Diamonds in the rough

May 16, 2009

Diamonds in the rough

Every so often, you’ll stop to watch some movie you haven’t heard of just because you want to rest your finger a bit. And it will surprise you with a line that you just know will stay with you forever. Today morning’s line is from a movie called Summer Catch, starring Freddie Prinze Jr. (I sincerely hope he strangled his parents for giving him a name like that) and Jessica Biel. Freddie’s dad’s character says at one point:

The reason the Indian rain dance works is because they wouldn’t stop dancing until it rained.

Maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Do you guys have any such lines that came out unexpectedly in the middle of a not-so-great movie?

Ramsu

Hollywood

7 responses to “Diamonds in the rough”

Puppy, Ha!

May 16, 2009

The Indian [Native American] rain dance quote reminds me of a story I read as a child (that several of our movie song lyrics leveraged as well), of the Indian [subcontinent] rainbird Papiha that obstinately thirsts for rainwater and drinks nothing else. It’s said to pop its beak up and drink directly from the monsoon rains, then go without water for the next 12 months while it waited patiently for the rains to revisit! (It’s this bird that I inevitably think of whenever I chance upon Milton’s poem On His Blindness…They also serve who only stand and wait.)

And speaking of watching an arbit movie just so you can rest that finger, I caught the second half of that Hanks-as-Crusoe movie Cast Away yesterday. Was gonna flip to something else as I don’t enjoy watching ’em in bits and pieces, but as a desperate Chuck Noland ripped open a washed-ashore FedEx box, and out came Wilson-the-Volleyball (soon to be his only “companion” for a long time to come) along with a birthday card bearing these words, “The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself,” I was hooked!

So I stayed up and watched the rest of the movie. The last few scenes go like this: Noland-the-FedEx guy delivers package to a ranch home in the middle of nowhere. Door’s open, no one’s home; he leaves it outside. He retraces steps, finds himself lost at a crossroads. A local woman in truck drives by, stops. Their conversation goes thus:

Where’re you headed? Well, I was just about to figure that out. Well, that’s 83 South. And this road here will hook you up with I-40 East. If you turn right, that’ll take you to Amarillo, Flagstaff, California. And if you head back that direction, you’ll find a whole lot of nothing all the way to Canada. I got it. All right, then. Good luck, cowboy. Thank You.

He stares at the forks in the road and then at the back of the woman’s truck, on which he finds painted the same pair of wings that were on the package he just delivered…to her door? Whoa, those zany sign spotters! 🙂

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Ramsu

May 16, 2009

I never quite liked the ending of Castaway — it felt tacked on, obligatory. As if they needed to give him a bittersweet ending with him losing the love of his life and then learning to move on. I don’t think it was required.

If they had ended the movie with him just making that raft and setting off in the hope that he would be rescued, I think I’d have found it pretty much perfect.

“A whole lotta nothing on the way to Canada,” however, sounds about right from what I’ve heard of that country.

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Puppy, Ha!

May 17, 2009

I guess in order to better analyze the ending, I should go back and watch the movie from its beginning. I’d need to know more about Chuck’s relationship with Kelly…why she was the love of his life and such.

From where I started watching, Helen Hunt did next to nothing for me (after As Good As It Gets and Twister, one does tend to expect her to bring you the moon if not take you to it), and I was kinda hoping Hanks would move on too. But yeah, I do agree that Hollywood has no trouble at all tacking on the obligatory ending!

P.S: You did notice that my nick was a nod to the puppy-with-the-package that’s part of the FedEx Home Delivery logo, didn’t you?…Wait, you didn’t…dammit, you were way too busy rolling your eyes at what you thought was simply a put-on pun on Papiha! Get outta here 😀

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Ramsu

May 18, 2009

To be honest, I didn’t even get as far as Papiha 😀

Not to mention the fact that I didn’t know about the puppy on the FedEx logo, which means I didn’t get that one either.

Let’s face it, dear. You’re wasting your puns on an absolute nincompoop 🙂

~r

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Puppy, Ha!

May 18, 2009

About that FedEx logo, now you do, don’t you? And hey, isn’t “Wow, You learn something new every day” supposed to be every quizzer’s undying personal philosophy or something? So there, I don’t consider my puns wasted! (In any case, God wastes precious punning skill on unambitious loser, who in turn wastes it on nincompoop friend, who in turn takes it out on poor telemarketers, and on it goes, this vicious circle of life, so guess what? Two words: Hakuna Matata!) 😀

The way I see it, no writer (or movie-maker or painter, for that matter) really puts a product out for public consumption so much as a probe out to pursue/procure his/her one perfect audience. So, I would let every pun find its own Pundit. 🙂

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Push(k)in’ the envelope

May 19, 2009

P.S: “Let’s face it, dear” — Wait a minute…Is this a riff on that famous Butler (Rhett) last line “Frankly, my dear”? In other words, did you just pronounce that my poor puns are all Gone with the Wind? You’re hereby disqualified from the Society of Nincompoops, mister! 😀

While you ponder your fate now, allow me to pucker my brow with worry on whose advice I should take next — the Stars’ or my good friend Rat’s! (BTW, the nick’s a nod to today’s comic strip, while yesterday, the 18th, is the one I’m intending to futilely link to, so look it up, willya?)

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Web Designing Karachi

March 17, 2010

Your post is entertaining to read and to the point.

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