Hundreds of thousands of young women to have vanished from their everyday lives-forced by violence into a hellish existence of brutality and prostitution by ruthless criminals. They're a profitable commodity in the multi-billion-dollar industry of modern slavery.
Human Trafficking, a TV movie directed by Christian Duguay and premiered in the United States on Lifetime Television in 2005 is a tough, uncompromising drama about the brutal realities faced by some of them, and the rookie immigration agent who, with the help of her boss and his team, works to bust the ring she uncovers and get its victims to safety.
This gritty crime drama, emotional tale of survival and justice is a must-see. It exposes the horrifying phenomenon and the ugly world of human trafficking that could happen in any neighborhood - including yours!
An eye opening about the realities of the human slave trade which is a real evil that exists in today's world.
I became aware of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) after watching this German biographical film directed by Sherry Hormann - Desert Flower (The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad) on yesterday.
FGM also known as female circumcision or female genital cutting which WHO (World Health Organisation) has defined as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons." An impractical culture practice of a destructive procedure that has been handed down for generations because of the belief that it will result in chaste and marriageable daughters in Horn of eastern Africa, northern Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan and northern Iraq. The procedure is often performed by an untrained practitioners on girls between infancy and age fifteen, usually without anesthesia or proper surgical tools (a needle and thread to stitch the girl back together after the cutting or thorns plucked from nearby bushes are used) to set the wound until it seals. It not only causing intense pain and psychological trauma, it also poses severe short- and long-term health risks, including hemorrhage, infection and increased risk of HIV transmission, birth complications and even death.
It is estimated that around 140 million women and girls around the world are affected by this cruel practice, including 92 million in Africa. Waris Dirie (born in 1965), an internationally renowned Somali-born fashion model is one of who undergone FGM as a child and her extraordinary true story was brought on the screen in 2009.
TERENCE DANIEL DONOVAN
(14 September 1936 – 22 November 1996)
Waris Dirie (Liya Kebede)(her first name means in Somali Desert Flower) was born in Galkayo, Somalia, where she was one of a dozen children raised by a family of travelers. Waris grew up poor and at the age of three, like many girls in East Africa, she was the victim of genital mutilation. At thirteen, she was sold to marry a sixty years old man who has already got three wife and she decided to ran away from her oppressive life to Mogadishu when she was illiterate and impoverished, with nothing to her name but a tattered shawl.
Her first leg of a remarkable journey take her to London, where she worked as a house servant and later at a McDonald’s. At eighteen, she was discovered by one of the Britain’s leading fashion photographers, Terence Donovan and she became an international celebrity. In 1997, at the height of her modeling career, Waris spoke for the first time with Laura Ziv of the women's magazine Marie Claire about the FGM that she had undergone as a child, an interview which received worldwide media coverage. That same year, Waris abandoned her modeling career and became an UN Special Ambassador for the Elimination of FGM.
In the fall of 1995, the real Waris Dirie met jazz musician Dana Murray in a tiny jazz club in New York and soon after she gave birth to their son, Aleeke in 1997. However, the relationship eventually dissolved. Today, Waris Dirie lives in Austria with her two sons Aleeke and Leon.
WARIS DIRIE
“I feel that God made my body perfect the way I was born.
Then man robbed me, took away my power and left me a cripple.
My womanhood was stolen.
If God had wanted those body parts missing, why did he create them?
I just pray that one day no woman will have to experience this pain.
It will become a thing of the past.
People will say "Did you hear, female genital mutilation has been outlawed in Somalia?"
Then the next country, and the next, and so on, until the world is safe for all women.
What a happy day that will be, and that's what I'm working toward.
In'shallah, if God is willing, it will happen.”
This horrible tradition is still practiced in many countries around the world today and according to records kept by the United Nations more than 8000 girls become victims of this heinous crime every day. Dessert Flower is truly a touching, emotional and encouraging film that tells an incredible story of an incredible woman with an incredible spirit and nothing will make you appreciate your life more as a free woman after watching it.
Movie Trailer:
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Prayers for Bobby is a 2009 United States television movie, based on the book of the same name in 1995 by Leroy F. Aarons (December 8, 1933 – November 28, 2004). It is based on the true story of Mary Griffith, gay rights crusader whose teenage son committed suicide due to her religious intolerance.
Mary Griffith (Sigourney Weaver) is a devout Christian who raises her children with the conservative teachings of the Presbyterian Church. However, when her son Bobby (Ryan Kelley) confides to his older brother that he may be a gay, life changes for the entire family after Mary learns about his secret. Bobby's father and siblings slowly come to terms with his homosexuality but Mary believes that her son is committing a sin and encourages him to change his ways with the help of the church.
BOBBY GRIFFITH (Jun 24, 1963 - Aug 27, 1983)
Stricken with guilt, Bobby decides that his best option is to move out of the family home, hoping that some day, his mother will accept him. He moves to Oregon, giving up on his hopes of defeating homosexuality. He finds a boyfriend, David (Scott Bailey) at a gay bar. However, Mary is staunch in her position and makes it clear that she still does not want her son to continue as he is. Despite meeting David's parents who assure them that things will change, Bobby continues thinking of his mother's words and also sees David with another man. Finally, Bobby's subsequent depression and self-loathing intensifies as he blames himself for not being the "perfect" son and one night, he free falls off a freeway bridge into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler truck, which kills him instantly. The family receives the horrible news the following day and is devastated.
Faced with their tragedy, Mary begins to question herself and her Church's interpretation of the Scripture. Through her long and emotional journey, Mary slowly reaches out to the gay community and discovers unexpected support from a very unlikely source. She becomes acquainted with a local gay reverend, Reverend Owens (Marshall McClean) who convinces her to attend a meeting of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). It is there that she realizes that she knew Bobby was different from conception and that his true value was in his heart.
MARY GRIFFITH
"Homosexuality is a sin. Homosexuals are doomed to spend eternity in Hell. If they wanted to change, they could be healed of their evil ways. If they would turn away from temptation, they could be normal again if only they would try and try harder if it doesn't work. These are all the things I said to my son Bobby when I found out that he was gay. When he told me he was a homosexual my world fell apart. I did everything I could to cure him of his sickness.Eight months ago my son jumped off a bridge and killed himself. I deeply regret my lack of knowledge about gay and lesbian people. I see that everything I was taught and told was bigotry and de-humanizing slander. If I had investigated beyond what I was told, if I had just listened to my son when he poured his heart out to me, I would not be standing here today with you filled with regret. I believe that God was pleased with Bobby's kind and loving spirit. In God's eyes kindness and love are what it's all about. I didn't know that each time I echoed eternal damnation for gay people, each time I referred to Bobby as sick and perverted and a danger to our children. His self esteem and sense of worth were being destroyed. And finally his spirit broke beyond repair. It was not God's will that Bobby climbed over the side of a freeway overpass and jumped directly into the path of an eighteen-wheel truck, which killed him instantly. Bobby's death was the direct result of his parent's ignorance and fear of the word gay. He wanted to be a writer. His hopes and dreams should not have been taken from him but they were. There are children, like Bobby, sitting in your congregations. Unknown to you they will be listening as you echo "Amen", and that will soon silence their prayers. Their prayers to God for understanding and acceptance and for your love. But your hatred and fear and ignorance of the word gay will silence those prayers. So, before you echo "Amen" in your home and place of worship, think. Think and remember, a child is listening."
A tragic, heartbreaking and unnecessary suicide true life story of homosexuality.
Life, a precious gift. Be who you are and say what you feel,
You are a letter ... written not with pen and ink but with the Spirit of the living God.
2 Corinthians 3:3 NIV
Letters to God is a 2010 Christian drama film directed by David Nixon. The story was written by Patrick Doughtie about his son.
Tyler Doughtie was born on September 23, 1995. At age 3, he began playing soccer, which soon became the love of his life. He was also involved in cub scouts and later, AWANA. In 2003, Tyler was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive brain tumor called Medulloblastoma. He underwent surgery for thirty radiation treatments and four months of high dose chemotherapy. Nine months later, in June of 2004, Tyler was re-diagnosed with Leptomeningeal disease, basically a side effect of the treatments. On March 7, 2005, Tyler passed away at the age of nine.
Inspired by the true story, the film tells about an eight years old little boy, Tyler Doherty (Tanner Maguire) stricken with brain cancer, who prays in the form of letters to God on a daily basis and the letters find their way into the hands of Brady McDaniels (Jeffrey Johnson), a beleaguered postman standing at a crossroads in his life. At first, Brady is confused and conflicted over what to do with the letters, he tries to hand them off to a local pastor but the pastor tells him to deal with it himself and he gets the same message from his boss, co-workers and friends. Eventually, they inspire him to seek a better life for himself and his own son that he's lost through his alcohol addiction.
TYLER AND PATRICK DOUGHTIE
An uplifting and inspirational film of hope, redemption and courage about the galvanizing effect of one young boy's shining spirit and unshakable faith can have on his family and friends. After Tyler passed away, Patrick was diagnosed with CLL (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia) and witnessing Tyler's brave bout with cancer, though he dealt with anger and depression off and on, it was finding Tyler’s and ultimately his purpose, to continue on and to be the messenger to share Tyler’s story with the world. By the way, Patrick's son, Brendan has an cameo role in the film as Brady's son.
Before the credit rolls, the film shows some real-life stories of people beating cancer and thriving in their faith. I hope this film will encourage those who are fighting battles against the cancers and to the families to remember to love and laugh and live with the ones who are still living.
Hope is living with courage and confident not fear. Life is not waiting for the storm to pass but go out and play in the rain! Thank God for everything and never, never, never forget you are loved.
Albert Pierrepoint, Britain’s most famous and prolific executioner who carried out 608 executions between 1932 and 1956. About half of them were Nazi war criminals, including William Joyce (one of the men dubbed "Lord Haw-Haw"), an Irish-American fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during the Second World War and John Amery, a British fascist whom he considered the bravest man he had ever hanged who proposed to the Wehrmacht the formation of a British volunteer force (that subsequently became the British Free Corps) and made recruitment efforts and propaganda broadcasts for Nazi Germany.
Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman, a 2005 British film directed by Adrian Shergold explored the life and career of Albert Pierrepoint, from the time he is first trained for the job and accepted onto the list of the country's official hangmen in 1932 until his resignation in 1956.
JOHN AMERY (14 Mar 1912 – 19 Dec 1945)
WILLIAM JOYCE (24 Apr 1906 - 3 Jan 1946)
Albert (Timothy Spall) born in Clayton, Bradford was the middle child and eldest son of Henry and Mary Pierrepoint (Maggie Ollerenshaw). He was influenced by the side-occupation of his father and uncle Thomas William (Bernard Kay) who both are an official executioners. In 1920s, after his father death, he works as a drayman for a wholesale grocer to deliver goods ordered through a travelling salesman. In 1930 he learns to drive a car and a lorry to make his deliveries. On 19 April 1931, Albert writes to the Prison Commissioners offering his services as an Assistant Executioner to his uncle should he or any other executioner retire. Few months later, Albert receives an official envelope inviting him to an interview at Manchester's Strangeways Prison but his mother Mary, having seen many such envelopes in Henry's time as an executioner is not happy at her son's career choice. After a week's training course at London's Pentonville Prison, Albert's name is added to the List of Assistant Executioners on 26 September 1932.
Albert views his job with seriousness and dedication, applying science and logic to each hanging. He can swiftly determine the proper length for the gallows rope, depending on the height, weight and physical condition of the condemned. While not a cruel or cold-hearted man by any means, Albert simply views execution as any other job and is not as visibly emotionally affected by it as some of his co-workers. On 29 August 1943, Albert married Annie Fletcher who had run a sweet shop and tobacconist two doors from the grocery where he worked.
Following the Second World War, the British occupation authorities conducted a series of trials of Nazi concentration camp staff and Albert is sent to Germany to hang forty-seven Nazi war criminals after the Belsen trials in November 1945. While he is staggered by the number of deaths he must conduct, he carries out his duties. Albert's inner values begin to emerge in his work when one of the bodies is left without a coffin, he angrily demands the coffin, saying that the man had paid the ultimate price and should now be treated with dignity. Over the next four years, he travelled to Germany and Austria twenty-five times to execute 200 war criminals. The press discovered his identity and he became a celebrity, hailed as a sort of war hero, meting out justice to the Nazis. The boost in income provided by the German executions allowed Albert to leave the grocery business and took over a pub on Manchester Road, Hollinwood named Help the Poor Struggler.
One morning, Albert receives a shock when he must execute a friend of his, James Henry Corbitt (Eddie Marsan) who Albert knows him as 'Tish'. James is a meek-looking man but had murdered his ex-lover in a jealous rage. Though Albert knows he must perform his job, he breaks his usual stoic demeanor and speaks kindly and calmly to James, who meets his fate in an almost content state. His last words are 'Thank you, Albert." and he smiles as the hood is put over his head.
RUTH ELLIS (9 Oct 1926 – 13 Jul 1955)
Albert goes to his pub that night and expresses his anguish to his wife. Annie is uncomfortable hearing Albert's inner turmoil, as their rule regarding his occupation had always been "never talk about it." Albert breaks down and confessed the guilt and misery he felt as he watched his friend hang by his own hand. He considers resigning from his profession altogether. Later he executes Ruth Ellis, a young, pretty and the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom after being convicted of killing her lover. Angry mobs outside the prison protest the execution and Albert's car is spat on and shaken as he drives home. After conducting over 600 executions and setting the fastest ever hanging record (7.5 seconds), Albert Pierrepoint officially resigns in 1956.
This is an excellent film based on true story of a family of executioners which detailed a psychological journey of a gruesome occupation told from the perspective of Albert Pierrepoint.
Albert and Annie Pierrepoint retired to the seaside town of Southport in the North West of England, South of Blackpool, where he died at the age of eighty-seven, on 10 July 1992 in a nursing home where he had lived for the last four years of his life.
ALBERT PIERREPOINT (30 March 1905 - 10 July 1992)
“As long as I can give in the last moments of these people,
whoever they are, whatever they’ve done,
if I can give them the respect and dignity at the last moment.
Milos Forman's film in 1996, The People vs. Larry Flynt follows the twenty-five years of Hustler Magazine Publisher Larry Claxton Flynt, Jr.'s life from his impoverished upbringing in Kentucky to his court battle with Reverend Jerry Falwell. It recounts his struggle to make an honest living publishing his porn magazine and how it changes into a battle to protect the freedom of speech for all people.
The film begins in 1953 with a ten years old Larry Flynt who is raised in poverty is selling moonshine (unlicensed alcohol) in Kentucky. Twenty years later, Larry (Woody Harrelson) and his younger brother, Jimmy (Brett Harrelson) found some success running the Hustler Go-Go club in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio. With the profits down, Larry decides to publish a newsletter for his business, the first Hustler magazine, which quickly became known as one of the most sexually explicit and shocking magazines in the country.
With the help from his wife Althea (Courtney Love) and brother Jimmy, Larry makes a fortune from the sales of his magazine. However, Larry soon found himself in constant legal trouble with his success comes. He befriends with a young lawyer, Alan Isaacman (Edward Norton) who defends him in the name of Free Speech and the First Amendment to the US Constitution (1791).
ALTHEA FLYNT (November 6, 1953 – June 27, 1987)
In 1978, Larry and Alan are both shot by a man with a rifle while they walk outside a courthouse during one of the trial. Alan recovers but Larry is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In 1983, Larry undergoes surgery to deaden several nerves and as a result, feels rejuvenated. He returns to an active role with the publication and publishes a satirical parody ad in which Reverend Jerry Falwell (Richard Paul) tells of a sexual encounter with his mother in an out-house near Lynchburg, Virginia. Jerry sued Larry, citing emotional distress caused by the ad. The case goes to trial in December 1984, the jury found in favor of Larry on the libel claim, but found in favor of Jerry on the intentional infliction of emotional distress charge and awarded Jerry $150,000 in damages. In 1988, Larry won an important Supreme Court decision, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, after an appealing.
JERRY LAMON FALWELL, SR. (August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007)
The film ends reveal that Larry Flynt lives in Los Angeles and his assailant was never brought to justice. Alan Issaacman is still Larry Flynt's attorney and Jerry Falwell remains as one of the most respected religious figures in America.
ALAN L. ISAACMAN (born July 12, 1942)
After Jerry Falwell's death, the real Larry Flynt stated he and Jerry Falwell had become friends over the years despite their differences. In the film, he himself made a cameo appearance as an Ohio judge and also a jury member in the court scene of the Jerry Falwell case.
This is an old film but I only watched it recently, one of the critics which I read and agreed with it, "This isn't a movie about Larry Flynt, the porn king. It's more a movie about the right to say what you want to say, without having to think of every person's opinion first."
This is a film which either you like it or you hate it and since I am into a biographical drama film, this film is still worth to watch.
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
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.
The Legend of 1900 (La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano) is a 1998 film directed by the Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore inspired by a theater monologue, Novecento (Nine Hundred) by Alessandro Baricco.
Shortly after the Second World War, Max Tonney (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a jazz musician enters a secondhand music shop just before the closing time to sell his Conn trumpet. He is broke and badly in need of money. Clearly torn at parting from his prized possession, he asks to play it one last time. The shopkeeper recognizes the tune from a broken record matrix he found inside a recently acquired secondhand piano from a cruise ship that served as a hospital ship in WWII and now slated for demolition. While the record is playing and Max begins to tell the story of 1900.
On the 1st of January in 1900, Danny Boodmann (Bill Nunn), the mechanic of the transatlantic liner Virginian bound for America, finds an abandoned baby in a box on board the ship. He decides to keep him and name the boy Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon 1900 (a combination of his own name, an advertisement found on the box and the year he born). Everyone call him by his nickname, 1900, the boy grows up and raises in the engine rooms hiding from the ship's officers until Danny's death in an accident. 1900, at his eight is forced to survive aboard on the ship as an orphan and for many years, he travels back and forth across the Atlantic. In 1927, 1900 (Tim Roth) a charming, iconoclastic young man befriends with Max who plays trumpet and together they join in the ship's orchestra. Increasingly lured by the sound of the piano in the first-class ballroom, 1900 eventually became a gifted pianist. He soon becomes a virtuoso whose reputation spreads beyond the confines of the ship. Even the famous jazz piano player, Jelly Roll Morton (Clarence Williams III) of New Orleans jazz fame gets on board for a challenge with him to a piano duel.
With all his life living on the ship, Max has encouraged 1900 to go on dry land but he never leaves the ship. Apparently, the outside world is too "big" for his imagination and he rather stays current in it. Max leaves the ship's orchestra in 1933.
Back to the mid-1940s, SS Virginian is scheduled to be scuttled and sunk far offshore. Max who believes that 1900 is still on the ship and attempts to convince him to leave the ship. But he is too daunted by the size of the world and feeling that his fate is tied to the ship, 1900 cannot bring himself to leave the only home he has known.
The film is not based on true story but the character acted by Clarence Williams III was real. Jerry Roll Morton (October 20, 1890 - July 10, 1941) who claimed to have invented jazz outright in 1902, at the age of fourteen, he began working as a piano player in a brothel and in 2008, he was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
The Legend of 1900 is one of the best film with glorious music, beautiful cinematography and a terrific jazz piano duel that shouldn't be missed.
Love is always an open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself and relish love in the old age is like an aged wine; it becomes more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated and more intoxicating!
Four senior citizens, Kim Man-Seok (Lee Soon-Jae), Song Ee-peun (Yun So-Jeong), Jang Kun-Bong (Song Jae-Ho) and Jang's wife Jo Soon-yi (Kim Soo-Mi) living in a hillside village.
Kim is a widow and a cranky milkman with a short fuse and a foul mouth. He wakes the village early each morning with his noisy, battered motorcycle to deliver the milk in the neighborhood. One day when he goes up a slope, he meets Song, a lonely woman who scavenges for scrap paper to sell for her daily expenses while roaming around the town at daybreak. Both of them had a tragic post-love story; Kim had a loving wife but he neglected her and eventually led to her death due to an unattended cancer; Song believes she is getting bad karma for leaving her mother and not being able to save her sick child when her husband left them. As two of them meet again and again each days, Kim feels something special towards Song and they slowly develop the kind of love which makes Kim smile from ear to ear just at the thought of Song.
Song parks her handcart at a junkyard and gets to know Jang, the caretaker of the parking lot next to the scrap yard. Jang has a wife who suffers from Alzheimer's after their three children left them to start their own families. Jang works from dawn till late at night and takes care of his wife after work when he comes home. One day, Jang wakes up late to work and forgets to lock his house door and asks Song to fasten it for him. Meanwhile, Jang’s afflicted wife, Jo walks out from the unlocked house and wanders around in the town. Fortunately, Kim sees her in the playground and drive her around to find her home. Jo happily sitting on the back of Kim’s motorbike and thinking that is Jang who driving her in a blossom garden.
The film revolves around four of them, a simple yet truly endearing tale of beautiful twilight love. You will smile for the sweetest moments between Kim and Song and laugh for the funniest friendship times between them until the bittersweet ending of the two couples that makes you cry.
Towards the end of the film, Jang gathers all his three children, daughter-in-laws, son-in-law and grandchildren in his house just to see them the last time before he griefs to make the decision to commit suicide together with his wife after he finds out that she is suffering from a terminal illness. In an enclosed room with charcoal burning stove, Jang says to his wife, "I will still want to be with you again in our next life ... ..." The next morning, they were found died on the bed holding each other hands.
After attending the funeral, Song decided to leave Kim as she realised that death will happen to them in the near future too and she will not be able to bear the bitterness of separation with Kim. She wants to keep the sweet memories of them in her heart.
The film ends with a doctor removing the oxygen mask from Kim in the hospital while he smiling and imagines of driving Song on his back in his old motorbike ... ...
Life's greatest happiness is to have someone hand in hand in life.
Children of Heaven (Bacheha-Ye aseman), a 1997 Iranian family drama film written and directed by Majid Majidi. The first Iranian movie to ever be nominated by the Academy Awards for best foreign language film.
Set in Majidi's native Tehran, the film begins with Ali (Mohammad Amir Naji) sitting beside a shoemaker who is repairing a tiny pair of worn shoes that belong to his little sister Zahra (Bahare Seddiqi). Ali then carries the shoes to a fruit market and leaves them outside the door unattended to buy some potatoes. Unfortunately, a garbageman accidentally picks up the shoes, hidden in a bag and takes them away.
Ali's family, whose poverty makes it necessary for the children to bear many adult responsibilities, is behind on the rent for their tiny, one-room apartment. Ali fears to tell his parents about the mishap since his father (Reza Naji) who is employed in an office, would have to borrow money to buy Zahra another pair of shoes, but without the shoes Zahra can't go to school. So the children come up with their own solution: they decided to share Ali's equally worn Converse sneakers since they go to school at different times. Zahra will wear them to school in the morning and race back to return them to Ali at midday so he can attend afternoon classes. However, this uncomfortable arrangement between him and his sister leads to one adventure after another as they attempt to hide it from their parents and teachers and a matter of time when even Ali's shoes will wear out.
Finally, Ali enters a high-profile children's long distance footrace in the school. The third prize is one week at a vacation camp and a pair of brand new sneakers which he promises that he will win for the sneakers to Zahra ... ...
A wonderful and moving film revolving around Ali and Zahra and their adventures over a lost pair of shoes in a typical Iranian village and family, where a simple standard daily belongings to us turns to be a pure decadence to them.
Too often we under estimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
The Blind Side, written and directed by John Lee Hancock released in 2009 is based on the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis tells the remarkable true story of Baltimore Ravens of the NFL offensive lineman left tackle Michael Oher (born May 28, 1986).
Michael grew up in the inner city housing projects in Memphis, Tennessee and was one of twelve children born to Denise Oher. His mother was an alcoholic and crack cocaine addict. His father, Michael Jerome Williams was frequently in prison and was murdered in prison when Michael was a senior in high school. Due to his impoverished upbringing, he received little attention and discipline during his childhood. He attended eleven different schools during his first nine years as a student. He was placed in foster care at age seven and alternated between living in various foster homes and periods of homelessness.
The film begins with seventeen years old Michael, at the instigation of acquaintance Tony Hamilton (Omar J. Dorsey)(based on Tony Henderson who in real life runs an athletic program that mentors teens in his neighborhood), an auto mechanic with whom he was living temporarily requests Burt Cotton (Ray McKinnon)(Hugh Freeze in real-life), the coach of Wingate Christian school (a fictional representation of Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis, Tennessee) to help Michael enroll to the school. Impressed by Michael's size and athleticism and Coach Burt gets him admitted despite his abysmal academic record. At his new school, Michael is befriended by a boy named Sean Jr. "SJ" (Jae Head). SJ's mother Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) is a strong-minded interior designer and the wife of wealthy businessman Sean Tuohy (Tim McGraw).
SUE MITCHELL
One rainy night, Leigh Anne notices Michael wearing only cutoff blue jeans and a t-shirt, shivering in the cold is walking down the road. When she learns that he is walking to the school gym to escape the weather and find warmth place to sleep, she offers him a place to sleep at her house. The next morning, when she sees Michael leaving, she asks him to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with her family. Slowly, Michael becomes a member of the Tuohy family. When Leigh Anne seeks to become Michael's legal guardian, she is told that even though he scored low in almost every category in a career aptitude test, he is in the ninety-eight percentile in protective instincts.
Michael is allowed to join the school football team after his grades improve and he has a shaky start due to his polite and gentle nature. He wasn't able to get the hang of the game and its rules and he wasn't able to understand what his role in the field was until Leigh Anne tap into his protective instincts to explain him how to play in the field. From that moment, Michael starts to play well and be useful to his team. An opportunity arises for Michael to play at university level, however, he needs to improve his grades. Hence, Leigh Anne hires a private tuition teacher, outspoken and kind Miss Sue (Kathy Bates) who worked five nights a week for four hours at a time to teach him and raised his GPA from a 0.6 to a 2.05 by the time he graduated in 2005.
SEAN JR., SEAN SR., LEIGH ANNE, MICHAEL OHER & COLLINS
When coaches from three respective universities come to recruit Michael, SJ talks to the coaches and leads the negotiations on Michael's behalf. Michael chooses the university where Sean had played for and where Leigh Anne was a cheerleader. That causes Investigator Granger (Sharon Morris) to move onto the matter before Michael arrives and she questions him as though they were holding interrogatory preceding at a police station. She thinks that the Tuohys and Miss Sue are using Michael to benefit that particular university. After thinking and questioning Leigh Anne on the matter, Michael realizes that the Tuohys are now his family and he tells Granger that that's the reason for him to choose that university.
The film ends showing the 2009 NFL Draft with the real Michael Oher being drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the first round. Eight years after the Tuohys brought Michael into their home, they are just as devoted to him as ever and Michael bought his own home, lives in suburban Baltimore and Leigh Anne, an interior decorator helped him to decorate his house.
Most of the scenes in the film are based on real-life; the “White Walls” essay that was read by his biology teacher, the car accident, the No.74 jersey, the real Michael Oher never had his own bed before seventeen years old, he inspired the Tuohy family to sit around the dinner table and the encounter on the side of the road except it was on a snowy November morning in 2002 during Thanksgiving break and Leigh Anne didn’t offer Michael a place to stay immediately instead on the next day where she couldn't ignore that he had been out in the cold in cutoff jeans and a t-shirt, the same outfit he was seen wearing every day in the school.
An inspiring and touching story that will have you laughing along and fall in love with the characters, especially the little boy in the film, he was cute and his lines were incredibly funny.
People don't care how much you know
until they know how much you care. No acts of kindness, no matter how small is ever wasted.
Everybody's Fine is a 2009 American drama film that is written and directed by Kirk Jones. A remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 Italian film, Stanno Tutti Bene.
Frank Goode (Robert De Niro), an eight months widowed retiree lives by himself in Elmira, New York, is getting ready for his children, David (Austin Lysy), Rosie (Drew Barrymore), Amy (Kate Beckinsale) and Robert (Sam Rockwell) to come visit him in the summer for the first family get-together after their mother died. However, one by one though, each of them call to cancel on him at the last minute.
Deflated at first, Frank decides to head out on a cross-country trip to pay them all a surprise visit, despite warnings against travel from his doctor who says he needs to rest. He is chronically ill with cardiac and respiratory problems from his life work making PVC-covered power lines. He deceives his children about his health and telling them that he is fine. Frank travels by train to each of his children's homes, beginning with his artist son David who is absent from his New York apartment. His daughter Amy, the advertising executive in Chicago, his son Robert, the conductor on tour and presently in Denver and his daughter Rosie who is a performer in Vegas. In each case, his visit appears to be untimely and he is quickly shunted from one sibling to another, all of whom seem to hiding things from him. Amy was hiding that her husband had an affair, that her creative director was her boyfriend and that her son wasn't at the top of his class. Robert hid that he was a percussionist and not the conductor of an orchestra. Rosie was hiding that she wasn't a dancer, her fancy apartment doesn't belong to her and she had a child without Frank knowing.
Frank then decides to return home by plane and suffers a heart attack just before the plane land. He has a vision of him taking the day off to talk to his children (depicted as youngsters). He asks them what on earth can he now say to their mother and the young Rosie replies, "Tell her nothing if you love her as she loves you. Tell her what she wants to hear. Tell her we're all fine".
While in the hospital with his children, they finally tell him the truth that David has died in Mexico of a drug overdose, he can't accept it and breaks down. Upon his release from the hospital, Frank goes back to the gallery where he sees a painting in the window painted by David and wants to buy it but it has been sold. The gallery assistant recognizes his surname and takes him to the storeroom to show him a picture of the home landscape with telegraph poles painted by David. A metaphor of Frank's life, a telephone cable maker who spent his entire life working to provide for his family. She tells him that David always said without his father's push, he would never have become an artist.
I like this film, so much reality existed in it; parents who still see their grown up children as small kids, children bringing the good news instead of the truth back home to spare the discomfort or to avoid being disapproved, a father who is worry yet too hard at times and children grown up with different paths in lives after leaving a family nest and becoming distant. A lot of similarities with the real life in a family.
In the film, when Robert and Rosie watching the back of Frank off in the train station and airport respectively, it reminds me the time when my parents sending me off in airport for a course trip and looking at my parents from the boarding gate, they have grow old so much that I have not realize as we are so busy with our lives and it just make you feel like you want to spend more time with them.
A sentimental film that reminds us of a FAMILY (Father and Mother I Love You). A healthy foundation for life's adventures to support you in times of need, to challenge you to grow and to celebrate with you in times of victory.
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.
“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,
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.
"They say you haven't lived unless you have a lot to regret. I regret ... I have some regrets. But I think we should remember not what we lost but what we've done." Alfred Blalock
The true life story of the first heart surgery in history - Something The Lord Made directed by Joseph Sargent in 2005 based on the National Magazine Award-winning Washingtonian magazine article "Like Something the Lord Made" by Katie McCabe.
The film tells the moving story of the thirty-four years partnership that begins in Depression Era Nashville in 1930 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee between one of the nation's pioneering cardiac surgeons, Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman) and an African-American carpenter, Vivien Thomas (Mos Def) as his lab assistant.
Thomas, without a college degree, is a gifted mechanic and tool-maker with hands splendidly adept at surgery. In 1941, Blalock requests Thomas come along with him when he is offered as Chief of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Thomas arrived in Baltimore with his family in June of that year, confronting a severe housing shortage and a level of racism worse than they had endured in Nashville. Hopkins, like the rest of Baltimore is rigidly segregated where the only black employees are janitors in the hospital and where Thomas must enter by the back door.
HELEN BROOKE TAUSSIG
(May 24, 1898 - May 20, 1986)
Blalock and Thomas formed a very close relationship and together, they developed a shunt technique to bypass coarctation of the aorta. While they were working on this, the cardiologist Helen Taussig (Mary Stuart Masterson) presents Blalock with the problem of the blue baby syndrome - a congenital heart defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot which results in inadequate oxygenation of the blood.
The film dramatizes their race to save a dying blue baby against the background of a Jim Crow (racial segregation) in America, illuminating the nuanced and complex relationship the two sustain. Thomas earns Blalock's unalloyed respect, with Blalock praising the results of Thomas' surgical skill as being "like something the Lord made" and insists that Thomas coach him through the first blue baby surgery over the protests of Hopkins administrators.
Yet outside the lab, they are separated by the prevailing racism of the time. Thomas attends Blalock's parties as a bartender, moonlighting for extra income and when Blalock is honored for the Blue Baby work at the segregated Belvedere Hotel, Thomas is not among the invited guests. Instead, he watches from behind a potted palm at the rear of the ballroom.
ALFRED BLALOCK (Apr 5, 1899 - Sep 15, 1964) & VIVIEN THEODORE THOMAS (Aug 29, 1910 - Nov 26, 1985)
After Blalock's death, Thomas continued his work at Johns Hopkins Hospital training surgeons. In 1976, in a formal ceremony, Hopkins recognized Thomas' work and awarded him an honorary doctorate. A portrait of Thomas was placed on the walls of Johns Hopkins next to Blalock's portrait in the lobby of the Alfred Blalock Clinical Sciences Building.
The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to love others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
For those who are dog lovers will bring to mind on this 2009 film directed by Lasse Hallstrom based on a true life dog story of a remarkable loyalty of a Aikta in Japan, Hachiko to his owner even many years after his owner's death.
The film begins in a class with full of young students who are giving oral presentations about their personal heroes. One of the boy named Ronnie (Kevin DeCoste) stands up and begins to tell of his grandfather's dog, 'Hachiko'.
In Bedridge, Professor Parker Wilson (Richard Gere) finds an abandoned dog at the train station and is instantly captivated by the dog. When the station controller Carl Boilins (Jason Alexander) refuses to take him, Parker takes the puppy home overnight with the intention of returning the dog to its owner the next day. But no one has and Parker convinces his wife, Cate (Joan Allen) to welcome him as part of the family. A Japanese friend Ken Fujiyoshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawareads) translates the symbol on the pup's collar as 'Hachi', Japanese for 'good fortune' and the number eight. Hence, Parker decides to call the dog 'Hachi'.
SHIBUYA STATION (1912-1945)
Hachi is a somewhat peculiar dog that refuses to learn normal, dog-like things like chase and retrieve a ball but he is a faithful companion and friend to Parker, alerting him of potential dangers and accompanying him to the train station each morning and meeting him there after his return trip each evening. This continues for some time, until one afternoon Parker attempts to leave but Hachi barks and refuses to go with him. Parker eventually leaves without him but Hachi chases him, holding his ball. Parker is surprised but pleased that Hachi is finally willing to play fetch the ball with him. Worried that he will be late for the college, Parker leaves on the train despite Hachi barking at him. At work that day, Parker still holding Hachi's ball is teaching his music class when he suddenly suffers a fatal heart attack.
HIDESABURO UENO
(May 1871-May 21, 1925)
HACHIKO
(Nov 10, 1923-Mar 8, 1935)
At the train station, Hachi waits patiently as the train arrives but there is no sign of Parker. He remains, lying in the snow for several hours until Parker's son-in-law comes to collect him. The next day, Hachi returns to the station and waits, remaining all day and all night. For the next nine years, Hachi is old and achy, waiting at the station for his owner. Late at night, Hachi returns to the train station and closes his eyes for the last time. Then, Parker walks out of the station and greets him as if nothing has changed at all and the two reunite as their spirits rise up to Heaven to be together forever.
A moving sad true story about loyalty and the rare, invincible bonds that occasionally form almost instantaneously in the most unlikely places. In real life, Professor Ueno took Hachiko in 1924 and the pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage and died, never returning to the train station where Hachiko was waiting. Every day for the next nine years, Hachiko waited at Shibuya station and his legendary faithfulness became a national symbol of loyalty in Japan till today.
On April 8 each year, Hachi's devotion is honored with a solemn
ceremony of remembrance at Tokyo's Shibuya railroad station with
hundreds of dog lovers often turn out to honor his memory and loyalty.
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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