The movie Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (literal translation: The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain) revolves around Amélie Poulain(Audrey Tautou), a 22-year-old introvert. Amélie’s childhood frustrations propelled her to devise a defense mechanism that she keeps until adulthood: she created her own insular world. Misdiagnosed with a non-existing heart condition, her upbringing is starved of human interaction—and caused her to grow up as a shy and reserved woman who lives a quiet, albeit ordinary life. Although she has a few acquaintances, she prefers to keep all of them at an arm’s distance. Amélie frequently shuns other people’s company, and cultivated an unusually active imagination born out of a childhood of loneliness. Inadvertently, she began to crawl out of her shell when a pivotal moment—involving a perfume cap, a tin box, and the death of Princess Diana—happened in her life, and she accidentally resolves her own issues as she resolved to fix other’s.

Amélie is a whimsical, somewhat idyllic movie that frequently totters at the tip of fantasy, and pulls back at the very last second. The director’s (Jean-Pierre Jeunet) trademark quirky humor is prevalent all throughout the movie: the extreme camera angles and cuts, the talking pictures and portraits, and the lead character’s too-short haircut. The cinematography is exceptionally unique and bright: it has a lomo-esque quality that projects an illusion of an old, only-in-the-movies storybook setting. The script is sentimental without being cheesy, humorous with the faintest touch of romance. Every subplot is tightly sewn, the edges flawlessly sandpapered that it glides smoothly down your throat, and you won’t realize that it’s lodged itself in your heart.

Tautou’s performance is, without question, the movie’s most dazzling ingredient. She expresses much with such few words, revealing just enough of her character to make the viewer understand and know her. At the same time she stays mysterious that the viewer must keep waiting for her to fully come out. She successfully lures viewers inside her eccentric existence, a world of curious and often funny happenstance. Her haircut did not diminish her beauty; rather it highlighted her doe eyes and secretive little smile. Amélie is ultimately kindhearted, and with just the right amount of mischief to keep her character realistic.

Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain is a many-layered movie, a hodgepodge of touches of suspense, comedy, and romance—a formula guaranteed to make the viewer glued to his or her seat until the movie credits go up.

View trailer here.

Mitch Albom's second novel tells the bittersweet tale of a man named Eddie, a maintenance person for an amusement park where he spent his whole life doing seemingly mundane things. Eddie feels that his repetitive days and routines were the "be all and end all" of his existence, and therefore saw himself and his life as a waste. When one of the amusement park rides threatens to kill a little girl, Eddie dived and saved her--sacrificing his life in the process. He then wakes up in heaven to find that his life and death on Earth is not really the end--in fact, it was only the beginning.

The first sentence of The Five People You Meet in Heaven grabs you by the neck, breathes into you and leaves you gasping and holding on until the novel's very last word. It shows how nothing in life is an accident, how souls are interconnected, how lives--even those of strangers--intersect with yours. It takes you to a world where no one else quite imagined--a heaven that has many steps, a world where you get to "make sense of your yesterdays"--and what more of a heaven could you get than the opportunity to have peace, to understand why you lived the way you did, make amends, and learn to forgive?

Gripping, touching, and eloquent, the novel has gained plenty of praises and good reviews and has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide and is now the most successful hardcover first novel ever (via Albom.com).

“A powerful book” -Time Magazine
“Transcendent” -Atlanta Constitution
“A book with the genuine power to stir and comfort its readers" -The New York Times

View the short movie here.

Katy is one of the best artist I've seen in DeviantArt, and this, along with Ida's luck, is one of my favorites from her works. Very very spooky, and to TRULY understand what it meant, you have to listen VERY HARD.

You can read some of the reviews here to understand better. :)