Movies

Purpose

 

Hugo: Did you ever notice that all machines are made for some rea­son? They are built to make you laugh, or tell the time, or to fill you with won­der. Maybe that’s why a bro­ken machine always makes me a lit­tle sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do.

Maybe it’s the same with peo­ple. If you lose your pur­pose … it’s like you’re broken.

Isabelle: Like Papa Georges?

Hugo: Maybe … maybe we can fix him.

Isabelle: So is that your pur­pose? Fix­ing things?

Hugo: I don’t know. Maybe.

Isabelle: Then what’s my pur­pose?

Hugo: I don’t know.

Hugo: I like to imag­ine that the world is one big machine. You know machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact num­ber and type of parts they need.

So I fig­ure if the entire world is big machine, I have to be here for some rea­son. And that means you have to be here for some rea­son, too.

A Song I Played At My Wedding

Day Twenty-​​Three – A Song I Played At My Wedding:

One of the movie dates Hubby & I went on when we were still dat­ing was Aladdin. We had loved the humor of the movie so much (not to men­tion what cute­ness occurred dur­ing our show­ing of the movie) that it quickly became a favorite of ours.

A few months later, in one of my rare dis­plays of cre­ativ­ity … I sur­prised Future-​​Hubby with a nice roman­tic pic­nic on the floor of my dorm room. And since the movie was no longer in the the­aters, I hap­pened to find all the mak­ings of an Aladdin-​​themed pic­nic for a very mod­estly cheap, “I’m a broke col­lege student”-type price. To this day, Hubby & I look back on that “date” with such fond memories.

When it came time to plan our wed­ding, Hubby & I had no inten­tion of hav­ing any­thing but your stan­dard, middle-​​class Filipino-​​American recep­tion. We never thought that we’d asso­ciate a theme with our wed­ding. But in another one of my rare dis­plays of cre­ativ­ity (Hubby’s the one with the Fine Arts Degree … not me!), the thought of doing some­thing around an Aladdin theme came to mind. And luck­ily, Hubby thought the idea was also brilliant.

So … here’s what we did to make our wed­ding unique. First off, Hubby wanted to design our wed­ding invi­ta­tions; which, in 1996 was not a very com­mon thing to pull off. Sec­ond, we decided that our wed­ding favors would be in the shape of Aladdin’s magic lamp and con­tain pieces of candy inside of it. Thirdly … we wanted to use a musi­cal porce­lain fig­urine of Aladdin & Jas­min on the Magic Car­pet as our cake top­per. And finally, the fact that the fig­urine could wind up and play “A Whole New World,” which we decided would be our “First Dance” song … well that was the icing on the cake (both lit­er­ally and figuratively).

And that’s the song (one of many songs played that night) that we had at our wedding.

Here’s a video (seen on the Aladdin DVD) of how the song came to be …

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What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

A Song I Wish I Heard On The Radio

Day Eigh­teen – A Song I Wish I Heard On The Radio:

I was 13 when “Pretty In Pink” came out in the the­aters. And I absolutely loved the movie and (of course) the sound­track. It’s because of Andie that I dreamed of work­ing at a record store when I was old enough to get a job. Lucky for me, I was able to ful­fill that dream.

There’s also this idea that I had, thanks to “Pretty In Pink,” that — once I was old enough — I’d be able to get into bars and clubs (with the req­ui­site fake ID) where I could sit and lis­ten (or even dance) to all the alter­na­tive music I wanted.

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Tall, Blonde and Blue-​​Eyed

I really got to recon­sider my stance on men with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Not that I ever had any­thing against guys with those par­tic­u­lar traits … it’s just that I never felt any “attrac­tion” to them.

Well, except for Brad Pitt as Achilles in “Troy”. But hey … I think any woman would have the hots for him after see­ing that one “love scene” in “Troy”; gra­tu­itous butt shot notwith­stand­ing. <sigh … >

Hubby, lucky gal that I am, has always been good about my celebrity “crushes” … after all, wasn’t he the guy that let me go all stalka­razzi on Johnny Depp back in June of 2009? We’ve just always had that type of hon­est rela­tion­ship where we can talk about silly things like that. After all, both of us have our own “Friends”-inspired Top 5 Free­bie List.

But there are two films that I’ve recently seen that had me sali­vat­ing over a pair of baby blues with golden hair.

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The Fourth Is Strong With This One

May “The Fourth” be with you …

Steady As She Comes

It’s no sur­prise that I con­sider myself a pre-​​cursor to a Fan­girl.** And I say “pre-​​cursor” because I cer­tainly am not one that is com­pletely obsessed with my favorite char­ac­ters or actors; Johnny Depp notwith­stand­ing (of course). And I cer­tainly don’t “role-​​play” like some fan­girls and fan­boys do. Call it being a prod­uct of grow­ing up as an ado­les­cent and teenager in the early 80’s … but I con­sider myself more a Pop Cul­ture enthu­si­ast, than a Fan­girl. I know more Pop Cul­ture trivia and par­tic­u­lar TV shows/​movies than I know any­thing about Manga or RPG char­ac­ters in the lat­est PS3 game.

Or as Cee Lo Green might say, “I guess (s)he’s more XBox. And I’m more Atari.”

So it shouldn’t be a sur­prise that, last night I was on the couch watch­ing Spi­der­man 2 in HD and read­ing the Wolver­ine & Jubilee*** comic at the same time. After all, my num­ber one Fan­boy (aka Hubby) was also on the couch next to me read­ing his entire pile of comics and was the one respon­si­ble for choos­ing our TV selection.

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Soul Searcher

Hubby & Me on our Hawai­ian Hon­ey­moon in 1996

An unex­pected trip to Chicago this past week­end had Hubby & me enjoy­ing the nice warm weather mostly in the com­forts of our car. But that was okay, since we had good tunes to lis­ten to … and even bet­ter conversations.

Oh, and not to men­tion, a great din­ner in Buck­town Sat­ur­day night fol­lowed by some deli­cious Dim Sum in Chi­na­town the next morn­ing as we left the city.

The week­end wrapped up with a movie; a per­fect way to keep cool on an unsea­son­ably warm Spring Day. I had wanted to see some­thing uplift­ing and inspi­ra­tional, so Hubby & I decided to go see “Soul Surfer.”

Okay, so the inspi­ra­tional part was more sec­ondary to the fact that I just really wanted to see surf­ing. And Hawaii. I just love any movies with Hawaii as the back­drop. And it’s all because it brings back some incred­i­ble Hon­ey­moon mem­o­ries, oh so long ago. So yeah, a movie filmed in Hawaii would make a very happy Emily.

Bethany Hamil­ton still surfs

So yeah, uplift­ing and inspi­ra­tional. And boy … did I get both.

For those that haven’t seen trail­ers or haven’t heard about this movie, it’s based on the true story of Bethany Hamil­ton. If the name doesn’t sound famil­iar, then this prob­a­bly will: Bethany was the 13-​​year old girl who, in 2003 was bit by a shark while surf­ing in Hawaii. She had lost her arm to the shark, but had gone on to con­tinue to surf even after that incident.

I won’t give much of the movie away here, but what I will say is that within 15-​​minutes of the movie I was cry­ing. And I con­tin­ued to cry (inter­mit­tently, that is) through­out the entire movie. It was that good.**

One par­tic­u­lar part of the movie had seri­ously got­ten under my skin. After sus­tain­ing her injury, Bethany obvi­ously began to ques­tion her­self; ques­tion what her big­ger pic­ture in life was. After all, surf­ing was her life … and what could she do now that she no longer could do it well enough to suc­cess­fully com­pete? She had gone to her church’s youth group leader, Sarah Hill (played by Car­rie Under­wood, BTW) and asked her, “Why?” If she had been given this incred­i­ble gift, why would God do this to her?

In the midst of cry­ing, Sarah told her exactly what I thought she would her: That there must be a big­ger plan out there for her. And that only God knows what that plan is.

Yes, I can see all my IF friends rolling their eyes and say­ing, “Yep. Heard that one before.”

And I can tell you that, in the midst of tears, even *I* rolled my eyes. But it’s what Sarah said after­wards that had me cry­ing even more:

First, she said “I don’t know what that plan is.” This always gets bonus points for me, since my expe­ri­ence with the “God must have a big­ger plan” state­ment has always ended with just that one phrase.

If only one time, I could’ve heard the added phrase, “I don’t know what the plan is” from any well-​​intentioned fam­ily or friends … that would’ve less­ened the bur­den in which I felt *I* had to carry this bur­den on my own. That one added piece would have given me the com­fort of know­ing that I wasn’t crazy for being so angry and so con­fused over some­thing that no one (not even an IF Doc­tor) had con­trol over.

Then Sarah goes on to say, “I don’t know why ter­ri­ble things hap­pen to us some­times.  But I have to believe that some­thing good is gonna come out of this.” And that’s the state­ment that had me weeping.

See … that’s the one thing that had been miss­ing once Hubby and I stopped all treat­ments for Infer­til­ity: The belief that there’s some­thing bet­ter wait­ing around the cor­ner for me. That there was some­thing else I could look for­ward to.

In the midst of decid­ing what Hubby & my next steps would be after stop­ping treat­ments, I was too close – too involved – with the smaller pic­ture, that I couldn’t see what the big­ger pic­ture was for me and Hubby. At first I couldn’t see past the anger and pain of being bar­ren to see what else was in my “big­ger pic­ture.”  But even­tu­ally, as the storm clouds pum­meled through and the dust finally set­tled, we both took a step back and decided that liv­ing child-​​free was part of that big­ger picture.

But now, almost two years later … I feel like I’m lost once again. If I can’t be a Mom, then what will I be? What can I do? How am I now going to be able to mea­sure my “suc­cesses” in life … espe­cially since other women and cou­ples can mea­sure there’s by the suc­cess of their children? ***

Hon­ey­moon Sun­set in Hawaii

It’s no mys­tery that I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing an ongo­ing iden­tity cri­sis. And that Infer­til­ity has played the biggest part into ques­tion­ing who I am … or who I could become. I know that, as this movie por­trays, I should have faith that God knows what my big­ger plan is for my life. I just wish I had the strength and con­vic­tion that Bethany – despite being so young – has that some­thing … any­thing good will come out of some­thing like infertility.

I just wish I could, at the very least, get a glimpse of that big picture.

So with that said … go see “Soul Surfer.” Not only will you see beau­ti­ful shots of Hawaii (Kauai, in fact … my favorite of the islands we’ve visted) … but you will see an incred­i­ble story of a girl who over­came her fears to do some­thing that was within her soul.

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 ** Okay, so the act­ing wasn’t exactly stel­lar, but the story was.

 *** And when I mean suc­cess, I mean those mile­stones in their kids’ lives. First word, first step, first day of school, first date … it can go on and on and on. Grad­u­a­tion, wed­ding, grand­chil­dren … need I go on more?

Ticket To Ride

Almost a week with­out a post. Yes, I’m try­ing to get bet­ter at writ­ing at least one post a week here. At least thats my goal.

As it turns out, I’m on a train head­ing back to Detroit from Chicago. Hubby and I drove back to Chicago in mid-​​March, but he had to get back to Detroit before I returned from my Boston work trip this past week. Any­way, this just means that I have a lit­tle win­dow of oppor­tu­nity to sit and write with­out being distracted.

Dr. Bro, LJC and me at Disneyworld

Being a “Road War­rior” for work has given me the oppor­tu­nity to spend more time lis­ten­ing to music on my dig­i­tal library. After all, many times I find myself in air­ports for just enough time to check my email, but not enough time respond to them. Or else I’m lit­er­ally on the road dri­ving to a loca­tion hours away from where I started. Either way, music is my con­stant com­pan­ion at these times.

It’s refresh­ing for me, because music has always been part of my life. One that only recently re-​​entered at full force after years of focus­ing on a career. Or try­ing to get pregnant.

My par­ents always had music on in the house and in the car. In fact, many of those road trips we’d take as a fam­ily involved worn out cas­sette tapes or — gasp! — old 8-​​tracks.

One of my favorite mem­o­ries is my first trip to Dis­ney­world at the age of 6. My par­ents packed my brother, my cousin (who would later be known as LJC) & me in our tan wood-​​paneled sta­tion wagon along with our two grand­moth­ers and an uncle and drove down from Detroit to Orlando. Dur­ing that trip, I believe my par­ents only took a hand­ful of 8-​​tracks; ones that we would con­stantly repeat, only because we couldn’t get any radio recep­tion when dri­ving through the mountains.

Let’s just say that by the end of our trip, the three kids knew all the words to every Neil Sedaka song, as well as all the singing parts to the Grease sound­track. And it’s appar­ently a mem­ory that keeps on giv­ing, because Hubby can attest that I was recently able to iden­tify a Neil Sedaka tune!

Another 8-​​track that was in the wagon dur­ing that trip was one of many Bea­t­les com­pi­la­tions that my Dad threw together. It was from that home-​​made “playlist” (cre­ated circa 1978) that I learned the words to most of the Bea­t­les songs. And to this day, every time I hear “Ticket To Ride” I have this incred­i­ble urge to belt out the song.

The 1978 Road War­riors (minus Mom)

It’s one of those child­hood mem­o­ries I keep stored close to my heart. And one that usu­ally sur­faces when­ever I hear any song that reminds me of road trips and spon­ta­neous singing.

For instance: Today on the train, “Tiny Dancer” came  up in “shuffle-​​mode.” The first image that came to mind was my favorite scene in “Almost Famous.”

Or the other day I thought of “Harold & Kumar” when hear­ing Wil­son Phillips “Hold On” on the radio.

Regard­less of the song, each one brought me back to my own road trip mem­o­ries and how much fun they were when music was thrown into the mix. And hear­ing each song cer­tainly gave me the urge to break out into spon­ta­neous singing. Loudly. And at the top of my lungs.

And, in the midst of the chaos that my life has become of late … It made me happy.

So even though I might not be an Amer­i­can Idol con­tes­tant, I think I might just sing aloud. At least in the pri­vacy of my own home. Or car. Or shower.

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Your turn, oh Inter­nets … What song makes you think of road trips? Or what song makes you break out your singing voice?

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Related Posts:

Emily’s Liv­ing Journal

Emily hears her Own Voice

Emily’s Pitch is a lit­tle Black

*

Oh, how I miss our old sta­tion wagon …

Old Souls

Hubby & I have always said that we’re old souls; ones that have lived and loved before … and are cur­rently in our next life together. It’s in the way we work hard in our careers; it’s the weight of respon­si­bil­ity that we feel for our­selves and for our par­ents and fam­i­lies. It’s been in our desire to have a bio­log­i­cal child of our own.

My Favorite Dis­ney Movie

In the same aspect, I like to think that we’re extremely young at heart; love to tease one another and love to be play­ful. We know (or rather Hubby knows) when we should let loose and relax.

The lat­ter is prob­a­bly the rea­son why we love to see movies. And specif­i­cally, the rea­son we absolutely love watch­ing ani­mated movies at an actual movie the­ater, rather than at home in front of our tele­vi­sion. It reminds me of the times when my par­ents would take me to see movies when I was a kid.

I will never for­get the day that the two of us saw Disney’s “Aladdin.” Hubby & I were still dat­ing and in col­lege. We had seen an evening show at a 1940’s the­ater in down­town Royal Oak; the the­ater packed with par­ents and their young charges. In the midst of the movie, when Aladdin backs out of free­ing Genie because he feels the need to use his third wish on him­self in order to keep Princess Jas­mine … one lone child in the the­ater, in her loud­est voice said, “Mommy, why doesn’t Aladdin just tell the truth?”

While the entire audi­ence let out a col­lec­tive, “Awwww …,” I can recall Future-​​Hubby squeez­ing my hand just a lit­tle tighter as we smiled at one another. And that was one of the first times I can recall think­ing that Future-​​Hubby would make an excel­lent father.

Now, flash for­ward to early 2009. Hubby & I had been mar­ried for 13-​​plus years by this time and we’d been through the ringer with Infer­til­ity. We had gone to see a movie one evening and saw the trailer for the movie “Up.” Both of us knew that this was one of those ani­mated films we’d want to see … regard­less of whether our nephew (or any of our younger, school-​​aged cousins) wanted to come with us or not.

What Hubby & I didn’t expect, when “Up” came out last sum­mer, was the infer­til­ity aspect of the movie. Well, okay … we did have a bit of a hint from read­ing other blog posts about the movie. But what I didn’t expect was how much it would affect  us; not just in the begin­ning scenes of the movie … but through­out the whole film, as Carl inter­acts with Russell.

It’s see­ing that “old soul” in Carl open his heart up to a young boy that broke my heart. It’s know­ing that Carl prob­a­bly closed his heart to chil­dren after he saw how it hurt Ellie that they couldn’t have chil­dren. It’s see­ing how much Carl loved Ellie and their life together; and how he’d do any­thing for Ellie … even after she passes away. It’s see­ing what Carl does through­out the movie to pro­tect Rus­sell and make sure he’s okay.

It’s like see­ing how Hubby, and his “old soul” would prob­a­bly be in years to come, if (or when) I pass before he does. It’s know­ing that, just like Ellie, I’d want Hubby to be happy and to know that my great­est adven­ture in life was with him.

Hubby turned the char­ac­ters from “Up” into an Asian ver­sion of us …
BTW, like my new header?

I cried in the the­ater that day. And I cry now, even as I write it; because that is a fear that I have, grow­ing old with­out any­one to take care of us except our­selves. And if, G*d for­bid, one of us dies before the other … not know­ing exactly how we’d be able to go on with­out the other.

But I sup­pose that since Hubby & I have already estab­lished that we’re cur­rently on our next life together as a cou­ple … it only makes sense that our next next life together will fol­low shortly after.

And that’s the only con­so­la­tion I can even begin to fathom at this time.

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Related Links:

How Aladdin played into the theme of our Wed­ding

Another Disney-​​related post

Everything Is Kung Fu

When Dr. Bro was about 12 years old, he took up Tae Kwon Do. Part of it was to learn self-​​defense; another rea­son was to gain con­fi­dence. I’d watch his classes from time to time; fas­ci­nated by the dis­ci­pline needed to prac­tice this mar­tial art.

Of course, a year after he started prac­tic­ing Tae Kwon Do, the orig­i­nal “Karate Kid” movie came out. It was def­i­nitely a movie that both of us had wanted to see. Dr. Bro, because of the ref­er­ence to learn­ing mar­tial arts. And me, because I wanted to see Ralph Mac­chio again after see­ing him in “The Out­siders”. Of course, both of us just loved the film; as did every 10 – 14 year old that saw the film with us. It was quite evi­dent, espe­cially dur­ing the scenes dur­ing the tour­na­ment, when every kid cheered for Daniel Larusso to win.

This past Fri­day, Hubby & I went to an early evening show at the movies; some­thing we haven’t done in awhile since find­ing myself unem­ployed. And of course we went to see the new ver­sion the “Karate Kid” … not only because we wanted to see how Jackie Chan could fill the role of Pat Morita, but because we were wanted to see how the story would trans­late now that it was set in China. We were not disappointed.

I must warn you, if you’re look­ing for a com­pletely dif­fer­ent spin on the orig­i­nal movie, you won’t find it here. The story line, from the cute class­mate to the bully, down to the some of the say­ings “Strike first! Strike hard! No mercy!” are the same. Except with this ver­sion, there seems to be some sort of twist to each ele­ment we see in the orig­i­nal film.

The first (and obvi­ous) twist to the story is that instead of being taught Karate, Jaden Smith’s char­ac­ter (Dre) is taught Kung Fu. So, as a good friend pointed out … why not call it “The Kung Fu Kid” instead? Well, after a lit­tle research I did man­age to find out that the film is, indeed called “The Kung Fu Kid” internationally.**

Another twist is in how Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) teaches mar­tial arts to Dre. In the orig­i­nal movie, Mr. Miyagi’s method of teach­ing Karate ranges from from wax­ing a car to paint­ing a fence.  This ver­sion does not have Dre being Mr. Han’s chore boy. Nope … instead, Mr Han teaches Kung Fu by hav­ing Dre take his jacket on and off.

I admit that when ini­tially see­ing the whole “Jacket On/​Jacket Off” tech­nique (as opposed “Wax On/​Wax Off”),  it appeared pretty lame, for lack of bet­ter words. But when put into con­text with the rest of the film, this method of teach­ing not only taught Dre Kung Fu, but it end up teach­ing him about respect.

Being a first gen­er­a­tion Asian-​​American, that is the aspect of the film that spoke to me most. It was watch­ing a kid from the new “West­ern World” try to inte­grate his life in the old “East­ern World.” There are many moments where we see Dre  act like a typ­i­cal Amer­i­can teenager; brash and arro­gant, unaware of his sur­round­ings. This atti­tude obvi­ously would not be accept­able in China where tra­di­tion and elders (as evi­dent by the mul­ti­ple scenes  of senior cit­i­zens exer­cis­ing) are revered.

Mr. Han does an excel­lent job, albeit reluc­tantly, teach­ing Dre about the impor­tance of respect in the East­ern World. He does it in the method in which he trains Dre in Kung Fu; because as Mr. Han says:

Kung Fu is in every­thing we do. It’s in the way we put on a jacket. It’s in how we treat peo­ple. Every­thing is Kung Fu.

In other words (or at least what I get out of it), if you respect every­body … every­thing in your sur­round­ings … you, too could be a mas­ter of Kung Fu. You, too would be able to find bal­ance between mind and body.

What I hope that most kids (and let’s face it, adults as well) get out of this movie is that there needs to be respect for every­thing; that we must treat peo­ple with the same respect that we would want in return. Whether it has to do with other cul­tures or reli­gions … or with Mother Nature and our own planet … we should find that bal­ance within ourselves.

When reach­ing the last few min­utes in the movie, I couldn’t help but cheer Dre on as he moved through the tour­na­ment. And that last scene … oth­er­wise known as “the crane kick” in the orig­i­nal movie? Well, lis­ten­ing to those 10 – 14 year old kids around us clap and cheer … it reminded me of that day, some 26 years ago, when Dr. Bro and I watched the original.

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** And while I was at it, I man­aged to find that there was actu­ally a Philip­pine TV show called “Kung Fu Kids”. Hmm … talk about com­ing around full circle!

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