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Broadside Now Showing March 29, 2010

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By Ross Bonaime, Staff Writer

With the remake of Clash of the Titans being released this week, audiences will see a film in 3D that attempts to be epic in every way.

But Clash of the Titans has a long way to go to become one of the great epic films. With that, here are the top 10 epic films of all time.

10. Intolerance
The father of the epic movie, D.W. Griffith, dropped all the white power messages of his previous film Birth of a Nation, and created four fascinating stories of intolerance spanning many countries and various time frames.

9. Spartacus
In the battle of ’50s – ’60s slave epics, Spartacus beats Ben-Hur, hands down.

Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick created a classic redemption story with some of Old Hollywood’s finest actors.

8. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
It doesn’t get much more epic than three films being shot simultaneously in a project that took over eight years to create.

But Peter Jackson’s surprisingly faithful adaptations of Tolkien’s novels will go down as modern day classics.

7. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Another great Kubrick epic, 2001 makes the leap from the beginning of time to mankind’s next evolution that is as epic in its theories and discussions as is the film itself.

6. There Will Be Blood
Daniel Plainview’s struggle with greed and religion in There Will Be Blood takes him on a journey that makes for an internal struggle just as great as any epic story.

5. Star Wars trilogy
Star Wars has easily become known as the great sci-fi epic series with its original trilogy. Yet even as George Lucas continues to mess up the credibility of his groundbreaking franchise, the original trilogy is one of the finest examples of epic filmmaking.

4. The Grapes of Wrath
If Griffith is the father of the epic film, Grapes of Wrath director John Ford is the son.

Ford was known for his glorious Western epics, but with this film, he told the touching story of a Depression-era family just trying to get by.

3. City of God
Following two children on different paths in Rio de Janeiro, director Fernando Meirelles crafted an urban struggle, spanning from childhood to adulthood and dealing with the most epic journey of all: growing up.

2. The Godfather
The Godfather will always be considered one of the greatest films of all time, and for good reason.

The struggle of a young son dealing with taking over the family business and everything that comes with it is as sprawling and majestic as most other films can only hope to be.

1. All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front is the greatest of all war films. A group of German soldiers in World War I realize the true cruelty of war in a film that is epic in every way.

From the journey that the soldiers go on emotionally and physically to the groundbreaking camera techniques the film produced, All Quiet on the Western Front is about as epic as they come.

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