Reading harold_maude's journal

I watched some of my favorite movies yesterday. The ones that every so often I have this need to watch.

Among them were "Jaws" "Dick Tracy" and "Jurassic Park".

They have these great moments in them, ones that say something about something.

I love the discourse in Jurassic park where they are discussing the park it self and the two scientists and the mathamitician are voicing the basic problems with trying to bring something back that has been extinct for so long.
It makes me think about how I feel about the amount of technology we have and how little wisdom we have to use what we've created wisely.

Then the whole ego thing in Jaws. Men trying to best each other by proving who's better.
The thing that finally causes them to have some respect for each other is a night in the galley where their comparing scars
and we all get to find out why Quint is the way he is.

I love the idea in Dick Tracy of a woman who is seen as property of what ever mob boss is in control taking things into her own hands in an attempt to change her world and have the man she wants.

What makes these moments so great is that they reflect at least in someways real life.
Things we all face at sometime.
Feelings of being out of control. Feelings of desperation that drive us to our own desperate acts.
Proving who we are.
Doing things that should never really be done.
And the concequences that follow.

I like the Lord of the Rings for the same kinds of reasons.
One of my favorite scenes is at the end of the fellowship of the rings where Boramere is dying and he has come face to face with himself, and realizes how stupid it was to want to control something that would have distroyed him.
He regained his honor just before he died.

I love the scene in Cassablanca where Humphry Bogart says to Lauren Bacall that she will regret not getting on the plane, maybe not today, but soon and for the rest of her life.
How amazing to understand that while the want is so strong, what's best in the end is to walk away.
How painful to know that even when you love someone it's best for them if that love is lost.

I love satisfying endings too. Ones that leave you feeling somehow completed at the end of the story.

I love Hitchcock movies. But the ending of the Birds made me feel like he'd got to the point where here is this great story but how do you end a great story?
So for me the ending of the birds is disapointing.
It leaves me hanging with the idea that this was the best he could come up with after almost the whole movie is this intense string of moments.

I love the sixth sense because it shows how it's possible to over come the deepest fear that no one will believe you and finally you find someone who does and it gives you the courage to live without fear.

I love the matrix for the idea that it's possible to be a prisioner and find freedom. Even at the cost of your life.

Great movies with great scenes that reflect back on who we are as a people.
Fraglie, heroic, humans with failings and frailties.
And sometimes, just like in the movies we get to win too.

Hell yeah! Well put!

I love the way films can stir up emotion, its the same as music, theatre, poetry and art! All types of creativity like this that has been created for so many personal an dunderlying reasons. They touch me on nearly all my sensory levels.

When I was a Theatre student we studied 'sensory attack' where through our performance we attack the audiences senses using sound, lights, silence and more. It was very interesting and very moving.

What makes these moments so great is that they reflect at least in someways real life.

Although this is a simple comment I find it hard to get my head around what is being said here. I know this sounds silly but are you saying this becuase films make you remember moments in your life and therefore you feel moved or are you saying that life in general! Because it is film it is made as much as possible to be realistic an dyou are saying that thats why you can relate it to life. Hope this questioning makes sense...there is reasoning behind it!

Its not just films that you watch and relate to an dthen feel moved its films you once watched and then watch again years later. Yesterday my boyfriend bought me The BFG on dvd..has anybody heard of the film??? Anyway iwatched it as a child many times and then it became lost, when I watched it last night I was moved by the animation, music, voices more then when I was younger purely becuase it was when I was younger that I first watched it. when I was younger I would have enjoyed the film becuase of the giants and the story line...But becuase I remembered the animation, music and voices it moved me as I pictured little me on the sofa!So there is another example of how films are just simply an awesome invention and so powerful!

I love satisfying endings too. Ones that leave you feeling somehow completed at the end of the story.

I coudn't agree more and so if I were you i wouldnt waste your time on afilm called The Final Cut...although throughout the film I felt some what satisfied the ending actaully made me angry enough to start shouting comments like..'Is this a joke' and 'Oh my god I cant believe that is the credits' and 'why doesnt it say to be continued'

Well you can judge for yourself!

I almost had you

The question made perfect sense. Outside of the conversation in Jurassic Park, the one I mentioned, which reflects how I feel about technology and how little wisdom we have gained in comparison to how fast it's grown, it was more of an observation of what thoes movies say.

There is one that I got lost in for a while, Donnie Darko, which, for lack of a better thought, had much to say about things I had been going through a few months earlier.
Especially the song that has the line in it, "I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, that the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I ever had."

I am an observer of human nature, and I end up seeing big pictures of something.

Thanks for the tip.
It sounds like watching someone who is dying and all the sudden their gone, like watching a movie and the screen just going blank.

I've never heard of the The BFG, but I'll check it out.
Thanks.