Dragonfly

Year: 2002

Genre: Drama

Direction: Tom Shadyac

Cast : Kevin Costner, Susanna Thompson, and Kathy Bates

Rating: Good

The movie is about a doctor, who loses his wife, who was seven months pregnant - also a doctor, to a tragic accident, and is grieving the loss. He later sees signs of his wife trying to contact him through her patients who experience near-death situations. All the patients, draw wiggly crosses and ask him to go to the end of the rainbow. He initially has no clue of where is it that they are asking him to go. He tries to focus on other things but these signs follow him even at home like his pet parrot behaving oddly, he seeing a glimpse of his wife out of the window, and a dragonfly paperweight falling by itself onto the floor.

The story moves on while he finally seems to understand where he is supposed to go. He goes to the village where his wife was serving before the accident took place and is finally led by the villagers to a hut. A woman leads him into the hut saying that though they were not able to save her body, they saved her soul. In the hut, he finds, in a basket, a beautiful baby girl, his daughter, which was what his wife was trying to inform him about. His wife had given birth to the premature kid before her death. Similar to his wife's birthmark, the baby also has a dragonfly mark close to her ankle.

The movie, though not that great, has some beautiful shots, and some emotional scenes. The background score also seemed a little different and interesting.

Halfway through, I realized that this was the film based on which the Hindi movie Saaya was made.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Year: 2009

Genre: Romance and Fantasy

Direction: Robert Schwentke

Cast: Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams

Rating: Very Good

The movie is based on a novel of the same title. It deals around the love story of Henry, who has the ability to travel across time - to his future as well as past, and his wife, Clare.

It shows how Henry time travels to meet the little Clare as a kid, knowing that she would be his wife, travels to the past to meet his mom, and even to different places.

Henry, though has this special power is not always too happy as he cannot control the urge to travel and hence sometimes is away for hours and days altogether. This creates tensions in his family life. Slowly Clare learns to adjust as the wife of a time traveler. Amidst all the tensions, not being together during Christmas, losing two kids before they are born, they still share a very special bond.

Another interesting part of the story is that Henry travels to the future to meet his child and also gets to know when he is to die. But he is not capable of changing anything that is supposed to happen. Henry's daughter, Alba, also has the ability to time travel but is different from Henry as she can control the urge to time travel just by singing. The future Alba, at times comes to meet the younger Alba to the present and tell her things about the future.

The ending of the movie is filled with a lot of emotions and ends on a positive note which makes it even more pleasant.

The Lake House

Year: 2006

Genre: Romance and Fantasy

Direction: Alejandro Agresti

Cast: Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves

Rating: Excellent

The Lake House is a romantic movie and has a little complicated or rather unusual plot. It centers around two people who live two years apart from each other, falling in love.

Kate moves out of a lake house and leaves a letter for the next tenant to forward her mails to her new address. Alex receives the letter but is surprised as to his knowledge the house was vacant for several years. Kate mentions about paw prints leading to the house which was already there when she moved in, while, to Alex's surprise, there are no paw prints when he moves in and happens while he is staying there. Later, Kate tells him that she is in 2006 and Alex in 2004. The mailbox in front of the house is where they drop letters for each other. A lot of events happen further which makes them develop feelings for each other though they have not yet spoken or seen each. Things go further and Alex sees Kate in his present, which is actually the past for Kate.

Furthur, the movie reveals more interesting incidents which keep connecting them in the past and future. The movie is very romantic and keeps you completely hooked. Most of the elements in the movie are also very beautiful and romantic, like the maple tree, the house, mailbox, and so on.

The ending kind of seemed a bit confusing and complex. Reason - they finally meet at the same time frame. But I really loved the movie. Hope you also do.

Its Twilight Now

Yeah, it is the Twilight mania for me now. I can't put down the book without wanting to take it up and start reading again. I don't want to go to sleep, instead lie down and read and read and read. I just want to finish of my cooking and other chores so that I can just indulge in the pleasure of reading. Its real fun now. Seems like I have got back that pace of reading I used to have back in my college days. And as the thickness of the pages on the left hand side, while reading, increases, I am more motivated to keep reading.

I plan to write a review about the series. I have already completed the first two of the series - Twilight and New Moon. Started on with Eclipse. It is a pretty thick book and the last one - Breaking Dawn is even thicker.

Okay no more time to write. Need to catch up with my reading now.

Animated Movies!

I have been watching a lot of animated movies recently. It all started with Tangled. Before watching Tangled, I was not very fond of the animated movies. In other words, Tangled inspired me to go forward and watch all the good movie out there.

So to list all what I watched over the past few weeks:
- Ice Age (Dawn of the Dinosaurs)
- Ratatouille
- Finding Nemo
- Wall-E
- Monsters vs. Aliens

Well, to tell you the truth, I have been blown off my feet. I never knew I was turning myself away from such lovely movies. The stories are good and characters, awesome. Even after watching some of them, they linger on for a long and keep appearing in front of my eyes. Wall-e was one such character. I am highly impressed and loved the character to the core - his eyes, hands, and even the sounds he makes. Similarly, Nemo, Dory, and Marlin from Finding Nemo - all of these are wonderful characters.

And I still have some more movies to watch on my list now:
- Cars
- Up
- Sleeping Beauty

Will definitely keep you posted on how each movie is.

Finding Nemo

Year: 2010

Genre: Comedy and Animation

Direction:

Andrew Stanton

Voice: Albert Brooks (Marlin), Ellen DeGeneres (Dory), and Alexander Gould (Nemo)

Rating: Excellent

Phew, I wonder how I could miss it all these years! Such a lovely movie. I loved it from shot 1 to the very last shot. An extremely awesome and thrilling movie. What if it didn't have any humans to take the movie forward. Nemo, Dory, and Marlin were superb. It would be mean if I miss out any of the characters. All were cute and lovely.

Finding Nemo (2003) is the story of a single parent-a clown fish, Marlin, who raises his only son with extreme care and love, only to be taken away by an underwater diver-dentist to Sydney right in front of Marlin. This is how the movie begins. The rest of the movie shows how Marlin, who as Nemo says, is afraid to come out in the ocean from the coral reefs, swims across the ocean, miles and miles, to Sydney, to rescue his son. The journey is interesting as Dory joins (Psss, Dory is a sweetie with ahem, ahem, short-term memory loss - pretty interesting?). I loved the moments when Dory keeps referring to Nemo by names like Bingo, Fabio, and the like. I am highly excited as I write each word about the movie.

The animation is excellent. The fine details, vibrant colours, and the ease with which the characters move as in real life, is amazing. The voice overs also are commendable. I loved the attention given to each sound in the movie. To point out, each time Nemo kept fluttering his 'lucky fin', I could hear the fluttering. I mean, isn't that amazing? Well yes, I am a lot excited having watched this movie.

The movie went on to receive the Academy Award for the Best Animated Feature.

I loved the theme of the movie. To me, it was such a striking plot. It is easy for us to imagine and feel empathy towards a human losing his child and going all over the places, knocking doors in search of the kid. But what about a fish? Just imagine, swimming miles and miles underwater, to find his lost kid. I think it is a brilliant plot and was really touching as well. I really loved the way how emotions were portrayed by each of the characters.

And finally, I chose the poster for this post, so that it had almost all the characters in the movie. But I could not find Nemo in it. Can you find?

Tangled

Year: 2010

Genre: Animation

Direction: Nathan Greno and Byron Howard

Voice: Mandy Moore, Donna Murphy, and Zachary Levi

Rating: Excellent

Have you watched Tangled? No, please go and watch it. A complete entertainer. Based on the fairy tale of Rapunzel, the movie is put in a rather entertaining and comical way. It is an animated movie and kids would love it completely. Not only kids, even adults would, if you have a liking for fairy tales or animated movies. I am a complete lover of fairy tales and thus went for the movie. I was very excited right from the start till the end.

The movie is directed by Nathan Greno and Byron Howard. I am not sure of the actual cast or anyone who worked behind the screens for making the movie a great one. Rapunzel as well as Flynn Ryder were interesting. But what interested me the most were the characters, Pascal, the pet chameleon and Maximus, the royal horse. Pascal was really adorable and sweet. Maximus stole the limelight with his mannerisms and wit.

The movie is a musical and a total entertainer. You wouldn't even realize when the movie gets over. I just wanted to see it over and over again. It was a lovely watch. I loved how the lanterns were raised into the sky, how Rapunzel managed her hair and performed stunts with it.

Go watch it! :-)

Fairy Tales

I still remember that the the first fairy tale I read was that of the sleeping beauty. A princess falls asleep due to a curse on her and sleeps for a hundred years to be woken up only by the kiss of a young handsome prince. The most fascinating thing about these stories were the fantasy involved and the pictures in the books - I loved them. All those princes and princesses with wide blue eyes, red lips, and golden hair, the wonderful castles, the beautiful animals. Even an ugly toad looked cute in fairy tales.

Next book which captured my interest was Cinderella. Now there is nobody who doesn't know the story - rags to riches. Followed by that was Rumpeltiltskin, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, Pinnochio, The Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Beauty and the Beast, and so on.

How I loved these books as a child. I was thrilled by the colors - all vibrant and rich. But one thing, I don't know the authors of any. Or is there anything like that? No idea.

I loved the princess in The Sleeping Beauty and always wondered how she could sleep for all these years without waking. When I used to wake up to go to school in the early mornings, how I wished I could be the sleeping princess. The Little Mermaid scared me as there was a mention about a witch who took the princess's voice. Rapunzel was a real beauty. But the thought of the blinded prince falling to the ground made me sad. While the feelings evoked in me after reading Cinderella were different. I too wanted to turn things into beautiful things of my choice. I still love reading fairy tales but not online. I love them as small, thin books, with smooth pages and colorful pictures.