Evan Osnos

In the final years of his life, when former Communist Party Chief Zhao Ziyang lived under house arrest, in Beijing, his aging friends resorted to donning white doctors' coats in order to slip past the guards stationed outside his home.

Sometimes you see films, not just science fiction films, where you get the sense that if the camera were to pan just to the left or the right, all of a sudden you'd be seeing light stands and crew standing around. But with 'Blade Runner,' the beauty of it is that it felt like a real, breathing city.

My grandmother spent her whole life working as a maid, a cook and a babysitter, barely scraping by, but still working hard to give my mother, her only child, a chance in life, so that my mother could give my brother and me an even better one.