"968"

It’s a bit of a mystery why lines like  “Do I feel lucky?” (“Dirty Harry,” 1971)  and “I’ll be back!” (“The Terminator,” 1984) enter the popular zeitgeist, but there’s no denying they do. And there’s more than a bit of magic to that.

Over the course of movie history, there have been the great actresses, women who light up the screen with charisma and character, like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Meryl Streep. There have also been women whose special gifts had more to do with the sexual allure they projected. Hey fellas, you must have noticed them, right? Brace yourselves then- here are our picks for the top twenty female cinematic sex symbols of all time. (Drum roll). 

Katharine Hepburn, whose birthday falls today, remains the only actor or actress to be awarded four Oscars. Yes, Meryl has long since surpassed her on nominations, but Kate still leads on wins. Few people now realize that by the end of 1938, after just six years in Hollywood, pundits were saying Kate was all washed up. In 1939, the year many point to as Hollywood’s finest, Kate didn’t have a single movie credit.  True, she got her first break early enough, as talking pictures in the early ‘30s were always searching for young, attractive Broadway-bred comers who could actually speak. Kate made an auspicious debut in 1932’s “A Bill Of Divorcement," opposite the aging, alcoholic John Barrymore (who played her father).

Though the celebratory pomp won't literally explode (with a 21-cannon salute!) until her "Official" birthday in June, it’s today that Queen Elizabeth II actually turns 90, and she shows no signs of slowing down. Her Majesty still rides horses, carries out Investitures (those big ceremonies where diplomats and Rolling Stone singers become Knights), and brightens over 400 engagements each year with her little-legged corgis and big hats. 

The Olympics finally wrapped last week with a blowout Closing Ceremony in Sochi that featured a hellish, 3-story animatronic bear that Putin probably designed for the upcoming attack on Ukranian freedom fighters.  Amongst the thrills and spills that come part and parcel with humans travelling at unholy speeds atop icy surfaces, we had the usual whining from ice dancers and figure skaters over anonymous judges’ scoring, some truly amazing tumbling and spinning from the more amicable (and fun) crowd of skiiers and snowboarders, and those weird moments that happen once every four years where we suddenly care deeply about non-sports like curling.

Like the old saying goes, art imitates life. Before the women’s movement changed the landscape forever in the mid-late sixties, most Hollywood films limited women to playing “traditional” roles of housewife and mother.

The engine roars, the tires scream, the camshafts do whatever it is camshafts do -- and you swear you can feel the road vibrating through the supple leather… of your armchair? Yes, like that intense roller-coaster ride at the amusement park, you get that surge of adrenaline, that frisson of fear coursing through your system. Only this time you won't puke cotton candy all over the girl you brought on a date, and she won't scream and take a taxi home and never call you again. Wait, what are we talking about again? Oh, yes. Car chases! 

What makes a movie cool? Perhaps the better question might be: what is cool? To introduce our list of coolest movies, it seemed like a good idea to start by defining, well, coolness.

Horror may be the only genre of film that some people categorically can’t watch. I’ve met quite a few people, mostly women, who admit to this sad condition. They simply don’t like being scared, and a really good horror movie can transform them into nervous wrecks for weeks. I’m in fact married to such a person. Two things I wish we could do together that we can’t: eat sushi and watch horror movies.