Movie Nerds

There are some movies that I could watch 20 times and still desire to see them again and again.  My all-time favorites include classics like Gone With the Wind, Sense and Sensibility,  Pride and Prejudice, The King and I, The Sting, Jaws, The Sound of Music, The Color Purple, Braveheart, A Christmas Story, The Way We Were, The Princess Bride, The Last of the Mohicans, The Last Samurai,  O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Inlgorious Basterds, Million Dollar Baby, Pulp Fiction, Star Wars (episodes 4-6), Indiana Jones, and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Each of these films draws me in and keeps me entertained every single time I watch them.

The reasons I watch some of these beauties is obvious.  Seriously, how gorgeous is Vivien Leigh as the sassy southern belle, Scarlett O'Hara?  And Rhett Butler?  Talk about the perfect man!   Rogers and Hammerstein took wonderful music and partnered it with magnificent cinematography....of course when I sing along  it might not be as magical to the other parties who are watching, but Julie Andrews never complains.  At age 13, Han Solo became my first love. The teenage boys never stood a chance against this scruffy, cocky, ever so lovable hero and 30 years later I still adore watching Han and friends outsmart the forces of evil.  When I needed a good chuckle the shenanigans of the Dread Pirate Roberts and his entourage never let me down.

Now the downside of seeing movies multiple times is that there are no big surprises coming down the way.  You know when that awesome samurai is going to die and when the shark is going to have a snack.  You know that Rhett won't be coming back and Maggie, on the cusp or realizing her dreams, will get paralyzed by a hateful cheating bitch.  But my seeing a movie multiple times does not in any way diminish how emotional I get.  I still blubber like a baby when the heroine loses her child or the hero loses his life.  Those characters might not be real but they elicit a strong emotional response.

Over the years I have come to know the lines to a great many films and while some might argue that this is another downside to seeing a movie umpteen times, I find it strangely enjoyable.  As a matter of fact,  my husband and I have turned quoting movies into a friendly competition.  We run the lines with the characters most of the time, but sometimes we say the upcoming lines before the characters do to really showcase our memorization skills.....or as Hubby puts it, our "nerd skills".  When we are running lines we try to impersonate the actors' facial expressions and accents and when one of us truly outshines the other, we talk smack about our superiority.

Easter weekend found us watching and quoting the LOTR trilogy.   A scene in the second movie of the series had Legolas arguing with Aragorn and parts of the conversation were in English and parts in Elvish--with subtitles. Our competition had been fairly even up to this point, but then my husband decided to play the coup de grace.  Hubby rolled off the upcoming line in perfect Elvish and with a smug smile on his face he said "My nerd skills are more powerful than yours."  It was with a heavy heart that I acknowledged he truly was nerdier than I.