Picking a movie to watch on an airplane is tricky business. Inexpe­ri­enced travelers make the mistake of choosing the movie they’ve been waiting to watch for the past month, or the one they think they’ll like the most. Bad idea. The audio is pretty bad on any airplane, and add the engine noise to that, and you’re left trying to lip-read the actors. Or you’ll crank up the volume to a point where you go deaf, and then life isn’t as much fun anymore.

Worse still, the little video screen in front of your seat may get turned off a little early, just before you’re told the name of the villain in a whodunit. And if that’s the movie you’ve been itching to watch for a while, it’s been effec­tively ruined for you.

That’s why I decided to watch “A Time Traveler’s Wife” on my trip from Seattle to Mumbai. It’s a perfect pick: I never really intended to watch the whole thing, so I couldn’t care less if it got cut off in the middle. The dialog didn’t matter too much, since Rachel McAdams is easy on the eyes and this is such a typical romance (man loves woman, woman loves man, man keep disap­pearing and popping up in other times, yada, yada…). And of course, I dozed off several times as the movie played on, but that didn’t matter all that much either.

Anyway, with this a priori stance about the movie, you shouldn’t really be expecting an unbiased review, but the truth is, I’m not here to comment on the movie at all. In fact, the only comment I have is on the name of the movie: I strongly believe the movie should have been named The Guy Who Disap­pears and Steals Clothes because, well, that’s what the lead character does all the time. Yes, he travels through time, sure, but that’s quite irrel­e­vant, especially on mute.

Speaking of traveling through space-time, have you ever noticed how time-travelers appear elsewhere almost instan­ta­neously? In real life, I would expect molecules of air and dust to get shoved aside violently when this happens, causing a tiny explo­sion. Oh well, I guess you can’t be all that realistic in a movie.…

On the bright side, this time traveler was less annoying than Hiro the Hero.

I watched the season finale of Heroes last week. Needless to say, they’ve upheld our glorious tradi­tion of disap­pointing endings. It wasn’t any more disap­pointing than the rest of the season, though…but it still quali­fies, right?

Another great tradi­tion that is followed by televi­sion and cinema is that every­thing must be explained by science. Genes being today’s fashion, every­thing in Heroes used to be explained by those little bits and pieces in our cells. Instant healing, reading thoughts, creating illusions, flying, traveling through time, painting the future and every­thing else used to be manifes­ta­tions of the amazing poten­tial of the human genome. The laws of physics are so ‘yesterday’ after all.

This time though, they invoked the mighty Einstein. You see, there’s this girl who can travel really fast, and this guy who can super­charge other people’s abili­ties. Guess what happens when they come in contact? She travels faster than light of course! That’s where Einstein comes into the picture — by travel­ling faster than the speed of light, she actually travels backwards in time, that is, into the past. With this super-ability, she travels into the past, rescues one of the good guys and gets back. Cute, huh?

But wait — the writers pulled a fast one on us: it’s all very well that she went back in time, but how on earth did she get back? Oh, whatever.

I also ended up watching old episodes from the first season during the last couple of weeks, and with all that wisdom, I feel obliged to share a bunch of dialogues that would summa­rize those twenty-three episodes -

Noah Bennet: I’ll do anything to protect my family!

Claire Bennet: I want to be normal. Boo hoo!

Peter Petrelli: I have everyone’s powers, but I’m still afraid and need my brother to hold my hand. I love him (sob, sob).

Nathan Petrelli: Don’t worry Peter, I love you and will help you just as soon as this election is over. Oh, and by the way, can you get this knife sharp­ened for me? I want it ready so that I can stab you in the back.

Matt Parkman: I’m a loser.

Hiro Nakamura: Don’t worry Parkman, I’m a loser too.

The Haitian:

(blanks out)

(…and now, a preview of the next season!)

Maya Herrera: I’m the reason why all those people died…waaaah! waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! (Somebody please shut her up.)