Fantasy Movies

Some busy schedule kept me away from the blog for a while .But I felt it’s necessary to keep the blog alive even if I don’t have much to write.. University strike continues but the extra load is on with the final year project that has already cost over 1 lak , final minute rush of my A/L students ,some upcoming external exams and job interviews .. Phew Life is still tough… Sometimes I wonder how the hell these difficult days gonna repay us the university students someday.So I thought of things that could make me happier. And then this idea of fantasy movies came to my mind.

If someone had ever asked me about my most favorite category of movies the answer is surely going to be non-other than the wonderful fantasy movies.. Does that sound girlish, weird or lame?.. Hmm that’s ok.. I don’t care how you gonna perceive that.. But let me give some justifications for what I believe in..

Fantasy movies often deal with kingdoms, Princes and princesses, mysterious creatures, Dark forests, spells, Witches and wizards etc. Nothing is impossible when it comes to the stories woven around them. Most of them have happy endings with the good guys living happily ever after and evil being punished and thrashed. Despite the age this category has been well accepted from fans of every corner of the world. Just go through the IMDB Box office movie records and you may find the dominance of this category.  

The reason of course is very much obvious. The world we live in is not as sweet and beautiful as described in these movies. Not all the time good gets honored or evil gets evacuated , you can’t look at a fallen star and make your wishes come true , you don’t normally see a couple living happily ever after and you find many handsome princes as playboys and beautiful princesses as bitches... The people in every corner of the world are weary of seeing everyday struggles, poverty, lies, deception, war, greed, competition, corruption, lust, illness, pain and danger etc.Living in a wonderland for two hours forgetting the harshness of the real life can bring so much peace to people’s mind and the imagination of all these impossible events as possible is quite a bit of fun right..

The movie list given here doesn't include famous Harry Potter series or animated ones. All of them are family movies and some of them are not so famous but still serving my purpose of fantasy. I have given you the chance of viewing them online if your Internet streaming is good. I’ve also provided you torrent files and you just have to click on the “Download Torrent” Icon on the snippet provided under each movie and the torrent file will be automatically downloaded to your PC. But if you don’t know how to open a torrent file and to download the movie with that better follow these links  Wikihow Link   or Video link 

"The Lord of the rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" series are the most famous out of them all. Along with those master pieces "Stardust", "The Golden Compass" carry the essence of typical fairy tales.. No matter how many times you watch them these stories never get older.. Movies like "Inkheart", "The Spiderwick Chronicles", "Enchanted" and "Peter Pan" connect the modern world to the Fantasy worlds with different strategies. They all have happy endings satisfying the needs of the fans. Their endings won’t disappoint you or leave you with nasty puzzles.

But I still enjoy when fantasy movies go to the extent of reaching the reality and ends up creating tragedies yet in a beautiful way. The Spanish movie “Pans Labyrinth” is one such great stuff heading to the top of my favorite list and“Bridge to Terabithia” (The girl in this movie is kind of cute and provided me the initial temptation to watch it  :P ) also follows the same steps with some higher ratings and critics. After watching those movies I was like Err..Oh god.. why this???.. But eventually I understood the importance of such endings.

The movie “Big Fish” is somewhat different from others and depicts a person who speaks of his life events with woven stories.. He sees his life as full of wonders and never accepts the reality even when he’s forced to do so. Just imagine how cool it’s to imagine of your life events as they happened in a fairy tale and make yourself the main character in it… Okkk… now this guy’s getting weirder and weirder ..  Ahah you See…. how I read your thoughts... I’m blessed with an awesome power to read your minds..

Speaking of “Lemony Snicket’s A series Of Unfortunate Events”. The movie Starts with a tragedy and in most parts of the story same tone remains.. But the ending is rather positive..

All right another post ends like this. Thanks for taking time to read my thoughts. And if you came here searching for movie links they are just one scroll below... Enjoy them...Have fun...

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

An innocent hobbit of The Shire journeys with eight companions to the fires of Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring and the dark lord Sauron forever.

   

  The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

While Frodo and Sam edge closer to Mordor with the help of the shifty Gollum, the divided fellowship makes a stand against Sauron's new ally, Saruman, and his hordes of Isengard.

 



  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Aragorn leads the World of Men against Sauron's army to draw the dark lord's gaze from Frodo and Sam who are on the doorstep of Mount Doom with the One Ring.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe


Four kids travel through a wardrobe to the land of Narnia and learn of their destiny to free it with the guidance of a mystical lion.

 

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

The Pevensie siblings return to Narnia, where they are enlisted to once again help ward off an evil king and restore the rightful heir to the land's throne, Prince Caspian.

 

  The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Trader

Lucy and Edmund Pevensie return to Narnia with their cousin Eustace where they meet up with Prince Caspian for a trip across the sea aboard the royal ship The Dawn Treader. Along the way they encounter dragons, dwarves, merfolk, and a band of lost warriors before reaching the edge of the world.

 

                             

Stardust

In a countryside town bordering on a magical land, a young man makes a promise to his beloved that he'll retrieve a fallen star by venturing into the magical realm.

 

 

The Golden Compass

In a parallel universe, young Lyra Belacqua journeys to the far North to save her best friend and other kidnapped children from terrible experiments by a mysterious organization.

Enchanted

A classic Disney fairytale collides with modern-day New York City in a story about a fairytale princess who is sent to our world by an evil queen. Soon after her arrival, Princess Giselle begins to change her views on life and love after meeting a handsome lawyer. Can a storybook view of romance survive in the real world?

Inkheart

A young girl discovers her father has an amazing talent to bring characters out of their books and must try to stop a freed villain from destroying them all, with the help of her father, her aunt, and a storybook's hero.

 The Spiderwick Chronicles

Upon moving into the run-down Spiderwick Estate with their mother, twin brothers Jared and Simon Grace, along with their sister Mallory, find themselves pulled into an alternate world full of faeries and other creatures.

Bridge To Terabithia

A preteen's life is changed after befriending the new girl at school.

Peter Pan

The Darling family children receive a visit from Peter Pan, who takes them to Never Never Land where an ongoing war with the evil Pirate Captain Hook is taking place.

Pans Labyrinth

In the fascist Spain of 1944, the bookish young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world.

Big Fish


A son tries to learn more about his dying father by reliving stories and myths he told about his life. 

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events


Three wealthy children's parents are killed in a fire. When they are sent to a distant relative, they find out that he is plotting to kill them and seize their fortune.

Why not Charles Or Edward ?

Last Tuesday in the Advanced Electronics lecture the discussion was more on Buddhism rather than display technologies. His purpose by doing this is not clear to me. He said he wants to discuss about industrial ethics as we're at the edge of our academic life. It’s always great to have a discussion on Buddhist concepts but I wonder whether it’s the proper time for that as we have 20% non-Buddhists in the class as well. He left us with a question to find answers for. And here goes my answer and I hope this would be helpful for the few non-Buddhist ENTC friends who read my blog.

The question he raised was why Siddharth (Bodhisatta) was not named as Charles or Edward in his previous lives? I’ve read and listened to a number of Buddhist sermons and I’ll answer this question with the knowledge I’ve gathered from them.

Reincarnation is accepted and vividly described in Buddhism and one could even argue that it’s the basis of Buddhism. To a certain extent it’s true but Buddhism approaches are more towards explaining path to Nibbana which literally means the only way to end reincarnation. I’m not going to talk much deeper on this as some readers would be only interested in the answer.

I believe that the question itself is wrong. I will discuss on the question in point form which would be much easier for me.

Point 1

Buddhism never speaks of a beginning or a creator. Buddha explains that the beginning is just a concept invented. The universe and the Earth we are in had been destroyed and reformed infinite number of times. The energy existing can never be created or destroyed and it just transforms in a cyclic manner. Buddha explained that this process happens automatically and each living organism have born and died infinite times.


Time to time this truth vanishes and a Buddha is born to reveal the truth to the living beings. And there have been infinite number of Buddha as well. At this point people may come up with questions like..

IFthere has been uncountable number of Buddha’s and each Buddha reduces some finite amount of විඤ්ඤාන (I don’t know the English word for that) how come we still have this much living beings left?


If the number of the විඤ්ඤාන is finite and if they can’t be created how does the population increase?


Do aliens exist and how other galaxies are interfered by the birth of Buddha?

 

T  There are answers for these questions but I’m not going to discuss them here as it takes much time.When Buddha wanted to explain something to people he used only the required and the most applying examples. In most cases he took examples from his previous similar regional births and that’s the reason why all the Jathaka Stories are comprised with pali bodhisatta names such as Mahaushadha, Makhadeva,Brahmadatta etc.

The book “පන්සිය පනස් ජාතක පොත” was written to enhance the “Shraddha” of the Buddhists and all these “Jathaka katha” (Jathaka Stories) analyze the characters of a society deeply and explains the characteristics needed for a better society. Not all the stories were peached by Lord Buddha and some were woven around prevailed folktales.I'm providing the link below if you wanted to read some of those  stories. Trust me they are really interesting and applicable to the current society as well

Link :- පන්සිය පනස් ජාතක පොත

Point 2

It’s said that Every Buddha was born, attained Enlightenment, held the first sermon and passed away on the same places as previous budhdhas. This has been a tradition and maybe that’s one of the reasons why the professor may have raised that question.

When a person dies the state of his mind we call as “චුති සිත”. This state decides the next stage of reincarnation which is “ප්‍රතිසන්දි සිත” . These states of mind are comprised of several factors. If you are a Buddhist and believes in your religion there’s higher probability of being reborn as a Buddhist. And that’s the same theory for Catholics and Muslims as well. The birth location is also decided upon this “චුති සිත”. But what happens in between is explained in such a way that the next birth can happen anywhere. But I don’t want to continue on that as I know half of my blog readers are non-Buddhists and this discussion won’t be at any interest to them.

Fortunately I got a chance to further clarify this matter. This Thursday I was on my way to home and was seating next to a monk. Bit eager but with a half hesitative mind I decided to talk to him about these questions I had. This monk’s reply was not different to mine but his explanation added something extra important which I might write on some other day.

And I’m extremely sorry if this post is hurting anyone’s faiths .But my only intention was to share my knowledge on this question and professor is surely gonna ask for the answers next day. So my conclusion is Bodhisatta might had been born not just only as Charles or Edward but may be as Jacob too . :P :P :P.Hope this was helpful and correct me if I’ve said anything wrong. But please make sure you accept whatever he says is right and keep quit. Don’t go for arguments unless you want to sit for a repeat test next year.

March

March, Doubtlessly it’s the best month of the year for me.I know it sounds crazy to like a particular month when you have the least hopes for this year’s march to be legendary. Lolz … Man.. I love this phrase.. “Legendary “ .Why only me ….I’m pretty much sure that all the fans who watch How I met your mother must know this famous statement of awesomeness by Mr. Barney Stinson . Someday I might blog about his and Ted Mosby’s characters too. Just before I started blogging finished watching the 18^th episode of HIMYM season 7 “Karma”. It’s insane that they have used a religious phrase to name a stripper in it but you have to forgive these Americans, at least they make you laugh.

Some of the most unforgettable moments of my life have taken place on this month but many of them leaving a load of harsh memories. Still I love this month because it has lot to offer me and I’m also in the habit of waiting to give a go at things until this month comes. J Why don’t I line up all the reasons that mattered me to choose this topic, like I did in the previous post “Killing the Identity”. Hmmmm…  The reason of course is simply because I don’t want to do that on a public diary.

But it’s my birthday month… Everybody must know that…. Hey world …Celebrate the birth month of some great people ever lived… You know what Albert Einstein and I were born on consecutive days (Of course not in the same year ryt ). I wanted to write something big and long as I did in “A Single Night’s Hero”. But it seemed worthless… 

Right now I’m listening to a touching Hindi song Tujhe Bhula diya  .And I've made you listen to that by encoding it to the post.Hope you won't mind .(I'm assuming all of my readers to be unlimited users). :P.I love the meaning and the melody of this song since it took me eight years back to where I was just an O/L student . I really miss those says. How many times have I wished to go back in time and re-hold the happiness I had lost years ago? People blame me for still sticking to the past. But I’ve forgotten what I should forget. I know that for sure.But First scar is always the deepest.No matter how much you try to cover, it's impossible to cure such a wound unless it heals automatically.All plasters wear out in attempts when the scar is this much irrecoverably painful.

Sometimes I feel that the time has come to treat it. But who knows I might be wrong.And now I'm more than afraid to make mistakes.So I’ll let the time decide it. 

Killing The Identity

It’s definitely not the right time to blog. It’s almost 1.00AM on a Tuesday morning. I should be going to sleep by now since 2mrw’s one of those terrible days when I have to wake up early to leave to the university. I had to study for the mid exams. But not feeling tired at all. Unlike school times too much studying is totally worthless. There’s this new education system that you have to get used to. When u go to industry you can’t and u don’t have to know everything by heart. Everything’s safely stored on this  web junkyard called “The internet”.

My looks have changed in a great deal after I opted to disappear my well grown stylish hair. I knew um going 2 look odd and horrible after this .But what’s the point of keeping this when you don’t have a point to keep it...  As expected the response was terrible from most of my pals. It wasn’t a sudden decision. I always wanted to see myself as a young hairless before I become an actual old hairless.. But that has never been possible due to my tuition classes where my students expect me to look professional. Damn… if not for these weekend drama (That’s the most justifiable name I can give for tutions) I would have gone for a shining baldhead. Followings are the list of reasons why I opted to cut my IDENTITY down… 

Reason 01

I can’t go to Temple or any religious Monasteries with my grand mum with all these other elderly people staring at me as if they have seen a ghost. People tend to judge others by their looks. I know that it’s not appropriate to visit sacred places like a fashion icon breaking the concentration of religious girls :P :P :P. My grand mum was more than happy to see me with this new look and that’s all I need to justify my decision.

Reason 02

Just imagine how awful it is to wake up every day with considerable amount of hair covering your pillow and mouth. Whenever I comb it I feel like losing a ton of hair curls.

Reason 03

After a long time now I have the looks of a man.:D..  The lengthy hair tail I had grown up looked awesome according to most of my friends.  Even though I felt it’s making me look like a girl because of their comments I was reluctant to cut it. And now it’s gone and I’m a MAN again

Reason 04

After the E-nite people started to willingly nickname me as නළුවා .. And I wanted people to forget this filthy phrase quickly. And seems like it’s working very well for me... 

Reason 05

On every typical weekday morning I took too much time to get ready because I had to comb , paste gels and creams on my hair while all my friends were waiting until I come out from the wash room. If I hadn’t combed it well I did look like that hairy Dog in that deluxe paint advertisement. Now shermal won’t have to worry about cleaning his comb as I won’t be using it anymore  :P :P..

Reason 06

I knew if someone called me looking good the main factor was always my hair. To me this seemed so damn stupid. I just wanted to prove that even without the hair I’m gonna look as awesome as I was… (You know what…. I was damn wrong …on the mirror I saw a completely nerdy looking jerk: P :P :P )

Reason 07

After all those funny justifications, Here goes the real reason why I took it off..  As a Buddhist who thoroughly believes in uncertain nature of every living organism and non-living matter I’m not valuing the effect of external attractiveness anymore. It’s not permanent. Someday somehow you are going to lose it. If someone judges or likes you because of your looks even their judgements will be temporary.And it’s so simple and easy when you are hair free headed. I feel that’s one of the reasons monks opt hairlessness. 

However this new experiment gave me something to blog about. But it’s worthless for anybody who’s reading this. By the way um gonna start a Tech blog very soon. Anyhow I further state that I never expect anyone to read this and I’m just so damn enjoying giving out myself with blogger. 

Awesome E-Night 2011

Ok… How am I going to skip writing something about the E-nite despite the fact that it was held months ago. During the last three and a half years spent here as an undergraduate I can’t recall a moment where I was as happier as that awesome night. And why is that?...  the answer is obvious right… :P…

That’s mainly due to the admiring responses my role in the visual for the E-nite theme song (Adareyi Obata maa) had earned me. But it was not my only contribution to the E-nite 2011… My stage performances as a Dancer and a vocalist gave me an ample chance to experiment my hidden talents. Even my parents were so happy to see me doing something positive after a long time.

After our six months training period I had enough time recover myself and make up a better mood to look at the uni life in a positive way.. Most of my friends too consider uni life as hectic due to the excessive load of pressure it has exerted over us. But I’ve understood that it’s always up to us to make life better with optimistic approaches in whatever things we do.. So my intention was to make myself busy with all the non-academic stuff in my last year @ university. And the annual E-nite was the perfect event for that.

Things started when I got this call from a friend asking whether I could take part in a dancing item for the E-night. If he had asked me the same question six months earlier I would have surely answered.. NO men are you crazy I’m the worst dancer on earth (which I’m sure is not: P). I could move my body to a beat in some sort of rhythmic manner: P... But after my Internship period @ SriLankan Airlines I had gained some weight and had to practice really hard to synchronize myself with fellow dancers. I’m quite a bit of shy guy. And fortunately I got the perfect dancing partner for me.. Sunari was cleverly making me dance and the final output turned out to be a great one. Our dancing crew consisted of three couples (Me,Sunari /Chandima,Hasini/ Damith,Kumuduni) three trees(Sahan,Arosh,Pramod) and a watchman(Ganushka) . The friendship we built up in that short period of time was so dear to our hearts. I wish we could have an E-nite each month.   

   

I knew I could sing and I wanted to perform a song for E-nite. Too bad there were plenty of super vocalists and we had a very short period of time allocated for the event so only the group song was available for me. And I accepted that gladly because I was practicing for the Dance so hard that I barely had time to involve in singing practices.

Getting to the song visual ,many might come up with the basic questions …How did I happened to get this role? Was it volunteered? Hmmm… the answer is no.. The song was already chosen by Dinuth and he had some shadowy story of a lecturer and two friends falling in love with the same girl kind of thing… And I was informed to be chosen for a friend’s role. Then (The new me) said Ok… Let’s do it.. Um ready to take it. Inside I was happier because I knew I’m somehow going to appear in that big screen where all my juniors would be staring at.

Not many days were left for the event when we started discussing about the script. It had to be altered several times after many interruptions from individual ideas. But everyone wanted the end to be happier for the boys and terrible for the girl which is the typical expectation in a university where 80% of the students are us the Male worriors :P.

When we couldn’t come to a conclusion Dinuth and Lakshitha opted to write it themselves with their own ideas. The initial script was changed reducing major roles to one lover, Lecturer and a girl and with a story ending fair to everyone.

The role selection was not that hard. Out of the two celebrities for the male role (Ryan and me :P ) the chance was given to me as Ryan was busy with his music practices. Shanika had already done a role in a short film directed by Dinuth so she was preferred for the girl’s role. Ganushka was chosen as the lecturer considering his outstanding acting skills (I’m pretty much sure he wants me to state it like this ). I opted Lakmal for my friend’s role because he and I had the same styles  .

So with the crew and the script ready we started shooting with the scenes where I entered the lecturer’s room while shanika was flirting with the lecturer and then me moving out of the lab in a disappointed mood.  The Analogue lab was the chosen location and the non-academic staff waz willing to help after they saw Ganushka was going to imitate Dr.Chulatntha . Within few shots it was all over. Casting crew was way quicker and learning faster than expected.

Next scene was me pacifying Shanika after her unexpected exam results .Actually that was the last scene in the visual and the scene of checking results was postponed as we couldn’t find a result sheet for a closer look up. (But the closer lookup of the result sheet was removed from the scene after the final edition). If anyone was careful enough he could have noticed me wearing two different jeans in the same location J.Later that Ganushka’s lecture and the whole opening part at ENTC Hall 1 were shot very quickly. And that was it for the day. Meanwhile Hasini’s grandmother passed away and we all took train to visit her place. Few shots were taken inside the train for both the visuals. The scene where I was sharing some tutorials with Shanika was shot the next day. 

Everyone was busy with their assigned tasks for this interesting event so it was never easy getting the cast together.Specially shooting Lakmal's part was difficult as he was nowhere when we wanted him and we initially didn't have a suitable location for the scene. However we managed to shoot it @ Matara boarding with the help of some junior batch mates.

The scene at the beach was very much fun as several friends including our dancing crew accompanied us there. And this ridiculous question as why I was walking in the beach in a formal dress????  … Oh come on… no one told me I’m going to need this much of cloths for this visual. That was the only bloody dress I had with me suited for a dream…   In many of the scenes I had to swap my clothes with friends and special thank goes to Hasith, Akalanka and Chinthaka for letting me have theirs.

Holding hands with a girl in Mount Lavinia beach….  Something I’ve never done before.. :P But It was Shanika who was totally responsible for the failures in the shots.Instead of  acting as a romantic couple we appeared complete strangers in the shot. To tell the truth she was NOT HELPING ME AT ALL … Errrr… this shy girl ruined my mood several times. I could have excused her if she wz in a relznship… But to my knowledge shewasn't and was laughing all the time when I tried to get into any serious action. (You know what…  I’m blogging with the brave assumption that she doesn't read my blog)..  

For the exam shot I had early copied down some calculations from communication examples which I had already forgotten how to solve by the time it was shot J Thanks to the great support from ENTC friends we had a nice shot there and after that we took the last shot of me sleeping and shanika wakening me up.

That’s the end of the story. It seemed Dinuth had done a miracle when he came up with his final output. He as usual was outstanding in his editing and directing. It’s obvious that 90% of the credit should go to him and I’m so grateful to him for using his skills to make me a single night star. I was bit shocked while it was screening as all my friends who were not there at shootings were amused to see me in the visual which was visible from the sudden noise they made.But at the end the response was so encouraging.

Hmmm… I breathed a sigh of relief after everything went well on that awesome night. For me that was a night to be remembered for the unforgettable glory though instantaneous, it had brought upon me.

Diaring

                                 Each and everyone have a story to tell about their lives. I too consider myself a good story creator/narrator and someday may be when I’m 60 years old I won’t be hesitating to write it down not with publishing purposes but for my own satisfaction :D... Till then I will be collecting all these precious memories unwritten and safely saved in the deepest corner of my heart as I had given up writing the diaries a long time ago.. (I wish I could regain those diaries.. Damn...… I should have given a second thought before getting rid of them all)..

                            Writing a diary.. Is that psychopathic?…In my point of view it’s 30% yes and 70% NOOOoooooo…..  When I first began writing on this thing called diary my whole intention was to improve my writing skills.. As expected It did help me a lot to impress my school’s E.literature teacher who marked our papers according to the weight of the answer sheets  :P.. I was getting plenty of marks than the rest of my class mates (maaay be not because I attended his tuition classes Lolz).. And as you can see my writing has become pathetic since I stopped diarying (I made up that word  :P). 

                             Later it became a habit and I kept on writing every special thing happened to me and with that I mean EVERYTHING !!! … That was kind of like a hobby to me..  It was a monument of my feelings, expectations, and my attitudes over colleagues and for all those unforgettable moments which have made up who I am.

                             People will look back and perceive certain life events differently when they reach different stages of their lives. So will I. It’s surely gonna feel extraordinary to recall the stupid and hilarious things you’ve done when you’re much older rit :D … Unlike keeping a diary locked inside your cup-board with its keys hidden under your mattress fearing your younger brother’s gonna excavate it, Blogging hits your privacy a LOT... Nevertheless I always have these BlogSpot privacy features which I might enable one day if I feel I’m giving out myself unnecessarily. Ok… That’s it for 2day .Once again wasting my precious time on this ridiculous blog … Hope this won’t become a habit too :D..  So this message is for all my friends out there PLZ STOP BLOGGING and start DIARING ….:P :P :P :P….