent up a female, who only recalled Thomas' name and with a message that she was going to be the last one.

This set forth a chain of events which caused the grievers to be unleashed and attacked the community in broad daylight and prompted the group to be split. Thomas' unyielding determination and curiosity drove him to seek out a way to escape the maze and with his leadership and new found friends and supporters such as Alby, Newt, Minho, Chuck etc, finally made their way out of the maze only to find themselves to be guinea pigs of an experiment of a group known as WICKED (World in Catastrophe Killzone Experiment Department) from a dying world who tried to find a cure for a deadly Flare virus, and thrust into an unknown future to be revealed in parts two "The Scorch Trials" and the finale "The Death Cure".

i am so looking forward to the sequels.

the boys looking at the maze which shifted in daylight

Thomas, Minho and Chuck

Brenda and Thomas

Minho and Thomas running away from the changing maze

Minho and Thomas running back to camp

the three books of the trilogy

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

I was looking forward to watch this movie but I must say I was disappointed by it. Starring Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell and so on, it continues from the 2011 movie "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" starring Andy Serkis and James Franco.

It was quite a long movie and the story took place in San Francisco, ten years after the Simian Flu Virus that escaped from a research facility following the first movie spread throughout the world. Caesar, the leader of the Apes, and his community had not seen humans since two winters ago and thought all of mankind perished until they came across a few human survivors led by Jason Clarke's Malcolm. The storyline was weak and didn't quite pick up after that and it was a letdown all the way to the end, even with Andy Serkis and Gary Oldman around.

The ending was once again open-ended, possibly as a lead up to any possible sequel. However, judging from this movie, I doubt the box-office takings would be optimistic enough to warrant a continuation of the this movie. Thank goodness James Franco didn't act in this movie.

Andy Serkis's Caesar, leader of the Apes

Koba, the ape who only learnt hate from the humans

Malcom and his team in search of the dam to restore power to the city

Malcolm

a visibly older Keri Russell of "Felicity" fame as Ellie

TODAY (21 AUG 13) PAGE 26 - BAT MAN SEEKS ELIXIR OF LIFE FROM CREATURES OF NIGHT

CELLS CAN SURVIVE SURGES IN METABOLISM

Professor Linfa Wang. Director of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme at Duke-NUS, from Hong Kong claims "The most outstanding difference we've seen between bats and other mammals has to do with DNA repair. If the science is as true as we think it is, we can unlock the mechanisms and it can have a huge, huge impact.". So what is all this about and what impact does it have on humans, one might ask?

Well, for one, the secret to longevity may be unlocked soon with all the ongoing research. Studies have shown that the secret to bats' longevity may be linked to their ability to harbour viruses that are deadly to other animals.

Other than the fact that bats are found to be vectors of diseases such as Ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome, recently published scientific evidences point to their unique responses to genetic wear and tear, ageing and diseases like cancer. Their low rates of cancer, ability to carry deadly viruses without suffering from it and ability in DNA repair have been proven to be astounding. 

Coming to existence about 50 million years ago and with about 1,100 species across the globe, bats are known to be conduits to spread zoonoses or diseases from vertebrates to humans. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, zoonotic diseases account for 60% of new infectious diseases. The viruses are speculated to be latent in the bat carriers which are then transmitted to other mammals, which are genetically closer to or have greater exposure to humans, that subsequently passed on the viruses to humans. A recent classic example is that of SARS, where the diseases was probably passed on to civet cats followed by humans.

The bats' unique abilities may lie with their adaptation of their hearts to switch from just a mere 10 beats per minute during hibernation to 1,000 beats when they are in flight. Physiologically, when this happens, the host's metabolism surges resulting in a lethal and sudden shortage of oxygen while at the same time producing large amounts of toxic metabolic by-products that damage DNA.

In essence, bats cope better with DNA damage repair, are carriers of viruses, have less cancer and typically live longer probably because all these are likely to be interrelated and expressions of a common denominator.