Lord Of The Rings makes Barry Norman's top ten cinema epics list

 

Sherna Noah
Tuesday 26 March 2013 09:41 GMT
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The Lord Of The Rings trilogy has joined the likes of Lawrence Of Arabia and Gone With The Wind in a list of the 10 greatest movie epics.

Broadcaster and film journalist Barry Norman compiled the top 10 for the Radio Times.

The Lord Of The Rings trilogy (2001-03) are the most recent films on the list, while Napoleon (1927) is the oldest.

Click here or on "View Images" for the top ten cinema epics

Other movies in the top 10 include Apocalypse Now (1979), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960) and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

Norman said the epic, "along with stories about sex and crime", was one of the oldest movie genres.

He said Charlton Heston, whose credits include Ben-Hur, El Cid, Moses in The Ten Commandments, and Michelangelo in The Agony And The Ecstasy, was the "greatest of epic movie stars".

Norman said purists who believed that films, such as Life Of Pi and Ridley Scott's Prometheus, that rely heavily on CGI could not be called epics should "get a life".

"CGI animation is as good as and often much more vivid than work produced by the original method and an epic doesn't necessarily require vast crowds anyway...," he said.

"The main ingredient of an epic movie is size. It has to tell an extraordinary tale - whether Biblical, historical or totally fictional - on a grand scale, filling the screen with outstanding imagery while doing so."

Barry Norman's greatest epics (in alphabetical order):

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Ben-Hur (1959)

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Gladiator (2000)

Gone With The Wind (1939)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

Lord Of The Rings trilogy (2001-03)

Napoleon (1927)

Spartacus (1960)

Throne Of Blood (1957)

PA

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