10. Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling
You didn’t think we’d write a list of our favorite movie couples without mentioning these two, did you? Tender, passionate, and deeply romantic, McAdams and Gosling in “The Notebook” simultaneously break our hearts and give us reason to believe in love. We’d be thrilled to see them together again on-screen and in real life.
9. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal
Sadly, we know this is a coupling we won’t ever get to see again, but since this is a fantasy list after all, we couldn’t pass up the chance to gush about these two together. Watching Heath and Jake roll around in the hay in “Brokeback Mountain” proved to us that guy-on-guy action? So effing hot.
8. Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon
They weren’t a romantic couple, but in “Thelma and Louise,” the mother of all chick flicks, Davis and Sarandon reignited Girl Power and proved that sometimes the deepest love is platonic in nature.
7. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes
On their own — or with other people — neither of these two thespians are the most likable on our list, but together, as they were in the 1996 remake of “Romeo and Juliet,” they’re totally captivating. Gone are all signs of the pretensiousness we’ve come to expect from Danes in her more recent movies, and DiCaprio’s over-acting is diluted to tolerable measure with his co-star’s sweet subtlety.
6. Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman
Sure, they played a couple in the middle of a divorce and nasty custody battle in the 1979 film, “Kramer vs. Kramer,” but the tenderness between them — not to mention the amazing Academy Award-winning acting — is something we need more of today. Plus, they’ve both had such impressive careers in the nearly 30 years since, we think there’s a great chance to catch lightning in a jar again if these two were to ever reunite on-screen.
5. Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray
Le sigh! Has there been a more bittersweet love story in recent cinematic history than between these two in “Lost in Translation”? While we love Bill Murray is nearly anything in which he appears, Scarlett Johansson’s luster just isn’t as shiny without him by her side. Together, they have a chemistry that is more kindred spirit than hot passion, a connection we yearn to see more of in this day of gratuitous sex overload.
4. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
So iconic as a couple, they don’t even need last names, but as Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the 2005 movie of the same name, the sexiest couple alive proved to viewers exactly why they belong together. The chemistry between them is palpable, and watching them together, most of us don’t know whom to envy more — her for getting to kiss him, or him for kissing her.
3. Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne
They steamed things up together in the 1993 Tina Turner biography, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”, earning Bassett an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and Fishburne his first Oscar nomination. Fishburne has stated about Bassett: “An electrifying thing happens when the two of us work together. I haven’t experienced it with anyone else.” We experience it, too, Laurence. And we want more.
2. Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp
Surely there’s enough water under the bridge for these two, who broke their engagement in the early ’90s, to reunite on the big screen again. They were perfectly sweet and enchanting together in the 1990 movie “Edward Scissorhands” and the sight of those big, soulful eyes they both share is enough to elicit a deep sigh from even the most stoic.
1. Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey
Forget Kate and Leo; we want to see Kate and Jim together again. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is one of the few movies we’ve seen Jim Carrey in that hasn’t made us want to claw our eyes out. In fact, Carrey was downright charming, something we’re pretty sure he needs Winslet to pull off. So, what are they waiting for?
In the latest DeclareYourself.com ad campaigns, celebrities try to use reverse psychology by saying “Don’t Vote.”
The ad features a whole lot of celebrities including Amy Adams, Tatyana Ali, will.i.am, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon, Maria Bello, Halle Berry, Selma Blair, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Connolly, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jaime Foxx, Jonah Hill, Djimon Hounsou, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Kiedis, Ashton Kutcher, Adam Levine, Laura Linney, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Esai Morales, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman, Ethan Suplee, Kyra Sedgwick, Michelle Trachtenberg, Usher, and Forest Whitaker.
If movies were completely scientifically accurate, they’d probably be as interesting as a Physics 101 lecture.
In real life, there are no explosions in space, gas usually doesn’t explode from a lit cigarette.
Some movies, though, put science front and center in the story and more often than not the science proves to be head-slappingly bad. Here are the top 10 offenders:
Armageddon
We could put together a long list of all the things wrong with Michael Bay’s feel-good ode to global destruction, but NASA has already and they counted at least 168 mistakes. But perhaps the biggest problem is that the plot itself — splitting a Texas-sized rock in two with a single nuke — has a Texas-sized hole in it. We don’t have a nuclear bomb anywhere near powerful enough to do the job. As strange as it might seem, this is a case of a Michael Bay movie not having a big enough explosion.
Independence Day
That mammoth mothership hovering over the earth in geostationary orbit would be doing more than just freaking out the world’s population. Because of its close proximity and mass — 1/4th that of the moon, according to the film — the flying saucer’s gravitational pull would cause massive tidal waves, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The aliens wouldn’t even have to roll out their anti-matter ray to blow up the White House — it would already be underwater.
Starship Troopers
Could a band of cave-dwelling, preverbal giant insects really have the sophisticated mathematics and technology to hurl a rock millions of miles through space to crash into Earth? Plus, 70% of the planet’s surface is covered in water, so they only had a 3 out of 10 chance at even hitting solid ground, let alone a major city like Buenos Aires.
The Day After Tomorrow
Roland Emmerich brought his trademark academic rigor to the realm of climatology and the result proved to be so silly that NASA refused to help with the filming of the movie. For one thing, it would require most of Antarctica to melt in order to submerge New York City to the level it is in the movie. If all the rays of the sun were directed at the South Pole, its ice would melt in about two and half years. This ridiculousness drove Duke University paleoclimatologist William Hyde to publicly state, “This movie is to climate science as Frankenstein is to heart transplant surgery.”
The Core
In the movie, the Earth’s inner core — a nickel-iron mass about 1500 miles in diameter — stops rotating, causing the planet’s magnetic field to collapse and microwave radiation from space to blast through the atmosphere. But microwaves aren’t affected by magnetism, and the radiation that comes from space is too weak to damage anything here. What’s more, if the core did stop rotating for whatever reason, we’d have more to worry about than that. The energy stored in the core would have to go somewhere, and the effect on the planet would be equivalent to five trillion nuclear bombs going off at once.
The Matrix
Much in the way of physics in the Matrix — like dodging bullets and running up walls — gets a pass because it’s all within a massive virtual world. But in reality, our supposed robot overlords are a bit dim. Humans are a remarkably inefficient energy source. Instead of turning the human race into Duracells, the machines would probably get more energy just setting those goopy people pods on fire.
Jurassic Park
Having a wildlife park full of dinosaurs would be a really cool idea if it weren’t for a few problems. No, not imperfect security or the possibility of spontaneous lizard sex changes. The problem is that it would be almost impossible to clone the dinosaurs based on DNA pulled from the guts of a 25 million-year-old mosquito. The dinosaur DNA’s double helix most certainly would have been broken down into individual chunks, mixing together with whatever else the mosquitoes might have eaten along with some of the insect’s own genetic material. Any creature constructed from that mess might be the stuff of nightmares, but probably wouldn’t look like a T. Rex.
Total Recall
The red planet’s gravitational pull is roughly 1/3rd that of the Earth’s. So if, for example, an Austrian bodybuilder were to visit Mars, he would be bounding across the room like Michael Jordan. Another problem: when exposed to the thin atmosphere of Mars, like bad guy Cohaagen at the end of the movie, you would likely suffer from a raging case of the bends and you would asphyxiate — both of which are plenty lethal — but your head wouldn’t bulge out and explode like an overused stress toy.
Outbreak
A monkey threatens a small town with a virus that kills everybody in less time than your average DMV visit, and only Dustin Hoffman can stop it. The trouble with a disease that virulent is it kills the host too fast to spread. Otherwise, we would be dead from the Ebola virus. Also, it generally takes longer to make a cure from monkey serum than it does to make a latte. Dustin Hoffman does look great in a hazmat suit, though.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Indiana Jones has survived a lot of improbable adventures, be it fleeing ancient spherical boulders or fighting off cult members while dangling off a rope bridge. But few scrapes have tested the bounds of believability more than Indy’s escape from a nuclear bomb blast thanks to a lead-lined fridge. The problem is that, even if he didn’t get flattened, horribly burned or suffocated (kids, don’t hide in refrigerators), Indy almost certainly would have gotten a lethal dose of radiation from the fallout. And that’s a lot scarier than snakes.
