2009年8月26日星期三

Spirit of Adventure


Spirit of Adventure

好像讀過朋友在facebook的感想,就是看了十分鐘就流淚,心想沒那麼誇張吧?怎料,就是這樣子,眼水即使沒有掉下來,卻在眼眶迴盪著,一直至完場。

也許最好的故事,就是真實的人生。

十分鐘走過Mr. Fredricksen先生太太的一生,簡單又真實。你說是因為瑣事俗事沒有完成夢想,到最後一切都已太遲,但原來兩個人在不經不覺間,已經走過多少的歷險 — 有你在身邊就是最美的歷險了。(老土到呢……但又真又實喎。)

一次又一次搗碎儲蓄夢想的玻璃瓶,為的是面對生命種種實實在在的需要,那實在是無可厚非的;時間一直過去,夢想只成為兩個人的核心,不再是兩個人的生活,時間一直流逝,生命一直平常過去,這樣的人生說不上是不美好、也是平凡了點,不是嗎?

有人陪伴著你一直實現不了夢想,那不是已經很浪漫嗎?

生命只有一次,冒險給你的是夢,是可能性、不確定性,日常生活給你的是現實,是實在的、確定的經驗驗,那一種更有價值?那一種更值得選擇?那一種是你現在所需要的?只有你自己知道。

生命不會在十八歲時才開始,也不會在八十歲就一定結束,如果你願意的話,哪一點也是起點。

Adventure is out there! Cross your heart to swear!

把擱在你心中的那兩張椅子,留在Paradise Fall吧!

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Plot (by wiki)
Carl Fredricksen is a shy 8-year-old boy who meets an outgoing and rather eccentric girl named Ellie and discovers they share the same interest in adventures as their hero, famed explorer Charles Muntz. Ellie expresses her desire to move her clubhouse, a dilapidated home, to Paradise Falls in South America, a promise she makes Carl swear to keep. Over the next 70 years, Carl and Ellie marry and grow old together in the house where they met while making a living as a toy balloon vendor and a zookeeper respectively. Unable to have children, they also try to save up for the trip to Paradise Falls but other financial obligations arise. Just as they finally seem to be able to take their trip, Ellie succumbs to her old age and passes away, leaving Carl living by himself, becoming bitter and missing his wife terribly. By this time, the city has grown around Carl's house with construction as he refuses to move. After a tussle with a construction worker over his broken mailbox, the court orders Carl to move into a retirement home. Carl comes up with a scheme to keep his promise to Ellie, and uses his old professional supplies to create a makeshift airship using 10,000 helium balloons which lift his house off its foundations. However, shortly after taking flight, Carl finds that Russell, a Wilderness Explorer trying to earn his final merit badge for "Assisting the Elderly", has stowed away on the porch after being sent on a snipe hunt by Carl the day before.
After a storm throws them off course, Russell steers the house with the help of his GPS navigator, and they find themselves on the opposite side of the tepui from Paradise Falls. The two find their body weight provides enough ballast to let them walk, dragging the floating house behind them. The two begin to walk across the tepui, hoping to reach the falls while there's still enough helium in the balloons to keep the house afloat. During the journey, Russell befriends a huge, colorful bird which he names Kevin, not realizing that the bird is actually female. They later run into a dog named Dug with a translating collar that lets him speak. They discover Dug's owner is 92-year-old Charles Muntz, who has remained in South America for many decades. Muntz explains that when he had brought back a skeletal species of a new bird species, he was called out as a fraud, and thus now seeks to bring back a live specimen, specifically Kevin, to restore his reputation. Carl is initially thrilled to meet his hero, but when he realizes that Muntz is after Kevin and will kill remorselessly in order to capture her alive himself, Carl takes steps to save the bird and escape from Muntz. Thanks to Kevin and Dug they escape Muntz's pack of vicious dogs, but Kevin is injured during the escape.
Led by a tracking device in Dug's collar, Muntz and his dogs arrive in his airship while Carl and Russell assist the injured Kevin to her chicks. Muntz traps Kevin in a net and sets Carl's house on fire, forcing Carl to choose saving his house over cutting Kevin loose. After Muntz flies off with Kevin, Carl firmly tells Russell he intends to get to Paradise Falls or die trying, and begins walking back again. The next day, Carl successfully gets the house on the cliff overlooking Paradise Falls like Ellie's wish just as the balloon no longer have any buoyancy to lift the house, but Russell's desire to assist Carl has been dulled out of anger and disappointment. Carl, settling down in his house, finds Ellie's childhood "adventure" scrapbook, which he thought had been left blank after the first few pages to save room for their planned adventure to Paradise Falls. However, he instead discovers that the pages have been filled with mementos of her life with Carl after they were married, and finds a final note from her thanking Carl for the adventure of their marriage, and an encouragement for him to go on an adventure of his own. Invigorated by Ellie's last wish, he goes outside to see Russell, only to find him giving chase to Muntz. Carl lightens the weight of his house by dumping furniture and his possessions, allowing him to chase after Muntz in his house with Dug by his side.
Russell enters the airship through a window, but is captured by the dogs. He is tied up and left to fall outside, but Carl saves him and keeps him tied up in the house. Carl and Dug board the ship, and are able to lure the guard dogs away from Kevin to free her. Carl and Muntz duel face to face and fight (Muntz with a sword, Carl with his cane), while Dug is able to wrest control of the pack and the airship. Russell frees himself but clings to a lifeline as he finds the house in a dogfight with biplane fighters. When Carl shouts for help, Russell distracts ("Look, a squirrel!") the dog pilots and regains control of the house to rescue his friends, who are now on top of the airship. In pursuit, Muntz shoots out some of the balloons, causing the house to land and slide off the airship. Carl manages to trick Muntz inside the house while saving Russell, Dug, and Kevin. Muntz attempts to reach the airship again, but gets tangled in the house's balloons and plummets to the earth below. Carl's house drifts off into the clouds, a loss Carl gracefully accepts as being for the best.
Carl takes control of Muntz's airship and returns Kevin to her chicks, and then returns with Russell and Dug back to the city. When Russell's father fails to attend his son's Senior Wilderness Explorer ceremony, Carl fulfills that role himself to proudly present Russell with his final badge, the grape soda badge that Ellie presented to Carl when they met ("The Ellie Badge"). Afterward, Carl becomes a cheerfully active community volunteer with a strong father-like relationship with Russell, Dug, and the other Wilderness Explorers. Meanwhile, his house, through happenstance, did ultimately land back on the cliff overlooking Paradise Falls, exactly where he and Ellie envisioned it.