Friday, April 14, 2006

Top Ten Best Picture Winners of All Time

Have you voted yet?

Why not!

It's so simple. Just email your top ten picture picks ranked from 10 to1 to eddiesworst@yahoo.com.

Your picks must come from the list of best picture winners. Follow the link to Eddie's place for the official list.

Now on to my picks which I have just emailed! I am leaving out one very obvious pick because I have never seen it. Jaws would hit the floor if I told. Can you guess? FYI, it was not the close but no cigar GWTW. I am from Atlanta you know! But I may get thrown out of town for not putting it in the top ten.

10. Kramer vs. Kramer - I might catch some hell for this one but it was the first movie that made me cry. Dustin Hoffman's interaction with Justin Henry is brutally heart-wrenching.

9. Return Of The King - Really a lifetime achievement award. Fellowship was the better movie. But as a boy I imagined of Ride of The Rohirrim. Peter Jackson took it beyond imagination to reality.

8. Annie Hall - I am not a Woody Allen fan but you cannot deny the greatness of this movie.

7. The Sting - You think a guy with grift in his name is not going to have The Sting in his top ten? As clever as they come. I could watch it over and over again.

6. Unforgiven - Possibly the greatest western of all. Although Clint Eastwood's acting is overrated, his transformation at the end of this movie is startling. When he walks through the saloon door it is as a demon from hell. Not raging with fire. But cold and deadly.

5. Gandhi - A movie that has the potential to change the world. So many depictions of great men come off as cartoonish. Ben Kingsley makes it heroic.

4. Schlinder's List - Rare is it that I am moved deep to the core. I love black and white and Spielberg made it horrifyingly beautiful. It recalls Yeats "terrible beauty".

3. The Godfather II - A dark sequel. Literally dark. I was a lighting designer in school and like Gordon Willis, I was known as the Prince of darkness. I love the moodiness of this film. I think it suffers slightly with changing between young Vito and Michael. Both stories are brilliant. Toggling back and forth between the two keeps this from the top two.

2. Lawrence of Arabia - I am guilty of loving big epic movies about big epic characters. It doesn't get much bigger than David Lean's classic. Combine Peter O'Toole's subtle, tortured portrayal with a supreme supporting ensemble, put them in glorious settings and toss in a war and you have created legend.

1. The Godfather - Yep, I like the original better than the sequel. It seems you can't have a discussion of one without the other. But the first film was just tighter. Coppola painted a big impressionist landscape where every shade is represented and everything is fuzzy and clear at the same time. For the rest of time this movie will represent the original ancestor of complex family relationships. Both " family" and family.

There's my list! Feel free to comment.

1 comment:

Sara said...

Let me guess. You've never seen Casablanca. I've never seen almost anything on that list before 1970. Hence I feel unqualified to do a list.