'The Wicker Man'

To me, what makes The Wicker Man extraordinarily creepy is that the film is based upon something that is very real. That actually existed.

I don't know if there are witches, vampires, zombies, demons or people with supernatural powers or whatever.

But The Wicker Man deals nothing with that. It's an isolated island in the north of Scotland, who still practices Celtic paganism. Something that existed or still exists.

Why do other oddball, rarely-practiced religions freak us out? How is paganism any more weird than Christianity or Islam? It's not. But we don't see it every day. Plus, religion is a frontrunner's game. We all assume that if you're going to join a team, you join someone in or around first place.

When other's don't -- when they join the Kansas City Royals of religions -- it strikes us as odd considering religions, we think, are chosen. They do not choose us. So why choose something less popular?

That's the source of the creepiness of The Wicker Man. It's nothing supernatural, scary or grotesque. It's just weird and foreign. Those two tenants give us the heeby-jeebies more than anything else in the world. Good horror and suspence do that to you.

It has made me read more about Celtic pagansim than ever before. It's a fascinating advancement in religion and belief. All of us humans waiting around for some answer to fall down from the sky.

Thankfully, it co-stars the gorgeous -- and naked! -- Britt Ekland.

'Goldfinger'

Gollld-finnngahhhhhhhhh

Shirley Bassey's introduction to the adaptation of Ian Fleming's James Bond novel brought me and my college friends a ton of laughs and parody.

I came up with a hotshot theory about James Bond: Much like one's favorite Beatle, it is likely to change with age and maturation. When someone's 16, their favorite Beatle is probably John Lennon and their favorite Bond is probably Sean Connery.

And it's not close. They don't consider Paul McCartney or Roger Moore.

However, as our tastes and ability to perceive and enjoy nuance and subtleties, things change. Or they should change. If they don't, then you have to consider that life isn't really interesting.

Besides, liking Lennon and Connery is like like rooting for the New York Yankees.

I do like Connery. I just have a higher appreciation for the other Bonds. In fact, if we're not careful, Daniel Craig is likely to overtake them all. He's the George Harrison of this equation. Or the Ringo Starr, considering both joined last.

Connery's appeal stems from his pure eroticism that he exudes with every turn and judo chop. He's a sexy man and he knows it. I also think he was the most chauvanistic Bond nad just about every time he looks at a woman in the film, he's just wondering what it's going to take to get her to spread her thighs.

Goldfinger is solid. A good villian (the oddly-named Goldfinger), a good henchman (Oddjob), good bumbling henchmen (Oddjob's Korean extended family ... all skinnier and dumber) and even some hot trim. Unfortunately, it also has Pussy Galore (the biggest misnomer in film history), who couldn't be any more ordinary looking.

'Ben Hur'

Charlton Heston had the flair for the dramatic in just about every facet of his career.

I mean, he was dramatic in his acting to begin with. But the guy wound up playing Andrew Jackson (twice), Moses, John the Baptist, Michaelangelo, El Cid, Marc Antony (twice), Henry VIII and, of course, God.

It takes a certain type of person to take on those roles and doesn't even account for his greatest role as Judah Ben Hur, the wayward, hard luck Jew who went from being a friend to all, a criminal, a slave, friendless and aggrieved to being the man he always was.

Despite all his fantastic roles and films, Heston won one Academy Award -- for Ben Hur. It was his only nomination.

Heston an interesting character. Most know him as the hard-right, gun-toting Republican, who loved his automatic firearms, his babies and his right wingers.

Interestingly, Heston had always been involved in politics and social issues. Just on the other side.

In the 1960s, he was one of several Hollywood types that marched on Washington for civil rights alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He even picketed segregated restaurants in Oklahoma City.

He campaigned for progressives such as Democrats Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. He supported President Lyndon B. Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968. He opposed the Vietnam War.

Then some time in the 1980s he flipped a switch and turned into a Republican, the one we would know later in his life. Or, as Heston puts it, the Democratic Party flipped a switch.

'The Passenger'

Although highly-regarded as a generally good film, The Passenger has one very special feature that places it in a different category.

In the final 10 minutes, director Michaelangelo Antonioni exectues what is called a penultimate long-take tracking shot.

The film is based around Jack Nicholson's character, a reporter in Africa seeking to do a story about a civil war and he can't get the information and interviews he needs. Meanwhile, his ex-wife is screwing some other dude.

When an acquiatance at his hotel dies, he switches his identity with the corpse's. It turns out the dead man was a gun runner for the rebel in this civil war. While his previous friends attempt to piece togethre his born identity's death (or life), others thinking he is the gun runner seek to kill him.

He checks into a hotel room and the long shot begins. The camera is on a ceiling rail and it goes out the barred window in to the courtyard of the hotel. At this point, the camera is attached to a hook on a crane and it goes around the courtyard for about seven minutes before rounding to Nicholson's ex-wife showing up. The camera pans to Nicholson's open window. There we see his body laying on the bed, dead. Killed for his adopted weapons-selling past that he never owned.

Taking long shots is not unnormal. Tons of directors do it. While doing Rope, Alfred Hitchcock wanted it tobe one tremendously long shot but the camera wouldn't take all the film.

Tidbits like the long shot would've been lost on a 15-year-old me, so I'm happy to be discovering all this film mumbo-jumbo now that I can appreciate it a bit more.

'An American Werewolf In London'

I was initially surprised to see this film on the 1,001 list because I just assumed it was about as dumb as you can get.

Don't get me wrong, this film is dumb. Yet, I watched it straight through and didn't come out thinking I'd wasted an hour and a half of my time. It was entertaining. The acting is about as bad as you get post 1970.

The writing is whatever. The plot is about as shakey as you can get, even for a film about werewolves.

I mean, the most unbelievable aspect of the entire film is that jackwagon David sleeping with the nurse, which is ridiculous. No way someone that hot with a career as a nurse (sworn to care for and ease discomfort of her patients) is going to sleep with the dorkiest and personality-deprived American like David. Just isn't happening. He'd have a better shot at becoming a werewolf.

In this film, he did both.

The film impressed/surprised on two fronts. The sex scene and the scene in the adult film house were shocking. I couldn't believe how graphic they got.

Secondly, the make-up jobs on the dead friend, Jack, the other werewolf victims and even the stormtroopers in David's dream are really, really good. The gore in this film was surprising because I thought they would play it safe. Instead, this is a very edgy film with sex and violence. I love both.

'Straight Outta Compton'

I freely admit that NWA -- and other "gangsta rappers" -- scared the shit out of the 10-year-old me.

I was white. I lived in rural Texas. I cut my teeth on pop music and groups such as The Beach Boys, The Zombies and The Beatles.

Of course "gangsta rap" was going to scare me. It was supposed to scare me.

I thought Eazy-E, Ice Cube, DJ Yella, Dr. Dre and Lord knows who else were going to travel around the country robbing, stealing, shooting, killing and creating general havoc. I sincerely felt this way. I blame it on "20/20." I'm sure they had some story about the evils of "gangsta rap."

Even the city named "Compton" sounded threatening. It sounds industrial and gritty. It sounds like a tool or steel company.

As is the case, if we had known then what we know now, we wouldn't be as frightened and I think that would have taken away from the album.

If we knew Ice Cube would be in family movies, that Eazy-E would die and Dr. Dre would be shilling for Dr Pepper, I don't think we'd feel the same away about them. Still, it doesn't take away from the record.

There are some amazing beats, samples and rhymes. It's a head-spinning good record. A great record in fact. It's really hard to take it out of your CD or shuffle rotation. Amazing record.

'OK Computer'

When I discussed the album Country Living by Roxy Music, I mentioned that the first song on side A -- "The Thrill of It All" -- was featured on an NPR music show discussing the best intro songs on albums.

For me, "Airbag" is one of the best, featured on Radiohead's seminal record, OK Computer.

It has the right amount of energy and it properly prepares the listener for what he or she are about to experience: Rock music on a precise note and standing on a higher level of accomplishment.

OK Computer is an absolutely fantastic record. Probably one of the top or so in my lifetime. It's like my generation's Revolver. After 16 years, it still stands very strong. If it were released today, teenagers, rock critics and hipsters would poop their pants. Not many albums at all can say that.

It is considered to be the album that killed 1990s BritPop. That's interesting. How many albums have "killed" a genre. Nirvana's Nevermind apparently killed hair metal.

Personally, I'd like to think that The Strokes' Is This It killed the knuckleheaded cock rock (Limp Bizkit, Korn) and the boy band-bubblegum pop phenomenon (Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys). I could be wrong.

If you don't own OK Computer, you are probably an idiot.

'Out Of Africa' & 'Out Of Africa'

After I read Out of Africa, I really wondered how they were going to make it into a film with all the loose narrative bits and marginal characters that would've been received well among the common moviegoer.

As it turns out, Out of Africa the book is almots nothing like Out of Africa the film.

The film takes bits and pieces from the book and some other biographies and texts to create this relationship between Karen Blixen and Denys Fitch Hatton.

In the book, her relationship with Hatton isn't even on the radar in the book as he appears to be a character and came and went out of Blixen's life as she tended to a coffee plantation in Kenya.

In reality, Hatton and Blixen were lovers and suffered a series of separations and miscarriages throughout their fated relationship that ended with his death in the airplane accident.

Both, however, are fitting tributes to the mother country of Africa, the devastation of culture and resources by colonizers and brilliant landscape that the country once held.

It's a fitting tribute consider the last 40 years of civil wars, takeovers, coups, dictators, death and corruption. It's a small fingerprint of what that continent used to be and will never be again.

Two film notes: In the scene where Meryl Streep's fighting off the lion attacking her cow, the lion was supposed to be tethered by his back leg. He wasn't, so Streep's reaction to the proximity of the lion is real.

Also, Streep was apparently nervous during the scene where Robert Redford washes her hair. There was allegedly some very pissed off hippotamuses in the general vicinity. And hippoes don't take kindly to strangers.

'Toy Story'

An easy movie to watch when your three-year-old is as into it as you are.

Toy Story was released in 1995 and at the time animated kids' films were a bit beyond my cinematic interest considering I was a bit more into girls and rock bands.

Of all the films on this 1,001 list, Toy Story probably deserves just as much as any other choice.

It was the first animated feature done entirely by computer and it set up a multi-trillion dollar industry of films that are not only entertaining to children, but very interesting for adults and regarded as generally good films with critics and the awards people.

Wall-E and Up getting Oscar buzz was no fluke; and it was all thanks to Toy Story.

I'd never seen Toy Story up until this weekend, even with the kid. It was one we didn't own and I'd never been around to catch it. It's good. Funny, clever with incredibly likable characters and a quality plot that meant something.

Interestingly, there's been two others, the third one released in 2010, 15 years after the original and, of course, the boy is 19 or so and going off to college. I can't wait to watch the other two.

'Open City'

"Open city" refers to a designation given a city when under siege or attack and all defenses have been let down.

During World War II, a number major European cities were deemed "open" including Brussels, Paris, Athens and, eventually, Rome once the Allies began bombing up until Allied occupation in June 1944.

In the film, Frederico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini and Sergio Amidei tell the story of the Italian Underground battling the occupying Nazi army through a series of terroristic attacks and espionage.

Filming started shortly after Rome was actually liberated and Rossellini was forced to used scrap film in order to make it. The German occupation was so fresh and raw that actual Nazi POWs were used as extras.

What a remarkable feat. To not only capture this portrait in recent history, but to capture it at ground zero with the perpetrators and people that lived the horror and fear. It's as close to a documentary as a scripted drama will ever get. It'd be like filming Platoon in the jungles of Vietnam in 1968.

Considering the circumstances in which it was filmed, Open City is very fresh and stark. The actors and actresses are really good and it paints a highly sympathetic portrait of bravery and resilience for the people of Italy that weren't into that Facsist thing.

'Johnny Guitar'

I checked out Johnny Guitar from the library in the VHS format.

It was part of a set of films chosen by Martin Scorsese as the ones that initially inspired him to become a director. It had an interview before the film with Scorsese where he tells you why he loves Johnny Guitar. It's not that he's not sincere or that I don't believe him, but I would bet Scorsese could say the same things about 100 different films.

He notes that Johnny Guitar is a non-western in a western format. It's not gun battles, battles with bandits or Indians. There's no cattle rustling or horse thieving. It might as well have been set in the 1920s and be about gangsters.

Furthermore, it's a western vehicle driven by female leads in Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge. Francois Truffaut called it a "phony Western." Pedro Almodovar used the film in Women in the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, when his lead actress is voicing Crawford's Spanish subtitles for the film. Another film overrun with powerful women.

Also, you could question the casting for this film in making the female characters overly powerful. Did they cast Sterling Hayden and Scott Brady as the male leads on purpose to have lesser actors cowering in the shadow of McCambridge and Crawford? It would appear so. They're not bad actors, but they aren't going to overwhelm the camera like Rock Hudson or Cary Grant would.

I don't know if it's a classic. But it certainly is very, very original and still very good.

A production note: Crawford was apparently very jealous of the younger McCambridge, despite the fact that three years later, the latter would play the utterly asexual sister Luz to Hudson in Giant. Conversely, neither McCambridge or Hayden liked Crawford speaking out against her after filming.

'My Brilliant Career' & 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'

These two films have two things in common: Both are based in Australia and both are set in or around 1900.

That's where the comparisons end. Because one (Picnic at Hanging Rock) is vastly interesting and extremely well made. The other (My Brilliant Career) is about as listless, uninspiring and dumb as a film can come.

The latter is basically a half-done Jane Austen novel set in the outback, apparently about female liberation. Basically, our heroine just refuses to marry. A big deal, I'm sure, but not like signing an amendment or starting a revolution.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is, on the other hand, fantastic. At the onset, there's an unsettling tone set by Peter Weir. It is Weir's second full-length feature. He'd later go on to do Dead Poet's Society, The Truman Show, Witness and other big-budget asskicks.

Then the film almost dumps the viewer into this deep crevass and doesn't let up. It's spooky and eerie. Most scary is that there isn't a resolution. Just a nibble and hope that there's some kind of explanation. There is no explanation and when things are wrapped in the neat bow, it drives us bananas.

So good, I'd almost buy it.

'Henry V'

Sir Laurence Olivier was a very interesting person.

He was obviously a very talented actor even at a young age and it was pretty well known that that was his profession since before he was a teenager.

So, when he felt dissatisfied with others and with the medium of film in general, people had to listen. Other than becoming a big star, I would think Olivier didn't need film. Or was it important for Olivier the stage actor to be a success as Olivier the film actor?

Was Olivier continually doing stage work like an American soccer star staying in his home country instead of playing in the more sophisticated and advanced European leagues?

He starred in Henry V, which was released in July 1944 as a supposed rallying cry for D-Day. The fact that D-day had taken place more than a month earlier and British and American troops had already liberated Cherbourg (and its umbrellas), Caen and had reached St. Lo. Of course, the troops still need the support and the folks on the homefront needed a trusted voice to say:

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by/From this day to the ending of the world/But we in it shall be remembered/We few, we happy few, we band of brothers/For he to-day that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother.

Sir Olivier attempted to join the Royal Air Force at the onset of World War II. He wasn't able to and instead joined the reserves and clocked in with 200 hours of flight time.

Sir Olivier was a smart man. He was not smart enough to stay away from Vivien Leigh, who was a total nut, but was probably dynamite in the right ways.

They started an affair in the 1930s and both travelled to Hollywood: Leigh to film Gone With the Wind and Olivier, Wuthering Heights.

Both were successes and Olivier would then release Rebecca with director Alfred Hitchcock.

'The Young One'

Place The Young One in the pantheon of films with To Kill A Mockingbird, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?, The Defiant Ones, Giant and In the Heat of the Night as films from the 1960s that probably didn't do so well in Southern states upon release.

The Young One is one of the most difficult to swallow because Evvie's true feelings (as to her disgust with Miller) are too inconsistent and unclear. Right when we feel she's joined Travers' side, she seems to go back to Miller's. She's perpetually tattling one Travers and setting him up to be killed.

In the end, the overly angry Miller allows Travers to escape, getting beyond his own prejudices and hate for hate's sake.

Travers' escapes the chain gang or a semi-certain lynching with the help of Miller, just days after Miller actually tried to kill him with a rifle.

I would assume films of this nature were quite the risky proposition in film making. You make a film like that and you'll polarized an entire portion of the country.

'Up In Smoke'

I was not born until long after Cheech and Chong's magnum opus Up in Smoke was released. And it was another 18 years after I was born until I entered some phase of acknowledgement towards illegal drugs.

Therefore, it's quite impossible for me to comment upon the ideas and perceptions of illegal drugs in the 1970s. I would only assume two things:

1. That despite the end of the 1960s and the hippie thing, that drugs were still very much a fringe thing, widely unaccepted among most mainstream folks.

2. That Up in Smoke was the first film that was almost solely about drug use and painted at lease a semi-positive portrait of drug takers.

I would thus presume that Up in Smoke was pretty seminal toward making recreational illegal drug use -- or at least marijuana use -- semi-acceptable even to many squares and old ladies. Or maybe it was just going to be a typical transition over time.

I'd still like to think that Cheech and Chong helped changed the perception that marijuana use caused egregious maniacal and lascivious behavior. But, instead, made everyone kind of dumb.

This, we decided, wasn't as bad as we think and now marijuana will probably be legalized some time in my lifetime.

All thanks to Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong.

'Last Year At Marienband'

If you'd like to watch a movie that doesn't make any sense, lacks any narrative arc or resolution, then Last Year at Marienband is just for your.

Leave it to a beautifully awful film to have an awesome poster and Criterion Collection cover.

There's value in films like these. Any film that is so poorly done, but has the art direction good enough to come up with such beautiful stills and film posters makes up for the other deficiencies.

And Delphine Seyrig is a breathtaking beautiful woman and it is a shame that she adopted a shock of platinum blond hair later in life.

She is one of the most beautiful woman I've seen on film.

'Tetsuo'

Japan is a pretty weird country. I've seen about a half dozen Japanese films from the past 15 years and they're all fucked up.

Tetsuo may be the end all, be all of fucked up Japanese movies. I get violence. Violence I can understand. Generally, I understand why it exists even if it is highly unnecessary or barbaric. Even people that live outside of Japan can be pretty messed up in the head.

Tetsuo can be best described as a moving grotesque. Something that should be at a circus, behind a sheet of some kind until the barker hypes it up so much and pulls the obstruction away. Then, the GASP! The horror and shock as they see the imagines of this many, over time, turning into this disgusting, awful-looking machination and bulk of metal.

The most obvious analogy is that man is becoming too wired and connected to technology. I prefer a slight alteration: That technology prevents movement and thought. Like technology is big, bulky football pads placed on a scrawny teenage boy. The boy can move and function, but it's tedious and plodding.

Still, prepare for the shock. It does not relent.

'Fight Club'

I wonder how much of DVD sales are due to those having to rebuy DVDs due to the downfall of the VCR and the VHS format.

Fight Club was one of probably 35 or so VHS tapes that I eventually sold in a garage sale once my soon-to-be wife and I amalgamated our possessions. I swore I would just eventually rebuy Fight Club, probably used somewhere or on eBay.

Alas, six years later and I still haven't replaced it. I honestly do not buy DVDs any more. I hardly rewatch films much and with the prevalence of Netflix I feel I can "get" Fight Club or any other TV show or film any time I want it.

Having rewatched Fight Club for the first time in six or seven years, I still enjoy it and now that my eye for things that makes films great, I realize that it, too, is great.

The editing and overall production is fantastic. The storytelling superb. Edward Norton is one of the best actors of the past 15 years.

I checked Fight Club out from my local library. The librarian I usually encounter always makes a comment about what I'm checking out and admitted that she thought the film was literally about macho guys beating the shit out of each other. After she was forced to watch it, clearly, she learned that it wasn't about fighting at all, but about consumerism and the rejection thereof.

It seems, everything is in the title.

'Dead Man'

I told my friend Rajesh that I was going to watch Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man over the weekend. He told me to be sure to not watch it tired because it's a long, slow film.

I couldn't disagree more. I was thoroughly entertained. A really cool modern western: Something I've watched a lot of lately.

It was released in 1995, long before Johnny Depp would start emoting needlessly into the camera and taking the opportunity to completely overact in every scene of every movie.

And shouldn't Depp go by "John." He's not 14 anymore. Johnny, Jimmy, Joey and names of that ilk do not work after, like, 22. Hank is the only exception.

I thought the film had a wonderful pace and I couldn't believe it was two hours long. Gary Farmer is fantastic as the Native American, Nobody. Loved Crispin Glover's little cameo at the beginning. Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne and Alfred Molina are great in their little roles.

It's dark and violent, much the way I view the old west. I don't think modern film could ever recreate what it was like to live in a lawless and rough part of a country that was as new as you could get.

How they captured and figured out crimes is a complete mystery. Depp's character could've killed anyone and pretty much gotten away with it by going into Canada or Mexico. But he couldn't quite get far enough away.

The modern western is the only era that at least captured what 70 percent of the desperation of the old west. Still, it's not enough.

'Judge Priest'

I never realized that Will Rogers had such a long filmography. I just always thought he'd do theater stuff and wrote books.

Rogers, funnily or tragically enough, lived to only 56 and he completed eight films the final year of his life. Judge Priest is the only inclusion on the 1,001 list. He was born in Oklahoma in 1879 before it was a state. He died in a plane crash in 1935 in Alaska before it was a state.

I don't remember what Judge Priest was about because it was really dumb. I assume I needed to watch it because why should we omit Rogers from this list.

The film also co-stars Hattie McDaniel, who would win an Oscar five years later in Gone with the Wind. I assume by this time she had perfected the role of the sassy black maid. Did'nt know that McDaniel was married four times, divorced thrice.

'Ys'

Joanna Newsom sprouted from the Nevada City folk-y "scene" several years ago with her foremost album, Ys.

That's one of my biggest regrets. Not being a part of a "scene." I've had the opportunity to be a part of a "scene." I grew up in a very poor area in East Texas that had no "scene" of note. I went to college at a mid-sized college in a mid-sized college town with no "scene."

So many "scenes" to create for my own and I was too damn lazy to do anything about it.

Newsom plays the harp. It takes guts to play the harp. You don't see a ton of harpists attempting to vend their pop songs on the public because the public typically doesn't react well to harps. They're pretentious and take up a lot of space.

It's beautiful music from a beautiful person. I'm not attracted to Newsom at all. But she's still beautiful. Kind of in the same way that sculpture or painting is beautiful. She carries a certain amount of elegance and grace, and I'm sure it stems from her chosen profession and her instrument. If she were the drummer for The Who, I don't know if I say the same things about her.

'The Wizard of Oz'

I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz every spring whenever it would be shown on network television. It was always a highlight of my year. I love this film.

When I was a kid, I always thought people in film and TV to be my age. Like Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears was my age. In fact, he was 12 when the film was made and was probably 25 by the time I got around to watching it.

So, I thought Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale was somewhere in Hollywood ... at 15 years old (Gale was apparently supposed to be 12 ... if produces thought they could convince us Garland was 12, then they had another thing coming). In fact, Garland had already died. But I grew up through my 20s identifying Garland as Dorothy Gale and nothing else.

The virginal, pretty, sweet and sassy Dorothy Gale. I knew he as nothing else. I guess I knew she was in other films, but I didn't want to watch those other films so she was always the little girl from Kansas. Isn't that weird?

****
One of my favorite parts of The Wizard of Oz is the songs. Even as the kid, I really liked the songs and as a kid I didn't really like singing or dancing.

For whatever reason, the composers created something that I could sink my teeth into. Doesn't make a lot of sense.

As an adult, I truly appreciate the music, especially the lyrics. I think the wittiest songs are the intro songs for each of the Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion. The "If I Only Had A ..." songs. Really funny and great lyrics. Thoughtful and smart.

****
My favorite of the three cohorts is the Tinman, especially played by Jack Haley. Although he plays a Tinman and his hold downfall is tears or rain rusting his hinges, he also comes off as really smooth and with the best voice.

Like a real crooner whereas Bert Lahr may or may not have been able to sing (although his theatrical/operatic style is most humorous) and Ray Bolger comes off as more of a vaudvillian physical comedian, Haley seems like a legit singer, actor and dancer.

I love his wry smile, that smooth voice and the physicality of his dance routine. When he stands straight up and begins to pitch from side to side as if he were to fall over is really quite remarkable getting his legs to look like they are nailed on the ground.

It's interesting that Lahr, Haley and Bolger didn't have these extensive Hollywood careers. They each did some film and, later, some TV. But not a ton of each. They were all vaudvillian veterans with some Broadway experience. Still, they each had a hand in one of the most popular and beloved films of all time and little else.

****
I watched this film for the first time all the way through in about 10 years. It was also the first time with my three-year-old daughter. She liked it. Kind of thought the Wicked Witch of the est and flying monkeys might freak her out. But she's a tad bit mature to get too worked up about such nonsense.

I'm sure we'll watch it again.

****
I never thought about who played the flying monkeys until now. I guess I always assumed they were real monkeys with wings on them. Clearly, they're people. Munchkins I presume.

'Tigermilk'

One of my friends from my formative years went to the University of North Texas to study film. Following graduation, he left for Hollywood and has been there ever since.

We communicate mostly over Facebook and e-mail. Periodically, we correspond and ask each other what we are listening to.

Just two weeks ago, he said he had been listening to a bunch of indie rock from the 1990s like The Pixies and Sonic Youth. He couldn't believe that he was listening to so much crap at the time with all this brilliant, life-changing music all around us. We were too wrapped up in teenage wannabe punk rock and ska groups. We thought we had it figured out.

Like all good music lovers, we aged and matured. Our tastes along with it. It's quite the transformation. As if our love for music had gone to war and seen action and come home changed, old, wise and poignant.

Belle and Sebastian's debut album took three days to record and only 1,000 copies were originally printed for sale.

One song was used in the film, Juno, so you know it's indie rock.

Slowly, they've become one of my favorite bands. Twenty-five years after the fact. Here's to growing up.

'Live At The Apollo'

Behind the ridiculous hair and the flashy outfits. Forget all of the children. Nevermind the showmanship.

James Brown was a fantastic singer, beautiful bandleader and keeper of the soul.

In more than 50 years, he went from being a kid with no home staying in his aunt's whorehouse and spending time in prison for armed robbery to being the foremost soul singer to being a joke, a punchline.

He was an eccentric man with the without-a-doubt ability to absolutely turn any song into a gut-wrenching, hip-swiveling sex groove, and that will be forgotten because the guy was a bit kooky and loved getting women pregnant. Kind of tragic.

Brown was also a man of certain civil values. His role in the civil rights movement and black pride is astounding. He seemed extremely grounded for a man with a trillion illegitimate children. He addressed issues like dropping out and if his messages were any indication, he was quite the patriot as a proud American who realized without his birthright in the United States, he wouldn't have the opportunities given to him.

Live at the Apollo is Brown's only album on the 1,001 list. It contains no viable hits and only one marginal one ("Please, Please, Please"). If you're looking for radio fodder, get his greatest hits. If you want a peak into the sweat-drenched pleading and soul, get this album.

'Vampyr'

Doesn't it look cooler whenever people spell it "vampyr?" I think so. It looks so ancient and real. As if misspelling the name makes vampires real.

Several odd notes about this film:

For one, the cinematographer allegedly half-exposed a can of film. Apparently, Theodor Dreyer loved the effect. Thus, the film has a very white, overexposed look to it.

Also, star Julian West helped finance the film and got a producer's credit. West would live another 49 years but never officially have anything to do with the film industry again.

Following Vampyr in 1932, it'd be another decade before Dreyer would direct another film due mostly to funding issues.

'Land Without Bread'

On the whole, Land Without Bread is the first ever documentary, directed by Luis Bunuel.

It depicts a very poor mountainous area in Spain called Las Hurdes.

As a fan of documentaries, I've always wondered how much license a documentarian takes with his subject matter. We know that in some -- like King of Kong -- that the filmmaker edited pieces to create a false tension.

Watching Land Without Bread, you assume there are probably many strains of the truth in order to make the area seem more desolate and desitute than it really was. According to most, it was an exaggeration.

Furthermore, we learn that the donkey was was allegedly killed due to being swarmed by bees after hives fell and smashed to the ground, was actually covered with honey to make the death take place.

Also, they talk about the mountain goats that frequently are eaten by the people after falling off a mountain. We then see what appears to be a goat carcass falling down a rocky mountain.

Bunuel actually had the goat killed and tossed down the mountain.

There more disturbing parts. The little girl in the street dying. The baby dying ... and Bunuel showing the lifeless body. There's also the footage of the so-called "idiots."

It's disturbing because you never get the idea that any of it is real. I'm not saying there weren't backwards places in the 1930s, but this was civilization Spain and a world on the very verge of modern machination. But we couldn't teach these people to hunt or garden?

'Dersu Uzala'

I had this extensive, three-part mega-article in The New Yorker about a man's treak across Siberia.

If you are fascinated by Russia and travel writing, it's well deserving of the time it takes to get through the 30,000 words.

When you think of Siberia, you think of gulags and cold. In actuality, it's just northern Russia. Not unlike the northern United States. Sure it gets cold, but it's not a place that is desolate, that people don't visit.

Siberia is just a bunch of cities and villages. Some torn apart by pollution, crime or poverty. But they're still cities with roads, churchs and people.

Anyway, the writer mentions the film Dersu Uzala.

It's a film based on the true story -- based on the memoirs of V.K. Arseniev -- of a hunter and trapper, Dersu Uzala. He is a Nanai, a Chinese-Russian native in the Russian far east. He served as a guide for the Russian army in the Sikhote-Alin mountain range in eastern Siberia.

Dersu not only served as a guide, but he developed a friendship with the army captain, who took him into his home once Dersu's sight starting going. Unable to live the life he was used to in the wild, Uzala's spark faded in domestication. Eventually he died in the wild.

'De-Loused In The Comatorium'

I loved At The Drive-In and so I automatically fell in love with their much better incarnation, Mars Volta.

Not only was their music 100 times more dynamic, loud, complex and mind blowing, but the band itself was super fascinating.

They were all on hard drugs. Jeremy Michael Ward overdosed on heroin just before the release of the album.. Lead singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodriguez were very open about their use of hard drugs to the point of their own destruction.

This is not their best album, in my opinion. Frances the Mute, frankly, makes my muscles tighten and my hair stand on end. Still, this is valuable rock music. It's probably the best released in the last 20 years.

If you like the album, check them out live. They take the energy on the record and up the ante a thousandfold. It's like a series of kicks to the stomach.

'Detour'

Detour is considered the first ever film noir and "B" movie. It was essentially the first bad movie that was intentionally made bad. Brilliant. It begant decades and decades of crap.

Detour stars Tom Neal as the wayward pianist, who attempts to cross the country to meet up with his main squeeze. He hitchhikes and winds up wrapped up in this insane little ball of fate with blood on his hands and a woman controlling his comings and goings.

Neal was quite the character. He was a former boxer with a big temper.

He apparently was banging Barbara Payton -- a drunk and drug addict who died of liver failure at 40 -- at the same time as a French socialite Franchot Tone. He beat the shit out of Tone.

Several years later, he "accidentally" shot his wife in the back of the head and killed her. He claimed it was an accident. Nevertheless, he was convicted of manslaughter and went to prison to six years.

He got out and became a gardener.

'The Mirror'

Reading a lot of the criticisms of The Mirror, I've learned that many feel this is one of Andrei Tarkovsky's least watchable films.

If those same people have seen Solaris, I can't imagine why they would say that.

For one, it's under two hours, which is quite remarkable for Tarkovsky, apparently.

Two, it's beautifully shot with at least a semblance of some kind of story despite the narrative arc having a hand gernade tied to it and having the pin pulled. It's a hodgepodge of these different stories featuring the same characters mish-mashing it all together.

By far, it's one of the more watchable Tarkovsky. It's the marijuana of Tarkovsky films.

'Notes From Underground'

Important because its considered one first literary examples of existentialism, which is oh-so cheery.

Existentialism is kind of a bankrupt term for me because it means so much to so many people. People tend to equate the sole meaning of life depending solely on the individual. Somehow, that equation was at some point deemed pointless.

Why is that pointless? If it is so pointless, why write books or make films about how pointless it all is. That art makes the individual's life meaningful. It's all so very strange to me.

What separates Dostoyevsky from the general meaning of existentialism is that his "Man" is a miserable little asshole. If he were living in 2010, he'd be unkempt, covering high school football games for the local newspaper, blogging and playing World of Warcraft online. Still, he'd bitch about the etiquette of being a magical troll.

It doesn't make Notes From Underground bad, just misinterpreted on some level. If Dovstoyevsky put this on a blog, it'd be largely ignored. He writes Crime and Punishment and it somehow carries weight.

'Forrest Gump'

Of all the impersonations in this world, anyone doing Forrest Gump makes me want to jam sharpened into my eardrums.

As I've seen this film over and over since its release 16 years ago, it's gotten worse and worse. It comes off a really sentimental and too crisp and clean American.

On one level, it's a comment on American during its, arguably, most tumultuous time in its short history. From the 1940s-1990s, you had assassinations and assassination attempts, a revolt among every non-white, non-male group, rock 'n' roll, AIDS, pointless wars and enough hate and bitterness to sink any lesser nation. It was bad times.

Forrest Gump puts a happy face on these events. And that's unfair.

For example, when Forrest is at Alabama and they are desegregating the college, he walks upon the crowd standing around George Wallace.

Forrest: What's going on?

Earl: Coons are tryin' to get into school.

Forrest: Coons? When racoons try to get on our back porch, Momma just chase 'em off with a broom.

Earl: Not racoons, you idiot, niggers. And they want to go to school with us.

Forrest: With us? They do?

Obviously, this was a huge moment in American history and Gump thought a bunch of people were standing around as a groundskeeper ran off a bunch of hungry raccoons looking for a meal.

Later on, Forrest returns a war hero from Vietnam and winds up in front of a large crowd at a peace rally. They ask him his thoughts on the war. A saboteur pulls the plug on the microphone, so we don't know what's said.

Gump was oddly philosophical stemming from his simple-minded, kindergarten outlook on life and its problems. He thought it odd that people would be standing around watching a black person enter an all-white school. Or he found it odd that with all the hubbub, that it wasn't a bunch of raccoons.

Maybe Gump had some serious, insightful thoughts about this madness. Maybe like Brian in Life of Brian, he was an unnoticed messiah, except when he added some disciples during his running. When he finally finds his closure and quits, they are disappointed that there wasn't some grand epiphany. Little did they know they were following a retarded guy.

It's not a great film, but it is a good film to talk about.

By the way, could you imagine Bill Murray, John Travolta or Chevy Chase as Forrest? Me neither. That would've been a disaster.

'Breathless'

I just wanted an excuse to post a photo of Breathless star Jean Seberg.

Seberg died at the age of 40. Details are considered sketchy. She was found 11 days after going missing in the back of her car with enough barbituates and booze to stun a mastodon. It was a ruled a suicide, but many wondered how she could operate a car so drunk and without her driving glasses.

The questionable circumstances around her death only matter because she got the attention of the FBI by being a strong supporter of the Black Panthers. So much so, that the FBI started a rumor that her child was a result of an affair with a Black Panther member. That daughter died days after she was born due to Seberg's overdose of sleeping pills. In order to prove the daughter was no the Black Panther's, she showed the media the baby's body.

Seberg was just a little girl from Iowa. She lived all over the world. Made films. Made loved to French directors, Russian novelists, Clint Eastwood and probably a dozen or so of other people that we'd all die to get a crack at in the sheets.

However, I think she's breathtakingly beautiful. And it was a joy to watcher her for 90 minutes.

'Less Than Zero'

Brett Easton Ellis is one of the most devastating writers of the past 30 years. Devastating.

I don't know what it means, necessarily. It's just, read one of his books and let me know how you feel about things afterwards.

Typically, you feel like shit. His novels do not evoke goodwill and hope. They evoke sadness, loneliness, desperation, dependence and depravity.

His books are where human animals exist outside of the normal mores and laws of human nature, where life is precious and there is at least the vague attempt at caring for one another.

Not for Ellis. His chractesr maim and kill with no remorse. It's literary natural selection. The strong survive and the weak end up becoming male prostitutes.

While reading Less Than Zero, I came away thankful that I wasn't brought up in any kind of life that those fictional teenagers were brought up in. One might say that it's fiction. Probably. But you can't tell me that there aren't 100,000 brats in Los Angeles just like Clay or Blair. It's happened and has been happeneing for probably 50 years.

Someone wrote that Less Than Zero is Catcher in the Rye for Gen X. I'd like to think it's more of a The Graduate or Reality Bites for Gen X. Holden Caulfield was far too young to realize that people were such dopes. To really grasp the sadness enveloping us, one must be a bit older.

Recently, Ellis wrote a sequel to the book. It basically catches up with the Less Than Zero crew 25 years after the fact. I will probably read it. Although, I suspect I'll be disappointed because there's no way these people are as interesting at 40 than they were at 19.

'The Shawshank Redemption'

Many Sundays growing up, the preacher at the church I regularly attended would always say, "I'd rather be here than in the finest prison or hospital in the state."

That, clearly, was a joke on his part.

Still, he was an old man and he probably had a pretty different idea of prison than I had. I used to live close to the prison in Seagoville, Texas. It's a white-collar prison, or so we're told. The prison is actually the nicest building Seagoville. Which says more about the town than the prison.

The Shawshank Redemption proves to me that prison is one of the top 10 places that were way worse 80 years ago than they are today. Hospitals. Insane asylums. Hotels. Mexico.

But The Shawshank Redemption isn't about prison as much as its about the human spirit, psychology and man's will faced with the greatest of odds.

Andy Dufresne was placed in a world without culture and humanity. Against all that is known in a prison, he forced humanity back into the structure and the men locked inside. The general idea is that these guys may or may not have been monsters, but they were still human and deserve the decency of books to read, a beautiful Italian aria or a beer on a hot day.

By doing the taxes of the prison guards or helping some listless youth get his high school equivalency, Dufresne was selfishly trying to maintain his hope and ideal that his humanity hadn't been stripped away from him while getting raped.

Excellent film except for the dumb moment when Dufresne escapes and lands in the septic pond. It's raining hard and he strips off his shirt and thrusts his fists into the air in freedom. Dumb.

'Jaws'

Jaws is probably one of the top 100 films on the 1,001 list.

Why?

It's not because it's a particularly good film in the strictest of senses. The acting isn't great, the shots aren't just awesome. It's not really breathtakingly good or anything.

But it scared the shit out of everyone. Still does. And that makes it one of the top 100 films ever made.

When that book and film came out, people were terrified to ever go in the water. Bath tubs and pools feel weird after you've seen it.

One day, my kid's going to watch Jaws and she, too, will be scared shitless. Other films try to make you sad, mad, happy or pensive. It changed one's demeanor.

Jaws changed your behavior. That's filmmaking.

Also wanted to point out Roy Scheider's portrayal of the Amity sheriff Brody. We always think that somehow he's some kind of a badass.

In fact, Scheider does a really good job at making Brody one of the most inept law enforcement officers in film history. Look at one of the opening scenes.

The girl goes out swimming at night and goes missing. The girl's boyfriend and Brody go to the beach to check things out. Brody's wearing this wind breaker, carrying and fumbling around with a bunch of crap and he's running clumsily in the sand toward the remains of the girl.

Not exactly Clint Eastwood or John Wayne.

Work in the fact that he hates the water, can't shoot, has no real control over his jurisdiction and really has no idea what he's doing except in the final 10 minutes of the film when he suddenly gets the brilliant idea to stuff an oxygen tank into a shark and take 20 shots to blow it up.

'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'

"Camp" is not a cinematic tenet that I get a lot of the time. To me, it's like being bad for bad's sake. Especially when it's the goal for many people to be good.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the ideal camp film. It's over the top and ridiculous. It's not only camp, but it's cult. Maybe the penultimate cult film. People crowd into theaters for sing alongs and shit.

I guess I can appreciate that. Isn't art's purpose to evoke some feeling and if it's still evoking those emotions spanning generations, 30 years after the fact, then that's a good thing.

Enjoyment makes art important. If no one enjoys it, what's the point? Millions and millions of people love this film. Even many who weren't even born when it was released.

Something that I think gets overshadowed due to the film's credibility as being "good" is Tim Curry's performance. He's fantastic, which makes sense since he pretty much created the character himself. It was his first film role and he could not have asked for a better one, in hindsiht of course.

'Earth'

Silent, Russian propaganda. When does this end? No more! Please!

'Mad Max'

About a month ago, it was reported that Mel Gibson, the ultra-billionaire actor and moviemaker, was beating up on his girlfriend and leaving rather inappropriate phone messages on her machine.

Since, the recordings have been made public. When all is said and done, Gibson will probably be ruined in terms of making new films.

He's a fucking nut.

Now, I can typically separate one's nuttiness from their roles in films, records or general appreciation. Like, I have no problem watching Christian Bale films despite him going batshit on a cinematographer.

I watch Roman Polanski films. I still clap to Gary Glitter's "Rock 'n' Roll" at hockey games. Vince Neil killed the guy from Hanoi Rocks and some people in another car, while drunk, and I still own Shout at the Devil.

For whatever reason, I could not watch Mad Max and not think about Gibson's drinking, apparent drug use, anti-semitic and racist comments. Mind you, this film came out 30 years ago. He was a completely different person on a different stage in his career. While filming, there's no way he imagined being on the financial level he is now.

Still, all I see is the nut screaming at his girlfriend over the phone.

'Breaking Away'

What a monumental movie on several levels.

First, it's a really cool movie for anyone who's lived in a small town. Or worse, a kind of big town that's too small to hold you, but too big to really leave.

Also, it stars four young men almost at the very start of their careers and over the past 30 years, they've all gone different directions.

Dennis Christopher plays the Italy-loving bicyclist. Coincidentally, one of Christopher's first roles was in Fellini's Roma. "Dave Stoler" would've loved this. Christopher never really got a steady, defining career. Incredibly busy, I don't know if I'd recognize him or not.

This is probably Dennis Quaid's best early role. He plays the lug-headed misfit townie, the muscle of the group with about as much motivation as a lead pipe. Quaid was a couple years out of roles in Cavemen and, his breakout, Gordon in The Right Stuff. Quaid, of course, is probably the highest profile of this group.

This is the second Daniel Stern film -- Diner -- in the past month. And he pretty much plays the same exact chracter -- a lanky, self-loathing groundling, who kind of flitters through life without giving it all much thought. Stern, as we've noted, had a couple of roles in high-profile films in the 1990s and then fell off the face of the Earth.

Jackie Earle Haley's had the most fascinating trek in films. He'd already been a kid actor and been famously immortalized as Kelly Leak in the Bad News Bears films when Breaking Away was released. He'd do Losin' It several years later and then disappear until 2006's Little Children. He then proved his mettle and continues to get good roles in good films.

Four different paths. Two of them still relevant.

'Great Expectations'

Once you read the book and watch the original film, it makes the most recent Gwenyth Paltrow-Ethan Hawke version look pretty retarded.

And I used to like that version. I probably watched it an inordinate amount of times.

Literature and film have always been connected, at least by the 1930s. They took both contemporary and classical novels and stories and adapted them no different than they do nowadays. Except back then, they didn't know anything other than basically filming the book, scene by scene.

Today, we have so many reinventions of stories and novels, that things can be lost that you get out of the book. Thusly, many feel the book is always better than the movie. Give me a million words over 100 minutes of film, and there's a lot more room to impress.

The adaptation of literature into film is the most obvious evolution of art. The script is just about written. The scenes, settings, characters and plot are already there. Just storyboard, cast, film and edit.

Another interesting crossover has been music (and lyrics) as dialogue. Look at musicals. It's just a series of songs and dance routines set into an overreaching narrative.

Also, musicals have gone on to use actual songs as dialogue -- meaning, like for Movin' Out, the entire show is just people dancing on stage while an in-house band sings and performs Billy Joel songs. Joel's lyrics are dialogue, but never spoken by the actual actors. It's just a different way to interpret art. It does change the way you look at Billy Joel songs though.

'My Fair Lady'

Knowing the general plot of My Fair Lady, I found it hard to believe that it filled up 170 minutes.

If they'd cut out about three unnecessary songs and the drawn out ending, it might have clocked in about about 130 minutes. Instead, we get 170 minutes of Audrey Hepburn's awful cockney accent.

The film has quite a bit of significance considering it was released in 1964 when gender and class roles were reversing or evening out. Right when Lyndon B. Johnson was signing in the Great Society legislation, a film was released that showcased the prejudice that held down those of lesser education and income as lesser human beings.

Also, the blatant mysogination was a tenant of a bygone era by the 1960s as women took control of their own destinies out from underneath the thumb of man.

My Fair Lady is a musical, entertaining. It's also a eulogy for a bygone era that literally seemed a 100 years in the past.