Movie Genres English Listening Practice (All Levels)

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Types of movies.

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Hi, Vicki Kelty here with another episode of the Language Learning Report Card Podcast.

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Today, I’m talking about different types of movies that I like and dislike.

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Are you ready to hear my preferences?

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Let’s go.

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I love romantic comedies.

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Many people call them rom-coms.

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And rom-coms are my favorite.

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They are funny and sweet movies.

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I watch rom-coms weekly.

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Yes, I watch rom-coms A lot.

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The next type of movie is adventure movies.

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My husband loves adventure movies.

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I think adventure movies are okay.

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I like them, but they’re not my favorite type of movie.

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Adventure movies are

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action-packed, and sometimes they have a little romance.

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I prefer action movies with some romance and comedy.

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I say that I watch adventure movies occasionally with my husband.

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Now, science fiction movies,

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They are not my favorite.

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I hardly ever watch science fiction.

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People also call science fiction sci-fi.

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My dad loves sci-fi.

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I think it’s his favorite movie genre, but like I said, I am not a fan of sci-fi.

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I think sci-fi movies are very strange.

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I hardly ever watch sci-fi.

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If I watch sci-fi, it’s usually with my dad.

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Now, thrillers, on the other hand, are really interesting movies to watch.

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I like thrillers.

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They are movies full of suspense.

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I probably watch thrillers every few months.

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I don’t want too much suspense in my

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regular life.

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Next we have musicals.

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Musicals are a really entertaining kind of movie.

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I like musicals, but I only watch musicals sometimes.

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I love to sing with the songs in musicals, but I don’t sing

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very well.

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Another movie genre I like is animated movies.

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They are family-friendly and amusing, so I am happy to watch an animated movie every once in a while.

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As for fantasy movies,

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They aren’t my favorite.

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I rarely watch fantasy movies.

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I don’t like them very much.

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I like the castles and unicorns, the imagination, the magical elements, but no, I rarely watch fantasy movies.

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Now,

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Drama movies I like, but I only watch drama movies occasionally because this genre is very emotional.

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The movies are often sad and depressing, so I prefer only to watch them occasionally.

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One last movie genre I don’t like is horror movies.

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They are scary and disturbing.

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They give me nightmares, so I prefer to never watch horror movies.

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Actually, my husband really loves horror movies, but

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No, I’m not interested in watching this genre and never sleeping again.

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Okay, those are my opinions.

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And now it’s your turn.

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Which types of movies do you like and dislike?

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Thanks for listening.

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And remember, you can find more listening practice at VickieKelty.com.

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That’s all from me.

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Catch you in the next episode.

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Bye!

00:00:00

Guess the movie genre.

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Hi, Vickie Kelty here with another episode of the Language Learning Report Card podcast.

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Can you guess what genre this sounds like to you?

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I will describe a genre, and you guess which one it is.

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Let’s go.

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The first genre.

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gives you all the feelings when you watch this type of movie.

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It is so emotional.

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You will be laughing, crying, in surprise, every feeling you could anticipate.

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It’s an intense movie.

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So get your Kleenexes ready and

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tell me which movie genre this is.

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Our second genre is a nice, sweet, adorable genre where you get to see a lot of characters that are usually drawings or maybe computer-generated images.

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I think they’re

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like cartoons.

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So they are usually, for me, very fun and cute to watch.

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What type of movie is it?

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The next one, our third movie genre, is a very magical genre.

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Maybe it doesn’t exist in real life, but sometimes these mythical creatures and lands are just a really nice place to go and live for a couple of hours.

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Do you know what genre it is?

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Let me know.

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The 4th genre is full of

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action and excitement.

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It will keep you on your toes.

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Very fun to watch and full of, well, escapades, if you will.

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Which genre am I talking about?

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Our 5th genre is going to

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also keep you on your toes, but in a more suspenseful way.

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Maybe playing some psychological mind games with you, maybe a touch of mystery in there, but it will keep you waiting to see what is going to happen next.

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Do you know which genre it is?

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Let me know.

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Our 6th genre takes us to more futuristic types of ideas.

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So you might have some aliens, robots, cyborgs, whatever has been imagined by the director and screenwriter.

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This type of movie is

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potentially getting more realistic day by day, but in theory, it is supposed to be futuristic.

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So tell me which genre I’m referring to.

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Our 7th type of movie is absolutely terrifying.

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This movie will have you covering your eyes with fear and keep you up

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later at night so that you don’t fall asleep and have nightmares.

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Can you guess what movie genre it is?

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I bet you can.

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Our 8th genre, we’re almost at the finish line, is full of love and laughter.

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Very different from the last genre.

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It will be very uplifting and happy, happy, happy, and keep you smiling and hopeful for the future.

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Which type of genre is this one?

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And now for our final genre, the 9th movie genre is all about singing and dancing.

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And sometimes people in the movie theater would prefer that you leave the singing to the professionals.

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But that’s your choice.

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Do you know what genre it is?

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That is for you to let me know.

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And that’s it.

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That is all nine movie genres with their short little descriptions for you.

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So, were you able to guess all of them?

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Well, you can confirm your guesses and find more listening practice at VickieKelty.com if you’d like.

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That’s all from me.

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Until next time, bye now.

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Film tropes.

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This is Vickie Kelty with the Language Learning Report Card podcast.

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I teach English online, mostly focused on speaking, and I’m going to be speaking about film tropes today.

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And hopefully it will get you speaking about them too.

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So I’m going to share

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different tropes that I think of for movies.

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There are so many.

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So I just chose one for each type of movie that I had talked about previously.

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And when I say previously in other listenings, and I thought of an example of a movie for each of the tropes.

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So

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maybe you can do the same.

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Maybe you’ll be inspired.

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I hope so.

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The first movie that I want to share is When Harry Met Sally.

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I actually just watched this over the holidays and not for the first time.

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And

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I just loved being reminded of that adorable friends to lovers storyline.

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Such a classic romance rom-com style.

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So Harry meets Sally, hence the name of the movie.

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They start out with an unlikely friendship, going on a road trip,

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And really, they don’t even become friends from the road trip, but they meet on a couple different occasions and eventually become friends.

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And to completely spoil it for you, well, the trope is friends to lovers.

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So you can imagine how it ends.

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Happily ever after?

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I don’t know.

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I guess you’ll have to watch.

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The next type of movie that I

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don’t watch a ton of are action movies, but this particular action movie was awesome because it had a bit of a love story mixed in with the action and it had comedy.

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So it just had a little bit of everything for me.

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But the storyline of it being a treasure hunt is such a great

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trope in my opinion.

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And I highly recommend it.

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It’s called Lost City and it stars Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum.

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And it has quite a few other appearances of big named actors.

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So big-name, yeah, big-name actors.

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So take a look if you want that kind of fish-out-of-water meets comedy.

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you will, you’ll, you’ll enjoy it.

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The spin that they have on Sandra Bullock just being completely out of her element going on this treasure hunt.

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She’s a, I think she’s a romance author and Channing Tatum is the cover of her book.

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Like he’s the male model on the cover of her book, if I remember correctly.

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I would definitely watch this one again because it was so funny.

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Next up is not one of my favorite movie genres, sci-fi.

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But I did actually watch a movie with my dad since he loves sci-fi that involved a really

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I don’t want to say fun, but maybe relevant trope, rogue AI.

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So if you want to watch a sci-fi movie with a rogue AI element, then check out Atlas that stars J-Lo.

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And I don’t remember who else was in it.

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I don’t know if the AI has an actor behind it or not.

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Probably not?

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I ask?

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So Jennifer Lopez for sure, though.

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So if you want to see Jennifer Lopez in her sci-fi element, check that one out.

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I have little else to say on that one.

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Next up is a genre that I do love, the thriller genre.

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And one that I saw recently because, was it last year?

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last year when Demi Moore was up for an Oscar for, oh, it was such a like gory movie, The Substance.

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And

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on TV, they were showing just a bunch of Demi Moore movies.

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And so one of them was called Mr.

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Brooks, starring, of course, Demi Moore and Kevin Costner.

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And there was another actor, oh, I can’t think of his name, who was also a main role.

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It was not what I expected.

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It was

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The trope was this cat-and-mouse game.

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And I think that that’s such a classic for thrillers to have that element.

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I would recommend it.

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It was a chilling movie.

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So if you like that sort of thing, I don’t want to go into too many details.

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So, maybe check out the plot and see if it interests you and give it a look.

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Mr.

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Brooks is what it was called.

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Next up, we have the big dreamer who gets a big break.

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And that is

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best shown in the movie Center Stage.

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Loved that when I was a, when I was a teen.

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I guess that’s more of a dance movie than a musical, but it does have music in it.

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If I want full on musical, I would say Chicago.

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It could be good for that big dreamer, like with Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

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Richard Gere, Queen Latifah.

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There are so many big names in that movie.

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And lots of big dreamers, that’s for sure.

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Definitely recommend Chicago.

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Can’t recommend it enough.

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Moving right along, we have the unlikely friendships, which

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I immediately thought of a movie I watched when I was little that made me cry, The Fox and the Hound.

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Such a cute movie.

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But maybe you’re more familiar with Toy Story and the relationship between Woody and Buzz.

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A very unlikely friendship.

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Super adorable.

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And

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A lot of animated movies, a lot of movies in general, have that unlikely friendship.

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You could even say When Harry Met Sally was one of the unlikely friendship tropes.

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They’re everywhere.

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Continuing with fantasy, we have the hidden realm trope.

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And I think that is really

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well represented in Labyrinth, starring Jennifer Connelly, has the amazing performance from David Bowie.

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And does that count as a musical thing?

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Can we put it as a musical as well?

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But yeah, Labyrinth was such a fun mix of fantasy and reality.

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I really liked that movie and I would watch that again.

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And I have watched it many times.

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Have you?

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If you haven’t, check it out.

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I think you would like it.

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And this is from somebody who doesn’t really watch fantasy movies, or at least I always say I don’t, but then I think of some movies that I’ve seen.

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There’s one that I can’t think of the name of right now with Tom Cruise.

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from back in the day.

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And I know there’s a unicorn in it or The NeverEnding Story.

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I mean, if that is in a hidden realm, I don’t know what is.

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Then we have our dramas.

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And what is better in a drama than family secrets?

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And the first movie that came to mind was

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Face on the Milk Carton, which I do believe was also a book.

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I might be making that up, but I don’t know.

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I really feel like it was a book.

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But Face on the Milk Carton, if you haven’t seen it, that does not surprise me because it was a made-for-TV movie, which in my humble opinion is the best kind of movie.

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I love a good made- for-TV movie.

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And I’m really lucky because

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weekends in Spain are often full of made-for-TV movies.

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So I can get my fill of lots of family secrets and family drama and so many other tropes that are common for those drama movies.

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Can you think of any others?

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Family secrets is such a classic, though.

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Okay, and to end with, we have haunted houses.

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So the first thing that I thought of was The Haunting, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, and I can’t remember who else was in it, but you might say, Vickie, that is not even scary, come on.

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So I will

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take it up a level, take it up a notch to Insidious.

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How about that?

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Scary enough for you?

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It was scary enough for me.

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It starts with a haunted house or a potential haunted house, I guess I should say, and moves on from there.

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So the haunted house element is in it.

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But that is not one that I will be rewatching.

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Once was too many times for me, because we know horror movies are not my cup of tea.

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They do not sit well with me.

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They live on forever in my mind and in my nightmares.

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Okay, those are all the tropes that I have to share.

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So

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Did they make you think of any that you’ve seen in movies?

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And which ones are your favorites, either that you thought of while I was chatting or that you liked from the ones I listed?

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And which ones do you hate?

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You’re like, ugh, can we stop with these already?

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be sure to let me know.

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And remember, you can find more listening practice at vickiekelty.com.

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That’s all for me.

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Bye-bye now.