Eggs

Apparently Bambi celebrates its 70th anniversary today or this week or, um, maybe just very soon. I can't quite remember: I started reading a news story about this fact on the wires at work today and then got distracted by a really ludicrous typo in the story - I kept wondering how this thing hadn't been picked up - and never quite around to finishing reading the actual story. But I do remember that part of this story was going on and ooooon about how the bit in the movie where Bambi's mother gets shots is one of the saddest movie scenes ever blah blah blah. And I thought... really? I saw the movie when I was a kid and I love animals and all but I can't say it made a big impact on me. Maybe I'm dead inside but I don't even remember, um, shedding a tear at the time. In any case, it got me thinking about the scenes from movies that always have made me bawl like a little bitch and then I started thinking about other movies I liked for different reasons and, well, the end is result is as you see below. Try to control your excitement - there are matches on the bench if you need to prop your eyes open.

Saddest movie scene: The Bridges of Madison County. I know how pathetic this sounds, especially since I just kind of ragged on Bambi - practically Citizen Kane compared to this melodrama. This is not a great movie. I mean, Clint Eastwood is the romantic interest. But there is something about this movie that always make me cry - not little tears either but really fucking bawl. In particular it's the scene at the end where Meryl Streep is in the car and Eastwood is in his car ahead of her, about to leave town. It's raining (of course it is) and her hand is on the door handle, like she's going to turn it and she nearly opens it and then her husband comes back to the car and the moment passes and Eastwood drives out of town forever and she's brushing tears away to hide them and... What? I have something in my eye, okay. It's raining on my face. I'm making a lasagna... for one.

Funnies Movie Scene: The Mikado (the nuts 1939 version where half the 'Japanese' characters are played by white dudes in bad make-up) I'm not going deliberately obscure here, honest. I mean The Mikado is in not even close to making the list of my favourite comedies: for the most part it's a sometimes very amusing, sometimes very dull movie. But there is this one scene in this version of The Mikado where a character makes a joke and laughs at his own joke and you think that's the end of the laugh but Oh My God no it's just the beginning and... Look I can't even describe it but I have watched that scene maybe... 50-plus times - approximately half of those with my brother, the only other person I know on whom this scene has exactly the same effect - and have never not laughed like a drain. It's weird.

Sexiest Movie Scene: Considering this category, for two seconds I thought about Jamec McAvoy in Atonement, writing that fucking insanely brilliant letter to Keira Poutface Knightley ("In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long") and then I thought a little harder and realised, of course, that it begins and ends with Y Tu Mama Tambien, far and away the single sexiest movie ever made and without, um, giving away too much of the plot (if you haven't seen it you really should - sexiness aside it's funny and charming and all good things) a movie apparently made with me as its target audience. Anyone who knows me and knows the movie will know that the scene I'm talking about comes near the end of the movie, just before the end of their holiday and is insanely hot on a variety of levels. But, um, I'm said too much. I must lie down.

Most Romanic Movie Scene: No this is not the same as above, of course I'm not repeating myself. Nor is it cheating if I cite a scene from Maurice - just about the most swooningly romantic book in the world as well as a pretty decent movie. Blame it on Rupert Graves insanely beautiful face (Jesus Christ,  I'm sick enough that I still find him hot but back in the day he was really something) but the scene where he first tries to blackmail Maurice and then, shyly, with a stupid little tap on his arm, suggests maybe they find a room instead is one of the few scenes that I like better in the movie than the book. Something about the what-am-I-doing expression on Graves' face and the way he mumbles his line ("I wouldn't harm one hair on your head" or something like that) just undoes me every time.

Happiest Movie Scene: Sometimes I'm so predictable I hate myself but for me it has to be the end of Woody Allen's Annie Hall. This doesn't count as a spoiler because the end of the movie is spelled out in its first few minutes but Allen's character and Diane Keaton, the titular Annie Hall, have broken up, again, and the implication is that this time it's the last time. It's sad, obviously, but it's also really happy because you can see that they've both got something out of this relationship, that they're going to be friends and then of course Allen has to finish it off with a stupid little joke that I still find as charming now as I did the first time I watched this bloody movie, when I was trying to impress some stupid boy:

"I-I thought of that old joke, you know, this- this-this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" And the guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much how how I feet about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and ... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs."