The elevator comes down, and like the two innocent motorists we, a roomful of students who have never even HEARD of this movie stare with fascination and apprehension at the black cape above the shoes…
The song starts, he turns around, and all our jaws drop in amazement. We’re no longer sure what this movie is really about, but it may possibly be the greatest thing EVER.
(They wouldn’t let me pick out movies for Halloween anymore after that.)
Hey, I was there. It was pretty sweet. Just laid back on the grass and rocked out.
My nomination: Pink Floyd, Live at Pompeii. David Gilmour just starts singing wordlessly. Transcendental. He’s also hot and shirtless, but that’s just icing on the cake.
Approximately the last 15-20 minutes of “Drunken Master 2” - from the time Jackie Chan goes into the foundry.
Properly appreciated in a big independent movie theatre, before a cheering crowd, watching the original print (undubbed), before most American audiences had ever even heard of this guy (about 1995).
Michael Moschen’s original performance on “Alive From Off Center”.
Sentimental, but gets me every time: “Reader, I married him.” From “Jane Eyre”, obviously.
“. . . . And he sang to them, now in the Elven tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.”
The scene where the White Star, thoughtfully equipped with a thermonuclear bomb by Sheridan, is called down by remote control upon him and the Shadows in their capital city by him as he jumps down a pit.
Again from Babylon 5; Sheridan : “Good morning gentlemen, this is your wakeup call” * BOOM ! *
I can’t find a clip, but the scene when Londo has Mr Morden dragged before him, and has his Shadow guards killed. He then tells Morden that the Shadows have to be removed from the island base they were given on Centauri Prime, and Morden sarcastically replies, “What will you do, blow up the island ?”
Londo : ( pulls out a device ) "Now that you mention it . . . "
Morden " NOOOOO ! !"
nuclear detonations *
From the Honor Harrington novel Ashes of Victory, the one where the State Security Admiral set to watch over Admiral Tourville announces that he and his command staff are going to be hauled back to Haven for trial and no doubt execution - and goes off the air when his entire fleet simultaneously explodes. As Shannon Foraker said, “Oops”; turns out the tactical programs she’d downloaded to them earlier had a few unauthorized additions . . . The “Good bye, Citizen Chairman” one is good too.
From the Spawn cable series; Spawn : “I’m going to let you live . . . longer than you want to.”
The Tuf Voyaging series had some good stuff, like the line “Pardon me, but I must now go forth and destroy your respective worlds.” I also liked the scene where Tuf tells the woman riding a dinosaur ( long story ) :
“You have an animal, I have an animal” ( holds up kitten, then tosses her a pistol )
“Now you have a gun.”
Tuf flees, she pursues. *
He passes through an intersection, she follows - and the plasma cannon set to destroy anything bigger than human opens fire *
Having just rewatched it, Jeff Daniels performance in the Little Round Top battle from Gettysburg. In particular, the last charge, where Daniels explains matter of factly that because they’re almost out of ammunition, and because they are the end of the line of defence the need to fix bayonets and sweep down the mountain “like a swinging door.” What makes this awesome, is that after calmly explaining exactly what they need to do, and getting everyone ready, Daniels lets rip with a cry of “Bayonets!” in extreme close-up and he looks positively deranged. It’s like Mr Rogers suddenly turns into Dennis Hopper in the blink of an eye. Awesome.
While stopping in a town for supplies well into the cattle drive from Texas to Montana, Captain Woodrow F. Call walks out of the general store with an armload of paper wrapped ladies’ items that had been purchased by his long-time partner and ladies’ man, Gus McCrae. Looking down the main street, Call sees the teenage son that he has never claimed or acknowledged, on foot, defiantly holding the reigns of a friend’s buckskin gelding while being lashed by a mounted cavalryman who is trying to forcefully take the friend’s horse.
Call drops everything, mounts his horse, and gallops down the street at full speed wham! right into the cavalryman and his mount, knocking the soldier to the ground, where he proceeds to kick the living shit out of him in front of the townsfolk in a killing rage that would have cost the soldier his life if it weren’t for Gus throwing a rope around Call and dragging him away, pistol in hand in case he needs to knock Call out to keep him from killing the man.
The scene is a wholly satisfying catharsis of long-suppressed denial erupting into the over-reaction of a protective father. Other than making a gift of the same grey mare that he rode down the street to his son later in the story, it is the only time that Call betrays the fact that the boy is his son.
The characters are masterfully played by Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow, Robert Duvall as Gus, and Rick Schroder as Newt.
Speaking of DEADWOOD, the fight between (Swearengen’s man) Dan Dority and (Hearst’s man) Captain Turner- damn! That raised the beam forever on intense and awesome barefisted fight scenes. (Equally incredible when you realize the actor who played Dority also played the retarded brother in Something About Mary “Franks and beans!”). The youtube link is below- I won’t say it’s NSFW, but it is NS if you’re at all squeamish at fake violence (eyeball gouging, bloody pulp leaving, etc.).
Sampiro: That scene, along with the frontier kidneystone removal, had me shielding my eyes and nearly twitching.
(Good ID on Doherty too. My favorites from the show are that Hearst is the same guy who played Major Dad (still mindblowing to me) and that Doc is Chucky from Child’s Play.)
Omaha Beach in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN- if that weren’t worth an Awesome Crown I’ll eat three day old roadkill and ask for seconds. That was one of those movie moments that you need a cigarette when its finished even if you don’t smoke, and my understanding is that Omaha Beach veterans who saw it all said it was the most disturbing and violent and accurate movie scene they’d ever watched.
Brilliant performance by both Eric Roberts (!) and Jon Voigt in Runaway Train where Jon Voigt’s character Manny tells Roberts character how hard, yet how important, it is to stay civilized:
That one occurred to me. I saw the movie by myself, a rarity. Then I went home, called my father - who served 26 years in the US Navy, having joined up the last two weeks of WWII - and I thanked him.
Ever seen “Anaconda”? His accent there is totally quixotic—part Scarface, part hillbilly, part slurry-drunkenness. It’s remarkable, really.
(And, for the record, Anaconda is an amazing movie. Owen Wilson, pre-mega-fame, Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, CGI mega-snake—it’s obviously not good, but it’s doog as anything.)
They never say where he is supposed to be from exactly, but the movie takes place in Alaska. What I always figured was he was like someone from the lower 48 who moved to Alaska to get rich fishing or pumping oil or something, but became a violent killer. I figure it is a couple of accents, plus the fact that he is probably supposed to be a bit undereducated.
I honestly don’t know of anything that tops this for ‘awesome’.
‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’. McMurphy has taken bets he can lift the huge metal utility block in the middle of the washroom. Nobody believes he can do it. He says he can. All bets taken, everyone gathers in the washroom to see him try. McMurphy is still super confident, but the feat is surely impossible? He crouches down, grips the metal block, tries to lift it. Strains every sinew, every blood vessel. Fails. Game over? No. He buckles down and tries again, this time straining even harder. It looks like the effort will kill him. He’s giving everything he’s got. The metal block isn’t budging. Eventually, he quits. Everyone else is stunned. They have never seen him fail at anything before. Some seem to take pity, others are inclined to sneer and gloat at his failure, particularly as it means he’s lost all the bets he made. McMurphy is down, defeated, exhausted and humiliated. He moves to leave the washroom, and as there is only one way out, he has no choice but to make his way through all of those watching him. He can’t evade their eyes, their expressions of pity or scorn. He gets to the door. He turns to face them.
Then he says one phrase. One phrase that instantly transforms the scene. One phrase that - even though he failed - gives him victory: game, set and match. One phrase that knocks them between the eyes and makes them realise why he is who he is, and why they can never even come close. One phrase that takes ‘awesome’ all the way up to eleven. He says,
“But I tried, didn’t I? Goddamit, at least I did that.”
