Originally Posted by Big J 33
Am I wrong?
Originally Posted by Big J 33
Am I wrong?
Metacritic:
Metacritic:
Q: If you were to ask 1000 people to list their top 3 favorite Tom Hanks performances and then discount any list that begins with Forrest Gump, would any two be the same? Tom Hanks is incredible. My three (and this took hours): Big, A League of Their Own, Catch Me If You Can.
— Ian Victorine, Gloucester
SG: Mine were Big, Bachelor Party and Cast Away. I asked 30 friends and coworkers the same question; 26 of Hanks' movies and TV shows were selected as a top-three performance by those 29 people.[sup]2[/sup]Big (17), Saving Private Ryan (13), A League of Their Own (, Cast Away (7) and Bosom Buddies (7) received the most votes; his other Oscar performance (Philadelphia) received five votes (remember, Ian in Gloucester made Gump ineligible). Semirelated: If you applied the WAR concept here, Hanks' top six performances would probably be …
Cast Away (12.3): He did scenes with a volleyball for a freaking hour. That was Steve Carlton's 1972 season, basically.
Big (11.1): I just can't see anyone else successfully pulling off Josh Baskin in 1988[sup]3[/sup] except for Eddie Murphy and possibly Robin Williams (who would have either pulled it off or turned it into one of the five most unwatchable comedies of the '80s. There's a reason it finished first in my unofficial poll. I can't believe there wasn't a Lifetime sequel called "Big II: Zoltar's Revenge" in which Elizabeth Perkins' character couldn't stay away from young Josh and pulled a Mary Kay Letourneau on him. Is there still time?
Turner and Hooch (10.6): Covered this in Mailbag V.
Forrest Gump (10.4): I say "underrated" for Gump. He's in EVERY scene. He has to play a dimwit in a blatantly manipulative movie without crossing over into that Robin Williams Zone and inadvertently making you hate him and the movie. He has to pull off a crazy accent that really shouldn't have worked and did. He has to pull off the inexplicable 10-minute jogging-back-and-forth-across-the-country sequence (one of the dumbest stretches of any Oscar winner) without making you turn on the movie. He has to make you think that Jenny Gump would want to have sex with him; granted, she was a %$%#, but still. He has to believably pull off being a football player, soldier, Vietnam vet, shrimp-boat owner and jogger, as well as someone with a heart and soul who's slightly smarter than he lets on. And the whole time, you have to buy that he has a 70 IQ. I'm gonna say that Raymond Babbitt was 10 times easier than Forrest Gump. And by the way, I hate Forrest Gump and can't watch it anymore. The jogging scene kills me. I can't get past it. They should have just had him develop superpowers and fight crime by briefly turning into Plastic Man.
The Money Pit (9.9): This was like Bautista's 2011 season. Huge numbers on a .500 team and features the single best Tom Hanks scene.
Saving Private Ryan (9.7): If we cared about the Oscars the same way we care about sports, we'd consider Roberto Benigni's beating Hanks for "Best Actor" in 1998 an even bigger travesty than Karl Malone's beating out MJ for the 1997 MVP. And like Jordan a year earlier, Hanks didn't win for the simple (and indefensible) reason that everyone was tired of seeing him win. I have Benigni/Hanks ranked as my no. 1 Oscar Travesty of all time. It's just too bad they couldn't have settled it in the 1998 Acting Finals; I think Benigni would have choked like Malone did.
Since we don't rate actors in a "big picture" sense the same way we dissect athletes, allow me three other Hanks thoughts:
1. During Letterman's apex in the 1980s, his four best guests were Hanks, Jay Leno, Michael Keaton and Eddie Murphy — every time those guys were on, you knew you were getting two killer segments and Letterman at his counter-punching best. But Hanks was also one of the three best SNL hosts ever: Any list has to include Hanks, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin as the top three in some order. These were two significant, game-changing pop culture achievements — Hanks influenced two of the three most influential late-night shows of the past 30 years (the other being The Daily Show).
2. My friend Dan Silver points this out: You could really split Hanks' career into two halves. No. 1 had TV Underrated Hanks (1980-83, when everyone could see his potential to be bigger than that) and Silly Comedy Underrated Hanks (1983-1992, when a second time, everyone could see his potential to be bigger than that); no. 2 had Respectable Great Actor Hanks (1992-2000, starting with A League of Their Own, when he unleashed one of the best movies runs ever) and Playing With House Money Hanks (2001-present, when he could do any movie he wanted, took some chances and got passed down to a younger generation as the voice of Woody in Toy Story). How you feel about his movies probably depends where you came of age in those halves. I can't have a Hanks top three without Bachelor Party because that's one of my favorite '80s movies, and also, he's funny as hell in it.[sup]4[/sup] But if you're 25? You might have Toy Story or Apollo 13 in that spot.
3. Off that same theme, here's a take from a friend who works in Hollywood: "For a lot of people Tom Hanks IS Forrest Gump. It is such an iconic role, one can't help think of one without the other. I'd bet 90 percent of the lists would begin with Forrest Gump if it were allowed. As for everything else, how you feel about Hanks will be split by age, gender, and preference in genre. The more important question for me: What does this say about Tom Hanks? I suppose he's like one of those rare great athletes who made the proper adjustments with age to extend their careers in connection with their changing skill set (e.g. Jordan's first championship run versus his second). Hanks started as a lanky comedic star and slowly became a believable dramatic heavy. It's an almost impossible road to navigate. Could you imagine Jason Segel eventually starring in Road to Perdition? Could you imagine Russell Crowe in Splash?"
Ultimately, that's what sets Hanks apart from every other great actor: He reinvented himself halfway through his career. There's just no parallel. From 1982 through around 1990, "Tom Hanks or Michael Keaton?" was a real question. You argued about it the same way you'd argue about "Marino or Elway?" or "Porizkova or McPherson?" Hell, Keaton briefly passed Hanks with the first Batman remake (1989); Hanks' next two movies were legitimate bombs (Bonfire of the Vanities and Joe Versus the Volcano, both from 1990). Two years passed and Hanks suddenly jumped a level with A League of Their Own, Philadelphia, Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Toy Story, That Thing You Do, Saving Private Ryan, You've Got Mail, Toy Story II, The Green Mile and Cast Away. To put that run in perspective, A League of Their Own came out when Bill Clinton was running for president; the rest of the movies came out during his presidency. It's probably the best nine-year run ever. And it happened after Hanks had already had a whole other career as a funny actor.
But here's where Hollywood diverges from sports. Hanks was Jordan (right down to his multiple apexes), but if this were sports, every time a potential threat to Hanks came along (say, Leo DiCaprio), you'd have writers and talking heads arguing that DiCaprio was going to be BETTER than Hanks, then a second group of writers and talking heads *****ing that "This is ridiculous, we'll never see another Tom Hanks!" The whole thing would keep going and going in a circle, and all the while, the same point would keep getting banged home: We're never going to see another Tom Hanks. We don't consume movies like this obviously. We don't have 24-hour movie radio, Hollywood ESPN or thousands of columnists and bloggers fighting for the same angles. There's no foolproof way to evaluate actors against other actors, and we're probably better off that way: Acting isn't about wins and losses, playoffs or advanced stats. It's art. But because of that, people rarely take a step back and say, "Holy crap, look at Tom Hanks' stats, this is incredible!"
Which feeds back to the "Would anyone have the same three favorite Tom Hanks movies" question. I asked 30 people who I know; all 30 picked a different trio of movies.[sup]5[/sup] That would not happen with any other actor or actress. Good call from Ian in Gloucester.
He's on point, I know people who pick different Tom Hanks movies as his top 3 all the damn time. Myself, I would probably go League of Their Own, Turner and Hooch, and the Green Mile. And I already keep thinking about Saving Private Ryan, or Apollo 13, or Philadelphia and I haven't even mentioned Castaway or Gump yet.
Un freaking real.
Q: If you were to ask 1000 people to list their top 3 favorite Tom Hanks performances and then discount any list that begins with Forrest Gump, would any two be the same? Tom Hanks is incredible. My three (and this took hours): Big, A League of Their Own, Catch Me If You Can.
— Ian Victorine, Gloucester
SG: Mine were Big, Bachelor Party and Cast Away. I asked 30 friends and coworkers the same question; 26 of Hanks' movies and TV shows were selected as a top-three performance by those 29 people.[sup]2[/sup]Big (17), Saving Private Ryan (13), A League of Their Own (, Cast Away (7) and Bosom Buddies (7) received the most votes; his other Oscar performance (Philadelphia) received five votes (remember, Ian in Gloucester made Gump ineligible). Semirelated: If you applied the WAR concept here, Hanks' top six performances would probably be …
Cast Away (12.3): He did scenes with a volleyball for a freaking hour. That was Steve Carlton's 1972 season, basically.
Big (11.1): I just can't see anyone else successfully pulling off Josh Baskin in 1988[sup]3[/sup] except for Eddie Murphy and possibly Robin Williams (who would have either pulled it off or turned it into one of the five most unwatchable comedies of the '80s. There's a reason it finished first in my unofficial poll. I can't believe there wasn't a Lifetime sequel called "Big II: Zoltar's Revenge" in which Elizabeth Perkins' character couldn't stay away from young Josh and pulled a Mary Kay Letourneau on him. Is there still time?
Turner and Hooch (10.6): Covered this in Mailbag V.
Forrest Gump (10.4): I say "underrated" for Gump. He's in EVERY scene. He has to play a dimwit in a blatantly manipulative movie without crossing over into that Robin Williams Zone and inadvertently making you hate him and the movie. He has to pull off a crazy accent that really shouldn't have worked and did. He has to pull off the inexplicable 10-minute jogging-back-and-forth-across-the-country sequence (one of the dumbest stretches of any Oscar winner) without making you turn on the movie. He has to make you think that Jenny Gump would want to have sex with him; granted, she was a %$%#, but still. He has to believably pull off being a football player, soldier, Vietnam vet, shrimp-boat owner and jogger, as well as someone with a heart and soul who's slightly smarter than he lets on. And the whole time, you have to buy that he has a 70 IQ. I'm gonna say that Raymond Babbitt was 10 times easier than Forrest Gump. And by the way, I hate Forrest Gump and can't watch it anymore. The jogging scene kills me. I can't get past it. They should have just had him develop superpowers and fight crime by briefly turning into Plastic Man.
The Money Pit (9.9): This was like Bautista's 2011 season. Huge numbers on a .500 team and features the single best Tom Hanks scene.
Saving Private Ryan (9.7): If we cared about the Oscars the same way we care about sports, we'd consider Roberto Benigni's beating Hanks for "Best Actor" in 1998 an even bigger travesty than Karl Malone's beating out MJ for the 1997 MVP. And like Jordan a year earlier, Hanks didn't win for the simple (and indefensible) reason that everyone was tired of seeing him win. I have Benigni/Hanks ranked as my no. 1 Oscar Travesty of all time. It's just too bad they couldn't have settled it in the 1998 Acting Finals; I think Benigni would have choked like Malone did.
Since we don't rate actors in a "big picture" sense the same way we dissect athletes, allow me three other Hanks thoughts:
1. During Letterman's apex in the 1980s, his four best guests were Hanks, Jay Leno, Michael Keaton and Eddie Murphy — every time those guys were on, you knew you were getting two killer segments and Letterman at his counter-punching best. But Hanks was also one of the three best SNL hosts ever: Any list has to include Hanks, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin as the top three in some order. These were two significant, game-changing pop culture achievements — Hanks influenced two of the three most influential late-night shows of the past 30 years (the other being The Daily Show).
2. My friend Dan Silver points this out: You could really split Hanks' career into two halves. No. 1 had TV Underrated Hanks (1980-83, when everyone could see his potential to be bigger than that) and Silly Comedy Underrated Hanks (1983-1992, when a second time, everyone could see his potential to be bigger than that); no. 2 had Respectable Great Actor Hanks (1992-2000, starting with A League of Their Own, when he unleashed one of the best movies runs ever) and Playing With House Money Hanks (2001-present, when he could do any movie he wanted, took some chances and got passed down to a younger generation as the voice of Woody in Toy Story). How you feel about his movies probably depends where you came of age in those halves. I can't have a Hanks top three without Bachelor Party because that's one of my favorite '80s movies, and also, he's funny as hell in it.[sup]4[/sup] But if you're 25? You might have Toy Story or Apollo 13 in that spot.
3. Off that same theme, here's a take from a friend who works in Hollywood: "For a lot of people Tom Hanks IS Forrest Gump. It is such an iconic role, one can't help think of one without the other. I'd bet 90 percent of the lists would begin with Forrest Gump if it were allowed. As for everything else, how you feel about Hanks will be split by age, gender, and preference in genre. The more important question for me: What does this say about Tom Hanks? I suppose he's like one of those rare great athletes who made the proper adjustments with age to extend their careers in connection with their changing skill set (e.g. Jordan's first championship run versus his second). Hanks started as a lanky comedic star and slowly became a believable dramatic heavy. It's an almost impossible road to navigate. Could you imagine Jason Segel eventually starring in Road to Perdition? Could you imagine Russell Crowe in Splash?"
Ultimately, that's what sets Hanks apart from every other great actor: He reinvented himself halfway through his career. There's just no parallel. From 1982 through around 1990, "Tom Hanks or Michael Keaton?" was a real question. You argued about it the same way you'd argue about "Marino or Elway?" or "Porizkova or McPherson?" Hell, Keaton briefly passed Hanks with the first Batman remake (1989); Hanks' next two movies were legitimate bombs (Bonfire of the Vanities and Joe Versus the Volcano, both from 1990). Two years passed and Hanks suddenly jumped a level with A League of Their Own, Philadelphia, Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Toy Story, That Thing You Do, Saving Private Ryan, You've Got Mail, Toy Story II, The Green Mile and Cast Away. To put that run in perspective, A League of Their Own came out when Bill Clinton was running for president; the rest of the movies came out during his presidency. It's probably the best nine-year run ever. And it happened after Hanks had already had a whole other career as a funny actor.
But here's where Hollywood diverges from sports. Hanks was Jordan (right down to his multiple apexes), but if this were sports, every time a potential threat to Hanks came along (say, Leo DiCaprio), you'd have writers and talking heads arguing that DiCaprio was going to be BETTER than Hanks, then a second group of writers and talking heads *****ing that "This is ridiculous, we'll never see another Tom Hanks!" The whole thing would keep going and going in a circle, and all the while, the same point would keep getting banged home: We're never going to see another Tom Hanks. We don't consume movies like this obviously. We don't have 24-hour movie radio, Hollywood ESPN or thousands of columnists and bloggers fighting for the same angles. There's no foolproof way to evaluate actors against other actors, and we're probably better off that way: Acting isn't about wins and losses, playoffs or advanced stats. It's art. But because of that, people rarely take a step back and say, "Holy crap, look at Tom Hanks' stats, this is incredible!"
Which feeds back to the "Would anyone have the same three favorite Tom Hanks movies" question. I asked 30 people who I know; all 30 picked a different trio of movies.[sup]5[/sup] That would not happen with any other actor or actress. Good call from Ian in Gloucester.
He's on point, I know people who pick different Tom Hanks movies as his top 3 all the damn time. Myself, I would probably go League of Their Own, Turner and Hooch, and the Green Mile. And I already keep thinking about Saving Private Ryan, or Apollo 13, or Philadelphia and I haven't even mentioned Castaway or Gump yet.
Un freaking real.
Originally Posted by CP1708
He's on point, I know people who pick different Tom Hanks movies as his top 3 all the damn time. Myself, I would probably go League of Their Own, Turner and Hooch, and the Green Mile. And I already keep thinking about Saving Private Ryan, or Apollo 13, or Philadelphia and I haven't even mentioned Castaway or Gump yet.
Un freaking real.
Originally Posted by CP1708
He's on point, I know people who pick different Tom Hanks movies as his top 3 all the damn time. Myself, I would probably go League of Their Own, Turner and Hooch, and the Green Mile. And I already keep thinking about Saving Private Ryan, or Apollo 13, or Philadelphia and I haven't even mentioned Castaway or Gump yet.
Un freaking real.
