Breaking Emotions Blogathon Week #3 - Smiles & Thrills

Blogathons are awesome. They're a great way for film bloggers to stumble upon sites that they may not have come across before and they're always fun to tackle. Lucky for me then, that I recently discovered a brand new blogathon titled 'Breaking Emotions' on the Mettel Ray site. Each week, bloggers are asked to pick three movie scenes that best sum up a particular emotion for them. Last week, the two emotions chosen were 'fear' and 'awkward'. This week, we're tackling tears and surprise. To find out more about the blogathon, click here and to see which scenes I've chosen, read on after the jump. Go on. You know you wanna!

First up this week is 'smiles'. The instant temptation is to choose scenes that made me laugh but I thought that was too obvious so instead, I decided to select scenes that made me feel good, bringing a smile to my face. At the end of the day, we all watch movies for those magical feelgood moments. Unsurprisingly, my three choices all come from family friendly films which capture this magic best of all. I hope reading about each of these scenes will make you smile. 

1) Adam Shankman's musical version of Hairspray is camp fun from the very beginning and Tracy Turnblad's opening number 'Good Morning Baltimore' is just so unabashedly fun and trashy that you can't help but smile. Bonus points for the slightly perverse John Waters cameo.

2) Babe. Who would have thought that a film about a talking pig competing as a sheep dog could ever make you feel this good? I won't spoil the ending for anyone who suffered a deprived childhood but this movie will bring you tears of joy if you get sucked into the magic.

3) I always fall back to The Lion King but seriously, this movie defined my childhood; it's the film I compared all others to growing up and why not? It's a Disney classic and if any studio knows how to make you feel good, it's Disney. The moment that brings me the most joy in The Lion King is the song 'I Just Can't Wait To Be King', which sums up all of Simba's youthful hope and an infectiously positive outlook on life. Oh yeah, and it's full of shiny bright colours.

While cinema should certainly make you feel good, things could get boring if every film just made you smile all the time, so it's important for movies to also thrill and excite us, literally keeping us on the edge of our seats. My three choices for moments that 'thrill' are fortunately not x rated but I'm sure you'll agree that these are great moments, so read on kids and enjoy.  

1)  My first moment comes from one of the most thrilling films of the past decade, Avengers Assemble', the jewel in Marvel's crown. It's not an obvious choice though so no Loki and no Hulk. During the battle of New York, there's a tiny blink and you'll miss it moment when Captain America holds up his shield so Iron Man can use it to deflect his repulsor rays into the oncoming aliens. It's pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things but as a life-long comic book geek, that was the moment when I felt all the stories I'd read as a child had finally come to life on the big screen.

2) This one may be an obvious choice but how could I not include a Ripley moment in a list of thrills? James Cameron is one of the best action directors of all time and the iconic showdown at the end of Aliens is the most exciting scene in the whole franchise for me. 'Get away from her you bitch!" gives me goose bumps every time. Man I need to get me one of those giant yellow construction thingies!

3) Finally, I decided to select one of the most manic films of all time, the Japanese kill fest Battle Royale, which is crammed full of craziness from the moment a teacher kills a student with a quick knife throw just for whispering! The moment that I found most exciting in a tense nail biting way was when one of the girls accidentally poisoned the others with soup, sparking off a huge bloody massacre where almost no one survived. It was exciting but in a graphically violent messed up kind of way. 

So there we have it. Week 3 of the blogathon offered some unusual but fantastic emotions to work with so bring on next week. Only two to go! Don't forget to let me know in the comments box below if you can think of any scenes that you would have chosen to best represent 'Smiles' or 'Thrills'. See you next week!