“The Last Question” (Isaac Asimov) - The last couple lines give me shivers.
“The Matrix” - Okay, so the idea of
basically, DesCartes’ thing
is an old one, but it was new to me back in '99 (I was a teenager).
What about you? I’d prefer philosophical awe, but I suppose emotional awe may be acceptable if you feel the need (e.g. that one scene in Children of Men where
the soldiers stop fighting when they hear the sound of a baby crying. Damn, I was watching that movie next to my friend and I had to fight to avoid tears because I didn’t want to look like a wuss.
PLEASE USE THE SPOILER TAG TO AVOID RUINING PLOTPOINTS, ETC.
The ending of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed left me with tears of joy.
OTOH, the first two clauses of the first sentence of One Hundred Years of Solitude blew me away: "Many years later, when he faced the firing squad . . . " It is the greatest hook in literature.
The final line of Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” also left me awed.
I was 18 when I first watched Pulp Fiction - it was 2004, so I was really late to that party, so to speak. I had never seen anything like it, in terms of how the movie was structured chronologically and the way the different characters’ stories were woven together. I immediately thought it was the most brilliant movie of all time, and after that first time I think I re-watched the DVD almost every night for about a month and a half. I think Tarantino is pretty overrated as a director and I think he lost it after Kill Bill, but Pulp Fiction is definitely in a class by itself.
Star Wars. Summer of '77, in the theater, I was 12. I wanted to be in that universe. Still do, even after what Uncle George did to it with the prequels.
The Last Question is certainly up there. I think I was 14 the first time I read it, and it blew me away. Same with King’s The Jaunt. Horrifying.
As far as movies go, nothing has quite compared to the emotional satisfaction and blindsided surprise that The Shawshank Redemption served up in quite a while.
I’m not a TV watcher, but one day I was flipping channels and there was a scene with two guys talking that just blew me away. You rarely see just plain acting of that quality on TV. I remember thinking “I don’t know what this show is, but I wish someone had broken into my house, put a gun to my head, and made me watch it from the beginning.”
I saw Pulp Fiction when it was still in limited release, well before just about anyone else had seen it (not bragging, just pointing out I’d heard very little about it). I was completely blown away.
The other one that blew me away, though it’s probably a cliche here 'round these parts, is Firefly. I’d seen lots of folks talking about it but never paid much attention. I caught the pilot on SciFi when they were doing a marathon, and I was completely captivated within 8 minutes – basically by the “We shall call it … ‘This Land.’” scene.
Edit: Ooh! I thought of another one: Lawrence of Arabia. I saw it when it was re-released about 20 years ago on the big screen, and I think I sat there with my jaw hanging open the whole time. I giggled through the intermission.
Neil Gaiman captivated me with American Gods. I picked it up on a lark at a friend’s apartment, and finished it within a day or two. I then devoured Neverwhere just as quickly.
The most recent movie to blow me away is Pan’s Labyrinth, which I finally got around to seeing earlier this year. Everything about it was wonderful, but what was most gripping was how real it seemed despite its fantastical elements. It singlehandedly made me a fan of Guillermo del Toro.
Another movie that blew me away, but is less known is A la folie… pas du tout, whose title in English is He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not. It’s a French “romance” starring Audrey Tautou, and the story’s told from two perspectives. I saw it four years ago, and it is always one of the very first recommendations I make to anyone when they asks for suggestions.
And though music was not listed, some artists that grabbed me from the get-go and who I still love are Vienna Teng (“The Tower”), Sarah Fimm (“Virus”), Jesca Hoop (“Seed of Wonder”), Grand Ole Party (“Look Out Young Son”), and The Romanovs (“La Mer Enchante”). There are a handful more, but those are the only ones I felt strongly enough to post about on the SDMB afterward.
The Graduate. I pulled it off of Netflix around the time I was graduating law school (obviously a generation or two behind the one it was meant for) and I was just blown away with how much it resonated with me.
Books: Flowers for Algernon, sure, but the one that really blew me away was Clavell’s Shogun. That was a life-changing book.
Childhood’s End is up there too.
I don’t get blown away as much by movies. I’ll have to think about it and get back to you…though LOTR: FOTR was exactly my imaginings, and I still love the Council scene.
When I was listening to the audio book version of ‘Starship Troopers,’ I was just sort of chugging idly along, enjoying it in places, comparing a few parts to the movie, when all of a sudden the debate in the officer’s History Moral Philosophy classroom blew my mind.
The overtones of militarism involved in the ‘service to vote’ scheme had always bothered me, but when the justification was explained it all seemed to make sense. To head off corruption and get the civic-minded into politics - require people to volunteer for some sort of uncomfortable and dangerous public service in order to vote or run for public office. Make it as easy as possible for anybody who’s just signed up on a lark to drop out when things get tough.
The impact was even greater for matching up with the question I’d always thought was rhetorical in “Restaurant at the end of the universe” - who do you get to govern if the people who seek out power are the least suitable for the task?
I saw the original London production of Les Miserables and, for the first time in my life, leapt to my feet to give it a standing O at the end. Simply magnificent.
Breaker Morant, The Sixth Sense, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Memento and The Incredibles are, IMHO, almost completely perfect movies in their respective genres, and each left me stunned and amazed at their sheer awesomeness.
Likewise George R.R. Martin’s Tuf Voyaging as the quintessentially perfect sf book.
I was a young teen when I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in the theater. At that time, I didn’t have a clue what it was about, but I didn’t care. The cinematography and the music and the drama of the bone/spaceships scene and the drama and tension among HAL and the astronauts completely blew my mind. Later on I read the book and realized what the main theme was, and was blown away again.
At 7, I was stunned by the opening of Star Wars, of course. The big revelation in *Sixth Sense *and in the ambulance in *Silence of the Lambs *also knocked me out.
