Today we had our last lessons with two experienced American teachers, both of whom gave us lessons about movies. Movie is an indispensable part of my life. It is too important for me to live without. I devote a lot of my spare time to watching different types of movies.I love movies like science fiction, action and adventure, thrill, crime,documentaries. The least genre I like is horror, and the reason is it makes me feel sick when seeing those disgusting or horrible scenes.
Different people have different taste. Jason played some part of a movie called “Mommie Dearest”, which he quite enjoyed watching. Nevertheless,we were shocked by the exaggerated performance of Joan Crawford and the way she treated her adopted daughter abusively. I think that the Mother is neurotic and I don’t understand the reason why she is so easily annoyed and becomes violent to her daughter. This is one of the movies I can’t stand, although Joan Crawford’s performance is considered excellent with criticism of over-the-top. If someone forces me to watch this kind of movie over and over again, it will drive me crazy eventually.
We also played a game which we acted as screenwriters,who were looking to make the next Hollywood blockbuster. Dante and I chose trill (or so called suspense), with the film’s title “memories”. We brainstormed the plots, it is about a crime which involved a coupled been killed, and the police officers are trying to find the suspect, but it turns out that all of their trying is in vain, they can’t find any evidence but the still functioning brain of the dead couple. We wanted to raise the question “whether the memories of the victims can be accepted as evidences of not?”
The movie Rich showed us is called "Airplane". It is a comedy film with hilarious story and conversations. Some of the scenes are reasonless, but the conversations in the movie are really funny. As we know, there are lots of words in English which have the same pronunciation but entirely different meanings. In the movie there’s a classical plot that illustrates this precisely. The leading role-Ted Striker is told by Dr. Rumack to fly the plane,he answers “Surely you can’t be serious?” But Dr. Rumack replies “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.”
Another funny thing in the movie which also gives me an important lesson is to pay attention to people’s questions. If you don’t,it is easily to misunderstand others and make jokes. When the flight attendant who is the leading actress- Elaine, asks a senior lady whether she wants something to read. The senior lady answers ”Do you have anything light?” Elaine brings the lady a flyer, which is not the lady asked for. In fact, she asked for something not serious in meaning to read. When Ted recalls the moment that he and Elaine stayed in the military hospital after the war, Elaine told him that there was a telegraph for you. Ted asked “Headquarters? What is it?” Obviously, he intended to know the contents of the telegraphy, but Elaine gave him an answer related to the definition of “headquarter”. It was an irrelevant answer. She said, “it is a big building where generals meet, but that’s not important thing now.”
And also, there are some scenes are reasonless. For example, when Ted is buying a ticket to Chicago, the waitress asks him “Smoking or nonsmoking?” He answers “Smoking”, then the waitress gives him a ticket which is smoking.
