My votes for the five best action sequences in movie history would include (1) any of Buster Keaton's death-defying stunts in his Civil War classic, The General, but especially the train wreck scene, (2) the chariot race in the 1959 version of Ben-Hur, (3) the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now, (4) the Omaha Beach sequence of Saving Private Ryan, and (5) every minute of Raiders of the Lost Ark, my pick for the best picture of 1981.
Feel free to weigh in with your choices in the comments section below.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
2 comments:
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wAS ThERE nO BesT ACtrEsS OF THIs yEAR ? nO CZECK MARL
Ah, yes, the best actress award. Katharine Hepburn won the Oscar for On Golden Pond. Now I love Katharine Hepburn -- I have her down for eight nominations and three wins, which is a lot in my universe -- but I think her win for On Golden Pond was more like her win in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, when she stood around and looked on supportively while Spencer Tracy did all the heavy lifting, than The Lion in Winter where she was absolutely ferocious.
So I gave the noms to the actresses who were doing the heavy lifting in 1981 ...
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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2 comments:
wAS ThERE nO BesT ACtrEsS OF THIs yEAR ? nO CZECK MARL
Ah, yes, the best actress award. Katharine Hepburn won the Oscar for On Golden Pond. Now I love Katharine Hepburn -- I have her down for eight nominations and three wins, which is a lot in my universe -- but I think her win for On Golden Pond was more like her win in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, when she stood around and looked on supportively while Spencer Tracy did all the heavy lifting, than The Lion in Winter where she was absolutely ferocious.
So I gave the noms to the actresses who were doing the heavy lifting in 1981 ...
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