Tom Hanks - Saving Private Ryan

I had a hard time coming up with this one. Tom Hanks is good enough that he could have multiple entries in The Frozen Shrine (and he probably will). There is no denying Tom Hanks' brilliance in his back-to-back Best Actor Oscar winning performances in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, but in my book (and this is my book... or my blog rather), his defining role so far has been Capt. John Miller. I mean, at the end of the movie, when he's on the ground and shooting at this big Panzer tank (or whatever the Germans were using) with his gun, which he can barely keep straight because of his injuries... that's something you remember. Here's a guy who took his crew on a seemingly impossible mission to find this Private Ryan, and for heaven's sake to bring him home to his mother who had lost her other sons in dubya dubya two... a mission that nobody wanted to be on, and a mission that cost most of their lives. The ultimate sacrifice, for this one kid, for Private Ryan.

The movie opens with one of the most iconic scenes in the history of film, that should've been enough to win the Best Picture Academy Award, which went to the godawful Shakespeare in Love and made Hollywood execs believe that Gwyneth Paltrow could carry a movie. The Gwyneth Paltrow as a Leading Actress Era gave us the following gems: Duets (co-starring HUEY LEWIS by the way), Possession, and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Great choice, Academy! I don't hate Gwyneth Paltrow by the way. I think she's a good actress and does well when she's not the lead. I enjoyed her in Iron Man and in The Royal Tenenbaums, but by no means is she bankable or can carry a movie to an Academy Award. She just can't, sorry.

I don't know what happened that year with the Oscars. I think voters were trying too hard or not hard enough because even though Tom Hanks should've won for Best Actor and Saving Private Ryan should've won for Best Picture... the Academy awarded the aforementioned piece of shit Shakespeare in Love and Roberto Benigni for his role in Life is Beautiful. To his credit, Benigni did give us one of the most memorable moments in Oscar history when he went apeshit and looked like wanted to make love to everybody in the room, so he gets a pass. Plus, Hanks already had his two Oscars for other possible Shrine roles, so they went with the crazy foreigner.

Tom Hanks followed his Shrine performance with: You've Got Mail, Toy Story 2, The Green Mile, Cast Away, Road to Perdition, and on and on.  The guy is super talented and will undoubtedly get a shot at another Oscar, and he may be one of the few people that will have multiple entries in this shitty blog, but for now, think of him in Saving Private Ryan and keep him there, in his best moment, Frozen in Time.

On a side note, Saving Private Ryan, like all epic Hollywood movies, has been parodied in a short movie with the title Saving Ryan's Privates which surprisingly isn't a porno, but ranks up there with porno parodies (as far as titles go - I haven't seen any of these, I promise) The Sopornos, Hill Street Blacks, and the classics When Harry Ate Sally and In Diana Jones.

Yeah.

Rationale...

There are two big reasons why I am doing this. First, I'm about halfway through The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons, whose column is a must-read and whose podcast is the only thing I listen to on my iPod besides The Howard Stern Show and an occasional podcast from Adam Carolla. The second reason why I'm doing this is that a couple of days ago I stumbled onto the movie You've Got Mail on my crappy Mexican cable service, and realized that this movie has now joined a slew of others in my "Movies You Have To Watch Until The End No Matter Where You Start Watching" list. That slew, by the way, includes Rocky I, II, III, IV and VI (because there was no such thing as Rocky V), The Karate Kid, As Good As It Gets, any Tarantino movie, Goodfellas, Casino, Scarface, St. Elmo's Fire, The Breakfast Club, any Pixar movie, The Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, and a whole bunch of others. It's a growing list as you can see. So how does me reading a book by Bill Simmons and watching You've Got Mail for the umpteenth time translate into creating this silly blog? Well, Bill Simmons speaks to me. He speaks to me because he's really into sports (so am I), he's really into pop culture (2 for 2) and he speaks to me because he writes in a way that makes you feel that you can write too. It's seamless, quick, witty, and almost always really really good. I'm not saying I write that way too, not at all. I'm just saying that the dude is an inspiration, ok? Get off my back.

Bill Simmons is also responsible for the name of this blog. You see, in his column and in his book, he uses the word "Pantheon" a lot. I like that word. I like it because it's strong and important. But, I didn't want to steal it from The Sports Guy, so I just sought out a synonym and found the word "Shrine." Plus, the title of the blog sort of rhymes, and I like that. Rhyming is fun.You should try it sometimes. For example, what rhymes with boat? The possibilities are almost endless.

So that's the Bill Simmons connection, what about the You've Got Mail connection? As I was watching this movie, a few things popped into my head. First of all, Tom Hanks mails in his performance (no pun intended). The movie was released the same year as Saving Private Ryan, and was probably shot roughly around the same time as well. Now, where do you think Tom Hanks' head was at the time? My money is on the best World War II movie and one of his greatest performances ever. I think he saw You've Got Mail as a chance to go back to his rom-com roots, work with Meg Ryan again, and have a decent shot at getting nominated for an Oscar for Ryan as a result of Mail (and he was). You know, so the Academy can see his range or whatever. Of course, I have no factual basis for this argument, and really, this whole thing isn't based on anything other than my own dumb opinion, but it's my own dumb blog, and you're reading it, so there. Another thing I noticed about You've Got Mail is Meg Ryan. Because really, you can't help but notice Meg Ryan in this movie. She is funny, charming, cute, and destroys every scene she's in. Any other actress in that role, playing opposite a Tom Hanks who wasn't really into it, would've made this a terrible movie. As it is, the technology featured in this movie is horribly obsolete, which deducts from its re-watchability factor, but Meg Ryan is so damn good that (for me) it cancels that out and makes me want to keep watching.

So, with that said, Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail is the first entry in the "Frozen In Time Shrine," because nothing she did before or has done since has been as great, and the way I want to remember her always is the way she takes over that movie and doesn't let go until the end credits start rolling. Physically, Meg Ryan has never been the hottest actress out there. She never had the killer body or the model looks, but when you see this movie, you can't help but think that she is the ideal woman, and you would kill to have someone like her. And that's it.

As a side point, look at Meg Ryan's career after You've Got Mail. First, she got all sorts of creepy plastic surgery that killed her "girl next door" appeal, which killed all those scripts for her, making her choose roles in incredibly crappy movies (In The Cut, Hanging Up, Kate & Leopold, and the worst movie of all time, The Women), and her career hasn't recovered since.

Odds of her having another Frozen In Time Shrine moment? I'd say 20%, and the way things have gone for her, that's a generous 20%.

Toodles.