Vanilla Sky

[CarmenTao]

I bought a secondhand DVD of Vanilla Sky last week. This is a Tom Cruise’s movie. I bought it ‘cuz I got the script and would like to learn the way they speak in the movie. Knowing that the move is 7 years old, I simply gave up reading the script but still watched the DVD as planned.

David (Tom Cruise) is a young entrepreneur, inheriting a fortune from his late father. He met Sofia at his birthday party and was totally appealed to her. When the romance is about to begin, he has a car accident and his face is badly disfigured. This is just the first 30% of the whole movie. In the remaining 70% of the movie, he cannot tell which is dream or reality. To tell the truth, neither could I when I watched it. Well, I was very absorbed to the movie in the first place although I watched it with my desktop at home with little special audio or visual effect. However there should have been a final touch to this movie. It ended badly.

By the way, I also bought another DVD called Semi-pro, which seems very vulgar. Well, from the point of English learning, we need to learn REAL English, don't we?

[Gloria Lo]

Recently I also watched DVD: Runaway Bride and A Good Year. Of course, I wanna practice my English listening skill.
I found that Whenever I play the DVDs on TV, it's hard for me to understand the the talking. I cannot catch the first and last sound of almost all words even I turn up the volum. On the contrary, When I try to play them on the notebook, it's much better. Do you have this kind of experience?

By the way, I am not familiar with 羅素克洛''s accent in the movie"A Good Year". Is it an Australian accent?

[CarmenTao]

Dear Gloria,
Good questions! Some experiences to share with you. First of all, I retrieve movie scripts from the following Web site:
http://www.joblo.com/moviescripts.php

In addition to that, I try to know the nationalities of the main cast from this Web site:
http://www.imdb.com

Russell Crowe (羅素克洛) is a New Zealander as you can see from the following profile:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000128/

You can decide which movie for English learning based on all the information available (the availability of movie scripts and the possible accents of the actors).

Recently I just found a good way to concentrate on English listening. Just repeat verbally what you have just heard. You'll focus very much on what you are listening. If I'm waiting for a bus, people will see me wear a headset and murmur in the meantime. I find it useful although I don't get some words. We can expand our vocabulary by reading. This is another story.

Just for your information. Merry Christmas!

[Gloria Lo]

Dear Carmen,

Thank you for all the information and tips you shared, I like to know how excellent persons like you learn English, it's quite useful. Rock also gave me the tip about taking notes without Chinese several months ago, it's also great.

Speaking of movies, last evening during yoyo meeting, someone talked about Brad Pitt. I am not familiar with movie stars' English names, so I just thought they were talking about some "pig". It's funny!

Your picture is terrific !

[maggiewang]

Yeah~~nice picture!!