Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Fred Zollo, the producer of the Mississippi Burning , dismissed the Internet threat to the movie industry, less than a decade back: “How can you watch a movie on a computer screen?” Except that almost everyone, everywhere today is glued to their smartphones watching movies! Which, by the way, are so much smaller than the computer screens that Zollo was so contemptuous about. And that’s without even getting into the people who watch movies on their tablets or even (gasp) their PC’s and laptops. Today Netflix has as many subscribers as HBO…streaming movies and serials via the Internet is starting to catch up with good old cable. This isn’t a blog to mock someone with the benefit of hindsight. Rather, it’s about this question Seth Godin that once asked: “How come so many of the attendees at the 1927 Solvay Conference went on to win the Nobel Prize in physics?” The equivalent question applies to every tectonic shift that is triggered by the tech sector, like watching movies o...

The latest season of Sherlock was terrible: the attempt to make Holmes a bit more human fell on its face; the plots were non-existent; and most important of all, there was no James Moriarty. As this article says : “Indeed, a truly great superhero comic is defined by the quality of the villains. Batman has the Joker; Superman has Lex Luthor; Spider-Man has Doc Ock; Iron Man has the Mandarin. In each of those cases (and many more), the best villains have become just as legendary as their corresponding heroes, and are almost always more interesting.” To this list, I would add: Sherlock Holmes has James Moriarty; and Harry Potter has Lord Voldemort. In any case, aren’t they like the yin and yang? Or as Moriarty puts it: “We're just alike, you and I, except you're boring. You're on the side of the angels.” Great villains don’t just liven up “banal stories about (heroes) saving the day and getting the girl while simultaneously standing for truth, justice, and the Ame...