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Movies On The Radio: Unconventional Love In The Movies

Wikipedia

Love can be strange, complicated and even downright bizarre. The portrayals of romance on the silver screen are no exception. Just in time for Valentine's Day, Host Frank Stasio talks with , film professor at North Carolina State University and , film curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, about unconventional romance in the movies. 

Here are some of their picks and your favorites:

The 2013 movie Her features a lonely man, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falling in love with his computer's operating system, voiced by Scarlett Johannson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAquwhl304I&noredirect=1

The 2008 animated hit Wall-E featured little dialogue, but the romance blossomed between two robots.

http://youtu.be/rBmOEx3yuDg

The love between non-humans continues in the 2013 film Warm Bodies when a zombie falls for a human girl after consuming her boyfriend's brain.

Love transcends even death in the 1990 film Truly, Madly, Deeply.

Some of the unconventional romances involve people of differing ages. One listener favorite is the 1971 film Harold and Maude.                                   

 

The 1950 classic Sunset Blvd  shows the complexity of a May-December affair.

Sometimes a crime brings a couple together. The 1973 American film Badlands is just one examples. Listeners also suggested Natural Born Killers and Bonnie & Clyde.

The mystery of love is not just for adults. Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom tells the complex story of a relationship between two young runaways.

Sometimes it is as simple as the old phrase "opposites attract." The African Queen (1951) shows a proper missionary and a rowdy captain finding common ground.

And perhaps the most iconic film of the unconventional romances is King Kong.

 

 

Laura Lee was the managing editor of The State of Things until mid February 2017. Born and raised in Monroe, North Carolina, Laura returned to the Old North state in 2013 after several years in Washington, DC. She received her B.A. in political science and international studies from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2002 and her J.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law in 2007.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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