"Make 'em laugh."

The "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series hosted by The Film Experience is celebrating the Gene Kelly's Centennial Week with the musical classic Singin' in the Rain. I adore this film. It was the first "old" movie that I loved, even though I didn't find it perfect. I still don't, but few other movies can fill me up with so much pure, unadulterated joy.

Some of the things I love about it-

• I love Debbie Reynold's expressions when she describes/insults movie actors.

• The wide shots.

• The dance between Kelly and the magnificent Cyd Charisse.

• My absolutely favourite part of Singin' in the Rain, however, is the stellar supporting actors, Donald O' Connor and Jean Hagen. I know this post is based on Gene Kelly, and I love him, and Debbie Reynolds too, but Cosmo and Lina are just beautiful in this movie. So funny, so brilliant.

         For example, O' Connor's awe-inspiring screwball humour in "Make 'Em Laugh". Just look at his face, though the best part is when he jumps off the painted wall (the last image). I love how it looks, though I found it impossible to capture perfectly since it happens so fast.

           Then there's Hagen. Now the arguably the best thing about her in the movie is her voice. Just the first time we hear it, we cannot help but me shocked yet amused. And the contrast between her diction and her proper diction coach is hilarious. But her well-deserved Oscar nomination was not only for that. Just see her expressions, and how they change when Kelly's character Don Lockwood doesn't let her character Lina Lamont make a speech at their film's premiere.

           That's why my favourite shot is- but first, a little build up: Lina has just coerced the head of her studio to make Kathy, played by Reynolds, to voice her in all her talkies and after the successful reception of the first one, wants Kathy to sing a song for the audience behind the curtain, while she lip-syncs in front.

           Basically Don, Cosmo and R.F., the studio head, pull the curtain to reveal the true singing star, Kathy Selden, though Lina has no clue yet.

          Then, Cosmo comes and starts singing in Kathy's place and Lina is just beginning to register that-

(The Best Shot)

              This is why I love them so much. Cosmo is a genius- he is always the one who comes up with the ideas, and they are usually really funny. Here he is publicly humiliating Lina in the most humorous way possible. And Lina, well, her face perfectly captures and explains her catchphrase, "Am I dumb or something?" Priceless.

"I'm not finished."

           After doing the The Film Experience's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" last year with one-half of my two most favourite movies of all time, Moulin Rouge!, I had expected to partake in many more of these this year. Alas it wasn't to be, but with a lot of difficulty I've managed to do one such post for another of my most favourite movies, another romantic one- Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands.

         It is a very interesting looking film. I thought about several aspects of it which I like. One of the funniest things about the film, because it is a very hilarious film too, is the gossiping housewives. This time around, I actually noticed how Burton showcases their hair, since that will become a bit of a centerpiece of the film later on. If you enlarge the picture, you'll see how Helen, played by Conchatta Ferrell (the second housewife) still has a roller in her hair in the last shot.

          The most ferocious housewife of them all of course is Joyce, played splendidly by Kathy Baker. When I was taking screencaps of the film for this post, I felt oddly compelled to take some of her big, witchy, sharper-than-scissors nails.

          Also the scissors- I love how almost always the scissors are shown before Edward himself. It is a sad albeit incredulous reminder of what life must be for a man like him.

          Look at this gem of a shot where both are shown together- wonder which one is more deadlier...

         But now, after this rather long intro, let me get to my favourite shot. It was a little difficult to choose because my personal favourite part of the film is when Kim, played by the lovely Winona Ryder, asks Edward to hold her, and he says that he can't; it is a painfully beautiful scene that unfortunately cannot be captured in a screencap... you have to see Johnny Depp's amazing acting to truly feel it. But then, Kim makes him embrace her, and there is a little flashback to when the Inventor, played by Vincent Price, is finally going to give him real hands.

            It is this part that makes you realize how much he wants to be with Kim. He yearns for her, for her touch and beauty and love, as much as he yearns to have hands and be normal. And somewhere inside he's afraid it won't be just like how he never was able to get the normal hands. This is the true tragedy of Edward Scissorhands, the one and only.

"You may see me only as a drunken, vice-ridden gnome whose friends are just pimps and girls from the brothels. But I know about art and love, if only because I long for it with every fiber of my being."

It has been a good five or six years since I first saw Baz Luhrmann's musical romance Moulin Rouge!. It was one of those experiences that change our lives forever- we think different, see things in a new light, understand ourselves better. You may think that I am over-exaggerating, but I was (am) young and impressionable...and boy that film impressed me! I felt right at home with the revolutionary Bohemians of the Moulin Rouge, and found kind of soulmate in Christian- a Romantic to the core who, without any influence as such, just naturally believes in truth, beauty, freedom and above all things, love. However, when I was watching it today for The Film Experience's Hit Me With Your Best Shot, I also found myself identifying with Satine... "Why live life from dream to dream, and dread the day the dreaming ends".


Therefore you see how this film that often tells me more about myself than almost anything else. So it was a real dilemma to chose my favourite shot, there are just so many things to love in this film. For instance:


1) The sublime beauty of Nicole Kidman as Satine.

2) The humour (just had to put that).

3) Obviously the absolutely gorgeous El Tango de Roxanne, which has everyone screaming at some point, deserves to be shown.

While all these are fantastic, I am now left with two finalists. One is an actual shot within the film, another is a set of six shots that come in the end of the credits.

The Best Shot- This really shows the magic of the film. Here are two people standing on clouds, with an umbrella, the Eiffel Tower and the moon with a face on it in the background. The scene happens when Christian, played by the wonderful Ewan McGregor, is wooing Satine by "Your Song". A melody sung from his heart, for hers, and she is swept away so much so that she imagines a completely unrealistic, yet dreamy place where both of them belong together. I think the background pays homage to the great musicals of yesteryears...the umbrella from Singin' in the Rain, rooftop from Mary Poppins, the Eiffel Tower for An American in Paris, and well the singing moon. I love films which transport us to places, and this singular shot takes me to a wonderland of romance and delight.

The Best Shots- Seriously, this is the favourite part of the film for me. I especially wait for credits to end everytime I watch Moulin Rouge!, because it is incomplete for me until I see these final six shots. I weep, I smile, I feel warm- why? Because these shots reaffirm my belief in the world. The fact that what these wild Bohemians believed in is not something the world has forgotten. We sing the songs that they sing- from Bowie to Kiss to Madonna. Their anthems are our anthems now; art and beauty and freedom and love prospers. It is a little hard to notice with all these Dukes lying around, but come what may, everything the film and its characters holds so dear still exists. That is what the story is all about, and I ardently love it.

Moulin Rouge! is 10 years old now, and I do hope it goes down in cinematic history as the beautiful love story with a Bohemian Can Can twist and a total tribute to the great songs of the 20th century. I mean honestly as lovely as the shots are, the film is nothing without its songs. Do watch and listen!