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.