Marley & Me

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.

A 2008 American comedy drama film, Marley & Me directed by David Frankel based on the memoir of the same name by John Grogan. A story about the thirteen years he and his family spent with their yellow Labrador Retriever, Marley.

John Grogan (Owen Wilson) and Jenny (Jennifer Aniston) are a newlywed couple who just begins their life together. They are young and in love, with a perfect little house in South Florida and not a care in the world. Then they brought home Marley (named after reggae singer Bob Marley), a wiggly yellow furball of a puppy and life will never be the same.

Marley, unlike other dogs, he grows into a barreling and incorrigible ninety-seven-pound steamroller of a Labrador Retriever. He is strong, powerful, endlessly hungry, eager to be active and often destructive of the property (but completely without malice). Even a dog obedience school did no good to Marley and he is expelled.

John, a reporters for competing newspapers is offers a twice-weekly column in which he can discuss the fun and foibles of everyday living and he realizes that the misadventures of Marley might be the perfect topic for his first piece. So, Marley continues to wreak havoc on the household, providing John with a wealth of material for his column which becomes a hit with readers and helps increase the newspaper's circulation.

As years go by, John and Jennifer have children of their own and moves across the country from South Florida to Boca Raton and to a farm in rural Pennsylvania while Marley continues to test everyone's patience by acting like the world's most impulsive dog. Yet his acts and behaviors are forgiven, just as he joyfully refused any limits on his behavior, his love and loyalty were boundless too. He become an indispensable part of the family.

Life is idyllic until the aging Marley begins to show signs of arthritis, deafness and an attack of gastric dilatation volvulus (a stomach torsion condition).

A heartwarming and unforgettable story of a family in the making and the wondrously neurotic dog who taught them what really matters in life.

JOHN GROGAN
(born March 20, 1957)

“A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours.

Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy,

about seizing the moment and following your heart.

He taught me to appreciate the simple things - a walk in the woods, 
a fresh snowfall, a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight.

And as he grew old and achy,
he taught me about optimism in the face of adversity.
Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness
and above all else, unwavering loyalty.”
- John Grogan

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We Bought A Zoo

Everyone has a story to tell and a 2011 comedy drama film, We Bought A Zoo directed by Cameron Crowe based on the 2008 memoir of the same name by Benjamin Mee tells a true story of himself, a single father and his family who bought and moved in an old house on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon with a dilapidated zoo in August 2006 and took on the challenge of preparing the zoo for its reopening to the public in July 2007 after a major refurbishment.

The story begins with a freelance journalist, Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) who has lost his wife and still grieving his loss. He decides to start a new life by buying a house with a zoo in the back, his seven years old daughter is delighted with the idea but his fourteen years old son is not happy about it and retreats away to his artwork which have grown more macabre since the death of his mother.

Benjamin, coping with the devastating loss of his wife while struggling to raise his children with financial problems and the staff grew skeptical in a zoo that was crumbling around them. To make things worse, the visiting of local council to inspect the park now and then and if Benjamin couldn't complete the costly renovations in twelve weeks, the animals will have to destroy.

In the film, the zoo is called Rosemoor Wildlife Park and is situated in America instead of Dartmoor Zoological Park (originally Dartmoor Wildlife Park) in the South West of England and the story also differs in that Benjamin Mee and his two children bought the zoo after the death of Benjamin's wife. The fact is they bought the zoo before Benjamin's wife, Katherine died on March 31 2007 after a short battle with an aggressive brain tumour.

Benjamin Mee (center) with his son Milo, daughter Ella, brother Duncan and mother Amelia. 

Today, the real Benjamin along with his children Milo and Ella, brother Duncan and mother Amelia still live at and run Dartmoor Zoological Park with a fantastic collection of 250 exotic animals including the widest variety of big cats in the south west of England. In 2011, Dartmoor Zoological Park is being voted as the UK's Top Wildlife Attraction with drawing in more visitors than ever.

Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage, 

just literally 20 seconds of embarrassing bravery, 

and I promise you, something great will come of it. 

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Patch Adams

Hunter Doherty "Patch" Adams (born May 28, 1945) who had a difficult childhood. In 1961, his father, an officer in the United States Army had fought in Korea and died while stationed in Germany. After his father's death, Adams returned to the United States with his mother and brother. Upon his return, Adams has stated that he encountered institutional injustice which made him a target for bullies at school. As a result, Adams was unhappy and became actively suicidal. After being hospitalized three times in one year for wanting to end his life, he decided "You don't kill yourself; You make (love) revolution."

A 1998 comedy-drama film Patch Adams directed by Tom Shadyac is the fact-based story of Hunter "Patch" Adams, an unconventional physician who attempted to heal patients with laughter, based on his own book and mixing equal doses of scatological humor and pathos.

In 1969, Hunter Adams (Robin Williams) is a troubled man who voluntarily commits himself into a mental institution. His experiences there convince Adams to become a doctor and two years later, he enrolls at Virginia Medical University being the oldest first year student, where he is appalled at the cold, clinical professionalism that alienates patients from their caregivers. Determined to provide emotional and spiritual relief as well as medicine, Adams clowns around for his patients, getting to know them personally. Although his efforts seem to work wonders and the hospital nursing staff is grateful for the levity Adams provides, his methods alienate his uptight roommate Mitch Roman (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as well as the staff and faculty of his school. Adams perseveres, however, even starting his own low-cost rural clinic called the Gesundheit Institute and wooing a pretty fellow student, Carin Fisher (Monica Potter). Tragedy strikes and Adams' career is put in jeopardy, forcing him to defend his style and philosophy before a board of jurists determined to bar him from practicing medicine.

In real life, Adams attended George Washington University and graduating brilliantly in 1967. He received his recognition as a doctor from the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) in 1971 and thereafter, he founded the Gesundheit Institute, a non-profit organization that is working towards building and sustaining the first FREE hospital in the United States.

Adams and Linda Edquist (who he met in MCV and she volunteered in the clinic) married in 1975 and divorced in 1998. They had two sons, Atomic Zagnut "Zag" Adams and Lars Zig Edquist Adams. In the late 1960s, one of his closest friends (a man and not a woman as depicted in the film) was murdered. As a speaker, now he travels around the globe lecturing about his medicine methods - good health is a laughing matter.

Life, Stormy says, 

is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. 

It's about perseverance,

about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.

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The Intouchables

“Sometimes you have to reach into someone else’s world to find what’s missing in your own.”

This is what the 2011 French comedy film The Intouchables directed by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache about; to leave from your comfort zone and go into the wilderness of your intuition to discover yourself. An unlikely true story of friendship between two men who should never have met, Philippe Pozzo di Borgo (born Feb 14, 1951), a quadriplegic aristocrat who was injured in a paragliding accident and his carer original Algerian, Abdel Yasmin Sellou for ten years.

The film begins at night in Paris when Driss (Omar Sy) is driving Philippe's Maserati Quattroporte at high speed with Phillipe (François Cluzet) in the passenger seat. They are soon chased and caught by the police. Driss claims to the police that he is trying to get urgent medical attention for Phillipe; Philippe pretends to have a stroke and the fooled police eventually escort them to the hospital. The two men are jubilant. As the police leave them at the hospital and they drive off. 

The story of their friendship is then told as a flashback.

Phillipe is a rich quadriplegic living in a mansion in Paris and he is interviewing for a live-in carer. Driss, a candidate who has no ambitions to get hired. He is just there to get a signature showing he was interviewed and rejected in order to continue to receive his welfare benefits. He is told to come back the next morning to get his signed letter. Driss goes back to the tiny flat that he shares with his extended family in a bleak Parisian suburb. His aunt, exasperated from not hearing from him for six months and orders him to leave the flat.

PHILIPPE POZZO DI BORGO
& ABDEL YASMIN SELLOU

The next day, Driss returns to Philippe's mansion and learns to his surprise that he is on a trial period for the live-in carer job. He learns the extent of Philippe's disability and then accompanies Philippe in every moment of his life, discovering with astonishment a completely different lifestyle. A friend of Philippe's reveals Driss's criminal record which includes six months in jail for robbery. Philippe states he does not care about Driss's past as long as he does his current job properly.

Over time, Driss and Philippe become closer. Driss dutifully takes care of his boss who frequently suffers from phantom pain. Philippe discloses to Driss that he became disabled following a paragliding accident in 1993 and that his wife died three years later of cancer without bearing children. Gradually, Philippe is led by Driss to put some order in his private life, including being more strict with his adopted daughter Elisa who behaves like a spoiled child with the staff. Driss learns about fine art, opera and responsibility from Philippe and Philippe is transformed by Driss to rediscovers his sense of adventure, hope and wonder in life. Together, they express a view of the world as full of possibility and life with opportunities to move forward.

An incredibly uplifting story about friendship, trust and human possibility that based upon a true story and real characters. The film ends reveal Philippe who is now his principal residence in the region of Essaouira in Morocco, is happily remarried and had two adopted children while Abdel is married with three children in Algeria, where he runs a poultry farm. The credits show Abdel Sellou and Philippe Pozzo di Borgo in reality and they are still in contact till today.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms 

and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you 

because you would not be able to live them. 

 And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. 

 Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, 

and live along some distant day into the answer.

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3 Idiots

One of the best Bollywood movie that I have ever watched even though is a bit lengthy but a true entertaining, enlightening and heartwarming film that remains etching in memory.

3 Idiots, a 2009 Indian comedy film directed by Rajkumar Hirani based on the novel Five Point Someone - What not to do at IIT! written by Chetan Bhagat in 2004. The film tells a story of three engineering students whose friendship stands the test of time.

The film begins with two friends, Farhan Qureshi (R. Madhavan) and Raju Rastogi (Sharman Joshi) embark on a quest to find a lost buddy, Ranchhoddas "Rancho" Shamaldas Chhanchad (Aamir Khan). Enroute, their memories drift back to the days when three of them were all college roommates in Imperial College of Engineering (ICE) ten years ago.

Farhan wants to become a wildlife photographer, but has joined engineering college to fulfil his father's wish. Raju is studying to get his family out of poverty while Rancho studies for his simple passion in machines who believes that one should follow excellence, not success as success will take care of itself if excellence is followed. With his different approach Rancho incurs the wrath of dean of college, Professor Viru Sahastrabudhhe (ViruS)(Boman Irani). Rancho irritates his lecturers by giving creative and unorthodox answers and confronts ViruS after fellow student Joy Lobo (Ali Fazal) hangs himself in his dormitory room. Joy had requested an extension on his major project on compassionate grounds that his father had suffered a stroke but ViruS refused, saying that he himself was completely unmoved by his own son's accidental death after being hit by a train. Rancho denounces the rat race, dog-eat-dog, mindless rote learning mentality of the institution, blaming it for Lobo's death. Threatened by Rancho's talent and free spirit, ViruS labels him as an "idiot" and attempts on a number of occasions to destroy his friendship with Farhan and Raju, warning them and their parents to steer clear of Rancho ... ...

There are few funniest moments in the film and one of it is when Rancho replaces the vernacular word chamatkar (serve, serving) with balatkar (screw) in the written speech prepared for Teachers' Day at the Imperial College of Technology and the insufferable Chatur Ramalingam (Omi Vaidya) who mindlessly memories the speech without noticing that anything is amiss. His speech becomes the laughing stock of the audience.

"Welcome our Chief guest, the Minister of Education. Welcome our respected Mr. Chairman and our respected teachers and schoolmates ... The reason our school can be so successful is only one person's contribution, Dr. Viru Sahhastrabuddhe! Give him a big hand ... He's a great guy really ... For 32 years, he has been continuously raping (the original word chamatkar means 'doing wonders' whereas balatkar means 'rape') college students ... We believe that he will continue that. It's so astonishing that a man can rape so many students perfectly in his life! His perseverance must come from his practicing! He devoted every moment to raping! We should learn from him! The students here will soon be all over the world. Wherever we go, we will continue to rape! We will make I.C.E proud! We will show everyone that our ability to rape is incomparable!"

"Good evening, Mr. Minister of Education. You gave us one thing that we need most ... Breasts (the original word means funds). Everyone has boobs but they all hide it ... No one would generously give them to others! But you gave your boobs to this rapist ... Now you'll see how he uses of it! (Verse) A loud fart is respectable ... A medium fart is tolerable ... A slight fart is fearful ... A silent fart is unbearable ... !"

Watch it and it sure make you laugh and cry at the same time for every moment of the three hours film and in the process in learning many golden rules for life. You will definitely love this awesome and remarkable film!

Whatever the problem in life is ...

just say to yourself 'Aal Izz Well' ... 

This wont solve your problems but it will give the courage to face it.

Chase Excellence and success will follow.

Life is not about getting marks, grades but chasing your dreams. 

Movie Trailer:

      

Full Movie (With English Subtitles):

     

Jakob The Liar

Jokob The Liar, a 1999 American tragicomedy film directed by Peter Kassovitz is a remake film of 1975 East German-Czechoslovakian Holocaust film Jacob the Liar directed by Frank Beyer and based on the eponymous novel by Jurek Becker published in 1969.

The name "Jacob" is related to Jewish history and culture. In the biblical story of Jacob, from the Book of Genesis, Jacob tells a lie to his father Isaac in order to steal the first-born birth-right from his older brother Esau. According to classic Jewish texts, Jacob lived a life that paralleled the descent of his offspring, the Jewish people, into the darkness of exile.

During World War II in Nazi occupied Poland of early 1944, a Polish-Jewish shop keeper named Jakob Heym (Robin Williams) is summoned to Ghetto headquarters on a charge he broke the curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements and the defeats of the German Army. Returned to the Ghetto, Jakob shares his information with a friend Mischa (Liev Schreiber) who wants to risk his life by escaping. Mischa eventually spreads the lie out that Jakob possesses a radio since no one will believe he went to the Ghetto office and came back alive.

Jakob is now forced to become creative to tell favorable tales of information from "his secret radio". He has to provide new items of fictional news each day in order to help maintain the peace and hope and prevent despair from returning to the Ghetto. However, the Gestapo get wing of the stories, they become convinced that someone has communications equipment stashed away somewhere and they demand the person with the radio to give himself up or risk hostages being killed. Jakob surrenders himself to the Germans and tells them that he had only listened to the radio inside German Kommondant's office. He is ordered to announce publicly that this was all a lie but Jakob refuses to tell the truth when presented to the public and he is shot before he can make his own speech.

This is an old firm but still worth watching it again. Many Jewish prisoners died in the concentration camp through deliberate maltreatment, disease, starvation and overwork or were executed as unfit for labor. Jakob the Liar shows another tragic aspect of the Holocaust and in the film, many have attempts to hang themselves or risk their life escaping to end the situation cause they do not see a future but Jakob with his own individual's unique attempt brings hope and faith alive in the desperate situation.

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The Bucket List

Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves; regret for the past and fear of the future. If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live. Find the joy!

The Bucket List is an American comedy drama film directed by Rob Reiner released in 2007. The story tells two terminally ill cancer patients who decide to break out of the hospital and live their last days to the fullest with a wish list of things to do before they "kick the bucket".

Corporate irascible billionaire Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson) and working class scholarly mechanic Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) have nothing in common except for their terminal illnesses (both have been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer). The quiet mechanic, Carter  has been faithfully married for forty-five years to his beloved wife Virginia (Beverly Todd) and has three children. The caustic and bitter billionaire Edward owns many hospitals, has been through his fair share of divorces and has one missing daughter. Following Edward's work ethics, his hospital puts him in the same room as Carter rather than give him a private room during his stay.

Though initially the pair seems to have nothing in common but after one morning, Edward finds Carter's 'bucket list' on the floor when Carter tosses it before the night after hearing he has less than a year to live. Edward includes his own items on the list and urges Carter to do everything on the list together with him and offers to finance the trip for the both of them. Despite the protest of his wife, Carter agrees and begins an around-the-world vacation with Edward and both of them become unlikely friends.

They go skydiving together, drive a Shelby Mustang, fly over the North Pole, eat dinner at Chevre d'Or in France, visit and praise the beauty and history of Taj Mahal, India, ride motorcycles on the Great Wall of China, playing the poker tables in Monte Carlo and attend a lion safari in Africa. Atop the Great Pyramid, looking out over the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure, they confide about faith and family, revealing that Carter has long been feeling less in love with his wife and that Edward is deeply hurt by his estrangement from his only daughter who disowned him after he drove away her abusive husband.

In Hong Kong, Edward hires a prostitute for Carter who has never had sex with any woman but his wife. Carter declines, realizing that he loves his wife and asks to return home. On their way back home, Carter reciprocates by trying to reunite Edward with his daughter but Edward angrily storms off and Carter returns home to his wife, children and grandchildren. The family reunion for Carter is short-lived when he suffers a seizure and is rushed to the hospital. Carter dies on the operating table after an unsuccessful surgery and leaving Edward to finish the list without him.

Later in the film, Edward finally attempt to reconcile with his daughter who not only accepts him back into her life but also introduces him to the granddaughter he never knew. After greeting the little girl with a kiss on the cheek, Edward crosses "kiss the most beautiful girl in the world" off the list.

In the epilogue, it is revealed that Edward lived until the age of eighty-one and his ashes are brought to the top of the Himalayas by his assistant and alongside a can containing Carter's. In the final lines of the film, Carter explains, "I'm pretty sure he (Edward) was happy with his final resting place. Because he was buried on the mountain and that was against the law."

Life is too short to wake up with regrets.

Love the people who treat you right.

Forget about the ones who don’t. 

Believe everything happens for a reason. 

If you get a second chance, grab it with both hands. 

If it changes your life, let it. 

Nobody said life would be easy. 

They just promised it would be worth it. 

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50 First Dates

A woman suffered severe head injuries in a road accident, wakes up in every morning and then forgets everything the next day found her happiness. An American romantic comedy film, 50 First Dates directed by Peter Segal released in 2004.

Henry Roth (Adam Sandler) is a womanizing marine-life veterinarian at Sea Life Park on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. One morning, Henry meets Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore) who is an art teacher in a cafe and they hit if off instantly and agree to meet in the cafe the next morning. The following day, when Henry goes back to the cafe, Lucy fails to recognize him and shows no recollection of ever meeting him. The cafe owner, Sue (Amy Hill) explains to Henry that Lucy suffers from Goldfield Syndrome (a type of anterograde amnesia) after a serious car accident a year ago on her father's birthday. Her condition has left her with short term memories loss between the day of the accident and the present. Every morning, she loses all memory of the past day and wakes up thinking it is Sunday October 13, 2002, on her father's birthday. To save her from the heartbreak of reliving the accident, her father Marlin (Blake Clarke) and brother Doug (Sean Astin) attempt to re-enact the activities of October 13 everyday including putting out October 13th's newspaper, watching the same Vikings game, singing the birthday song, eating the same pineapple cake and refilling Lucy's shampoo bottles.

Realizing that he is beginning to fall in love with Lucy, Henry sheds his philandering ways and begins devising new ways to meet her again every day, hoping that one day she will retain her memories and feelings for him. Henry comes up with an idea to make a video explaining to Lucy her accident and their relationship and play it every morning for her. They go on many dates and overtime, Lucy begins to reciprocate Henry's feelings even going so far as to accept his marriage proposal.

The film ends when Lucy wakes up in a strange bed and plays the video tape marked "Good Morning Lucy". She watches it and cries as she relives her accident while the tape explains everything that has happened and ends with her and Henry's wedding. She then looks out the window and is shocked to find herself on a boat. She goes up on deck and sees Henry as well as her father and her young daughter sailing on Henry's boat where their dreams fulfilled.

MICHELLE & LAN PHILPOTS

The case of Michelle Philpots echoes the film 50 First Dates who lost her day-to-day memory in 1994 after two separate road accidents and wakes up thinking its 1994. She married to Lan Philpots in 1997 and since then, Lan has to convince her they are married everyday. Some days he has to get out the wedding photos to prove to her that they are husband and wife and is not just loved ones that Michelle is struggling with, she uses hundreds of Post-It notes and reminders on her mobile phone's calendar to keep her informed of appointments and every day activities. Anything she has done or anyone she has met must be logged for future reference and on the rare occasions she ventures out of her home in Spalding, Lincolnshire, she goes armed with SatNav system that marked the location of her address.

If we commit ourselves to one person for life, 
 this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; 
 rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, 
and the risk of love which is permanent; 
 into that love which is not possession but participation  

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I Love You Phillip Morris

Steven Jay Russell (born September 14, 1957) is a US con artist known for escaping from prison multiple times. The film, I Love You Phillip Morris tells about his real-life story during 1980s and 1990s. A true story of life, love and prisons break directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa released in 2009.

PHILLIP MORRIS

Steven Russell (Jim Carrey) who is a law-abiding citizen, plays organ for the local church and volunteer as a deputy police officer in Virginia Beach with his wife Debbie (Leslie Mann) and a young daughter. Steven spends his off hours searching for his biological mother who gave him up as a child. Later, he tracks her down only to discover that she had remarried his biological father and given birth to three other children, each of whom his biological sibling but his mother rejects him without explanation.

After surviving from a car accident, Steven decides to live the rest of his life as his true self. He confesses to Debbie that he is gay which he had been hiding it from her. While he pursues a new life as an openly gay man, Steven realizes that "being gay is really expensive" which leading him to become a con man (insurance fraud, credit card fraud, passport fraud and so forth) to support his lifestyle. He is caught and sent to prison where he meets a sweet and soft-spoken inmate, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor).

 STEVEN JAY RUSSELL           

The film tells the story of an inveterate conman and a gay man who just can't stop conning his way through life in a humorous manner. It may looks unbelievable when watching it but in 1993, Steven Russell disguised himself as a workman with a walkie-talkie, wearing a pair of women's black trousers stolen from the prison infirmary and walked out of the front gates. And three years later, he stockpiled green felt-tip pens from prison art classes, squeezing the ink from the cartridges into a sink of water to dye his overalls the color of surgical gowns and simply escaped the second time. The most daring escape ever was in 1998, over a ten months period, Steven tried to feign the symptoms of Aids to show that he is dying. Don't know how he do it but he claims to have an IQ of 163 which is over 140 than a genius.

In the end of the film explains that the real-life Phillip Morris was released from jail in 2006, but Steven is still currently serving a hundred forty-four years sentence (till July 12, 2140) on twenty-three hours lockup with only having one free hour a day for supervised showers and exercise.

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The Terminal

The Terminal is an American romantic comedy drama film directed by Steven Spielberg released in 2004 and is partially inspired by the seventeen years stay of Mehran Karimi Nasseri in the Charles de Gaille International Airport, Terminal 1, Paris, France from 26 August 1988 to July 2006 when his refugee papers were stolen.

Mehran Karimi Nasseri

The film starts with an Eastern European man by the name of Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) arrives at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and while he was air en route to America, a revolution was started in his home nation of Krakozhia (fictional country). With his passport, visas and currency issued by Krakozhia are no longer valid internationally and suddenly, he is a citizen of nowhere. Hence, Viktor is denied entrance to the U.S and he is also unable to return home but to lives in the terminal carrying his luggage until Krakozhia's situation is resolved.

As the days stretch on into months, Viktor finds the compressed universe of the terminal to be a richly complex world of absurdity, generosity, culture, ambition, amusement, status, serendipity and even romance with a beautiful flight attendant named Amelia Warren (Catherine Zeta-Jones).

Life is a challenge and it's natural that we feel sad, frightened and pained when anything adverse happens to us. In the film, we see how Viktor reviews the bright side of every angle of his problems in time of adversity when he doesn't speak English very well, with no valid citizenship, no cash and no one to help him around in the terminal. And while Viktor is rising to his life challenges, how he begins to befriends and helps some of the people around him who work in the airport.

The best things in life are worth waiting for, fighting for,

believing in and just never letting go of.

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Serenedipity

Serenedipity, a nice word and I kind of fancy with it. The word was formed from the Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes "were always making discoveries by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of".

In 2001, Peter Chelsom directed a romantic comedy of the same wording as the film title. The story tells of a couple reunite years after the night they first met in New York City, fell in love and separated, convinced that one day they will end up together.

Jonathan Trager (John Cusack) meets Sara Thomas (Kate Beckinsale) by chance in the Christmas eve, in Bloomingdale's, both trying to buy the last pair of black cashmere gloves available for sales. Despite each being in a relationship with other people at the time, they spend an amazing afternoon together and attracted to each other. Jonathan wants her contact information "just in case", but Sara, a fatalist, plays games of fate with Jonathan to determine if they are indeed meant to be together.

Sara decides to write her contact information in a book, Love in the Time of Cholera and his on a five dollars bill. She gives the bill to a newspaperman and she says that she would sell the book in a New York used books store. If they are meant to be together, he will find the book, she will find the five dollars bill and they will find their way back to each other.

Life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences, 
but rather it is a tapestry of acts that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan. 

If we are to live life in harmony with the universe, 
we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients used to call "fatum", 
what we currently refer to as destiny.

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WHEN YOU KNOW - Shawn Colvin

When you know that you know who you love, you can't deny it.
Or go back, or give up, or pretend that you don't buy it.
When it's clear this time you've found the one, you'll never let him go
Cos you know and you know that you know.

When you feel in your skin in your bones and the hollow
Of your heart, there's no way you can wait till tomorrow.
When there isn't any doubt about it once you come this close
Cos you know and you know that you know.

You can feel love surround you like the sky 'round the moon.
This is how love has found you, now you know what to do.

When you know that you know who you need, you can't deny it.
Or go back, or give up, or pretend that you don't buy it.
When it's clear this time you've found the one, you'll never let him go
Cos you know and you know that you know.

And it's time you come in from the cold.
Haaa ...
And you know that you know.

      

A Thousand Words

What if you only have a thousand words left? And what will matters most to you?

A Thousand Words is a comedy-drama film starring Eddie Murphy and directed by Brian Robbins released on March 9, 2012. Jack McCall (Eddie Murphy) is a fast-talking literary agent, who uses his 'gift of gab' to get various book deals, any time and any way.

One morning, Jack finds an unusual Bodhi tree with a thousand leaves mysteriously appears in his backyard after an encounter with a spiritual guru, Dr. Sinja (Cliff Curtis). With every word Jack utters, a leaf falls from the tree and he realizes that when the last leaf falls, both he and the tree are toast. In time, he finds that even written words count towards his limit; plus anything that happens to the tree will also affect him. When Jack tries to cut it down with an axe, an axe wound appears on him. When squirrels climb on the tree, it tickles him. When a gardener tries to poison it with DDT and Jack gets high on the fumes.

Words have never failed Jack McCall, but now he's got to stop talking and conjure up some outrageous ways to communicate or he's a goner. His choice of words communicating with others becomes difficult and have affected in his career, work, marriage with his wife Caroline (Kerry Washington) and friendships.

With his life falling apart and the tree running out of leaves, Jack goes to Dr. Sinja and asks how to end the curse. The guru tells him to make peace in all of his relationships. With just one branch of leaves left, Jack tries to reconcile with Caroline and visits his mother (Ruby Dee), who lives in an assisted-living center and has dementia. She tells Jack, who she thinks is Jack’s late father Raymond, that she wishes Jack would stop being angry at his father for walking out on them when he was a kid. Jack, realizing that this is the relationship that needs the most mending and goes to visit his father’s grave. Jack expends the last three leaves of the tree with the words, "I forgive you". With no leaves remaining, Jack collapses and appears to have died.

You never know if 
the last time you see someone is going to be 
the last time you ever see someone.

Movie Trailer:

      

Driving Miss Daisy

Driving Miss Daisy is an American comedy-drama film released on December 15, 1989 directed by Bruce Beresford and adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Alfred Uhry of the same name.

In 1948, after a driving mishap, a reluctantly seventy-two years old wealthy Jewish widow, Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy) can no longer drive because no insurance company will cover her. Her son, Boolie Werthan (Dan Aykroyd) tells  her she will have to get a chauffeur, which in that time meant a black man (the racial attitudes and prejudices of that time). 

An African-American man, Hoke colburn (Morgan Freeman) was hired by Boolie as Ms Daisy's new chauffeur against his mother protests. Miss Daisy at first refuses to let Hoke drive her, going so far as to walk to the local supermarket, Piggly Wiggly with Hoke following her by automobile, much to her chagrin. Her reluctance to be driven around is because she is embarrassed that people might think she is either too elderly to drive or so well off that she can pay for a driver. Out of necessity, Miss Daisy gradually starts to accept Hoke and the fact that she needs him to drive her around.

A wealthy, strong-willed Southern matron and her equally indomitable Black chauffeur. Both have a different back groups. Hoke because of his skin color, Miss Daisy because she is Jewish in a WASP-dominated society. At the same time, Hoke cannot fathom Miss Daisy's cloistered inability to grasp the social changes that are sweeping the South in the 1960s. Nor can Miss Daisy understand why Hoke's "people" are so indignant. Even though they continued to bicker, an unlikely remarkable friendship was beginning to form between them as the years pass.

Friendship isn't about whom you have known the longest ... ... 

It's about who came and never left your side ... ...

Movie Trailer:

       

Up

UP is a 2009 American computer-animated comedy-drama, adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Bob Peterson which released in August 2009.

The story started with a young Carl Fredrickson working as a toy-balloon vendor meets a young adventure spirited girl named Ellie. They become closed friends and married, both dream of going to a Lost Land in South America. They promise each other that they would travel together to Paradise Falls and build a house there. Many years later, Ellie has died of old age before they can take their trip. Carl who's lonely and remembers the promise he made to her. Then, when he inadvertently hits a construction worker, he is forced to go to a retirement home. But before they can take him, he and his house fly away by tying thousands of balloons to float his house and en-route to his dream adventure.

Right after lifting off, however, he learns he isn't alone on his journey, a wilderness explorer seventy years his junior, an eight years old boy named Russell, whose trying to get an assisting the elderly badge has inadvertently become a stowaway on the trip and Carl sees no other choice but to bring the boy with him. Together, they embark in an adventure, where they encounter talking dogs, an evil villain and a rare bird named Kevin.

For the first ten to fifteen minutes of watching the film, it moved me so beautifully as it tells the story of the wonderful life that Carl and his wife Ellie share together till they old. Carl being a lovable character, you can feel the joy that he feels and his loss when his wife passes away. Despite, each and every character in the film provides their own bit of humor, the fun and charming story between Carl and Russell and a tale of a man who never experienced what he wanted the most in life. Carl might seems to be a fairly mean old man but the film spends a great deal of time to develop him into an emotional wreck of a man. Personally, I felt easily being emotionally impactful of the entire film.

"Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up."

"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble."

God bless!

Here's the links:

Movie Trailer

When Harry Met Sally

It was almost more than ten years that I watched "When Harry Met Sally", a 1989 romantic comedy film written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner. It stars Billy Crystal as Harry Burns and Meg Ryan as Sally Albright.

The plot start in 1977, when both Harry and Sally met to share the drive to New York City after they finished college at the University of Chicago. The film jumps through their lives as they both search for love but failed and bumping into each other time and time again. Finally a close friendship blooms between them, and they both like having a friend of the opposite sex. The underlying theme of the film is the argument about male-female relationship; can men and women be friends or does always sex get in the way?

Nevertheless, "When Harry Met Sally" is a great new year love story that stay all time.

"I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

Our life is just like an open book with pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves and its first chapter is New Year's Day. Dont keep it blank as it will never able to fill it back again and make sure it worth reading.

God bless!

Here's the links:

Movie Trailers

Sliding Doors

"Sliding Doors" directed by Peter Howitt and released on June 1998. The film follows the life of Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is arriving at work one morning and discovers that she had been unjustifiably sacked from her PR job.

The film's plot splits into two parallel universes which run in tandem. In one universe, Helen catches the tube train, meets James and arrives home to find her loathsome Lothario lover Gerry cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend Lydia. In the other reality, Helen misses the tube train, gets mugged, goes to hospital and eventually arrives home to find Gerry alone in the shower. The two realities move forward in tandem; in one Helen leaves Gerry and forms a happy, new, loving relationship with James; in the other Helen's live becomes more and more wretched as she takes on two jobs to support her worthless, cheating boyfriend as he supposedly writes his novel but in fact carries on a torrid affair with Lydia.

"Sliding Doors" is one of the best films that Gwyneth Paltrow has done. Humour, anger, sadness, love, compassion and a lot of lying in this film and the most special of this film is for the way the two storylines overlap, making a very original movie. It uses the concept of time by showing what a significant difference a few seconds can make in one's life.

Though life is like a sliding door, it closes one end but opens the other but the result is much alike as everything in our path and destiny is preordained in the book of providence.

"Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise. And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh."

TURN BACK TIME - Aqua

Give me time to reason
Give me time to think it through
Passing through the season
Where I cheated you

I will always have a cross to wear
But the bolt reminds me I was there
So give me strength
To face this test tonight

If only I could turn back time
If only I had said what I still hide
If only I could turn back time
I would stay for the night.
For the night...

Claim your right to science
Claim your right to see the truth
Though my pangs of conscience
Will drill a hole in you

I seen it coming like a thief in the night
I seen it coming from the flash of your light
So give me strength
To face this test tonight

If only I could turn back time
If only I had said what I still hide
If only I could turn back time...
I would stay for the night

The bolt reminds me I was there the bolt reminds me I was there
If only I could turn back time
If only I had said what I still hide
If only I could turn back time
I would stay for the night

Here's the links:
Movie Trailer

Life Is Beautiful

"Life Is Beautiful" is an Italian language film which tells the story of a Jewish Italian, Guido Orefice (played by Roberto Benigni, who also directed and co-wrote the film), who must employ his fertile imagination to help his son survive their internment in a Nazi concentration camp (a camp which maintained by Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler throughout the territories it controlled). This film was released in October 1998 and is an unforgettable fable that proves love, family and imagination conquer all.

The film starts in the 1930s, Guido, an Italian Jew, falls in love with a school teacher, Dora, who isn't Jewish. He woos her and steals at her engagement from her rude and loud fiance, a Fascist official. They get married and several years later, their son Giosue grows up among growing anti-Semitism. During WWII, Guido and Giosue are arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Dora goes too, determined not to separate the family. In the midst of the horrors of the camp where the old and the children are killed because they are not strong enough to work, Guido protects his son by pretending that survival in the concentration camp is an elaborate game with which Giosue must play along or be sent home. Various levels of creativity are used by Guido to protect his son in the camp.

This is a great film of love, optimism, courage and inner strength and I was being moved by the love of a father; a sacrificing of a father made for the son which he created lights for him to move forward in continuing while facing with obstacles. Even right until the end of his life, he still not forgeting to make his son laugh one last time by imitating the Nazi guard as if the two of them are marching around the camp together. The son, Giosue manages to survive, and thinks he has won the game when an American tank arrives to liberate the camp and not knowing that his father has died. A truly sad tragedy and encouraging film.

"The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way."

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL - Noa

Smile, without a reason why
Love, as if you were a child
Smile, no matter what they tell you
Don't listen to a word they say
Cause life is beautiful that way

Tears, a tidal wave of tears
Light, that slowly disappears
Wait, before you close the curtain
There is still another game to play
And life is beautiful that way

Here with his eyes forevermore
I will always be as close as you
Remember from before
Now that you're out there on your own
Remember what is real and
What we dream is love alone

Keep the laughter in your eyes
Soon your long awaited prize
We'll forget about our sorrows
And think about a brighter day
Cause life is beautiful that way

We'll forget about our sorrows
And think about a brighter day
Cause life is beautiful that way
There's still another game to play
And life is beautiful that way

Here's the links:
Movie Trailer

The Game Rule

Beautiful That Way - Noa