2011-05-01

The Bodyguard stories beetween love and duty

The Bodyguard is a 1992 American romantic-thriller film starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. Costner stars as a former Secret Service Agent turned bodyguard who is hired to protect Houston's character, a music star, from an unknown stalker. Lawrence Kasdan wrote the film in the 1970s, originally as a vehicle for Steve McQueen and Diana Ross. It was directed by Mick Jackson. The Bodyguard stories beetween love and duty

Synopsis:

Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston) is an Oscar-nominated music superstar who is being stalked and sent death threats. Frank Farmer (Kevin Costner), a former Secret Service agent during Ronald Reagan's presidency-turned professional bodyguard, is hired to protect her.

The film follows Rachel's life through her career and family. Performances include her singing hits such as "I Will Always Love You" and "I Have Nothing". Frank successfully protects her from danger and as a result of his protection, Rachel falls in love with Frank. He initially tries to keep the relationship professional, but the two sleep together. However, recognizing that their relationship may compromise his protection of her, Frank breaks off their affair. Rachel must put her trust in Frank ahead of her own desire for success. In the end, Frank's duty is fulfilled, having successfully protected Rachel, and they part with a kiss. Frank then moves on to his next assignment, guarding the Reverend Philip Hardy with the First Presbyterian Church of Iowa Rapids.

When Harry Met Sally... a film about love and friendship

When Harry Met Sally... is a 1989 American romantic comedy film written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner. It stars Billy Crystal as Harry and Meg Ryan as Sally. The story follows the title characters from the time they meet just before sharing a cross-country drive, through twelve years or so of chance encounters in New York City. The film raises the question "Can men and women ever just be friends?" and advances many ideas about love that became household concepts, such as those of the "high-maintenance"girlfriend and the "transitional person".

The origins of the film came from Reiner's return to single life after a divorce. An interview Ephron conducted with Reiner provided the basis for Harry. Sally was based on Ephron and some of her friends. Crystal came on board and made his own contributions to the screenplay, making Harry funnier. Ephron supplied the structure of the film with much of the dialogue based on the real-life friendship between Reiner and Crystal. The soundtrack consists of standards performed by Harry Connick, Jr., with a big band and orchestra arranged by Marc Shaiman. Connick won his first Grammy Award for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance.

Columbia Pictures released the film using the "platform" technique, which involved opening it in a few select cities, letting positive word of mouth generate interest, and then gradually expanding distribution over subsequent weeks. When Harry Met Sally... grossed a total of US$92.8 million in North America. Ephron received a British Academy Film Award, an Oscar nomination, and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for her screenplay. The film is ranked 23rd on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs list of the top comedy films in American cinema and number 60 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". In early 2004, the film was adapted for the stage in a production starring Luke Perry and Alyson Hannigan. When Harry Met Sally... a film about love and friendship

Synopsis:

The movie is framed with stories of elderly couples telling stories about their relationships. Several stories are told throughout the movie.

The story begins in 1977. Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) finish college at the University of Chicago and meet when both need someone to share a drive to New York City, where Sally is beginning journalism school and Harry is presumably starting a career; at the time, Harry is dating a friend of Sally's, Amanda (Michelle Nicastro).

The film's underlying theme arises from their differing ideas about relationships between men and women which emerge during this journey. Harry evinces the view that "Men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way" ... even with ones "he finds unattractive". Sally disagrees, claiming that men and women can be strictly friends without sex. On the way, at a stop in a diner, Sally is angered when Harry tells her she is attractive; she accuses him of making a pass at her. In New York, due to their divergent philosophies, they part on less than friendly terms.

Five years later, they meet in a New York airport and find themselves on the same plane. Both are in relationships; Sally has just started dating a man named Joe - who happens to be an old friend of Harry's - and Harry is engaged to a woman named Helen, which surprises Sally. Harry suggests they become friends, forcing him to elaborate on his previous rule about male-female friendships; they can never be friends because sex part gets in the way. Despite Harry's suggestions of exceptions to that rule, they separate concluding that they will not be friends.

Harry and Sally meet yet again five years later, in a New York bookstore. They have coffee together and talk about their previous relationships, which have ended. After leaving the café, they take a walk and decide to be friends. In subsequent scenes, they have late-night phone conversations, go to dinner, and spend a lot of time together. Their dating experiences with others continue to highlight their different approaches to relationships and sex.

During a New Year's Eve party, Harry and Sally find themselves attracted to each other. Though they remain friends, they set each other up with their respective best friends, Marie (Carrie Fisher) and Jess (Bruno Kirby). The four go to a restaurant, where Marie and Jess hit it off; they ultimately get engaged. One night, Sally tearfully tells Harry over the phone that her ex, Joe (Steven Ford), is getting married to his legal assistant, and he rushes to her apartment to comfort her. They unexpectedly have sex that night, resulting in an awkward moment the next morning as Harry quickly leaves in a state of distress. This creates tension in their relationship. Their friendship cools for three weeks until the two have a heated argument during Jess and Marie's wedding dinner. Following this fight, Harry repeatedly attempts to mend his friendship with Sally.

Then, at a New Year's Eve party that year, Sally feels alone without Harry by her side. Meanwhile, Harry is shown spending New Year's alone. As she decides to leave the party early, Harry appears and declares his love for her; they make up and kiss.

The last segment, in which couples discussed their relationship histories, is an interview with Harry and Sally, talking about their wedding.

Titanic epic romance & disaster movie

Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson and Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated maiden voyage. Titanic epic romance & disaster movie

Cameron's inspiration for the film was predicated on his fascination with shipwrecks; he wanted to convey the emotional message of the tragedy, and felt that a love story interspersed with the human loss would be essential to achieving this. Production on the film began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the actual Titanic wreck. The modern scenes were shot on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, which Cameron had used as a base when filming the wreck. A reconstruction of the Titanic was built at Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, and scale models and computer-generated imagery were also used to recreate the sinking. The film was partially funded by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox – respectively, its American and international distributors – and at the time, it was the most expensive film ever made, with an estimated budget of $200 million.

Upon its release on December 19, 1997, the film achieved critical and commercial success. It equaled records with fourteen Academy Award nominations and eleven Oscar wins, receiving the prizes for Best Picture and Best Director. With a worldwide gross of over $1.8 billion, it was the first film to reach the billion dollar mark, remaining the highest-grossing film of all time for twelve years, until Cameron's next directorial effort, Avatar, surpassed it in 2010. Titanic is also ranked as the sixth best epic film of all time in AFI's 10 Top 10 by the American Film Institute. The film is due for theatrical re-release in 2012 after Cameron completes its conversion into 3-D.

Synopsis:

In 1996, treasure hunter Brock Lovett and his team explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic, searching for a necklace called the Heart of the Ocean. They believe the necklace is in Caledon "Cal" Hockley's safe, which they recover. Instead of the diamond, they find a sketch of a nude woman wearing it, dated April 14, 1912, the night the Titanic hit the iceberg. Rose Dawson Calvert learns of the drawing, contacts Lovett, and tells him that she is the woman depicted. She and her granddaughter Elizabeth "Lizzy" Calvert visit Lovett and his team on his salvage ship. When asked if she knows the whereabouts of the necklace, Rose recalls her memories aboard the Titanic, revealing that she is Rose DeWitt Bukater, a passenger believed to have died in the sinking.

In 1912, 17-year-old first class passenger Rose boards the ship in Southampton, England with her fiancé Cal, the son of a Pittsburgh steel tycoon, and her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater. Cal and Ruth stress the importance of Rose's engagement, because the marriage will solve the DeWitt Bukaters' financial problems. Distraught by her engagement to Cal and the pressure her mother is putting on her, Rose considers suicide by jumping off the stern of the ship. Before she leaps, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson intervenes and persuades her not to jump. Jack and Rose develop a tentative friendship.

Cal and Ruth forbid that Rose see Jack. She defies them, meets Jack at the bow of the ship, and decides that she prefers him to Cal. They go to Rose's stateroom and she asks Jack to sketch her wearing nothing but the Heart of the Ocean, an engagement present from Cal. Afterward, the two flee Cal's bodyguard into the ship's cargo hold, where they make love, and then to the ship's forward well deck. There they witness the ship's collision with an iceberg and overhear the ship's officers and designer discussing its seriousness; Rose tells Jack they should warn her mother and Cal.

Cal discovers Jack's drawing and a note in his safe along with the necklace, so he has the Heart of the Ocean slipped into Jack's coat pocket, framing him for stealing it. Jack is arrested, taken down to the Master-at-arms's office and handcuffed to a pipe. Cal puts the necklace in his coat but later gives the coat, and unwittingly the necklace, to Rose. Rose runs away from Cal and her mother (who has boarded a lifeboat) to break Jack free with an axe.

Jack and Rose struggle back to the deck where Cal and Jack persuade her to board another lifeboat, Cal claiming that he has made an arrangement that will allow both men to get off safely. After she boards, Cal doublecrosses Jack. Realizing that she cannot leave Jack, Rose reunites with him back on board Titanic. Infuriated, Cal takes a pistol and chases them into the flooding first-class dining saloon. After running out of ammunition, Cal returns to the boat deck and boards a lifeboat by pretending to look after an abandoned child.

As Jack and Rose return to the top deck, the lifeboats have all departed and passengers are falling to their deaths. The two take refuge on the stern as the ship sinks bow-first until they are washed overboard. Jack helps Rose onto a nearby wall panel that will only support one person’s weight. As he hangs onto the panel, he assures her that she will not die there and will instead die an old woman, warm in her bed. Jack eventually dies from hypothermia.

When a rescue boat returns to the site of the sinking, Rose blows a whistle taken from the uniform of a nearby deceased officer, and is taken by the RMS Carpathia to New York, where she gives her name as Rose Dawson. Hidden, she avoids Cal for the last time on Carpathia's deck as he searches for her. Old Rose mentions that Cal eventually commits suicide.

Her story complete, Rose goes alone to the stern of Lovett's ship. There she reveals the Heart of the Ocean has been in her possession all this time, and drops it into the ocean. Later, while seemingly asleep in her bed, the photos of her days surround her, a visual chronicle that she lived the life she wanted with Jack. The young Rose is then seen reuniting with Jack at the Grand Staircase of the Titanic, cheered and congratulated by those who perished on the ship.

Fly Me to Polaris a fantasy youth romantic movie

Fly Me to Polaris is a 1999 Hong Kong film directed by Jingle Ma and starring Cecilia Cheung and Richie Ren. Fly Me to Polaris a fantasy youth romantic movie

Synopsis:

The plot focuses on the character Onion (Ren) who became blind and mute during his childhood. Onion works at a hospital and gets to know the nurse Autumn (Cheung). Onion asks Autumn out on a date and when she says yes, he is so happy that he trips over a rock and is run over by a car. The death of Onion made Autumn realize that she was really deeply in love with him.

Because he was the 6 billionth to die in heaven, Onion is granted a wish. He wishes to return to Earth for 5 days, since that is the longest he is allowed to go back. Unfortunately the rules stipulate that he cannot tell anyone who he really is and that, at the same time, he will be not be recognized as Onion himself by his former friends.

Upon returning to Earth, Onion tries to talk to Autumn, who is upset over his death. He tries to tell her who he really is but can't without breaking the rules, and finds her being wooed by a doctor. He wastes a few days trying to tell her but finally gives up and makes the most of the time he has with her.

At the end of the week, she realizes that he is Onion. But by that time, there are only few minutes left until the meteor showers, flying him back to Polaris.

A Walk in the Clouds a magical film with tremendous heart

A Walk in the Clouds is a 1995 American romantic drama film directed by Alfonso Arau. The screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen, Mark Miller, and Harvey Weitzman is based on the 1942 Italian film Four Steps in the Clouds by Piero Tellini, Cesare Zavattini, and Vittorio de Benedetti. A Walk in the Clouds a magical film with tremendous heart

Synopsis:

Shortly after the surrender of Japan, marking the end of World War II, United States Army Sgt. Paul Sutton returns to San Francisco to reunite with his wife Betty, whom he married — following a whirlwind courtship — the day before he departed for the Pacific. The war has left him with emotional scars, and he experiences flashbacks on a regular basis.

Paul's reunion with Betty is strained, especially after he discovers most of the letters he wrote her were set aside unopened. He is determined to make a go of the marriage however, and hopes to establish a new career for himself. Betty insists he continue to sell chocolates door-to-door, and he sets off to Sacramento. En route, he meets fellow bus passenger Victoria Aragon, a Stanford University graduate student whose Mexican-American family owns a vineyard in the Napa Valley. When he learns the unmarried woman is pregnant by her professor, Paul offers to introduce himself to her very traditionalist family as her husband.

Victoria's father is infuriated, not only that she married a man below her social standing, but without his permission as well. Paul's initial plan to quietly slip away and continue on his journey, leaving Victoria's family to believe he abandoned her, is derailed when her grandfather Don Pedro encourages him to stay and help with the harvest. During the harvest Paul (an orphan) grows closer to the family and learns the joys that come with their tradition, roots, and way of life. Paul and Victoria try to ignore their growing attraction and feelings for each other, but with little success. However Paul's honor prompts him to attempt to salvage his marriage and return home, but when he does he discovers his wife is involved with another man. She has applied for an annulment, to which he happily agrees, and he returns to the Aragon estate to ask Victoria to marry him.

An argument with her angry and drunk father leads to a disastrous fire which destroys the vineyard. However Paul remembers one plant that may still have its roots intact and races off to retrieve them and bring them back to the family. The disaster (as well as Paul's bravery and dedication during the fire) has brought Victoria's father to realize his errors. So when Paul returns he accepts him, telling him that this is "his family" and "his roots". The family sets out to replant and rebuild with the help of their newest member.

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai a Hindi romantic comedy film

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happens) is a Hindi romantic comedy film, released in India and the United Kingdom on 16 October 1998. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai a Hindi romantic comedy film

The film was written and directed by the debuting Karan Johar and stars the popular on-screen pair of Shahrukh Khan and Kajol in their fourth movie together. Rani Mukerji features in a supporting role, while Salman Khan has an extended cameo appearance. The film was extremely successful both in India and abroad, winning major awards in all categories including the Best Film award at the 44th Annual Filmfare Awards,[3] Lux Zee Cine Awards, Sansui Viewers' Choice Awards, Aashirwad Awards, Bollywood Movie Awards and the National Film Awards.

Synopsis:

Rahul Khanna (Shahrukh Khan) is a widower who has an 8-year-old daughter, Anjali (Kajol). Her mother Tina (Rani Mukherji) has left her eight letters with a dying wish that one letter be read on each birthday. On her eighth birthday, Anjali reads her mother's last letter, that tells her the last wish of her mother. How Anjali fulfills her mother's wish forms the crux of the story.

Rahul Khanna and the tomboy Anjali Sharma are students at St. Xavier's College. They are the best of friends. One day Tina Malhotra, the principal's daughter, enrolls at St. Xavier's. She comes from London, and she is beautiful, feminine, and sophisticated; she is the antithesis of Anjali. Rahul falls hard for Tina as soon as he meets her and actively pursues her.

However, a comment he makes in class about love, saying he can only love his best friend, makes Anjali realise that she has feelings for Rahul. A love triangle begins to develop. Seeing Rahul's interest in Tina, Anjali strives to be more like Tina and, for the first time in her life, begins to act more feminine. However, her attempts are only met with laughter from the rest of the school and from Rahul himself, although Tina scolds him for it. Anjali is finally motivated to tell Rahul outright that she loves him, however, before she can, Rahul confesses to her his love for Tina, leaving Anjali's heart broken.

Anjali leaves college suddenly, despite Rahul and Tina's attempts to convince her to stay as her train is leaving. When she admits that she may never return, Rahul, still unaware of Anjali's feelings for him, feels betrayed that she didn't tell him. They exchange tearful goodbyes, and Rahul is devastated. Anjali never calls or writes.

Tina and Rahul marry and have a daughter but, due to complications, Tina dies shortly after childbirth. Before she dies, she makes Rahul promise to name their daughter Anjali. She leaves her daughter a series of eight letters, to be given to her on each of her birthdays until she turns eight. Every year, on Anjali's birthday, she is given a letter and hears her mother's loving wishes for her; these letters become treasured memories of the mother she never knew.

In the eighth and last letter, the little girl is told about her namesake. Where Rahul had been blind, Tina had noticed Anjali's emotions and pitied her deeply. Tina had always felt guilty for coming between what she recognised as a deep love. In the letter, Tina instructs her daughter to find the older Anjali and reunite her with Rahul. Because Rahul hasn't remarried, perhaps his first love could be the mother that the young Anjali needs and wants. Taking her mother's words to heart, young Anjali soon recruits her doting grandmother (Rahul's mother, played by Farida Jalal) and grandfather (Tina's father, played by Anupam Kher) as accomplices.

It is revealed that the older Anjali has changed considerably from her tomboyish college days and is now a beautiful, well-groomed woman, engaged to be married to Aman Mehra (played by Salman Khan). Though Anjali confesses privately that she doesn't love her fiancé and will never love anyone but Rahul, she is set to marry Aman within a week. When little Anjali hears of this, she begins to pray. Miraculously, her prayers are answered, and the wedding is postponed to December.

Younger Anjali and her conspirators learn that the older Anjali will be a dance instructor/counselor at a summer camp. The younger Anjali begs Rahul to let her go; he relents, with her granny accompanying her. Her namesake discovers, without the younger girl's knowledge, the truth of her new charge's parentage. Rahul greatly misses his daughter while she is away; when she sneezes during a phone call home, he immediately rushes to be at her side. When he arrives, he and his former best friend are shocked to see each other again. After a basketball game reminiscent of their college days and a revealing game of charades, they soon find old feelings reviving. They share a tender moment alone, but Anjali is stricken with guilt, since she is engaged. To complicate matters, Anjali's fiancé arrives at the summer camp, and Rahul soon finds out that they are engaged. Though hurt by this news, he tells Anjali how happy he is for her and, interpreting his happiness as another rejection, she decides to leave camp and move up her wedding date.

The wedding date arrives, and a deeply unsettled Anjali prepares to be married, which would mean losing Rahul forever. Rahul and young Anjali attend the wedding, both of them clearly devastated. Rahul goes to see Anjali before she descends the stairs and, as a result, Anjali gets cold feet. Aman, following on something he earlier joked about, drags her down the steps to the wedding. Aman realises he'd be coming between a fated love and decides to step aside to let them be together at last. As the ecstatic Rahul and Anjali gets married, a beaming vision of Tina appears and gives the thumbs up to little Anjali.