one of the reasons it's better to go out the bottom is clearance... you'll have a very hard time taking both out together through the top without damaging/removing the master cylinder/abs etc.

as for lifting the car up enough to get engine/trans out? do you have rafters in your garage? after the engine/trans is out, the front end is gonna be pretty light. you should be able to attach a chain/pulley type setup to the dogbone mount points on the rad suppoort and lift it up out of the way.