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Photo: 127 Hours and other Oscar nominees in Lego by Alex Eylar.

127 Hours, directed by Danny Boyle, written by Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, based on Aron Ralston’s book, starring James Franco

1. You know exactly what everyone is thinking the minute they take their seats: When will he cut it off?

2. The second question is, How watchable is a movie that is 98 percent James Franco? The answer: Very. The movie doesn’t work unless you root for the guy and James Franco is nothing if not sympathetic.

3. There’s another movie about a guy in a horrible situation: Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds as a truck driver in Iraq whose convoy is attacked and who wakes up in a coffin buried in the sand. All he has is his cellphone and lighter. I also like Ryan Reynolds but did not see why I should root for him (Perhaps because it was dark in the coffin and one could not see the amazing abs that made people sit through that Amityville movie). After 20 minutes of Ryan’s frantic phone calls I tuned out and read a book.

4. Another movie I am reminded of: Kevin Macdonald’s excellent Touching the Void, also based on a true incident. Two guys try to climb Siula Grande in the Andes. One of them breaks his leg, and the other guy tries lowering him down the mountain on a rope, but things go very, very badly and when all looks hopeless the other guy decides to cut the rope (A decision that may have saved them both, though he was condemned in mountaineering circles for doing it). The injured guy falls into an abyss and, incredibly, manages to crawl back to camp.

The detail I remember the most is how a song he particularly hated kept playing in his head, and it strengthened his resolve because he could not die listening to that song. Touching the Void is even more intense than 127 Hours.

5. Important things we learned from 127 Hours:

(1) If you’re leaving for the wilderness, always tell someone where you’re going so someone can go looking for you if you don’t come back.

(2) Always bring your Swiss knife, not some crappy all-in-one tool knife made in China that you get free with a cheap flashlight.

(3) You may have your cellphone with you but when you really really need it can you get a signal?

(4) If you’re going to make a movie about people who don’t move much—junkies in a heroin stupor, a guy wedged into a canyon—hire Danny Boyle. He can make anything kinetic.

We’re giving away 127 Hours movie posters—the English version of this one.

Want a poster? Tell us what you would give up to get this poster. This takes some thought because face it, it’s just a poster, but you do want to win.

You have until Sunday.

# 1 leeflailmarch

Rapunzel’s long hair
too expensive to rebond
but great for climbing

# 5 listbonne

Cellophane sana,
pero sabi ng bakla:
“Hibang ka ba, ‘te?”

# 8 lady q

Waiting and waiting
Locked up high in her tower
To let down her hair

# 9 din79

Rapunzel, Oh dear!
Put your long hair to good use,
make it stepmom’s noose.

Note: In the movie the hag is not the stepmom, but this works for us anyway.

# 14 the chronicler of boredom

A long-haired virgin
enjoys her hair being pulled
by a virile prince.

Note: In the movie the love interest is a common thief so this version is closer to the original.

Congratulations, winners! Please post your full names and mailing addresses in Comments so our friends at Disney can send you your Tangled lampshades. Thanks to everyone who sent in their haikus.

Up next: the 127 Hours giveaway that does not require you to cut your arm off.

The Yucch-meter has started to get a Groundhog Day feeling about these LitWit Challenges: Have we been reading the same story with slight revisions over and over again for several weeks? Therefore we have devised a plan to keep the Yucch-meter from taking a flying leap out the window only to wake up the next day, look at the readers’ submissions, and read the same story again. We shall require the contestants to write poetry.

Not free verse; we do not have enough napalm to deal with that. We have chosen a form with stringent rules: The Sonnet. Do read these rules before composing your entry. No, it’s not just the rhyme scheme and meter. (Too complicated? Try this how-to.)

Here’s Matthew Macfadyen (one of the more recent onscreen Mr Darcys) reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29. You may spare yourself the video and just listen to his voice.

Melty, isn’t it. Our favorite sonnet is number 130, in which love is expressed as a series of insults.

Your assignment is to compose a sonnet and post it in Comments by Friday, February 4, 2011 at 11.59 pm.

If you just asked “What’s the maximum word count?” please proceed to the nearest concrete wall and smash your head against it. Again.

The winner will receive two books about students: The Lord of the Flies by William Golding and The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore. Start writing those sonnets.

Rapunzel—there’s another disturbing fairy tale. A hidden tower with no stairs, the only access a high window that you could reach by grabbing onto the heroine’s hair?? Tangled, the new Disney musical retelling of Rapunzel, avoids the unanswerable questions (How does she shampoo? Won’t her neck snap when someone rappels with her hair?) in favor of a brisk story of a girl escaping from her horribly manipulative mother.

We’re giving away 5 Tangled paper lamp shades (like they have in the movie). To get one, tell the story of Rapunzel in haiku form (3 lines, 5-7-5 syllables).

Example:

Princess Rapunzel
Has a really big problem
with conditioner.

Post your entry in Comments by Wednesday, February 2 at 0200hrs. The winners will be announced on Wednesday night.

Tangled opens on Feb 2 in Digital IMAX 3D (SM North EDSA & SM Cebu), Digital 3D and regular 35MM format.

The famous kitchen table scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981).

Not #14 miss choi: “The stench of adultery floated past me and travelled down the hallway. . .”??

Not #16 angus25: “Emily stared at the bed with rancor”??

Not #21 wenkebach: “he gave me the keys, a mistake he’d regret for life”. . .which lasts a couple of days.

Not #24 dibee: “she was already on top of her”?? “She sat up and one of his hands moved to her breast while the other one seemed to be guiding her member to enter her”??

Not #25 Cacs. We are all for offending the religious, but the love triangle is kind of a cheap shot. When taking down a well-loved figure, one must remain above such things as where they hide the sausage.

The finalists are:

#15 stellalehua, in which the cuckold beholds the offense then folds the laundry, cleans the bathroom, vacuums the carpet and prepares dinner for two.

#20 the chronicler of boredom, in which the aggrieved wife photographs the offenders in flagrante delicto, attacks them with a golf club and threatens to release the photos if her financial demands are not met.

#23 winnerific, in which the aggrieved party rubs chillies all over the offending parties’ underwear.

In #20 and #23 the shocked wives behave very rationally, which happens, but we don’t believe them as written. #15 is the most perverse reaction by far as the “victim” proceeds to render service to his tormentors. Therefore the winner of LitWit Challenge 4.5: Bed of Nails is stellalehua.

Congratulations! We’ll alert you when you can pick up your prize.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

The next LitWit Challenge is coming up.

Noel sent me this NYT article on Adultery and how it’s so much worse if it happens in your bed. (What more if it were your refrigerator.) Read Don’t Try This at Home—Adultery in the Marital Bed.

“Conventions change. A woman no longer earns a scarlet letter for having a child out of wedlock; divorce is not synonymous with scandal; and it is no surprise to find, when a marriage comes apart, that a third person was involved. But even in a sexually liberal culture, the home is still usually off-limits, as if protected by an invisible force field. And the marriage bed — a phrase that in itself seems quaintly out of date — remains a sacred object.

All but one of 18 marriage counselors and divorce lawyers interviewed for this article said they saw at-home adultery rarely, if ever, although the divorce lawyers saw it more often than the therapists. When it does happen, however, the consequences are usually dire: affairs are painful in a marriage, but affairs that take place in the marriage bed can be lethal. . .”

I love the bit where they quote The Sopranos. Yeah, there’s a moral compass.

One consequence of adultery: dead bunnies.

This brings us to this LitWit Challenge 4.5: Bed of Nails.

The Situation: You walk in on your spouse having sex on your bed with someone not yourself, seeing as you have not mastered the swami trick of bilocation.

The Catch: If you’re a biological female, you have to write it from the point of view of the aggrieved husband. If you’re a biological male, you have to write it from the point of view of the aggrieved wife.

Tip: Avoid the obvious. Revenge comedies are most welcome.

Word limit: 1,000 words, preferably less.

Deadline: 11.59 pm Monday, 24 January 2011.

The Prize:
David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and this notebook.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

* * * * *
P.S. What would you do?

A. Kill them both.
B. Run off screaming.
C. Scream, throw things, and attack them physically.
D. Pretend you didn’t see anything.
E. Take photos or video and put them on facebook.
F. Leave and never come back (Send someone to get your stuff).
G. Cheat on spouse immediately.
H. Cheat on spouse immediately with the same person he/she was cheating on you with, announce “Ha! I’m gay!” then get the third party to announce that they prefer you.
I. Act like you don’t care.
J. You really don’t care.
K. Other reaction (Specify).