Let me know what you decide and we’ll get it on the blog.

I love the backgrounds in JUNGLE BOOK, I want to go to those places. Although not as much as the “locations” in Miyazaki.

And we all hate that little girl that turns up to seduce Mowgli away to hearth and home. Bitch!

I’ve not yet decided on my choice but there are a couple off the top of my head that immediately spring to mind (probably because they’re powerful enough to make me shed a tear… and they may seem odd as I tend to emote to camera movements rather than character):

1. The moment in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST when Jill first arrives in Sweetwater, the camera elevates over the train station to reveal the town whilst Morricone’s track ‘Jill’s America’ reaches a crescendo. That bit gets me *every* time.

2. In Angelopoulos’s THE TRAVELLING PLAYERS, there is (amongst many) an almost ten minute sequence shot that beautifully depicts political shifts in power through a “musical” standoff between the Communists and Fascists (only at the end does the latter draw a gun in a kind of phallic conquest). The moment I refer to arises mainly because of “all that came before” with respect to choreography (with camera working as an all-knowing eye, moving itself cautiously to observe at safe distances) so that, after the storm, Communists now fled the scene (no deaths or injuries), a sombre musical piece begins to play in the dance hall, prompting the remaining fascist males to homo erotically embrace each other for this “final dance”… as they do so, the camera makes its way through the crowd until it comes back into contact with one of our players who has been viewing the entire event from the back of the room (that final camera trajectory is the moment of euphoria I refer to).

Failing those, I’m sure if I rewatched Sturges’ UNFAITHFULLY YOURS, I could find something from Rex Harrison’s “reactive” performance that would fit the bill quite easily.

Happy new year to all.

Great nominations! I’ll get the Kelly online soon (one can’t really ignore him in any discussion of Cinema Euphoria, as Malcolm McDowell could testify).

Need to see MABOROSI now!

My euphoric moment would probably also be a musical number: Gene Kelly’s dance on roller skates in It’s Always Fair Weather. For a cinematic depiction of floating two feet off the ground because of love, you can’t do much better.

A different scene also keeps coming to mind as I think about this: a sex scene in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Maborosi. It’s not the sex that makes the scene but what it represents: the first hint that an arranged marriage, burdened by the lingering sadness and guilt that prey on the wife because of her first husband’s suicide, may be able to break through into a real love. The kids are away on a hot summer day, and we see the husband and wife beginning to, for the first time, become real people for each other. The wife smiles and laughs for the first time since the opening scenes; temporarily, she radiates joy. I suppose it’s less a euphoric scene than a hopeful, moving one, so maybe it doesn’t qualify. But it’s one of my favorite moments in cinema.