Collector inadvertently helps another find his past

"Everything is Illuminated," a film that came out in 2005 with Elijah Wood, is a wonderful movie that tells a story of one collector who is moved to find out where a photograph came from and to thank a woman for saving his grandfather's life.
Jonathon (Wood) is the collector and travels to the Ukraine to find a small village that more or less vanished during the Holocaust. His tour guides, Eugene and Eugene's grandfather, end up being related to this village as well, though you're not sure how until the end of the film. Though Eugene does not know it, his grandfather is from the village and pretended to be dead and ignored his Jewish heritage so he could survive. All throughout the film it seems that perhaps the grandfather was one of the soldiers who killed the Jews. He ends up taking his life in the end, once they have left the village and he tells the women the collector is looking for that the war is indeed over. She has been living in a house near the no longer existing village surrounded by sunflowers and collecting items from the village and cataloguing them since the war.
Though Jonathan and his guides start off on a rocky start, they end up respecting one another and having a weird understanding of one another.
I highly recommend the independent film.

Dancing and singing in "Bride and Prejudice" makes for an exciting remake

By Tiffany Young
Based on Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice," "Bride and Prejudice" is a movie in English that takes on Bollywood-type qualities with music and dance throughout.

A fun musical, the movie begins in a small town in India where Lalita lives with her three sisters. Her mother is trying to marry her daughters off to rich men, so she does not have to worry about them.

A wedding is taking place, bringing a wealthy man, Balraj—who is interested in Lalita's sister—back to India. He brings Darcy, a wealthy American and one of his best friends, and his sister along on the trip.

While Darcy would rather be working, Lalita catches his eye with her beauty and her dance moves, but Darcy seems to say all the wrong things whenever he attempts to speak to Lalita causing her to dislike him even though he caught her eye at once, too.

Throughout the movie, the two run into each other through Balraj, and later through a business acquaintance of Darcy, Kholi, a distant relative of Lalita's looking for a bride to take back to America. Lalita is meant to be set up with Kholi, but she refuses him, leaving her best friend next in line. When her best friend decides to marry Kholi, Lalita's family is on their way to California where her destined meeting with Darcy continues.

Meanwhile, however, another man has entered the picture, a man known by his last name, Wickham, who says all the right things to Lalita and all the wrong things about Darcy—confirming Lalita's opinions of him.

But when he gives up his first class seat to her mother on the trip to Los Angeles, Lalita gives him a chance and goes on a few dates with him. His mother is not keen on his dating an Indian girl and invites his girlfriend—someone he does not seem interested in and is dating only because his mother wants him to—to the wedding. Since Lalita did not realize he was dating someone, she is upset and after the wedding Darcy tracks her down to express his love for her. Darcy says the wrong things again, however, causing her to tell him he is the last person he would want to be with.

He follows her to India, which turns out to be a good thing, since Wickham has been seeing Lalita's little sister, Lucky, behind her back and is now planning on seducing her. When Lalita finds out Wickham had gotten Darcy's little sister pregnant attempting to get her family money, Lalita trusts Darcy to help her find Lucky and Wickham. They find him and he and Darcy get into a fight in which Lucky sees he was always interested in her older sister anyway and they both leave him for good.

Darcy still has to make a few things right, but when he explains himself, Lalita's heart is finally won.

French film "Priceless"

I mentioned my love of libraries in my last post and one reason for that beyond the extensive list of books is that I can use the library as my very own "Blockbuster." Only it's free and has a wider variety of films!

For instance, yesterday I went to pick up a book I had on hold, "Pilgrim's Progress," and decided to pick up the first film I saw, "Priceless."

I didn't know it was a French film, but I thought perhaps it could be judging from the back description saying it was set on the French Riviera.

Sure enough, I had picked up a French film, which I would never do at Blockbuster. I'm not even sure they have much of a list of foreign films.

It turned out to be a very cute romantic comedy in which a bell boy and bartender for a swanky hotel falls for a woman who goes from man to man trying to find a rich husband and has nothing to own for herself. Thinking he is rich, she falls into his bed only to find out when her fiance has left her he has little money to speak of. She goes around spending his money like a little spoiled girl until he spends his last euro for ten more seconds with her.

But then he becomes a boy toy for an older woman and begins playing her own games. They sneak around their "lovers'" backs, but how long can they keep their secret and will love or money prevail?