Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Best Picture Of 1932-33 (Drama): King Kong (prod. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)

And the Prophet said, "And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead."—An Old Arabian Proverb

Is there anyone here who doesn't know at least the gist of King Kong's plot—a giant ape falls in love with a beautiful blonde and winds up on top of the Empire State Building as a squadron of airplanes plays pin the tail on the forty-foot monkey. It's one of Hollywood's most enduring stories, inspiring two big-budget remakes, several sequels and countless imitations. But in all its various iterations, none of have had the lasting impact of the 1933 original. It's fun, it's stupid, it's a landmark, it's iconic—and it's my choice as the best drama of 1932-33.

Depending on which of producer-director Merian C. Cooper's tall tales you believe, the plot of King Kong was either the product of a nightmare in which a giant gibbon attacked New York City or it came to him full-blown after he watched an airplane fly past the city's skyscrapers. Whichever its origins, the idea certainly appealed to his sensibilities. Raised on tales of adventure and exotic locales, Cooper had already filmed documentaries in Persia and Siam, as well as traveling to Africa for an adaptation of The Four Feathers, and had pondered filming a drama inspired by a family of baboons he had observed while filming the latter movie, going so far as to write an 85,000 word monograph on the subject.

Too, Cooper had been a pilot in the U.S. Air Service in World War I, later flew seventy combat missions for Poland during that country's intervention against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, and in 1927, became a founding member of Pan American Airways. Surely the thought of flyers shooting up downtown Manhattan had occurred to him at least once.

In any event, Cooper pitched the story to Jesse Lasky at Paramount at the end of 1930. Lasky thought Cooper was nuts and that any resulting picture would likely bankrupt the studio, but David O. Selznick, who had just taken a job at RKO-Radio Pictures, decided the maverick producer was just what his struggling studio needed to goose its lackluster box office. Cooper didn't disappoint him. After producing a successful adaptation of Richard Connell's short story The Most Dangerous Game (with direction by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel), Cooper turned his attention to his giant gorilla movie in earnest. He commissioned special effects wizard Willis O'Brien to shoot two test scenes of the giant ape, and best-selling mystery writer Edgar Wallace to draft a screenplay.

A veteran of the 1925 silent version of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, O'Brien was the foremost expert in stop-action animation (the process of creating the illusion that an object is in motion by moving it incrementally between individually-photographed frames of film). He and Cooper conceived two test sequences, one of the ape attacking a crew of sailors as they cross a deep gorge, the second of the ape battling a Tyrannosaurus rex as a woman looks on in terror.

To people the test footage, Cooper borrowed two cast members from The Most Dangerous Game, Robert Armstrong in the role of Carl Denham, and as the heroine, Fay Wray, promising the latter a chance to work with "the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood." (She thought he meant Clark Gable.) When Game's third star, Joel McCrea, balked at performing the necessary stunts, Cooper substituted bit player Bruce Cabot. Fleshed out with footage of a Triceratops killing a man that O'Brien had prepared for an aborted film project called Creation, Cooper presented the test to RKO's board which immediately approved the project.

With frequent collaborator Ernest B. Schoedsack directing the live-action sequences and Cooper supervising the special effects work, filming was set to begin in August 1932.

Now all Cooper needed was a story.

Edgar Wallace wrote the first draft of the screenplay in just five days at the beginning of 1932, but died of pneumonia a month later. To replace Wallace, Cooper brought in James Ashmore Creelman who had written the screenplay for The Most Dangerous Game. Creelman made the ape more fierce and played up the beauty and the beast aspect of the story, adding the famous final line, "It was Beauty killed the Beast." Schoedsack's wife, writer Ruth Rose, then streamlined Creelman's script, eliminating, for example, an explanation of how the captured gorilla is ferried to New York. She also added autobiographical elements of her experiences with Cooper and her husband when the pair worked on those documentaries in Persia and Siam.

Among those autobiographical elements Rose added was the fictional movie director, Carl Denham, who heads the expedition to find Kong and film the encounter. Characterized as "crazy" and with a reputation for "recklessness," Carl Denham is not a man cursed by self-awareness and only his own half-crazed dreams can make his eyes light up. "It's money and adventure and fame!" he's after, the cost to those around him be damned.

"If he wants a picture of a lion," one character says, "he just goes up to him and tells him to look pleasant."

Armed with a cargo hold full of guns, explosives and gas bombs, Denham and a crew of "tough mugs" have everything needed to shoot a movie except an actress, but no matter how much he's willing to pay, no reputable agent will work with Denham and he winds up hiring a homeless waif right off the streets of New York—Ann Darrow, played by Fay Wray, of course. Going on nothing but a tale told by a Norwegian sailor in a Singapore bar, they set sail for an island "not on any chart" in search of a mythical beast, with Ann along in the role of Beauty—or perhaps bait.

"[T]his low-rent monster movie," Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert wrote for his Great Movies series, "and not the psychological puzzle of [Citizen] Kane, pointed the way toward the current era of special effects, science fiction, cataclysmic destruction, and nonstop shocks. King Kong is the father of Jurassic Park, the Alien movies and countless other stories in which heroes are terrified by skillful special effects."

King Kong is one of the most aggressive examples of a movie that bypasses your rational mind to work directly on the emotional centers of your limbic system, and much of the plot is a hodgepodge of cliches, culled from a variety of sources—Beauty and the Beast, King Solomon's Mines, The Lost World, The Perils of Pauline, and even the films of silent era director D.W. Griffith. (Indeed, in some ways, King Kong plays like a parody of the by-then passe Griffith, whose movies, when stripped of their art and their politics, can be seen as celluloid records of Griffith's neurotic dread that someone somewhere was about to relieve preternaturally pure Lillian Gish of her virginity, with Kong standing in for the freed slave, the Chinese shopkeeper, the Southern rogue and the French aristocrat of The Birth of a Nation, Broken Blossoms, Way Down East and Orphans of the Storm, respectively. Cooper even drove the joke home by having Denham put Ann through a series of cheesy silent-era poses while filming her with an old hand-cranked movie camera of the sort directors hadn't used since the advent of sound.)

But smarter stories have been told and instantly forgotten and a smart, sensible story isn't the point of King Kong anyway—fun-stupid terror is, and after a long tension-filled build-up, Kong finally makes his first appearance, thrashing through the jungle toward a screaming Fay Wray whom island natives have staked out as a sacrifice to their terrible gorilla god.

KING KONG 1933 -

MICHAEL STEVER | Myspace Video


The wait is well worth it—Kong's entrance is one of the greatest in film history.

To create the special effects at the center of King Kong, O'Brien designed a half-dozen eighteen-inch models of the gorilla, using jointed armatures of aluminum for the skeleton, covering it in cotton and rubber for the muscles, latex for the skin, and rabbit fur for Kong's hair. (Sculptor Marcel Delgado, working from O'Brien's designs, objected to using rabbit fur, fearing it would retain the impression of his fingertips as he moved the model between shots—it did—but RKO executives were thrilled with the result. "Look!" one exclaimed watching the test footage, "Kong is angry—his fur is bristling!")

For close-ups of Kong eating islanders and New Yorkers alike, E.B. Gibson built a full-size bust of Kong's head from wood and cloth with an air compressor to move the metal hinges of his jaws. Similarly, a hand mounted on a crane was built of steel, rubber and bearskin. The various models of Kong scaled out to eighteen, twenty-four, forty and seventy feet, depending on the scene, a fact which drove the meticulous O'Brien to distraction but which satisfied Cooper's dramatic instincts, and moviegoers knew only that Kong was as big as he needed to be at any given moment to scare them out of their wits.

In post-production, Murray Spivak, the head of RKO's sound department, created the sound for all the movie's special effects sequences, which had necessarily been recorded silently. For Kong and prehistoric creatures, Spivak recorded animals at the Selig Zoo, slowing the recordings to deepen their growls and stitching recordings together to make them longer. For Kong's grunting, Spivak recorded his own voice through a megaphone. Kong's chest-beating was the sound of Spivak hitting his assistant Walter Elliott with a drumstick while holding the microphone against Elliott's back. Spivak also provided all of the screams in the movie, with the notable exception of Fay Wray's.

Another innovation, one we very much take for granted these days, was Max Steiner's heart-pumping score which underlined the action and ratcheted up the tension. As hard as it may be to believe now, at the time producers such as Irving Thalberg were firmly opposed to the use of a musical score in a film. He and others believed that music playing in a film from a source not immediately obvious—from a radio, in a nightclub—would only confuse the audience. A quaint notion now, but it took films such as King Kong to prove Thalberg and his ilk wrong. (Check out the blog A Shroud of Thoughts for an interesting article about Steiner's score.)

The real technical achievements, though, involved the processes necessary to integrate the models into the live-action sequences so that instead of dwarfing an eighteen inch model, the actors were battling a full-size ape. Sydney Saunders of the RKO paint department developed a new process for rear-screen projection (used for the first time in Kong's fight with the Tyrannosaurus). Linwood Dunn engineered a new optical printer that made composite and "traveling matte" shots (for example, Kong pushing open the gate at the wall of the native village) practical and economical. And O'Brien himself patented a projector that allowed full-scale live-action footage to be mixed with the miniature on a frame-by-frame basis. Each of these breakthroughs in optical effects technology quickly became the industry standard for decades to come, and while the film's effects are dated by today's lights, personally I find them more satisfying than many of the computer-generated images that have dominated the film industry for the last decade or so. (For a fuller discussion of Kong's groundbreaking special effects, check out Ray Morton's book King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon From Fay Wray to Peter Jackson.)

If I were handing out a complete set of alternate Oscars, I'd give King Kong awards for sound, score, special effects, visual effects, art direction/set decoration (what, at the time, was called interior decoration) and film editing, which along with the award for best drama, comes to seven, making it the biggest winner of the year.

Of course, none of these innovations would have meant much if King Kong hadn't fulfilled its basic promise of scaring the pants off its audience, and it most certainly accomplished that, with stories of audience members fainting in the aisles during the film's screening. Whether you congratulate Cooper, Schoedsack, O'Brien, et al. for their achievement or blame for the thousand pale imitations that followed is up to you.

Which brings us to the acting.

I can't say I disagree with Stephen Hunter's assessment, who for Washington Post wrote that "Bruce Cabot [who played the nominal hero, first mate Jack Driscoll] gave what was probably the worst performance in a great movie on record—he seemed more wooden than a tobacco store Indian and not nearly as colorful." (Indeed, Cabot played "Sam the Indian" in John Wayne's 1971 western, Big Jake.) And Robert Armstrong as Carl Denham isn't much better, although his eyes do shine with the evangelical fervor of a true believer.

But I do take issue with James Berardinelli's assertion that the overall acting is "barely adequate." As I've said before, Fay Wray made a vital contribution to the horror genre, teaching a generation of damsels in distress how to scream—and scream she did. Think about it: just six years before King Kong's premiere, it hadn't even been possible to hear an actress scream in a movie. After Fay Wray, we knew it was the only proper way to enjoy a horror movie. And while she couldn't bring to the table the nuance a talent like Naomi Watts brought to the 2005 remake, ultimately Wray brought something better—fear. And fear, after all, is what we go to a horror movie to experience.

Still, the most likeable and sympathetic character in the entire film, and the only one who feels completely original, is a stop-action model of a forty-foot gorilla.

And that, ultimately, is the genius of King Kong. I suspect that audiences of the time, mired as they were in the worst economic Depression in American history—25% unemployment, a third of the nation "ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed," the stock market worth only ten percent of its previous value—saw in Kong a reflection of their own plight, first as a representation of those outside forces we can't understand—the tornado, the flood, the economic turmoil that punishes the just and unjust alike—but then, as Kong is uprooted from the only home he's ever known and dragged in chains halfway around the world for the jaded amusement of Upper East Side popinjays, as the farmer who has lost his land, the man who has lost his job, the descendant of a slave oppresses by Jim Crow, the recent immigrant adrift in a hostile culture he doesn't comprehend.

"How did you ever get into this fix?" Denham asks.

Speaking for people the world over, Ann replies, "Bad luck, I guess."

In deeply anxious times, King Kong allowed audiences to express their anxieties without confronting them directly, and afforded them, in addition fun-stupid escapism of the first order, a satisfying emotional catharsis.

King Kong opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews and enthusiastic crowds, with lines stretching around the block to see the sold-out show at the 6,500 seat Radio City Music Hall. The film's Los Angeles premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater featured a seventeen-act stage show as well as the forty-foot "big head" bust of Kong which was placed in front of the theater. Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times called Kong "fantastic" and "compelling," Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times dubbed it "sensational," and Relman Morin, writing for the Los Angeles Record wrote that "King Kong is the supreme product of the coordination of human imagination and human skill."

The film was a solid winner at the box office, too, grossing $2 million in its initial run, enough for ninth on the year's list of top movies. More importantly to RKO executives, the film helped the studio turn its first profit in five years, rescuing RKO from receivership.

After the success of King Kong, Merian Cooper worked primarily as a film producer, first as the vice president of production at Pioneer Pictures, then as the vice president of Selznick International Pictures. During the Second World War, Cooper joined the United States Army Air Force and was stationed in China, eventually rising to the rank of brigadier general. After the war, he formed Argosy Productions with John Ford and produced some of that legendary director's most beloved films, including The Quiet Man, The Searchers and the cavalry trilogy.

Ernest B. Schoedsack continued to direct, working on sixteen movies in all, including the Oscar-winning King Kong knock-off Mighty Joe Young. He and his wife, screenwriter Ruth Rose, remained married for fifty-two years, until her death on Schoedsack's eighty-fifth birthday. He died a year later, in 1979.

Willis O'Brien continued to work as a special effects expert and he was the "Technical Creator" on the 1949 film Mighty Joe Young which won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Although no individuals were officially named on that award—it went to "RKO Productions"—O'Brien did receive a statue from the Academy.

Max Steiner went on to compose some of the most famous film scores in history, including those for Gone With The Wind and Casablanca. His scores were nominated for Academy Awards twenty-four times, winning three.

Of the lead actors, Fay Wray remained the most visible, appearing in ninety-nine movies, though never again in a movie of King Kong's renown. "At the premiere," she said later, "I wasn't too impressed. I thought there was too much screaming. I didn't realize then that King Kong and I were going to be together for the rest of our lives, and longer." She was to have made a cameo in the 2005 remake directed by Peter Jackson, cast to speak the famous final line, but passed away before the scene was filmed.

Both Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot also worked steadily, but aren't much remembered today outside of the context of King Kong. Indeed, the actor connected with the movie who fared best was Joel McCrea, who turned down the part of Jack Driscoll. He went on to star in such classics as Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The More The Merrier and Ride The High Country.

In 1991 the Library of Congress selected King Kong for preservation in the National Film Registry. The American Film Institute has twice listed Kong as one of the fifty best films of all time (in 1975 and again in 1998) and in 2008, ranked it as the fourth best fantasy film ever made.

Trivia: The "Great Wall" set from King Kong appeared in several other movies over the next five years then was redressed as Atlanta and burned to the ground for the filming of Gone With The Wind.

More Trivia: Look for director-producer Merian Cooper as the pilot of the plane that finally kills Kong and Ernest Schoedsack as the gunner.

Monday, November 29, 2010

My Monthly life Magazine

Hot Issue
Apa yang sering dilakukan orang ketika telah jenuh dengan hari-harinya? Refeshing? Jalan-jalan? Melakukan hobi seperti pacaran, nonton film, baca komik, olahraga, liburan, makan, joget-joget di tengah jalan? Sepanjang sekolah menengah gue secara alamiah mempelajari hal ini dengan mengamati bagaimana kegiatan yang gue lakukan membuat gue senang dan merasa nyaman. Membaca, Menonton, Browsing, Menonton pertandingan sepakbola adalah salah satu dari banyak hal yang gue daulatkan sebagai “my day knights”. Bulan November merupakan salah satu bulan terberat dalam tahun ini (selain bulan maret tentunya), so bagaimana gue melewati jangka waktu sebulan ini tidak lepas dari bagaimana “my day knights” bekerja. And meet my day knights on November Compressive!


GALLERY
Kesal karena setelah googling sana-sini ga nemu juga Wallpaper Rosa Kato, maka dengan beberapa foto thumbnail plus software Photoscape, maka jadilah wallpaper Rosa Kato pertama di dunia, yang bahkan tak tersedia di official homepage Rosa Kato sendiri. Yah, jika kita tidak menemukan apa yang kita inginkan, ciptakan saja sendiri.


Music Review


Tittle: Dari mata sang garuda

Artist: Pee Wee gaskins

Album: AD ASTRA PER ASPERA (Penuhi bintang dengan jerih payah)


Lagu ini sangat cocok diputar menjelang Piala AFF, dimana Indonesia akan maju menghadapi Malaysia di pertandingan pertama. Kembali ke lagunya, Dari mata sang garuda adalah lagu bertema nasionalis ketiga yang gue suka setelah “Bendera” dari cokelat dan “Negeriku” dari Finalist A Mild Live Wanted angkatan pertama. Lagu ini bertempo cepat, dengan distorsi gitar yang lumayan. Dan gue lebih suka melihat video klipnya karena gue nge-fans ma Aldy, drummer band ini, hoho.

Movie Review
Tittle : Harold and kumar : Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Cast: John Cho (Harold), Kal Pen (Kumar)

Film ini bercerita tentang pelarian (konyol) Harold dan Kumar dari Guantanamo Bay, kamp tahanan khusus untuk teroris milik Amerika. Cerita bermula ketika Harold dan Kumar sedang dalam perjalanan pesawat menuju Amsterdam untuk bertemu dengan Maria, wanita pujaan Harold. Setting cerita ini mungkin tidak terlalu lama setelah tragedi 11/9 WTC sehingga isu terorisme di dalam pesawat masih hangat-hangatnya. Nah, ketika berada dalam pesawat, Kumar pergi ke toilet dan mengeluarkan penemuan terbarunya, sebuah bong penghisap ganja otomatis (Kumar adalah seorang mahasiswa yang cerdas, dan pecandu ganja kelas berat). Maka kekacauan pun bermula dari sini, ketika itu seorang penumpang lansia, yang dari tadi gelisah melihat tingkah laku kumar yang tampangnya arab abis, melihat celah pintu toilet yang terbuka dan dalam pemandangan lansia itu, Kumar sedang memegang sebuah pistol (padahal Kumar hanya memegang sebuah bong penghisap biasa). Lansia ini pun panik dan berteriak teroris, suasana di pesawat menjadi chaos. Ketika itu didalam pesawat telah siaga dua orang agen kepolisian yang kemudian menangkap mereka. Sialnya lagi bong yang dipegang kumar terlempar sehingga isinya meledak dan mengeluarkan asap. Penumpang pesawat pun panik dan mengira itu gas beracun. Setelah itu, Harold dan Kumar sah ditetapkan sebagai teroris, seberapa kerasnya pun mereka berdalih.
Selanjutnya, Harold dan Kumar pun dibawa ke Guantanamo Bay yang terletak di Kuba. Dari sinilah inti cerita dimulai, bagaimana Harold dan Kumar meloloskan diri dari penjara, juga dari kejaran pasukan keamanan Amerika yang (katanya) paling hebat. Sepanjang pelarian, banyak hal yang aneh yang mereka alami, dari mulai terjebak dalam upacara suatu sekte pembenci kulit hitam, tidur bersama seoorang anak cacat bermata satu, hingga jatuh dari pesawat dan masuk ke ruangan pribadi presiden Amerika. Kocak.
Karena banyaknya adegan rasis dan lelucon kasar dalam film ini, maka Harold and Kumar : Escape frrom Guantanamo Bay mendapat rating R, alias Restricted, (tontonan 18 tahun keatas). Untung gue udah bisa nonton hehe ;p

Dialog Favorit gue:
Dialog ini terjadi di helikopter yang menuju kembali ke penjara Guantanamo Bay setelah Harold dan Kumar (yang disangka teroris tertangkap).
Ron Fox (Seorang Pejabat Keamanan Negara yang rasis): Dimana Al-quran yang bsia menyelamatkanmu itu?? Hahaha

Kumar: Hei, kau bahkan tidak tahu aku bukan seorang muslim. Lagipula jika aku seorang muslim, belum tentu aku seorang teroris.

Intermezzo:
Oh ya, dalam film ini juga ada puisi keren karya kumar (yang pada awalnya, didalam film ini adalah mahasiswa cerdas, yang selain jago mengerjakan soal kalkulus, juga jago menulis sebuah puisi). Puisi ini adalah kombinasi "cinta" dan "matematika"
“The Square Root of Three”
I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three
A three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight

Beneath a vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine
For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three
Has quietly come waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
And with a wave of magic wands
Our square root signs become unglued
And love for me has been renewed
Site Review


Pendapat gue mengenai situs ini : It’s The Largest and cool manga community! Alasannya:

1.Koleksi manganya sangat lengkap, dari A-Z, lebih dari 500an judul manga. (telusuri abjad per abjad untuk menemukan koleksi lebih, yang terpampang di halaman home situs hanya sebagian kecil saja)

2.Tersedia fasilitas download manga dan read online manga

3.Link download tidak mengarah ke situs file sharing seperti 4shared, hotfile, mediafire, sehingga proses download tanpa waktu tunggu.

4.Bisa download sampai dengan 8 file secara bersamaan.

5.Menyediakan komik-komik langka yang tidak beredar di Indonesia secara gratis

6.Minus flash, sehingga halaman situs ringan untuk dibuka.

So, what are you waiting for?

Match Review


Aston Villa vs Arsenal, 2-4

(Villa scorers: Ciaran Clark 2 goal)
(Arsenal scorers: Andrey Arshavin, Samir Nasri, Maurone Chamakh, Jack Wilshere)

Pertandingan ini bisa disebut sebagai pertandingan menarik melihat banyaknya gol dan attempt yang tercipta. (Lebih seru dari pertandingan Manchester United vs Blackburn Rover dengan skor akhir 7-1, dimana pertandingan tidak berimbang diperlihatkan Manchester United). Pertandingan ini dibagi dalam 4 scene, yang pertama ketika Arsenal unggul 0-2, kemudian ketika Villa membalas 1-2, Arsenal menambah satu gol lagi menjadi 1-3, Villa memperkecil ketinggalan menjadi 2-3 (disini pertandingan mencapai tensi yang tinggi) dan puncaknya pada injury time, Arsenal menyempurnakan kemenangan menjadi 2-4. Berkat kemenangan ini, Arsenal merangsek ke posisi 2 klasemen sementara dan makin mengukuhkan rekor sebagai tim yang belum pernah kalah dalam pertandingan Away (tandang).

Monthly Best comment 
 
Anggraeny (untuk entry : My dizzy exam)

“BUAHAHAHAHAHA!
Bru smpat baca blog abg, n kekeh abis2an krna kak m***

Lia Wardina (untuk entry : There’s one dream, only that I can provide)

“Gila aku gara-gara blog mu jik.”


What's on next month?

Beikut daftar sementara film yang akan gue tonton, komik yang akan gue baca, dan entry yang akan gue tulis di bulan depan. Tunggu reviewnya ya.

Movie: 

Taiyo no uta

The mist

 4bia

 The hangover

Komik: 


Battle royale

DMC the manga

Real vol 9

Entry:

The most important friend 2010

Coming soon

2 Desember, Ujian blok 11 (modul 1 dan 2)

1 Desember, Indonesia vs Malaysia (AFF cup)

9 Desember, Ujian blok 11 (modul 3)

11 Desember, Manchester United vs Arsenal (EPL), Ujian blok 11 (modul 4), Ujian praktikum

19 Desember, Ulang tahun Odik


3rd Mood Healer

Di entry-entry blog gue sebelumnya, gue pernah mengatakan bahwa selain senyuman cewek manis (seperti senyuman Rachel Weisz atau Vj franda), ada beberapa hal lagi yang bisa memperbaiki mood gue, yang biar kedengeran keren, gue sebut dengan istilah Mood healer. Musik, adalah mood healer pertama yang gue kenal. Ini menjelaskan kenapa gue suka genre musik pop rock. Pop rock yang bersemangat adalah salah satu kunci dalam mereparasi suasana hati gue yang gampang kacau gara-gara sering telat bangun atau dicuekin cewek (haha ketawa miris lagi deh). Yang kedua, adalah kemenangan Arsenal. Gue masih ingat efek ketika Arsenal menang melawan Aston Villa sabtu malam kemarin, gue semalaman nyengir terus padahal lagi capek-capeknya. Dan berlawanan dengan itu, kekalahan Arsenal atas Totenham di kandang sendiri seminggu yang lalu, malah membuat gue ga bergairah melakukan apa-apa (sehabis pertandingan asli gue langsung tidur saking kesalnya).

Mood healer yang ketiga, yang baru gue sadari efeknya beru-baru ini, adalah Quotes. Yap, quote-quote bagus selalu membantu gue untuk memperbaiki suasana hati bilamana gue mengalami kejadian yang memaksa perasaan gue untuk kacau. Contohnya seperti ini (berdasarkan pengalaman pribadi)

Gue saat itu sedang online di facebook dan melihat “dia” diantara chat list gue. Tanpa prasangka yang buruk, gue pun langsung nge-chat.
Gue tulis kata seperti ini
“hai, ****”
Gue menekan enter, dan kurang dari dua detik muncul balasan, dari facebook.
**** telah offline dan meninggalkan percakapan.

Apa yang ada di pikiran gue setelah itu bukanlah hal yang baik. Gue mengumpat-umpat. Untunglah gue punya sidebar (google sidebar) di desktop komputer yang menampilkan quote secara random.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness

Kata-kata sederhana itu menghindarkan gue dari keinginan untuk meninju layar komputer. Yah, marah-marah hanya akan membuat kebahagiaan gue (yang cuma sedikit) akan hilang. Mood gue perlahan ditenangkan, hanya saja, gue masih ragu apakah memang “sabar” yang seharusnya dilakukan. Bukankah menahan emosi itu tidak baik, sekalipun kehilangan 60 detik kebahagiaan adalah taruhannya. Mengapa gue harus diam saja setelah diperlakukan seperti itu untuk yang kesekian kalinya (ya, kejadian diatas itu bukan yang pertama). Gue pun mencoba menyelamatkan diri dengan mengobrak-abrik kumpulan quotes di sidebar google gue, dan menemukan quotes yang bagus.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Atas nama lelaki kedewasaan (preet), gue pun melupakan kejadian menyebalkan itu. Ga tahu kenapa pikiran dan perasaan gue terlalu gampang untuk disugesti oleh kata-kata. Lihat itu, ukuran seorang lelaki itu bisa diukur dari bagaimana ia memperlakukan seseorang yang berlaku tidak baik kepadanya. Secara tidak langsung itu menyatakan bahwa tidak membalas perlakuan kurang baik orang kepada kita adalah bukti kedewasaan. Nah, karena gue ga membalas orang yang menyebalkan itu, berarti gue Dewasa dong (mendadak senang). :p

Dalam sebulan terakhir, inilah 10 besar quotes favorit gue. Yang sangat berperan dalam mengubah mood gue ketika putus asa maupun ketika bingung. Check tis out tzahhh!

1.At first dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable

2.Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Bill Gates, Hellen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Mark Zuckenberg, and Albert Einstein.

3.We could all take a lesson from crayons : some are sharp, some are beautiful, some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they still learn to live in the same box.

4.Avoiding problems you need to face is avoiding the life you need to live.

5.Sometimes you just can’t open up to someone. Not because you don’t trust them. But because once you tell someone how you feel inside, you’re giving them permission to hurt you.

6.You can close your eyes to things you don’t want to see. But you can’t close your heart to the things you don’t won’t to feel.

7.Forget about the people in your past, they didn’t make it to your future for a reason

8.There are things that we don’t want to happen but have to accept, things we don’t want to know but have learn.

9.If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

10.The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.

South Indian Actress Sangeetha Arvind Hot Wallpapers, Photos & Pictures

Sangeetha Arvind-Krish (born 21 October) is an Indian film actress. Her grandfather, K. R. Balan, is a prominent film producers, who had produced more than 20 Tamil films. Also her father had produced several films. Sangeetha Arvind is all geared up for her December release ‘Manmadhan Ambu’. And the reason why she is so excited these days is the fact that she has shared screen space with veteran actor Kamal Haasan for the first time in her film career. Sangeetha is a professional Bharatanatyam dancer as she had learned Bharatanatyam during her school days. She studied in St. John's, Besant Nagar where she was unanimously elected as the head girl of her school. Check out the latest Sangeetha Arvind Hot Wallpapers, Sangeetha Arvind Manmadhan Ambu Movie Photos, Sangeetha Arvind Hot Pictures, Sangeetha Arvind Kamal Haasan Photos.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Looking Ahead: Turner Classic Movies In December

So what are our boys at TCM showing in December that I've written about or soon plan to write about here at the Monkey? Let's take a look, shall we?

Thursday December 2
3:45 PM Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
Boyhood friends grow up on opposite sides of the law. Cast: Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy. Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II. BW-90 mins, TV-G, CC

Saturday December 4
7:15 AM Night at the Opera, A (1935)
Three zanies turn an operatic performance into chaos in their efforts to promote their protege's romance with the leading lady. Cast: The Marx Brothers, Allan Jones, Kitty Carlisle. Dir: Sam Wood. BW-91 mins, TV-G, CC, DVS

6:15 PM Thin Man, The (1934)
A husband-and-wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts. Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan. Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II. BW-91 mins, TV-G, CC, DVS

Sunday December 12
12:45 AM Intolerance (1916)
In this silent film, four stories from different eras intertwine to depict man's inhumanity to man. Cast: Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish, Constance Talmadge. Dir: D.W. Griffith. BW-115 mins, TV-14

Wednesday December 15
12:00 PM Bitter Tea of General Yen, The (1932)
An American missionary falls in love with a Chinese warlord. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther, Walter Connolly. Dir: Frank Capra. BW-87 mins, TV-PG, CC

Sunday December 19
12:15 AM King of Kings, The (1927)
In this silent film, Cecil B. DeMille directs an epic retelling of the life of Christ. Cast: H.B. Warner, Dorothy Cumming, Ernest Torrence. Dir: Cecil B. DeMille. BW-157 mins, TV-G

Tuesday December 21
12:00 AM Thin Man, The (1934)
A husband-and-wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts. Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan. Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II. BW-91 mins, TV-G, CC, DVS

Wednesday December 22
3:00 AM Big Jake (1971)
A rancher leads the posse out to recover his kidnapped grandson. Cast: John Wayne, Richard Boone, Patrick Wayne. Dir: George Sherman. C-110 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format

Saturday December 25
6:00 AM Little Women (1933)
The four March sisters fight to keep their family together and find love while their father is off fighting the Civil War. Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas. Dir: George Cukor. BW-116 mins, TV-G, CC, DVS

1:00 PM Ben-Hur (1959)
While seeking revenge, a rebellious Israelite prince crosses paths with Jesus Christ. Cast: Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins. Dir: William Wyler. C-222 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format, DVS

Friday December 31
8:00 PM Animal Crackers (1930)
Three zanies try to recover a stolen painting during a madcap house party. Cast: The Marx Brothers, Lillian Roth, Margaret Dumont. Dir: Victor Heerman. BW-97 mins, TV-G

9:45 PM Monkey Business (1931)
Four stowaways get mixed up with gangsters while running riot on an ocean liner. Cast: The Marx Brothers, Thelma Todd, Rockliffe Fellowes. Dir: Norman Z. McLeod. BW-78 mins, TV-G, CC

11:15 PM Horse Feathers (1932)
In an effort to beef up his school's football team, a college president mistakenly recruits two loonies. Cast: The Marx Brothers, Thelma Todd, David Landau. Dir: Norman Z. McLeod. BW-67 mins, TV-G, CC

12:30 AM Duck Soup (1933)
When he's named dictator of Freedonia, a con artist declares war on the neighboring kingdom. Cast: The Marx Brothers, Louis Calhern, Margaret Dumont. Dir: Leo McCarey. BW-69 mins, TV-G, CC

1:45 AM Night at the Opera, A (1935)
Three zanies turn an operatic performance into chaos in their efforts to promote their protege's romance with the leading lady. Cast: The Marx Brothers, Allan Jones, Kitty Carlisle. Dir: Sam Wood. BW-91 mins, TV-G, CC, DVS

3:30 AM Day At The Races, A (1937)
A group of zanies tries to save a pretty girl's sanitarium. Cast: The Marx Bros., Allan Jones, Maureen O'Sullivan. Dir: Sam Wood. BW-109 mins, TV-G, CC, DVS

Friday, November 26, 2010

Free Christmas 2010 Wallpapers, Beautiful Christmas 2010 Pictures & Photos

Christmas 2010 is one of the famous and popular festivals of Christian community. It is celebrated with different colors and traditions all over the world. Every year 25th December is celebrated as event of Christmas, the day dedicated to the birth of Christ GOD. The festival of Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ and conveys his message of love, tolerance and brotherhood. This Christmas festival gives the message of humanity, friendship, world's prosperity and the path of truth and honesty. Different countries follow different traditions and customs to celebrate the event of Christmas. Here are some really beautiful christmas 2010 photos for your desktop, including free christmas 2010 wallpapers, christmas festival 2010 photos, beautiful christmas 2010 Pictures, christmas 2010 Images. Click to get free and full size version of the wallpaper background. More Info: http://collection-of-wallpapers.blogspot.com/2010/11/free-christmas-2010-wallpapers-photos.html

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