Monday, June 09, 2003

Let's take a break from The Great Untold Adventures of Leaving Tunisia and talk about movies. You may have heard last week that American Film Institute released their list of the Top 50 Heroes and Top 50 Villains in cinema history. Or at least American cinema history. And since then, I've probably received 200 or maybe 300 emails from my fans, begging for my opinion on this list, as I, of course, love lists and am not afraid to demonstrate my opinion of them. And I do have an opinion. Here is one place where you can read the complete list. Just to give you a taste, the Top 10 Heroes are: 1. Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), "To Kill a Mockingbird." 2. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford ), "Raiders of the Lost Ark." 3. James Bond (Sean Connery), "Dr. No." 4. Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), "Casablanca." 5. Will Kane (Gary Cooper ), "High Noon." 6. Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster ), "The Silence of the Lambs." 7. Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), "Rocky." 8. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), "Aliens." 9. George Bailey (James Stewart ), "It's a Wonderful Life." 10. T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole), "Lawrence of Arabia." The Top 10 Villains are: 1. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), "The Silence of the Lambs." 2. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), "Psycho." 3. Darth Vader (David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones), "The Empire Strikes Back." 4. The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), "The Wizard of Oz." 5. Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." 6. Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), "It's a Wonderful Life." 7. Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), "Fatal Attraction." 8. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), "Double Indemnity." 9. Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), "The Exorcist." 10. The Queen (voiced by Lucille LaVerne), "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Regarding the Heroes: *Atticus Finch? Well, OK, but he's pretty milquetoast, isn't he? I mean aside from the revelation that Ol' Atticus can really shoot a gun, he doesn't have a lot of undercurrents that we can't see. But he's a fine guy, and it's a great film. *Rocky is a great call. *Why is Ellen Ripley in Aliens included over Ripley in Alien? Aliens is pretty good and scary, but it fails compared to the first film. Like T2, it's the overblown James Cameron follow-up version of a great story. *Is Clarice Starling nothing more than a nod to PC pressure to put a woman high on the list? Is she REALLY a greater hero than TE Lawrence, for God's sake? *Where in the world is Wesley from "The Princess Bride"? Or Fezzick, for God's sake? Did they just blithely skip their chance to immortalize Andre the Giant in AFI history? *Why is Harry Callahan only #17? Probably because he's only kind of a hero. He's so.....dirty! *I love the fact that Ghandhi (#21) is less of a hero than Han Solo (#14). Also on that note, that's two Harrison Ford heroes in the top 14. *Can we take the original copy of "It's a Wonderful Life" and shove it up Tom DeLay's ass, please? How has this depthless, saccharine piece of Norman Rockwell-style Americana turned into such a legend? *The existence of Lassie at #39 invalidates the entire list. Come on. Lassie's heartwarming and all, and I don't begrudge dogs anything. But come on. Grow up. *The Terminator is number 47 on the heroes list, and number 22 on the villain list! The Terminator in T2 is NOT one of the 50 greatest heroes of all time. Have you seen T2 recently? It's not very good. The special effects with T2000 are cool, and there are a couple of scenes, but it's such Hollywoodized standard schlock with the kid and all that. I remembered it being better until I saw it again last year. Regarding the villains: *The original Terminator, though, was and is awesome. The fact that he's only #22 is a joke. It's Arnold's best role (which doesn't inherently recommend it, but he is fantastic in this case) and it is downright scary in a lot of places, especially when the now-skinless Terminator walks out of the fire. Man. *Hopefully, someone from the future will send the Terminator back on a mission to destroy whomever thought it was a good idea to put the "bad guy" from "It's a Wonderful Life" at number 6. Number 6! Grow up. *Nurse Ratched is inspired. A fantastic villain. *Norman Bates perhaps should be number one. Or Vader. To be fair, I am not entirely convinced that Hannibal Lecter is even a villain. I mean, he's a bad, bad man. But, to my view, a Great Villain should be the Antagonist in the film. Clearly, Clarice Starling is the protagonist there. The antagonist is not Lecter, but rather is Buffalo Bill, isn't it? *Regan MacNeil--not a villain. Satan's the bad guy, there, Regan is a just a poor, vomiting tool. *Michael Corleone from Godfather II is ranked at #11. I don't know. Again, not a villain so much as a guy who does bad stuff. The only awful thing he does in this film is kill Fredo, and that's really because Fredo betrayed him. How can the protagonist be the villain? His character is too ambiguous. At least he's closer in II than I. *The fact that the Alien from "Alien" and not "Aliens" is number 13 only proves the point I made above regarding Ripley. *Number 20 is "Man." From "Bambi". Whatever. *Verbal Kint from "The Usual Suspects" is number 48? What? How is Verbal Kint a villain? *For the love of God, how can Hans Gruber only be number 46? Jesus! *Where is Prince Humperdinck? Well, there's some grist for the mill. I've got other opinions on this list, but I'll save them for now.   2:11:46 PM    Let's hear it. []