Tag: Gods must be crazy

The Film Emotion Blogathon: 5 films to represent the 5 emotions in Pixar’s Inside Out

On By ruthIn Blog Events47 Comments

FilmEmotionBlogathon

I just heard about this blogathon on Drew’s blog, but it was spearheaded by the Con Man blog, inspired by the Pixar hit Inside Out (which I adore). I love this idea and naturally I had to take part!

Here are the rules for the Blogathon:

  • Pick five films to represent the five emotions in Inside Out. The criteria for choosing these films is listed below. I would be willing to allow a tie, if you couldn’t decide between two films to best represent one of the emotions.
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  • What I’m looking for are five movies that make YOU feel a certain emotion. Here’s what to look for:
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    JOY: First of all, you want to pick a movie that makes you happy. The kind of movie that you put on whenever you’re in a bad mood that never fails to lighten your spirits. It can be a family film, a romance, a comedy – as long as there’s a smile on your face by the end credits, it should be fair game.
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    SADNESS: Now for the movie that made you cry the most. From Bambi to Titanic, there are plenty of tear-jerker movies out there. These are movies where you gravitate towards the main characters and really don’t want to see anything bad happen to them. Maybe a character dies, maybe the guy doesn’t get the girl, but your eyes should be pretty watery by the film’s end.
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    FEAR:  This is the movie that gave you the most nightmares. Pretty self explanatory. There are plenty of classic horror movies to choose from, but it doesn’t have to be an out-and-out horror film. If the movie’s about a more subtle kind of fear, or if the movie just has a creepy atmosphere, that should work. Whether blunt or subtle, this is the movie that scares the **** out of you.
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    ANGER: This is a movie that you flat out hated. Not a movie that was dull or boring, but a movie that just fills you up with rage just thinking about it. Maybe it’s a movie made by a certain director that had so much potential, maybe it’s an adaptation or a sequel that just didn’t do the original justice. It could also be a movie where your anger isn’t directed at the movie, but at the characters. Ever wanted to scream at movie characters for making such incredibly stupid decisions.
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    DISGUST: This last one is a bit tricky, I’ll let you interpret it the way you want. It could be a horror film with a lot of really awful imagery that you don’t want to look at, it could be a comedy with a bunch of gross-out humor that you can barely listen to. It could even be a movie that you like, but your disgust comes towards the basic premise in a grander sense, like being disgusted by what you see in 12 Years A Slave or Schindler’s List. Either way, this film should make you cringe.
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  • Write out five paragraphs, (one for each film) talking about the movies and why you chose them.

So here are my picks:

JOY

The Gods Must Be Crazy

As the criteria is a movie that never fails to lift my spirits and puts a smile on my face. It’s got to be my childhood favorite that still holds up to this day. Right from the witty & sarcastic opening monologue that’s poking fun at modern civilization… “For instance, if it’s Monday and 7:30 comes up, you have to dis-adapt from your domestic surroundings and re-adapt yourself to an entirely different environment. 8:00 means everybody has to look busy. 10:30 means you can stop looking busy for 15 minutes. And then you have to look busy again…”

GodsMustBeCrazy

There are sooo many hilarious situations that never fails to get me in stitches. The main character Xi the traveling Bushman & his Coca Cola bottle + the clumsy research scientist Mr Steyn w/ his decrepitude jeep are simply hysterical!! The movie is also very quotable. To this day I still find myself quoting from this movie: “It’s really an interesting psychological phenomenon…” or my personal favorite “ayayayayay” 😀

I picked this movie for a ‘A Movie That Always Make Me Laugh‘ Meme a few years ago and I still think so today. I think What We Do in the Shadows will become a perennial favorite comedy of mine, too!

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SADNESS

Legends of the Fall

I struggle with this one as I initially thought of Schindler’s List and the two Disney movies Bambi and The Lion King because those films made me cry buckets. Heck even just listening a few notes of Itzhak Perlman’s violin music of Schindler’s List on the radio gets me teared up. But at least those films end in a hopeful note. So for this category, I have to go with Legends of the Fall because it’s one of the biggest tear-jerkers I’ve ever seen.

LegendsofTheFall

The story itself is just sad and tragic – families torn apart by love and war, everyone ends up losing the one they love. The romance is as devastating as can be given most characters didn’t get the love of their lives. I just listened to the beautiful, aptly melancholic score by James Horner recently and watched some clips of the film, and it still gets me sobbing all over again.

FEAR

The Exorcist

This is an easy one as I don’t watch hardly any horror films but I did see this one in college and to this day, it still scares the **** out of me. I remember after I saw it, my then boyfriend who’s now my hubby actually slept in the living room of my apartment as I was too scared to spend the night by myself. Even just looking at a photo of Linda Blair in full demonic makeup as Regan still gives me the creeps. I couldn’t even google Regan’s photo to include here, so I just typed in ‘Exorcist poster’ instead.

Exorcist

There was a Chinese horror flick I saw as a kid that I didn’t know the name of that I found pretty chilling, but I think Regan is probably the most horrifying character I’ve ever seen. I think what makes it even scarier is the fact that it’s inspired by a true story and people do get possessed in real life.

ANGER

Transformers: Age of Extinction

For a movie I absolutely loathe with a passion, it’s hard to top this one. I’ve only seen the first one and the only reason was because we were at a friend’s house. And I saw this one as I interviewed the two young actors, and thought, well how bad could it be? Well, I wanted to punch Michael Bay and whoever financed this stinker, an abominable of gargantuan proportion. It fills me up with rage how movies like this continues to get made… I mean one movie is one thing, but five??! It’s even more aggravating as there seems to be no end in sight as this franchise continues to make money 😦

TransformersAgeExtinction

It’s as if appalling dialog, stupid characters who continually make idiotic decisions weren’t enough to insult us, there’s the gross female objectification and obtuse gender/racial stereotyping. Don’t get me started about the overwhelming CGI, I mentioned in my review that I actually took my 3D glasses off a few times just to give my tired eyes a break. It’s really a sensory overload in the worst possible way. If only this franchise would go extinct!!

DISGUST

The Whistleblower

I raked my brain for this one as I could technically put down The Exorcist again for this category as Regan is just a disgusting creature and the vomit stuff & a bunch of other demonic scenes are so stomach-churning. I choose to include this little-seen film because it also deals with deplorable crimes against humanity issues like Schindler’s List and 12 Years A Slave. Human trafficking is a disgusting crime that has no part in any society, and it’s even more heart-wrenching that this film shows nobody’s willing to stand up for the victims.

TheWhistleblower

Rachel Weisz played the title role, a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia who outed the U.N. for covering up a sex scandal. As if the living condition these girls are subjected to isn’t appalling enough, they also had to endure some truly brutal stuff. There’s one particularly barbaric scene that’s absolutely painful to watch, I literally felt sick in my stomach that I had to look away. What’s most depressing is that these atrocities are still allowed to continue as the perpetrators are not persecuted due to diplomatic immunity. Check out my full review.

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What do you think of my picks? Which films would YOU select for each of the five emotions?

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31 Days Movie Meme: Day 4 » A Movie That Always Make Me Laugh

On By ruthIn Movie Memes23 Comments

Day 4 topic of the 31-Days Movie Meme is a movie that always make me laugh. The one movie that never fails to get me hurling on the floor laughing is an old classic  of mine. I first saw it with my family in Jr High or so, but to this day, my love and fascination for it never waver.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

Rarely has the voice-over narration got so much laugh for its sheer witticism and hilarity. At the beginning of the movie, the narrator contrast the life of the bushmen and those in a metropolitan city, I love how they poke fun the latter and make it look like a documentary.

Only 600 miles to the south, there’s a vast city. And here you find civilized man. Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment; instead, he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery, and he put up power lines to run his labour-saving devices. But somehow he didn’t know where to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make life easier, the more complicated he made it. So now his children are sentenced to 10-15 years of school, just to learn how to survive in this complex and hazardous habitat they were born into. And civilized man, who refused to adapt to his surroundings, now finds he has to adapt and re-adapt every hour of the day to his self-created environment. For instance, if it’s Monday and 7:30 comes up, you have to dis-adapt from your domestic surroundings and re-adapt yourself to an entirely different environment. 8:00 means everybody has to look busy. 10:30 means you can stop looking busy for 15 minutes. And then you have to look busy again. And so your day is chopped into pieces, and in each segment of time you adapt to a new set circumstances. No wonder some people go off the rails a bit…

“No wonder some people go off the rails a bit…” How true! I saw this over a decade ago but I find myself still quoting from this movie:  “It’s really an interesting psychological phenomenon…” or my personal favorite “ayayayayay” 😀

All of the characters are hilarious: The anthropologist Mr. Steyn (“I collect manure…”), Xi the Bushman, and Steyn’s BFF Mpudi, I can’t pick a favorite as I love them all! The narration is so well-written and they find the most amusing way to describe the most mundane thing we see every day, as they’re seen from the point-of-view of the Bushman. One of them is when describing Steyn’s jeep driving past Xi as he’s resting on the ground: “One day, a very noisy animal rushed past where Xi was sleeping. It left very peculiar tracks, as if two enormous snakes had slithered past.” But more than just funny for funny sake, the movie’s also quite poignant and the message of appreciation for life is still relevant to this day even if the depiction of the Bushmen is no longer accurate.

I had to include a scene from this movie in my Top 20 Favorites, but the movie is chock-full of uproariously funny scenes. This one is my absolute favorite:

If you’re ever in the lookout for a good, clean, fun comedy, I highly recommend this one!

FlixChatter’s Weekend Roundup

On By ruthIn Random Thoughts1 Comment

I guess I was one of only three people who skipped the 2012 disaster flix that grossed $225 million worldwide over the weekend (including $65 million in US & Canada). According to Reuters, Columbia, a unit of Sony Corp, said 2012 recorded the highest worldwide opening ever for an original film not based on an established franchise, brand or best-selling novel. Ha, that made me chuckle, well more like a snigger. Original? Hardly. But hey, this is the logic-defying, originality-be-darned, popcorn action/comedy flix that people go see to simply be entertained. Here’s my friend Corinne’s quick review of it:

I went to the movie “2012” this last weekend with the expectation that it would be over-the-top with fabulous special effects and short-on-intellectual-script-but-fun kind of movie. And for me it was everything and more. The special effects were indeed fabulous. John Cusack’s hair did stay in place throughout all of his great escapes. I loved how nothing seem to go wrong for John and his family while they escape one horrible destruction after another. Like, how their plane could still fly even while engulfed in thick, black volcanic ash. Or how their “Russian” bomber plane could fall into a giant hole as the earth floor kept cracking but moments later managed to fly right back up.

But the best part was how everybody still had bars on their cell phones and could call anyone, anywhere on earth despite the fact that all the cell towers where already destroyed. Yes, it was alot of fun for an end-of-the-world story, but you have to leave your brain at the door, relax with your popcorn and you too will enjoy this wonderful doomsday flix… and John Cusack’s hair.

Ha! Exactly what I’d expect from the maker of Independence Day. Sounds like it’s probably worth seeing on DVD or pay-per-view, but I’d rather save my 10 bucks for Avatar and Sherlock Holmes next month.

It’s DVD weekend for me as I finally saw The Ugly Truth. Well, it was Gerry Butler’s birthday on Friday so my girlfriend Becky and I decided to get some Thai take-out and watch it afterwads. Well, it’s not as atrocious as I thought, but it left much to be desired. This is not GB’s shining hour as he looked so bloated most of the time, but at least he hasn’t lost that sparkle in his eyes. Those aren’t as tricky to retain than a 12-pack abs =) His Mike Chadway is generally obnoxious and vapid through and through, but of course the movie has to ‘redeem’ his character by the end to make us root for him getting it on with Katie Heigl’s character. I guess the biggest problem for me — amongst many — is how predictable the whole thing is. I mean, I know you can’t expect too much plot-twist from a rom-com, but just a teeeeny shred of mystery can’t hurt. The Ugly Truth salsa dance sceneThere’s not much spark between Heigl’s and Butler’s characters, either (save for the sassy dance scene), which is another big letdown from this flix as I hardly ever find Butler lacking chemistry with his female co-stars. Heigl did manage to look beautiful even in her sillier scenes though, but mostly her scenarios are just so over the top and absurd. Overall, I’m just glad I didn’t pay 10 bucks to see this at the cinema, but it’s still worth watching on DVD, especially for an avid GB fan. The hot latin dance scene is easily the highlight of the movie for me, GB’s naturally a sexy dude, and boy does he have some manly hands… always a plus in my book! =) Looks like Julianne Hough from Dancing with the Stars taught him well, I imagine the two of them could easily win that competition hands down IMO.

On the other end of that spectrum is an oldies-but-goodies flix that never fails to amuse me: Gods Must Be Crazy. After a sumptuous Indonesian dinner with friends, we watched the early 80s comedy — some for the first time —and I was in stitches once again. This movie will remain one of my top five favorite comedies of all time, it’s hilarious, poignant and amazingly timeless. There’s nothing crude or contrived about it, a rarity in today’s flix. Just check out some of the memorable quotes on its IMDb page and tell me if that doesn’t convince you to rent it straight away. There’s a scene that earns a spot in my Top 20 Favorite Scenes, but there are so many others from this flix that deserve to be on the list, including this one involving a Land Rover they fittingly dubbed the antichrist =)