Rhymes With Fuchsia

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Ten on Tuesday

Ten Favorite Oscar-Winning Films

For many years I've had a combination of minor claustrophobia and agoraphobia: I hate having to sit still and silent in one place surrounded by strangers. This afflicts me most strongly at concerts, to which I must admit I usually go because Grant wants to hear the program, and where he won't let me knit. (Even if we are sitting 47 miles from the stage at Symphony Hall and my seat is located behind a pillar, so that even if the performers happened to be wearing telephoto nightscopes I couldn't possibly distract them.) Sometimes he is in the program, and I like those more, especially pops concerts. In any case, I prefer to watch movies at home, and I'd rather watch an old favorite than something new. This explains why everything on my list is so last century. In chronological order:
  1. The Lion in Winter. "We know, and he knows that we know, and we know that he knows. We're a knowledgeable family."
  2. Cabaret. This is a family-friendly blog, so I won't quote my favorite line (well, actually three lines) from this movie, but you know what they are, and I know that you know, and so on.
  3. Coal Miner's Daughter. Same with this one, come to think of it.
  4. Tootsie. I love watching Geena Davis before she was a redhead.
  5. The Accused. Within a few months in 1988 Grant and I saw four or five excellent but extremely downbeat movies. This was one of them, and Clean and Sober was another; I don't remember the rest. I think Roger Ebert was right when he said it's easier to make a great drama than a great comedy; fortunately at least one was made in 1988.
  6. A Fish Called Wanda. This is it. Don't call me stupid.
  7. Ghost. Whoopi Goldberg should have won for The Long Walk Home, but I'm glad she won for this one instead, because I get to put it on the list, and it really is one of my favorites.
  8. The Fugitive. This is probably my favorite Harrison Ford movie.
  9. Dead Man Walking. Another great downer movie. I've also read the book, and my favorite Helen Prejean observation is that we don't trust government to pave the roads right, but we somehow do trust it to decide whom to put to death. (Only a minority of convicted murderers get executed even in death-penalty states. Pun intended.)
  10. The Full Monty. It won for best music. This is at or near the top of my all-time list of great movies, and not just because it lets me end this list on a high note. It might have done better had it not been up against Titanic, which I've never seen except for a few minutes here and there, but which apparently kept about 90 percent of Hollywood employed for a year.

Honorable mention: Flashdance, Ed Wood, To Kill a Mockingbird.

3 Comments:

  • I was thinking about Ghost yesterday. "I'm Henery the 8th I am."

    I also like Geena Davis in "A League of their Own"

    By Blogger roxie, at 9:43 AM  

  • I was interested by your post at slactivist:
    I'm with you on nouns and adjectives, although when a perfectly good adjective such as biblical already exists I prefer to use it. When a noun gets verbed, however, I get twitchy, especially if a perfectly good verb already exists. Your middle-school teacher probably made you say get in contact with, which to my ear as well as yours sounds unbelievably precious and much too long, but it is my considered opinion that impact got verbed only because people never knew how to spell affect/effect and for some reason didn't want to say influence or impinge on. (Impinge and impact are related in the same way as infringe and infraction.)

    But I don't find it enjoyable to participate there. I can't imagine reading all the comments, and I wonder if anyone does. So I am bringing my comment to your blog.

    Impinge/infringe is a great tidbit. I was going to say that none of the verbs you offered have the sense of violence that "impact" has. "Impinge", since it is almost the very same word as "impact", ought to have all the connotations of "impact", but I don't think it actually has that connotation of violence.

    In fact, impinge to me has the sense of something that happens over time, or an interaction in which the level of violence is not being noted.

    By Anonymous Linda H, at 12:23 PM  

  • I would never slam anyone for liking "A Fish Called Wanda". On the other hand, I was marveling over Kevin Kline's athleticism in "Pirates of Penzance" just yesterday.

    By Blogger Joan in Limbo, at 10:57 AM  

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