Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Jurassic Park (1993)

It was tough, getting a good screen-grab of that moment there at the end, when our poor, child-abandoning lawyer-slash-weasel Gennaro (yes, I knew the character's name without having to look it up) gets thrashed back and forth in the T-Rex's jaws. Too much motion!

Anyway, I'll just come right out and say this: I consider this scene - from the moment the reverberations play across the cup of water's surface announcing the Tyrannosaur's approach until Sam Neill and the two kids get chased down a tree by a falling Ford Explorer not long after where I've cut off the screen-grabs above - well I consider this scene to be one of the finest accomplishments in all of cinema. It's up there with Eisenstein's Odessa Steps as far as I'm concerned. I have seen this scene literally dozens of times (I saw Jurassic Park in the theater alone fifteen times the year it came out) and it never fails to make me hold my breath through its entire duration every single time, and I never realize it until its over, but I don't think I blink either. And it's ten minutes long! It's one of the most perfect, basic realizations of what film can offer us.

The film as a whole has loads to offer - I love this movie with all of my heart - from the Velociraptor attack in the kitchen to Samuel Jackson's shredded-off arm (that reveal kicks so much ass), but its centerpiece, this T.Rex attack, is in the pantheon. It is love, written in goat's blood and sealed with a guttural chomp.

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Previous Ways Not To Die: Hoisted By Your Own Hand Grenade -- Having The Years Suction-Cupped Away -- Criss-Cross -- Turned Into A Person-Cocoon By The Touch Of A Little Girl's Mirror Doppleganger -- Satisfying Society's "Pop Princess" Blood-Lust -- Done In By The Doggie Door -- Tuned Out -- Taking the 107th Step -- Rescuing Gretchen -- Incinerated By Lousy Dialogue -- Starred & Striped Forever -- Vivisection Via Vaginally-Minded Barbed-Wire -- Chompers (Down There) -- Run Down By M. Night Shyamalan -- Everything Up To And Including The Kitchen Toaster -- Sacrificed To Kali -- Via The Gargantuan Venom Of The Black Mamba Snake -- Turned Into An Evil Robot -- The Out-Of-Nowhere Careening Vehicle Splat -- "Oh My God... It's Dip!!!" -- Critter Balled -- Stuff'd -- A Hot-Air Balloon Ride... Straight To Hell!!! -- Puppy Betrayal -- High-Heeled By A Girlfriend Impersonator -- Flip-Top Beheaded -- Because I'm Too Goddamned Beautiful To Live -- By Choosing... Poorly... -- Fried Alive Due To Baby Ingenuity -- A Good Old-Fashioned Tentacle Smothering -- Eepa! Eepa! -- Gremlins Ate My Stairlift -- An Icicle Thru The Eye -- Face Carved Off By Ghost Doctor After Lesbian Tryst With Zombie Women -- Electrocuted By Fallen Power-Lines -- A Mouthful Of Flare -- Taken By The TV Lady -- Bitten By A Zombie -- Eaten By Your Mattress -- Stuffed To Splitting -- Face Stuck In Liquid Nitrogen -- Crushed By Crumbling Church Debris -- Bitten By The Jaws Of Life -- A Machete To The Crotch -- Showering With A Chain-Saw -- In A Room Filled With Razor Wire -- Pod People'd With Your Dog -- Force-Fed Art -- Skinned By A Witch -- Beaten With An Oar -- Curbed -- Cape Malfunction -- In The Corner -- Cooked In A Tanning Bed -- Diced -- Punched Through The Head -- Bugs Sucking On Your Head
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