Favourite scene in the movie
Cathy from Canada here.
My favourite scene was the grocery store shopping spree.Brings back a lot of great memories as I won the same sort of prize a number of years ago. :O)
i loved that scene too! wow their store is soo packed , i dont think stores sell cocktail shrimp anymore, right?
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=walmart
Sure, you can still buy shrimp cocktail in jars at a lot of grocery stores. I just don't think it's anywhere as good as fresh shrimp cocktail. Speaking of incredible mothers, my mom made the best shrimp cocktail sauce. Mmmm.
I have to agree, that supermarket shopping spree scene was the highest moment of the film. It's pretty hard to top. But I also really loved the scene when Evelyn returned from Goshen Ind and her drunk husband had locked the kids out and he grabbed her arm while he was yelling at her and in an instant, those kids were all over him like flies on rotten meat. After the time he caused Evelyn to trip and cut herself on broken milk bottles, they were never going to let him lay a hand on her again. I loved that scene. It was so lovely how those kids absolutely worshipped their mother---and it's sad they seemed to have litle more than contemp for their father. But it made sense to me.
Another great scene was when they all composed the "sandwich" song together. It was so funny how Woody Harrelson kept sticking his head in the room like a big sore kid w/ his angry, depressing versions of sandwich songs and they all just laughed at him.
I was introduced to this film last night by a friend, who thinks highly of it, as do I now.
I would have to say that I find myself thinking that I have a great deal of respect for the director of this one. I particularly liked the way the scene with the broken milk bottles and the blood was re-visited with the same colour elements in the scene with the Jello, the "Death by Jello is highly unlikely." scene. The way that the colour of the Jello played off the whiteness of Kelly's shirt, as a parallel visual element to the mixing of blood and milk in the earlier scene.
I don't want to make Ms. Anderson sound like Sergio Leone, but it was indicative of a visual imagination.
Hey, globaltrailer, that's a very perceptive observation about the Jello on Kelly's shirt vs. the blood mixed with milk. I replayed both scenes, and there certainly are similarities.
For those who saw this in the theater: Did people cheer when she pelted her husband with Jello? I certainly did at home!
I didn't see it in the theater but I would've cheered had I been in a theater. As it was, I cheered to myself, and my husband and I both laughed.
I hadn't thought at all about the visual comparison to the jello-tossing and the milk-spilling scenes, but it does work...a very astute observation globaltrailer. I do think it was intentional also, now that I think of it...the jello could've been any color; making it red jello, splashed acorss Kelly's white shirt was indeed a perfect parallel of the milk-spilling, blood staining scene.
Interesting discussion about the milk & jello, but I seem to recall that in the original book, red cherry Jello was the family favourite. So no, don't think they changed the color of the Jello on purpose in the movie to parallel the milk/blood scene, just worked out that way.
Cathy :O)
Ah, to take it the one step further...
Marx's observation about history and dramatic events, vis a vis, the bourgeois Emperor, i.e., Louis Napoleon as the replay of his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte:
All events in history occur twice: once as tragedy, the second time as farce.
I think that the filmmaker was just making a point about the differences in temperment of the couple. His results in blood spilled; hers results in a comedic moment, a diffusion of tension. Each was coping with tragic events.
After all, she married a man with ambitions, though not all that explored, not a raging drunk.
The scene I enjoyed was after the shopping spree, when they were all eating and enjoying all the new foods and her husband was acting like such an idiot...throwing food out and just being a big baby (eating spam out of the can lol)...it cracked me up...I dont know maybe my humor is off...but it was funny.
shareNo, I don't think your humor is off, Scully. I found all the scenes like that w/ the husband acting like a big, crabby baby very, very humorous. It was pathetic how jealous he was of his wife's success, and how threatened he was by it. It was funny how she shrugged it all off and paid him little mind when he threw his temper tantrums. In the scene you're talking about, it was telling how Evelyn soothed her husband's tantrum and coaxed him gently over to the table to sit with them and share in the bounty they were all enjoying. After that, you see her out in the yard w/ a couple of the kids picking up all the packages of food the childish Kelly threw out in the yard during his tantrum, as if it was a game.
shareMy grandma used to live in Defiance Ohio and some of her friends knew Evelyn...my gram was stoked when this movie came out...and the store she does the shopping in was Chief we used to go there all the time to get doughnuts
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