Premiere Magazine's 100 Best Moments

[dave durbin]

Okay, kids -work with me on this one: Premiere magazine just unleashed their choices for the best movie moments of all time and overall, it's not that bad. But of course their are some omissions that baffle me and inclusions that frustrate me (Gladiator, Saving Private Ryan, Fargo, Gangs of New York, Wings of Desire) -not because they're bad films but because I don't really feel they have scenes that rank as some of our best (with the exception of Private Ryan's opening battle sequence but it wasn't even included). It's almost a 'man's man' kind of list, sort of dull and disappointing and it feels safe and politically correct -i.e. we all know 'the shower scene' will make the cut and the 'rosebud' whisper and the like because they're ALWAYS on these lists. (Granted they're stunning moments but seeing them selected is like a college announcing Barefoot in the Park and Our Town as part of their theater season lineup.) Here are -more than just a few- moments and images that I feel should have been on there (and some that I just would have loved to have seen selected). Forgive my self-indulgence and just go with it and have fun. In no particular order:

1. Bonnie and Clyde meet their fate one sunny afternoon

2. a pre-feminist Jane Fonda slips into the character of Barbarella and does a zero-gravity strip behind the opening credits

3. the rain of frogs in Magnolia

4. Sam Peckinpah directs the most controversial rape scene of all time in Straw Dogs

5. Regan MacNeil pushes her mother's face under her nightgown and it makes for the most disturbing scene in any movie in the history of motion pictures in The Exorcist

6. the breakfast cereal commercial -or the Miss America one- from Putney Swope

7. a young couple drive up to the country and run into the world's longest, strangest, most hilarious road pile-up in Godard's Weekend

8. Daryl gets medevil on Harrison in Blade Runner

9. a mother tries to ward off aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind

10. Lola-Lola sings Falling in Love Again in The Blue Angel

11. Sally Bowles belts out Mein Herr in Cabaret and influences everyone from Gene Simmons to David Bowie to Alice Cooper

12. Esther Blodgett belts out The Man That Got Away in a smoky after-hours club in A Star Is Born and influences dozens of lonely housewifes and drunken homosexuals

13. Suzie Diamond purrs Making Whoppee lying across a piano top in The Fabulous Baker Boys (Fuck you Armond White!)

14. Gilda sashays through Put The Blame On Mame

15. Travolta dances in Saturday Night Fever

16. sexy dancers invite you to 'take off' with them in All That Jazz

17. Lily von Schtuup tells us how tired she is in Blazing Saddles

18. Charloette and Humbert do the cha-cha in Lolita

19. Linnea sits quietly while listening to Tom croon I'm Easy in Nashville

20. Barbara Jean breaks down on stage in Nashville

21. Lois reminiscences about Sam the Lion to Sonny in The Last Picture Show

22. Masha has Jerry Langford over for a nice quiet dinner in The King of Comedy

23. Monica Vitti dares to overcome her fear and show compassion for a man she wants to love by placing her hand on the back of his head as a sign of forgiveness in L'Avventura

24. Rosemary eats the 'mouse' and meets the Devil in Rosemary's Baby

25. Marylee dons a red frock and does a maddening mambo while her father dies of a heart attack in Written on the Wind

26. the football game in MASH

27. a hockey player strips to save his team in Slap Shot

28. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie make love in Don't Look Now

29. Bree Daniels listens to Arlyn's final moments in Klute

30. Comissioner Dreyfus gets a tooth pulled from Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther Strikes Again (?)

31. Thelma Ritter bites the bullet (literally) in Pickup on South Street

32. Steve Buscemi has a nervous breakdown in a dream in Living in Oblivion

33. Beth and Calvin show their love for each other on a country club golf course in Ordinary People

34. Jon Favreau has an entire relationship with an answering machine in Swingers

35. a drunken Julie Christie tells William Castle what she wants to suck in Shampoo

36. a drunken Judy Davis sports a crown of candles and tells Kevin Spacey what to eat in The Ref

37. Selena transforms into Catwoman in Batman Returns

38. a mother and son are reunited in the final moments of The Grifters

39. a nervous stewardess -sorry, flight attendant- asks if anyone knows how to fly a plane in Airplane

40. Frankenstein picks a daisy with a little girl by a pond

41. Ray Liotta shows Lorraine Bracco a good time on their first date in Goodfellas

42. a former brute is hollowed out by the death of the only person who loved him and lies clutching the sand at the end of La Strada

43. Johnathan and Bobbie 'discuss' marriage in Carnal Knowledge

44. Bogart and Malone discover the joys of a book store in The Big Sleep

45. Falconetti's face at any point in The Passion of Joan of Arc

46. George tries to give his daughter her birthday gift in Shoot the Moon

47. Maddie makes her entrance on a hot summer night in Body Heat

48. a devil and an angel vie for the attention of a drunk and horny college youth in Animal House

49. the Derby scenes in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? make the Survivor stunts look like kid's play

50. two brothers meet their fate in a cornfield in Casino -one of the most disturbingly violent scenes in recent memory

51. Mabel has a homecoming party in A Woman Under the Influence

52. the tennis match in Blow Up

53. Monty takes the stand in Judgement at Nuremberg

54. Monty and John Ireland show off their 'guns' in Red River

55. Greta Garbo gets drunk in Ninotchka

56. Meryl Streep does drugs in Adaptation

57. Henry Fonda goes cheek-to-cheek with Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve

58. Violet, Judy, and Doralee discover Maui-wowy in 9 to 5

59. the television audition in Mulholland Drive

60. Henry Fonda quietly reads 'the letter' in The Ox-Bow Incident

61. a skeletal old grandmother sings a song from her youth in Pather Panchali

62. Udo Kier watches from a ship as Emily Watson returns in Breaking the Waves

63. Harold chops his hand off in front of his mother and his 'date' in Harold and Maude

64. Bela Lugosi slugs some whisky before jumping into a cold pond to do battle with a rubber octopus in Ed Wood

65. Thelma and Louise show an army of cops how they feel about men

66. Ned Beatty is forced to 'squeeeeeel' in Deliverance

67. Jennifer Salt becomes a stand-in for Margot Kidder's twin in DePalma's Sisters

68. Maggie Smith is told what someone would do with a dead naked body in Murder by Death

69. Christopher Walken unleashes his dancing ability in Pennies from Heaven

70. Ann-Margret has a messy showdown with a television set in Tommy

71. Elvis and Ann-Margret sing C'mon Everybody in Viva Las Vegas

72. Joe Buck meets a Manhattan housewife walking her dog in Midnight Cowboy

73. Venus tells Olive about the 'horse dourves' in Bullets Over Broadway

74. a giant female breast roams the countryside in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex

75. Jim Broadbent sings Like a Virgin in Moulin Rouge

76. Catherine Tramell goes commando in Basic Instinct

77. Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice try to have an orgy

78. a beautiful young woman is discovered in the forest under a stream of sunlight in Rashomon

79. the final image of Shoeshine

80. Joan finds a you-know-what in Christina's closet in Mommie Dearest

81. the raining hallway in Shock Corridor

82. James Bond discovers his conquest coated with gold in Goldfinger

83. John Wayne kisses Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man

84. the father and son heart to heart in Happiness

85. little Karen demonstrates another use for a garden trowel in Night of the Living Dead

86. Jessica Harper meets the head witch in Suspiria

87. the car chase in Bullitt

88. the car/bicycle chase in What's Up, Doc?

89. Lola screams in Run Lola Run

90. a drunken Shirley Maclaine screams that her skirt did NOT twirl up in Postcards from the Edge

91. Amber Waves brings home Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights

92. DeNiro takes a slow motion left hook in Raging Bull

93. two brothers are reunited at the end of The Straight Story

94. two women are 'reunited' on a couch in Mulholland Drive

95. Jon Voight makes Jane Fonda see God in Coming Home

96. Winona Ryder writes a suicide note for two football players in Heathers

97. Holly Body tells Jake Scully what she will NOT do in porno films in Body Double

98. Mahalia Jackson lets loose with Troubles of the World in Imitation of Life

99. Divine eats dog shit in Pink Flamingos

100. A woman asks a man if he minds if she smokes while he's 'eating' in Deep Throat

101. Cleo observes a man and his frogs in Cleo from 5 to 7

102. Katherine Helmond gets a 'plastic' makeover in Brazil

103. Amanda Plummer talks about her feelings for Robin Williams in The Fisher King

104. A cow shoots over the top of a castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

105. DeNiro shoots Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown

106. DePalma pays homage to Karen Black in Family Plot and Catherine Denuve in Belle du Jour by dressing his transvestite killer in a blonde wig and shades and having him/her slaughter Angie Dickinson in Dressed to Kill

107. Roberto Benigni shares a soul mate dance with the Italian woman in Down by Law

108. Rock Hudson's payback at the end of Seconds

Honorable mention goes to Julie Andrews for showing her breasts in SOB and Gene Hackman for his striptease in Scarecrow

Thank you for reading, again forgive the self-indulgence, and please submit more if you get a chance