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What are the five movies that captured your imagination?
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angw...
1. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring - What I've always loved about fantasy (and history as well) is the sense of staggering grandeur and wonder. I have never seen a movie that captured that so thoroughly. I was literally riveted to my seat from the opening credits. This movie captures the inner feeling that makes me want to write fantasy and SF in a way that no other movie has really done for me. The entire trilogy has that feeling to it, but the first one bowled me over so thoroughly because I was so afraid they'd screw up the book -- it was one of the first books my mother ever read to me, when I was four, and it was an indelible part of my childhood imagination-scape -- and rather than messing it up like Hollywood does with 90% of their "based on a book" movies and their fantasy movies ... they reached underneath the book and hit that exact tone that resonated with me so hard when I was a wide-eyed kid. I still get goosebumpy thinking about it.
2. The Sixth Sense - Because I'm a writer, I love plot craftsmanship, and this movie was just beautifully designed. It's the only movie I've seen three times at the theater, because after being blown away by the ending, I had to see how the underpinnings of the plot were laid. And I just had more admiration for the movie and its clever misdirection after seeing it over and over; every time I found something new that I hadn't noticed before.
3. Galaxy Express 999/Captain Harlock - I'm grouping these together; one is an animated movie, one is an anime, but they were made about the same time (late '70s) by the same guy (Leiji Matsumoto), and I saw them at about the same time, when I was around the age of 10. Even though I remember very little about them now, they had a huge impact on my imagination and ambitions. I had always adored comics and cartoons, and wanted to be a cartoonist or animator, but at that age I was frustrated and disillusioned with the childishness of Saturday morning cartoons and superhero comics, and starting to lose interest. Then I saw Matsumoto's animation -- the gorgeous spacescapes, the grand space battles, the slow melodramatic death scenes, the complicated and alleghorical plots with a billion shades of grey. I also saw Robotech at about the same time, and its more down-to-earth plotlines kick-started my imagination in a different sort of way, but there was something about Matsumoto's gorgeously designed space opera (and I do mean *opera*; it was totally an opera, only minus the music) that really woke up something in me. Even though I now know that a lot of the original story's anti-Western-imperialism sentiment was hacked out to cater to a Western audience, the grand clashing of empires and the sailing-ships-against-the-stars imagery have always stuck with me.
4. Metropolis (1927) - I was going to watch the first few minutes of this silent film on Turner Classic Movies and then go to bed -- it was 1 a.m., after all. Instead I was riveted for the whole two hours, and then I immediately had to buy it off Amazon.com and try to make all my friends watch it too. This movie fascinates me on two levels. One is what an incredible influence it had on the general "look" of every science fiction movie that followed it. This was the first true big-budget SF movie, and so much of its imagery -- female cyborgs, towering cityscapes with interlaced freeways and flying machines, underground cities, weird machines -- is basically the template for everything from Blade Runner to Battlestar Galactica. But the other thing that fascinated me about the movie is how I was totally sucked into the plot and the characters. It's a silent film, and they're all over-made-up and over-acted in the silent film way; I wasn't expecting to like and sympathize with the characters, or to be wowed by special effects when they basically consist of film splices and lights.
5. The Wizard of Oz - Another movie that was an indelible part of my kidscape. I haven't seen it in years -- probably because I watched it so much as a kid -- but even as a kid, having read the Baum books years before I saw the movie for the first time, I was wowed by the grace and skill with which the books were translated to the screen. The book was changed a lot for the movie, but all the changes were there for a reason and they worked. And now I'm humming "Follow the Yellow Brick Road", dammit.
Honorable Mention: Galaxy Quest - I'm a third-generation nerd -- my grandparents played Dungeons & Dragons; I was raised on Star Trek: TOS and underground comics and '70s New Wave SF -- so this was just the ultimate escapist, OMG-I-wish-I-was-there movie.
angw...1. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring - What I've always loved about fantasy (and history as well) is the sense of staggering grandeur and wonder. I have never seen a movie that captured that so thoroughly. I was literally riveted to my seat from the opening credits. This movie captures the inner feeling that makes me want to write fantasy and SF in a way that no other movie has really done for me. The entire trilogy has that feeling to it, but the first one bowled me over so thoroughly because I was so afraid they'd screw up the book -- it was one of the first books my mother ever read to me, when I was four, and it was an indelible part of my childhood imagination-scape -- and rather than messing it up like Hollywood does with 90% of their "based on a book" movies and their fantasy movies ... they reached underneath the book and hit that exact tone that resonated with me so hard when I was a wide-eyed kid. I still get goosebumpy thinking about it.
2. The Sixth Sense - Because I'm a writer, I love plot craftsmanship, and this movie was just beautifully designed. It's the only movie I've seen three times at the theater, because after being blown away by the ending, I had to see how the underpinnings of the plot were laid. And I just had more admiration for the movie and its clever misdirection after seeing it over and over; every time I found something new that I hadn't noticed before.
3. Galaxy Express 999/Captain Harlock - I'm grouping these together; one is an animated movie, one is an anime, but they were made about the same time (late '70s) by the same guy (Leiji Matsumoto), and I saw them at about the same time, when I was around the age of 10. Even though I remember very little about them now, they had a huge impact on my imagination and ambitions. I had always adored comics and cartoons, and wanted to be a cartoonist or animator, but at that age I was frustrated and disillusioned with the childishness of Saturday morning cartoons and superhero comics, and starting to lose interest. Then I saw Matsumoto's animation -- the gorgeous spacescapes, the grand space battles, the slow melodramatic death scenes, the complicated and alleghorical plots with a billion shades of grey. I also saw Robotech at about the same time, and its more down-to-earth plotlines kick-started my imagination in a different sort of way, but there was something about Matsumoto's gorgeously designed space opera (and I do mean *opera*; it was totally an opera, only minus the music) that really woke up something in me. Even though I now know that a lot of the original story's anti-Western-imperialism sentiment was hacked out to cater to a Western audience, the grand clashing of empires and the sailing-ships-against-the-stars imagery have always stuck with me.
4. Metropolis (1927) - I was going to watch the first few minutes of this silent film on Turner Classic Movies and then go to bed -- it was 1 a.m., after all. Instead I was riveted for the whole two hours, and then I immediately had to buy it off Amazon.com and try to make all my friends watch it too. This movie fascinates me on two levels. One is what an incredible influence it had on the general "look" of every science fiction movie that followed it. This was the first true big-budget SF movie, and so much of its imagery -- female cyborgs, towering cityscapes with interlaced freeways and flying machines, underground cities, weird machines -- is basically the template for everything from Blade Runner to Battlestar Galactica. But the other thing that fascinated me about the movie is how I was totally sucked into the plot and the characters. It's a silent film, and they're all over-made-up and over-acted in the silent film way; I wasn't expecting to like and sympathize with the characters, or to be wowed by special effects when they basically consist of film splices and lights.
5. The Wizard of Oz - Another movie that was an indelible part of my kidscape. I haven't seen it in years -- probably because I watched it so much as a kid -- but even as a kid, having read the Baum books years before I saw the movie for the first time, I was wowed by the grace and skill with which the books were translated to the screen. The book was changed a lot for the movie, but all the changes were there for a reason and they worked. And now I'm humming "Follow the Yellow Brick Road", dammit.
Honorable Mention: Galaxy Quest - I'm a third-generation nerd -- my grandparents played Dungeons & Dragons; I was raised on Star Trek: TOS and underground comics and '70s New Wave SF -- so this was just the ultimate escapist, OMG-I-wish-I-was-there movie.
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Sorry, just had to say that.
And Galaxy Quest really was just such a brilliant movie. I have this image of What's-his-face and Sigourney Weaver running through this insane corridor, fires exploding around them and the walls trying to beat them down (were they called "chompers?"), and Sigourney screaming something like, "Why is this here! This makes no logical sense! There is no useful purpose for these! Well, I'm not doing it! This episode was badly written. Whoever wrote this episode should DIE!"
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It was just such an awesome, gigantic sci-fi in-joke. Obviously made by SF fans, for SF fans.
"Let's get out of here before one of those things kills Guy!"
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all of them except Galaxy Express, which I've never seen, but now you make me want to....may I offer in it's place Miyazaki's Spirited Away? It was a lushly illustrated movie that was just richly awesome...
Another movie that captured my imagination was the original Star Wars. For its time, that movie was it....
(and I admit to adoring The Fifth Element as well. Maybe it was the performances? Maybe the detailed and richly imagined futurescape and future society? Maybe the humor and irony throughout...)
thanks for giving me a smile....
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I love Star Wars, but I never got on the Star Wars train the way a lot of people did. I was just a little too young for the original Star Wars phenomenon -- and just at the wrong age to get caught up in the fervor over the second wave of movies.
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Oh my. What a challenge.
1. Stagecoach/ The Searchers/ Unforgiven
The are the milestones in westerns. Stagecoach took the western and made it the feature presentation. The Searchers showed you that westerns were not just shoot 'em ups. Unforgiven is the pinnacle. It is definitive. Anything afterwards is just gravy.
2. Blazing Saddles
Like Borat, it is a movie that gets made and afterwards regulations change. You can only make it once. It makes you laugh at the inequities of society. Today, they could never get away with yelling about the sheriff. But the point is driven home.
3. The Star Wars Trilogy
Much the same reasoning you gave. Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I saw that left you hanging. Ten years old and they did not finish the story. Aah! I remember thinking...What about Han?!!
4. Citizen Kane
It is just amazing. The rise and fall of greatness. It really is the greatest movie ever made. Orson just makes you want to know about this egomaniac.
5. The Birds/ Psycho
Forty years later the special effects are dated but the story telling is as accurate as ever. You are still unnerved as they walk out of the house and all of those birds are sitting there, waiting. And Norman...he wouldn't hurt a fly.
Just thought I'd put my two cents in. I love this kind of thing!
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1) Bladerunner (producer's cut) - great for some of the imagery and it gets you thinking
2) Casablanca - cheesy, yet classy. Originator of all those cliches
3) The Matrix - for the groundbreaking stunts and such a complete, imagined (or is it real) world
4) The Usual Suspects - more fun the second or third time
5) Kill Bill (both vols) - bloody, but wonderful, creative imagery and so many homages/refernces you could write a thesis
Honorary - Bullitt - because Steve McQueen defined cool, plus a car chase through San Francisco, and after reading drufan's list, The Third Man - in the days before CGI and specifal effects Orson Welles and Hitchcock were masters of their craft with lighting, building supsense and telling a story.
Maybe I'd drop Ususal Suspects from the list...
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Blade Runner! That's an interesting one for me, a really fantastic example of how tiny creative decisions can affect the story as a whole. I watched it back in, oh, probably the early '90s, and I liked it, but it didn't make much of an impression. Then a while later I saw the director's cut, and OH MY GOD. The little change in the end ("Too bad she won't live forever ... but then again, who does") -- I can't describe how hard that sucker-punched me. It's honestly become one of my rather long list of favorite movies just because of that change, from the slapped-together warm fuzzy ending to one that is painful and honest and real.
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Phillip K Dick's stories are definitely interesting (and crazy at times). Unfortunately Hollywood has not done well with them (Total Recall misses the point and Paycheck could have been stronger).