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New Year's Eve: The Truth of Hollywood Holiday Magic


If you choose to not believe in the magic, at least do not choose to do so during Christmas and New Year's Eve. These should be magical for any age and any gender - always and forever. Do believe in Santa as long as it's possible, it'd be than easier for you to tell and pass a holiday magic onto your kids later in life.

Personally, I believe that if believing in magic - [and in love and romance] - is not present in one's life, this person is pretty much dead. He or she is not longer living fully and hope-fully. That's why I'm a strong advocate for the holiday movies, especially when the plot is all about love, dreams and hopes - even if it's a bit on a cheesy side - it's all good, it's all healthy. The whole premise of such movies is to become more hopeful and optimistic about the future, to forget problems at home and work and to start believing in good and bright again - even if it's just for two hours...


Films like New Year's Eve - and the upcoming film The Valentine's Day - is the 'new' thing to do in Hollywood. For each holiday - a film full of A-list celebrities and short vignettes (stories) that are usually somehow, some-when and somewhat are all interconnected - we now get silly, fun films that are about everything and nothing at the same time; they're just about little stories of life that could happen to any of us (even if they are exaggerated a bit - it does not hurt anyone). 

These films are becoming very popular with the Americans - and internationally - because they are all set around one theme - be it a beloved holiday and/or a tradition that is celebrated with love, drama, style and deliciousness by very many people with very different life stories, but who are all likeable in one way or the other, because they are all humans and they make mistakes, but they make them because they want to love and be loved, to accept and be accepted in the society...


The film New Year's Eve is a cute, adorable film that is set around - well - New Year's Eve and shows the lives of many different characters right before the Ball is to drop on Times Square. They are married, divorced, alone and not, pregnant and with grown up kids, in love and broken-hearted, healthy and sick, ambitious and not, happy and sad. These are stories about couples and singles and the ways they try to live their lives to be happier, healthier and overall - fulfilled both at home and work...They are nurses and business women, they are technicians and artists, chefs and electricians, students and elderly - just as our lives are full of different people and places. It resonates with us not on the level of 'intellectual reality', but rather on 'I'd like to believe it could happen and such love and/or care could exist'...

But then again, while I might have liked the film, because I grew up in a home where men gave flowers to women, the healthy spouse took care of the ill spouse and when the New Year's Eve would come, the family believed in magic and made the others believe in the possibility of it...It's such holiday romantic movies as Harry Met Salhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098635/ly and You've Got Mail we keep in our personal DVD collection - and we keep it for the right reason.


Directed by the veteran of romantic films we grew up with and love so much - Garry Marshall, New Year's Eve features the cast of: Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Héctor Elizondo, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Seth Meyers, Lea Michele, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Pfeiffer, Til Schweiger, Hilary Swank, Sofía Vergara, It can't get any better than that, right?

And one more thing, do not see 'cheesy' movies with someone who's long ago stopped believing in things that define romance, love, hope and dreams and who is skeptical and cynical about most aspects of what makes a life full. Because no matter how 'cheesy' these kind of movies are - [and most of us do know they are cheesy] - they do put a human being in a good, hopeful mood, just in time for the holidays, where little things are dreamed big, and big things are dreamed grand...

Remember, films like that do not make one naive - as my friends and I agree - we work hard, we have many responsibilities in our lives that we have to take care of - most of us do not have easy lives - so a bit of 'cheese' in our lives allows us to not only relax and forget about the seriousness of our lives, but also reminds us to look on a brighter side of things in our personal lives. For my girlfriends and I - these kind of films are therapeutic, they make us feel good without any kind of 'physiological' involvement...

I'd rather be a hopeful romantic than a sarcastic cynic in my approach to life, because no matter what happens at the end, I'd be able to turn back at my life and find those things that made me happy once...

So, go and see this film - it would only make you more excited about the upcoming holidays!

Watch a trailer here:

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