(Does anyone else enjoy The Most Extreme on Animal Planet? I love their countdowns! Maybe I should start doing "most extreme" countdowns of my own.... :))
And now, the moment we've all been waiting for! The unveiling of my favorite, and also Seth's new favorite (he asks to watch it over and over again! Yesss...:)) and also Matt's favorite-by-suggestion movie scene OF ALL TIME! There are so many layers of insanity! And nothing could thrill more than insanity! :) We have an insanely good and insanely dark Mozart piece providing the mood. We have Mozart going insane. We have a young Salieri going insane while watching Mozart be insane. We have an old Salieri who has been insane for years! On stage, there are a bunch of characters not only going insane, but also being DRAGGED TO HELL! Oh, the thrill! (Incidentally, Salieri has plans of his own to "triumph over God," just like the guy on stage who, oops, is... dragged to hell....) Add to that some good ol' 18th-century pyrotechnics and you have a recipe for a really great scene. :) I love it, love it, LOVE IT! Enjoy!
"And NOW...
The madness began in me....
The madness of a man
SPLITTING IN HALF!"
Love it. :)
And I love you, Mr. Editor, whoever you are, who did such a perfecto edit. In the words of Denzel Washington from favorite scene #3: you AMAZE me!! :)
And now in the words of the fun emperor in Amadeus (which is where this scene is from, by the way): "Well! There it is!" Since this top ten list is now complete, I feel I must recognize some honorable mentions! The bowl-fixing scene in The Road Home (a Chinese film that we LOVE—definitely in my top ten movies of all time! And it's a simple, sweet, pretty movie that I'm pretty sure just about everyone would relate to and love. Go find it! You won't regret it!); a few scenes from Stranger than Fiction (another top ten movie! Favorite scene is probably his interview with Dustin Hoffman. Ha! "King of the trolls...?" Or maybe one of the end scenes. Who knew Will Ferrell was such an amazing actor?); OH OH! the Al Pacino-with-the-gun-behind-the-toilet scene in The Godfather! (probably should have been in the top ten! I've only seen the edited version of the movie on TV, though, so I guess I forgot to remember I've sort of seen it...); the near-end of Pursuit of Happyness; the end of Psycho.... I'm sure there are some goodies I'm not thinking of! Any honorable mentions posted in comments will be honored (meaning I won't delete your comment, and it will live through the ages! :)).
"What is life?! They say bread is life. And I bake bread—bread—bread. And I sweat."
HAHAHAHA!!! Oh man. I'm already laughing just thinking about putting up this scene. The first time I saw Moonstruck was with Matt and also Amy. When it got to this scene.... HAHA! We were rolling. (I'm almost as amused at the thought of us as I am at the thought of the scene! :)) If you ever want to entertain one of us, all you'd really have to do is blurt out: "I DON'T CARE! I ain't no freaking monument to justice!" (And even better if you go through the motions of the next couple of lines. :))
Or a decent runner-up might be: "Crissyyyyy! BRING ME THE BIG KNIFE!! [I won't do it!]...She won't do it... Do you know about me?" Haha!
And a note to anyone planning to audition for, say, a high school play or something: this would make a great monologue! I wish I were still doing stuff like that so I could figure out how to make it work for myself! :)
The basic plot before this scene is that Loretta (Cher) is engaged to Johnny, a totally boring and sappy baby of a guy, but a safe choice I guess (her first husband was hit by a bus, making her majorly superstitious about falling in love...). They get engaged, he immediately leaves for Italy to see his dying mother, and he begs Loretta to pleeeeease, while I'm gone, find my brother Ronny and invite him to our wedding! "We haven't spoken in five years.... There's some bad blood between us!" Johnny and Ronny—the bad-blood brothers. :) So Loretta goes to the family bakery to talk to Ronny (when she tried the phone, he quickly hung up after yelling: "THIS WRONG CAN NEVER BE MADE RIGHT!!" Haha!) and gets this great rant. Plus, an explanation for the "bad blood."
It's Nicolas Cage at his finest! (I didn't even know I could like Nicolas Cage until I saw this. :)) Unfortunately, I have no idea if the beauty of this scene still comes through when you haven't seen the first 20 minutes of Moonstruck. But I'm posting it anyway. I hope you enjoy it! (And that it doesn't seem like a serious scene, because it's definitely not!) Go watch the movie—it's hilarious!
(The clip keeps going, but the first half is this great bakery scene—ending with a funny, pathetic little spiel that Matt especially loves from the girl who wouldn't bring him the big knife. I think the rest of the clip might end a tad bit scandalously so, you know, proceed at your own risk...! Hehe. No scandal in the bakery scene, though. Just loveliness. :))
Ha ha! This scene from Much Ado about Nothing KILLS us. SO great! This kid-like frolic in a water fountain is what a confirmed bachelor is reduced to after overhearing (from lying trickster matchmakers!) that the woman he loathes and continually fights with is actually in love with him. And when she overhears the same about him (from more lying trickster matchmakers), she melts just as bad. It's the best set-up ever! Made all the better by the great monologues about, "ew, I'll never fall in love!" and "I'm so excited to have just fallen in love!" Shakespeare is so great. :) (Especially when people know how to make him fun like he meant to be! :))
Kenneth Branagh's monologue always makes me think of my brother, Jordan. When he was only nine years old, I used to find him alone in the tv room watching movies you wouldn't expect a kid to enjoy. This was one of them—he watched it all the time! When Benedick gets all lovesick for Beatrice ("I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit BROKEN on me because...I have railed so long against marriage...." hehe :)), he asks the question, "shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor? NO! The world must be peopled!" Ha ha! Every time, Jordan would just start cracking up. It's a funny line, for sure—but made SO much funnier now that we always picture this cute little 9-year-old cracking up over it.
I couldn't find any reasonable soul online who made a clip of just this scene. But if you think, "hey, I'd like to spend 10 minutes watching the funniest set-up of all time!" start the first clip (you can skip the first minute), and by the end you'll feel like you just have to start the second clip and watch the first minute to finish the scene. :) If you like House, you'll enjoy seeing Robert Sean Leonard being so silly.... Hehe. A bunch of silly people in this one: Denzel Washington, Kate Beckinsale, Emma Thompson.... Great movie. :) GREAT scene! Number Three on our countdown!
If you don't watch any of the other clips we posted, watch this one (it's seven minutes). If you don't watch this one, go get the whole movie and watch that. And if you do watch this one, still go get the whole movie and watch it. This movie is... amazing. And not many people have seen it (it's an HBO film) which is really a shame. Emma Thompson plays a highly intelligent and clever and successful literature professor battling ovarian cancer, largely on her own. I think it was Roger Ebert who said of the movie that it "first breaks the funny bone, then breaks the heart." There are so many clever and funny things to laugh with—then such profound things to feel and reflect on. We can't recommend this movie enough. (We bought the DVD online a few years ago—Walmart or Amazon or something—for $4, I think. It's probably easier than trying to rent it. And you'll want to own it anyway!)
This scene comes in a rare moment when her tenacity and wit are all but gone—and when things have been the hardest, she's still been alone. Her old mentor from her youth tries to visit her at the university, and learns she is in the hospital. (When she asks about Donne, in the movie you've already heard Emma Thompson's character talk a lot about Donne—whose poetry she loves—in her conversations with herself.) Obviously, since it's in this list, it's one of our favorite scenes ever. While we're actually watching it, we'd probably have to call it number one. :) (And it's made all the more beautiful with the Arvo Pӓrt music—one of our favorite composers. You might not be able to read The Runaway Bunny again without wanting to shed a tear or two...!) Go find and watch this movie. You'll be so glad you did.
Gregory Peck in one of the best scenes ever, ever, ever. :)
I also love the scene when he walks out of the courtroom after the guilty verdict. His reaction, and the reaction of the people sitting up in the balcony, and the reaction of his kids.... All so powerful. (This is To Kill A Mockingbird, by the way. In case you're unlucky enough to have not seen it yet.... GREAT movie. :))
I can't even bring myself to post this one. But if you've seen Life Is Beautiful, the near-end scene affected you as much as me, I'm sure.... When he's being led off at gunpoint, and he looks over to see his son watching him from his hiding place.... He winks at him, making his funny face, and walks his funny walk as he's led away. He knows he's going to be killed—he'll still do whatever it takes to make sure his little boy isn't afraid.
It's an amazing movie, and all boils down to that little moment. One of the best.
Matt and I first watched Citizen Kane a few years ago for the sole purpose of being able to argue against it! Ha ha! It was so universally regarded as the best film of all time that we were just sure it would be a totally clichè "good film" movie that was actually totally dumb. Something trying to be artsy or something, and really just stupid. So we started watching it in a totally critical mood, ready to TAKE IT DOWN!! Yeah! Instead, about ten minutes into it we looked at each other, all surprised, and said "this is actually REALLY GOOD!" By the end, we were different people. Hehe. Not sure how I lived life before Citizen Kane.... :) (Ha ha!)
The movie doesn't have a ton of stand-out scenes (it all goes together so perfectly... :)), but this one is pretty great. Charlie Kane, with his totally complex superiority (or adoration...) issues, builds his wife an opera house when her singing can't get her into any other venues. The biggest opera house in the country, of course. She doesn't even want it (she's content with being mediocre), but he is going to get her recognized. This scene is her painful performance. (I've sat through a few operas where I wanted to be tearing my program up like Joseph Cotton is! Hehe.)
The moment where he stops clapping as the lights come up is my favorite moment of the whole movie! (Which is where the scene actually ends even though this clip will keep going... I don't feel like doing any work to post just the first few minutes. :)) Great acting.
(The other scene we initially thought of as the best is when Kane is old and his wife finally leaves him, and he tries to manipulate her into staying like he manipulated everything else but she just walks away. When he finally loses it and destroys the room, totally in character as an old man Charlie Kane, then walks out after picking up the snow globe.... Ahhhh.... So great. :))
HA HA! We only recently discovered the beauty that is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Paul Newman is always wonderful, and I think Robert Redford is at his absolute best in this movie (even outshines Paul Newman I think...). After being chased by unknown chasers for approximately a million times longer than they've ever been tracked before ("who are those guys?!" hehe) Butch and Sundance come to a crossroads. Or a cliff.... :) And Butch has another one of his brilliant ideas. Couldn't love Robert Redford more than in this scene! (If you don't know the movie, you should watch it! Very fun. This scene is so much better in context. :))
And here's a bonus scene which is awesome even OUT of context! Ha ha!
I know the public didn't seem to enjoy this movie, but we sure did! (We're pretty sure Shyamalan was making fun of his audience with this one! Can't help but enjoy that. Hehe. Plus, the acting was great....) I can't for the life of me find the scene I want, though! When they're down in the basement and they think the alien is going to come get them, and the kid has the asthma attack.... And the dad holds him trying to talk him through it, while at the same time wanting to panic himself, and also wrestling with faith in this horrible moment....
Mel Gibson's acting there is totally wonderful. Love, love, love it. (Sorry I have no clip.)
Last night we were fishing around for fun movie scenes to show Seth, and he ended up latching on to what may be my favorite movie scene of all time. Like mother like son! (This boy has GOOD taste. :)) So after watching it a few times, and saying "ah! What a great scene!" it got us talking about other great movie scenes! We made a top ten list—we'll see if I can find all the clips. :) When I added the following clip, Matt accused me of diluting the strength of the list. It might be silly, but I still LOVE it!
#10—Meet the Parents airport scene!
Ha ha! "All I have to do is do what *I* wanna do and all I wanna DO is keep my bag and not listen to YOU." ..."You said bomb on an airplane...." "I said it's not like I HAVE a bomb." Bomb-bomb-bombbomb-b-bombbomb-b-bomb.... Love it.
My blog was inspected for wholesomeness (turns out it's very wholesome :)) and when I saw the stamp I realized the error of my ways! I'm pretty sure when I blogged about voting that I didn't mean FDA when I said FDA. I'm pretty sure I meant the USDA. :) Then again, I may have just been trying to further illustrate my point that I don't know a thing about the farming industry.... Hehe. (Very clever, Auburn! :))
California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 2, by the way. Even though we don't know squat about farming—and even though the USDA (not the FDA :)) exists and does—we just can't resist campaigns for animals being able to do the hokey pokey. Let's just hope all the other ten pages of text in that thing we approved made some sense...! :) Hehe. Because, going back to that one single thing I know about this, the California farming industry is ginormous. :)
Let's just make all the eggs free-range. Those are great! Yum.
As for the criminal justice ones, I still don't know what they mean—but the kindergartners wanted haggis, and Californians wanted a couple yes-es and one no. Or was it two noes and one yes...? Hehe.
Hehe. I like it. :) But I liked this picture, too:
The problem is, we just couldn't agree on how to take that pain down.... Scalpel or hatchet?!
"Well, I say a hatchet first and then a scalpel."
"Well, I say you go in very, very intricately with a high-quality scalpel, and leave the hatchet in the garage."
"No, no, no. You should have a plumber bring a hatchet. Then crush away with no mercy! RARRRRRR!!! ...then get a scalpel. And delicately shave all the tiny pieces into even tinier pieces...."
The argument could go on for years, no...? Hehe. (Especially once the plumber is involved. :))
But because Churchill told me to (I hear he was anti-headache), and because pain is nothing more than a 30-ft. piece of cement sculpture looming over me, crushing my head for months on end (easy foe, right? :)), we decided I should try to deserve victory. Hehe. Or something like that. Actually, I just went to my follow-up appointment with the neurologist to talk about... the infernal headache. [I hope you still read that with a booming voice! Hehe. :)]
Since the drug he had given me several weeks ago seems to lessen the average intensity of the headache I have all day long, every day, he thought theinfernal headache that I still get once or twice a week sounded a bit more migraine-y now than he originally thought. And he gave me a migraine medication to take when I felt a wicked one coming on.
Rewind these past, what has it been now...? Five months! These past five months I've had a constant headache. The one drug over the long-term has seemed to help a bit as a prophylactic, but no drug or combination of drugs (and we've tried everything!) to try to kill the headache or even lessen the pain has ever done a thing. Nothing. At all. The other night I started to get another kill-me-now head explosion and I took the new migraine medication! And...whoa! Blessed surprise of all surprises—it worked! It not only reduced the horrible headache back to status quo headache, it actually wiped everything out altogether! So for the first time since June—June!—I was...ahhhh.... Headache-free.... For a few hours. Hehe. But it was a great few hours.
Anyway, so that's the update! A shocking discovery after all these months—they've been migraines after all. So now we try a few more dosage combinations and see if we can knock this out entirely. Strange to all of a sudden be a migraine sufferer—and around the clock, too. In my sinuses. Weird. And for all this to happen as I move back to our dreamland? Hehe. I can't imagine San Diego was the trigger! Haha! Who knows.... It's all pretty weird.
But after a million theories, we're narrowing it down. I'm not sure if we used a hatchet or scalpel.... Hehe. I'm leaning toward trying a bulldozer now. :) Maybe a wrecking ball. Or hot lava. (Hey, Amy, tell Finn I need him to throw hot lava at my headache! Haha!)
I don't think I could ever be more thrilled to see the candidate I didn't vote for win the presidency. I even shed tears, I was so happy.... Really. (And I keep feeling teary today, too! When will this end? Hehe.) Though I don't generally agree with Barack Obama's political ideas, I feel like whatever harm a leftist government could do might actually be made up for with how good it can be for our country to be led by a black man. Would anyone have believed it so few years ago when, insanely, Jim Crow was the law of the land...? (Gosh, I'm crying again!) Did anyone really believe even just months ago that America could really do this? The looks on the faces of African-Americans with this win say that, no, it was too good to be true.
So, I may not even care if he turns out to be a socialist cat, stealing my burritos! Hehe. He seems to be a classy, good man. If his leadership can heal some of the divides that still persist in this country, can inspire disadvantaged kids, can help more of this country celebrate diversity rather than fear it... then hallelujah. In the true sense of the word. :) I'll remember forever the images from Obama's rally: a crowd of all types of people—white, black, hispanic, gay, straight, old, young, very old and very young—joining together, rejoicing together, celebrating together. THAT'S the America I've longed to see. And I'm a white girl born in 1981.... Imagine—just imagine—what this means to countless others....
What a tremendous election day. I can't wait to see how things play out.
[P.S. Prop D passed! WOO HOOOOOOOOO!! Thank you, 53.15% of San Diego!]
Ha! After three days of positively gorging himself on candy, Seth just went to his halloween bucket to discover it's... empty. He gasped and said "NO! All gone!" A minute later he was chomping on a sweet tart and came up to show me. He said, proudly, "look! Look what I'M eating." Hehe. I guess he found one on the floor or something. I congratulated him. A couple minutes later he came up and got in my face (I guess he couldn't find any more on the floor...), putting on his cutest, smiliest look, and said (I swear he was even batting his eyelashes...), "Get more circle treats at the store, mom? Yeah?" He nods a few times, smiling. "Yeah?" Then a nod and whisper, "circle treats? Eat at the store? Yeah?" HA HA! He's a problem solver, I guess. Oh, the bitter disappointment when you first discover your halloween candy doesn't last forever!
At least Congress got smart—almost—and pushed standard time back so we don't have to have 5:00 darkness in October, too. But you'd think when Congress said to themselves, "hey, daylight savings saves us tons of resources!" they might have followed the thought with "let's keep it all year!" instead of "let's start wasting resources in November instead of October!" I mean, really, does it make any sense?
I'm going to write my congressman—by candlelight in the middle of the night (6:00 maybe :))—and beg for reason. :)
Hello, my favorite month! I'm SO happy for it to be November finally. All the Halloween decorations go away (they just aren't pretty.... And if pumpkins are involved, they stink too!). Christmas decorations come out (which is a good thing, since turkey and cornucopia decorations are also very ugly...). The weather (here in California, at least) is AWESOME. And, as if all that weren't enough, Matt and I get to celebrate not one, but TWO anniversaries. It's fun. :)
First, we get to celebrate the exciting day we met each other. Aw.... We actually remember the date! It wasn't one of those slow-to-get-to-know-each-other friendships. We met one night, and were best friends right away (he totally fell in love with me—ha! ;)) making the date a little more memorable. That was TEN years ago this week! Ten years! It's hard to imagine how the same amount of time elapsed between being 7 years old and meeting Matt, as between meeting Matt and now. We've been a part of each other's life for a whole lot of our life now...! I'm so glad. :) (Imagine how cool it must be when you've been together for a hundred and ten years! Ok...maybe that's stretching the possibilities.... :))
A couple weeks later, we'll have our sixth wedding anniversary. We're hoping for a great dinner to celebrate, maybe a day up in the mountains for some good ol' romantic skiing. :) (We'll be in Colorado—we've just GOTTA ski!) November has treated us well. So, happy 10th and 6th anniversaries, Friend! And happy November to everyone—the best time of the year! (Unless you get snow soon, in which case...I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry. Go skiing! :))
OK. Yes, Sir. (Could anyone argue with that?)
