'Europa, Europa'

Europa, Europa is 112 minutes long and it took about 107 minutes for me to realize that its based on a true story.

I think I enjoyed it more thinking it was fiction. Do you think we view or process things differently because we know its true or false? I think so. I just don't know how.

Don't biopics get boring? If you're not bored during the first viewing, they're not typically films you can rewatch time and again. At the end of the day, we like escaping and if you can have a true story that seems too hard to believe, like Europa, Europa.

The film follows Solomon Perel, a teenage boy living in Germany with his Jewish family. During the Night of the Broken Glass, Perel's family shoe shop is destroyed and his sister killed.

The family emigrates to Poland, where they think they can be safe from Nazi Germany. Instead, Germany invades in 1939 pulling the family apart. Solomon and his brother Isaac attempt to escape, but are separated. Solomon winds up in a Russian orphanage where he is indoctrinated into the communist brotherhood (and where he's forced to abandon his religious beliefs to fit in). Once the Russian-Nazi truce is broken, Solomon is pulled from side to side attempting to A) stay alive in the war and B) stay alive from the Nazi Holocaust machine.

He joins the Nazi army and becomes a war hero. Still a teenager, he is sent back to Berlin to join the Hitler Youth. Again, he struggles to not only keep his cultural secret, but also to control the typical teenage urges (not sexing up Julie Delpy). Through some fortunate coincidences, Solomon not only avoids being found out, he winds up avoiding death when a Russian officer hands a Holocaust survivor a pistol to carry out his execution. At the moment of death, Isaac finds his brother and they embrace.

I learn that its a true story in the final minute when the real Solomon is there in a field singing.

That's as good as fiction.

'Scream'

I saw Scream in the theaters way back in 1996 as a teenager. I thought it was pretty scary. I guess. It was very entertaining and, watching it today, it stands up pretty well. There is the archaic use of the cell phone. But it was 1996. What were they supposed to do?

It was a gigantic success. It garnered more than $173 million in the box office. At the time, I didn't remember many horror-slasher films before. Afterward, these films crawled out of the woodwork and, today, you can't go three weeks without there being a new one released. Again, maybe they were always being released, but at the time, it seemed that Scream re-launched this genre and 14 years later it still thrives.

The most fascinating aspect of the film (in fact, much of the dialogue revolves around this theme) is its reliance on referencing past horror-slasher films.

In the opening scene, Drew Barrymore's character is quizzed on her knowledge of slasher classes like Friday the 13th and Halloween. One of the characters -- the comic relief, Randy -- works at a video store (an essential profession in pre-DVD 1996) and has a encyclopedic knowledge of horror films and the "rules" of surviving a slasher film.

This is the same as an action film using Die Hard as a reference to surviving and beating the bad guy. Or a comedy using the jokes from Airplane! All of this doesn't make sense, but it makes perfect sense for the horror-slasher genre because it's simple and because it's the only film genre in which the viewer thinks they could do a "better job" than the actual characters.

Nobody watches Die Hard and thinks they could beat the bad guy better. They watch it to live an unreal scenario with a fake person. Nobody thinks they could figure out Diane Keaton in Annie Hall better than Woody Allen. Nor does anyone think they're actually funnier than Judd Apatow or Don Rickles.

It's relatively minor, but important part of Scream and something nobody else could pull off.

Interesting production note: Apparently one of the executive producers did not like the mask. So he was going to have the crew try out other masks. Frankly, that's a creepy ass mask and I couldn't imagine them using any other one.

'Giovanni's Room'

James Baldwin had the double whammy: Gay and black.

He moved to Paris in 1948 in order to divorce himself from the segregation and racism, especially in the American south. Still, he was primed to further alienate everyone with his blatant homosexuality and the way it envelopes his writing.

Baldwin being black further perplexes the fact that the characters in his second novel, Giovanni's Room, are all white. Although they're extremely gay.

What really must have kicked Baldwin in the nuts is that he was going to alienate all white people because of his race and sexual orientation. He was going to alienate the blacks with his sexual orientation. He was perpetually a man without a home and a man without a people. That had to be frustrating.

This alienation (him from everyone else, going both ways) bleeds through his stories.

However, Baldwin had it right. It's what makes him good. He took relationships -- whether homo- or heterosexual -- and turned them into emotional typhoons destroying everything in their paths. He wasn't in any way bias toward one orientation or another. He knew both could get pretty fucked up because people are pretty fucked up. He also knew that no matter who you like to be with or what color their skin is, these raw emotions are always the same.

'Notorious'

Ingrid Bergman. Hello nurse!

I didn't know that Bergman left her daughter and husband in New York City to do a film (and to do) with director Roberto Rossellini. The fat, balding Rossellini. Directors get all the good-looking chicks. She'd eventually have Rossellini's kid while married to the first guy.

Meanwhile, the daughter and husband are at home wondering where mommy went. They'd get a divorce, she goes to Italy and has more of Rossellini's children, including Isabella Rossellini, who is hot, but who I didn't know was Bergman's daughter.

I didn't know any of this. Got a little bit less respect for Bergman today than I did yesterday.

Notorious is good thanks to Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant. Set in Brazil, Bergman must infiltrate a group of Nazis who got their hands on some plutonium. Grant is her contact in the CIA.

As she gets deeper, her love for Grant (and vice versa) get in the way of the investigation and pinch. It was written based on a short story in the Saturday Evening Post by Hitchcock, who owed David Selznick a film. Selznick sold it -- the director, actors, script -- for $800,000 in addition to 50 percent of the box office take. Must be nice. Selznick probably wonders why Bergman didn't leave her husband for him.

'The Visitors'

Supergroup ABBA released eight albums. The Visitors was there last in 1981.

They sold 400 million albums worldwide and they never had one sell less than The Visitors.

Benny and Frida (the brunette) had just divorced a month before entering the studio for their final album. It's a dark album. Full of synths and ominious and less-cheery lyrics. ABBA had finally written grown-up lyrics about heartbreak and those moments when the tunes just don't sound too well.

If it's an consolation to Benny, Frida would later marry a prince. At least she moved up socially.

There are two ABBA albums on the 1,001 list, the other being Arrival, which is full of hits. The Visitors really had none. If you have a "greatest hits" knowledge of the group, then The Visitors is probably a pretty foreign group of songs. It's a piece of history because for one of the most popular and well-sold groups in music history, this is the one that most people have never heard.

'Speakerboxxx/The Love Below'

The most interesing "album" recorded in the past 20 years.

I say "album" only because they are packaged together for sale. There couldn't be two more different collections of music from two guys on different artistic paths. Sold seperately, you probably couldn't tell they were made by guys who once worked together.

Essentially, the members of OutKast recorded solo albums -- Big Boi did Speakerboxxx and Andre 3000 did The Love Below.

The Love Below was the most lauded of the albums. It had the two hits -- including the incredibly radio/club-friendly "Hey Ya" -- and is a critics fav because it's more experimental as Mr. 3000 dips his toes into several genres of music, most of which isn't hip-hop or rap.

Big Boi didn't stray too far from was he was already doing. Unfortunately for him, Speakerboxxx is the better album. It's expertly produced with some fantastic writing and performances from a who's who of cast members. It's shorter, which enriches the songs even more. Big Boi opted for the dunk instead of the half-court shot, but it was a spectacularly shot.

Andre 3000's The Love Below does deserve some credit. The hodgepodge of genres is something I don't much care about. But aspect of the opus is something I've never read about before and that is the fact that The Love Below is a concept album.

Mr. 3000 takes the journey of love from the beginning (a man talking to God, asking him/her to send him the love of his life) to the "climax" (the one-night stand) to the break-up ("Hey Ya") to the post-break-up letter. It's a brilliant comment on the man's perspective in the modern relationship.

'Red Harvest'

I had planned on reading some more Dashiell Hammet in the time I readRed Harvest. It didn't happen, so I thought I'd better include it before I forget it.

Red Harvest is the story told over and over. The street-savvy detective rolls into town in order to take down the powerful gangs controlling the city. Because he's so street smart, he doesn't get caught up in women (much) and he always plays one game ahead of the other people in the story.

Our protoganist winds up winning over the city and beating the bad guys.

The difference between Red Harvest and the rest of filmdom that's used the same plot is that we don't have to be paid to write a movie.

'Aliens'

I always thought it interesting that the sequel to Alien is called Aliens. Granted, there is now more than one alien, but, still, couldn't we brainstorm this a little bit more. Just tons of confusion.

James Cameron wrote Aliens before and during the filming of Terminator, which had been delayed thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger filming Conan the Destoyer.

At the time, nothing was for certain. Cameron wasn't the sure bet he is now as it was Terminator that really put him on the map.

Funding for a sequel to Alien wasn't certain also because it wasn't killer in the box office to begin with. Still, Cameron continued writing. Terminator became a hit, Sigourney Weaver signed on, the film was made and it became a box-office smash.

See, things always work out.

'Sounds Of India' & 'Notorious Byrd Brothers'

These two albums, on the cover, seem like two very different pieces of art to put together. However, they have at least two very concrete things in common.

Both were released in 1968. For Ravi Shankar, he was introducing the west to eastern music, especially that of the sitar, which had already been brought over by George Harrison of The Beatles after hearing Shankar play.

For The Byrds, Notorious ... was a direction-changing opus. More country and more psychedelic than anything that had been done before. Alt-country was born in this album.

But there's one more common ingredient. In both, there are spoken parts where someone explains something about the actual music.

On Sounds of India, Shankar himself is recorded talking about Indian music and the instruments being used on the album. He goes into rather great detail (more than the average listener would care to know, I think) about the instrument, how it works, what kind of sounds it makes and how all these pieces fit together.

On Notorious ..., producer Gary Usher records a really short explanation to the listener about the album and how the Byrds were very happy with their creation, despite the fact that only Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn survived the entire process. Also, he explains that it's much more country than other Byrds recording and he introduces the use of the Moog synthesizer in the recording process.

Both statements from Usher and Shankar are very interesting and I'm surprised that more artists didn't do this. I guess Phil Spector had the Christmas wish on his holiday album. Otherwise, that's it. I think fans would find all this interesting. Remember when reading the liner notes on the LP or CD was actually something you did? Basically, these are recorded liner notes.

How much more interesting would music be if you had the artist or someone involved telling you about how the song was written or recorded. Or maybe the guitarist pops on and tells you how a lick is played. We're missing out here.

'Rocky'

The ultimate triumph of the will. This is a movie about the human spirit and the protagonist (the very uncartoon-like Sylvester Stallone) happens to be a boxer. He could've been a hotel clerk, a maid, a rodeo clown or surfer. It still would've been something beyond boxing and beyond winning.

Winning didn't matter. Picking yourself up by your bootstraps and grinding mattered.

I guess boxing being the choice for the film did have some poignancy. Boxing is, arguably, the most primal and basic sport in history. Running might trump it in this regard, but two shirtless guys punching each other with a series of bobs, jabs, juking and jiving is something neanderthals were doing a million years ago and what mankind has done in every culture since.

Stallone, over time, is a man who's image has been that of great debate. On one hand, he's a leather-faced meathead, who doesn't have the most diverse career and who is probably generally considered "dumb."

On the other hand, he's the creator and protrayor of two of the most notable film characters in history (John Rambo, Rocky Balboa), he's had notable box-office success and he's written a lot of his movies including all the Rockys, Rambos, Cobra and Cliffhanger. What has Brad Pitt every written?

Stallone was actually more of a writer than anything. He allegedly wrote Rocky in three days and was offered $350,000 for the script. He agreed as long as he could play the lead role. It was agreed, but he didn't get hardly anything for continuing as a writer and playing the lead in a gigantic film.

'Miriam Makeba'

Miriam Makeba -- or Mama Afrika -- was a South African singer, who released her self-titled album in 1960. It was her first.

She'd go for the next four decades releasing 29 albums, in addition to a number of compilation albums.

Miriam Makeba doesn't sound African in the sense that we associate African music, which may be (and probably is) totally distorted.

I thought she was some Caribbean singer or possibly South American. Not that any of these styles or genres aren't totally connected. They are. But the album exudes a very smooth and cool jazz feel straight from the 1960s.

It's easy. Makeba seems to sing loud and strong, and, yet, effortlessly, as if she were ironing a shirt while doing it.

What all these styles and genres have in common are spontanaity and the unpredictable phrasing and singing make it a perfect example of all these varying styles.

Makeba was quite the troublemaker.

After recording an album with Harry Belafonte about the horrors of apartheid in South Africa, Makeba's passport was revoked when she tried to re-enter. For 35 yeras, Makeba would never visit her home country until a free Nelson Mandela invited her back. She also married activist Stokely Carmichael, lived in Guinea and played at the Rumble in the Jungle concert event.

To cap off her political activism, she guested on an episode of "The Cosby Show," one of the more subversive shows in American history.

'The Garden Party'

Nothing much to this story, but it's just as strong as any lengthy novel or longer short story.

The upper-class Sheridans are hosting a garden party. As their servants prepare for the party (and the family worries and idles without too much worry), they find out a local working man died in the street. Laura thinks the party should be cancelled in consideration to the family that lives nearby. The rest of the family disagree assuming the man was probably drunk and that's why he died; as if, if this were true, he deserved to die. Quite the classy family.

The party goes on without a hitch. Following, Laura takes a basket of food to the man's grieving family where she sees the body against her will.

In about 15 pages, Katharine Mansfield says more than Franz Kafka or Albert Camus often say in 400 pages. This is a really simple tale of the class conciousness and the eventual breakdown of extreme classism and the burgeoning development of the middle class.

Never was there some kind of death of rich people. They've always existed and there's more of them today than there ever has been in the history of the world.

But attitudes have changed, although that seems hard to believe. It's not so black and white anymore.

'The Bends'

My first exposure to Radiohead? On the soundtrack for the film Clueless was included a version of "Fake Plastic Trees," a great song off the album, The Bends. That is why good bands agree to include songs on soundtracks, even to films they don't necessarily relate to.

During a tour in support of The Bends, Radiohead nearly broke up. What a potential culture-shifting action that would have been.

The Bends peaked in the United States at No. 88 despite the relative success of the single "Creep" and due to its overwhelming success in the United Kingdom. Several months after the release of The Bends, Oasis would release What's the Story? (Morning Glory) and it would sell about 400 trillion units. Not until later did The Bends reach platinum sales in the United States.

Anyway, Radiohead was not very popular in the United States. Had they broken up, the seminal OK Computer doesn't exists. Neither do the next four albums that would attain almost immediate critical regard upon release. Essentially, take one of the biggest and best rock bands in the world out of the equation. Pretend The Rolling Stones broke up in 1962. That's what its like.

'Little Big Man'

A really cool film and probably my favorite Dustin Hoffman film.

It's a beautifully made satire about American history, the treatment of the Native Americans, the U.S. miliary machine and, in turn, the Vietnam War, which was still waging in southeast Asia.

Although it's meant to have humorous side to it with a satirical undertone, at the end of the film you feel oddly put out. It's extremely dark and unsettling. The humor is just a distant memory. This is most apparent during the battle of Washita, where a smile doesn't cross anyone's face throughout the whole film. In fact, the film's spirit was broken at that moment.

It does co-star the extremely beautiful Faye Dunaway, which is always good.

'The Official Story'

The first Latin American film to win the Best Foreign Feature Oscar.

Well worth it. It's an unsettling look at the aftermath of the Dirty War in Argentina where thousands went missing due to their leftist views. Right under everyone's noses, mass groups of people were taken in the night never to be seen again prompting the mothers and grandmothers of the missing to protest as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

But this isn't a story of the Dirty War so much as that of a middle-class family. The wife, Alicia, is challenged by a longtime friend after her husband disappears and learns that someone close to them turned him in to the government. Alicia learns that babies and children of the disappeared to sold to families.

She starts digging and begins to unveil an unhappy set of circumstances that gave berth to her own family. The blind, polite eye she gave the Dirty War is soiled with the truth. As much as the film is supposed to unsettle the characters, it unsettles the viewers just as much.

It forces us to question the idea of history. How subjective, persuasive and flowing a narrative history can be with time and manipulation. That even the United States is not exempt from restructuring our past in order to avoid embarassment.

However, no country or people are alone in this. If the manipulation was history wasn't going on, it would always be perceived as going on. A truly comprehensive history course doesn't exist unless you have a lifetime to truly sink your teeth into it.

Every civilisation has its pockmarks and dirty laundry. How we come back from those moments matters the most.

'Fatal Attraction'

Following the release of Fatal Attraction, I wonder if the rate of affairs and one-night stands went down in the United States.

It would certainly scare the shit out of me.

As much as men are dicks, there is an equal reaction: Women can be batshit crazy.

It's unfair to categorize all women like this, but it's equally unfair to assume that all men are assholes just looking to get laid. This isn't altogether untrue, but it's less false, I guess. I would assume that feminists hated this film because it subjugated the successful, single career woman (Glenn Close) as not only psychotic, but driven only by having a family and seemingly dependant on this piece of shit man.

Fatal Attraction is also relevant because it's one of only a handful of films that can be defined by one scene ... and that scene can be summarized in two words.

This film has the "rabbit" scene. It defines the film. Even if you haven't seen Fatal Attraction you could enter into a discussion of it at a party and say, "How crazy was that 'rabbit scene!' Huh!?"

It's like the butter scene in Last Tango in Paris.

'The Goalie's Anxiety At The Penalty Kick'

The fear of the goalie at the penalty kick must be one of the most terrifying in all of sports. It's essentially 50/50, if not worse.

The ball could go high even if you pick the right side. It's an "oh-shit" moment for sure. Then again, what kind of teammates put their goalie in the position to save a penalty kick. Leaving the guy in the lurch.

As far as I can tell, this is the most existential book I've ever read and I've read Camus and Kafka. This is fucked up, however.

The author, Peter Handke, was a bit of a nut. He somehow got in cahoots with Yugoslavian dickhead Slobodan Milosevic ... you know, the guy that tried to eradicate every Muslim (and many others) out of Bosnia, Serbia and Albania.

He was asked to testify on Milosevic's behalf. Handke didn't, but he did attend the trial and spoke eloquently at his funeral in a way that would make you think he somehow supported Milosevic's movement.

You know, killing Europe's Muslims. Even existentialists shouldn't kill people. Even if it doesn't matter.

'Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness'

On the Smashing Pumpkins' 1995 release Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, lead singer Billy Corgan growls:

"Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanlinessAnd cleanliness is godliness, and god is empty just like me"

This lyric doesn't make any sense. How is loneliness like cleanliness? And does his ascertion that "god is empty just like me" equate him to be kind of a slob?

It's bullshit lyrics attempting to incite some kind of spiritual and cultural riot amongst his peers that bills Corgan and his bandmates as frauds and dime-store intellectuals found on any corner or intersection of a major city.

Mellon Collie ... is an awful album that not only signaled the end of the band, but signaled the end of the Smashing Pumpkins as a rock band. It's a double album that could've been easily edited down to a single, 13-song album, as soon as they cut out all of the piano-pop bullshit.

The Pumpkins had only one iota of value for me and that was as a rock band. Once they ceased to do that, they ceased to have value for me.

But back to their bankruptcy as artists, Corgan (I would include the rest of the band ... but, let's face it, they had as much input into the recording process as I did) is in the same group as Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and a handful of others. Somehow, they captured some kind of madness of the time and parlayed it into some kind of celebrity and idol worship.

Corgan wishes he were a poet. Instead, he's a hack rock singer. His pining for the former illegitimizes his role as the latter.

'The Heiress' & 'The Snake Pit'

It took a couple of movies, but I now realize the true greatness of Olivia de Havilland. She is a really great actress and The Heiress and The Snake Pit are probably her two best.

In The Snake Pit, she plays a young woman in an insane asylum, a place she is fully unable to remember how she arrived. The story progresses as de Havilland's character undergoes treatment and a series of flashbacks that seemingly explain her institutionalization.

In The Heiress, she plays a naive and possibly mentally retarded "old widow" living with her overbearing and overprotective father and aunt. She meets a suitor at a dance (overly handsome Montgomery Clift) and they fall in love. However, father doesn't approve of the impending engagement because Clift's character is broke having spent all his fortune frivously. This is only an issue because de Havilland's Catherine is due to inherent a lofty sum.

After the pair plan to elope, she indicates that she'd lose her fortune if they disobeyed her father. He splits for California and she's so much more the wiser and jaded. Clift's character returns trying to stir up old flames. She plays the game but winds up locking the door on the old guy, thus ending the film.

Both films are fantastic. Both highly rewatchable. Over a 10-year period, de Havilland was nominated for four Oscars (three for Best Actress) and she won twice, one for The Heiress. She was nominated for The Snake Pit. Those are some pretty good skins on the wall.

'The Conformist'

A great question about human nature during times of great tribulation, I think, come back to conformity, and, in essence, making things go back to the way they were.

I think this is more true for ordinary people attempting survive within certain levels of fascism.

Our hero Marcello only wants to be normal. To almost blend into the background and work, eat, sleep, play and laze about like anyone else not hired by Mussolini's secret police to murder his former professor.

In order to achieve this normal life, in order to be OK with the surroundings and environment, Marcello feels he needs to murder his former professor. Throw in a homosexual experience as a kid and all the pressure of living in a fascist state and that might push any and all of us to kill someone.

This doesn't excuse murder and killing. It doesn't excuse young men serving as guards at concentration camps. Nor does it excuse the Jews that helped shove the carcasses into the incinerator. But I believe we'd all be rather shocked at what a human will do in order to conform, to bleed into the background.

'In A Lonely Place'

Humphrey Bogart's, probably, best film. By far one of the better ones I've seen him in, but I'm not too much of a Bogart fan so I shouldn't really say anything.

What mesmerizes me the most is Bogart's cool. Despite the fact that he's a suspect in a murder investigation, his character always seems like he's one step ahead of everyone else. Like he knew 20 minutes into the film how it would actually end.

This isn't odd for a private investigator or just a cool dude. But Dix is a screenwriter. Probably not the coolest of heads. Most people, more or less screenwriters, wouldn't be so nonchalant about the whole thing.

Then again, maybe this attitude comes from the idea that Dix doesn't care if he's guilty or not. He could get gunned by police or get the death penalty: It never really mae any difference to him. Bogart's Dix was a bit of a fatalist and no girl wants to date a fatalist.

'Hunky Dory'

Who knew that David Bowie -- the androgynous rock lead frontman -- was putting out power pop piano albums. Like Ben Folds.

Bowie, even in the grand scheme of rock music over the past 60 years is an odd duck, and it has nothing to do with developing and living under a false identity or desiring to be more of a woman than man.

Bowie was a lead singer with no real discernible band. It was David Bowie. That was the band. You went and saw David Bowie in concert. Not the Spiders from Mars or the players Bowie employed to tour. Nobody knew who those guys were.

Although Mick Jagger was a charismatic lead singer, he was the lead singer of the Rolling Stones. Nobody said they were going to see "Mick Jagger and his band" tonight. They were going to see the Stones. And Keith Richards is every bit as popular as Jagger. And it's not like Charlie Watts and Ron Wood are chopped liver.

Bowie's unique. He's a lead singer who didn't really play any instruments nor did he have a recognized set of players nor did the perform under the umbrella of a band. Even Ziggy Stardust sang on his own.

There are little instances in rock music quite like this. And I mean real rock music. Robert Palmer doesn't count. Bowie's a fringe rock star, at best. As popular as he is, many younger people don't know him and most probably don't own an actual Bowie record.

I guess Bob Dylan is in that mold. Solo John Lennon. There aren't a lot and there aren't any modern-day rock singers who are quite like them. Too many bands and if you're singing solo, then you probably ain't singing rock and roll.

'Top Gun'

Ol' Top Gun did not age well. It's corny and dumb: From the shirtless volleyball scenes, over-the-top acting and writing, the shower scene, the flying upside down and taking a photograph, the "Great Balls of Fire," Tom Cruise, "You've Lost That Loving Feeling," the music, Kenny Loggins, "need for speed," Val Kilmer's hair, Anthony Edwards' hair, Kelly McGillis, the aviators.

It loses a lot over time.

However, that should not take away from the very fact that Top Gun was the coolest fucking film of all time and it defined everything that we wanted to be as pre-teens and teenagers.

All that shit above, we wanted. We wanted to be magnificent lovers like Tom Cruise. We wanted to be coy and cool like Kilmer. We wanted to drive McGillis absolutely nuts by blowing her off. We wanted leather jackets, aviators, motorcycles, "Top Gun" hats, jets, the ability to play Jerry Lee Lewis on the piano, be a jet pilot, marry Meg Ryan and have a kid without actually having to live with them. Even Goose was cooler than us.

And the nicknames. We hardly knew these people outside of Iceman, Maverick, Joker, Goose, Jester and Viper. How fucking cool was that?!

The general summary here is that most of us at nine, 10, 11 and 12 years old were complete geeks and the cult of personality hits us at that age like no other. We're dumb. We don't like Bob Dylan or Jean Luc Godard. We had a lot growing up to do. Just like Maverick.

'Kid A' & 'Amnesiac'

These albums are two pretty important ones for me. They're not my favorites nor do I consider them vital toward my personal music soundtrack.

I like OK Computer and In Rainbows much better, but these two hold their place. They're Radiohead's Revolver and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Or, is OK Computer their Revolver? They're more important to Radiohead than they are to me. And that's OK.

Kid A was released in 2000 and, as a bookend, Amnesiac was released in June 2001. Less than a year apart and both go together.

Here are some of the things said by Radiohead about these albums:

"We had to come to grips with starting a song from scratch in the studio and making it into something, rather than playing it live, rehearsing it and then getting a good take of a live performance. None of us played that much guitar on these records. Suddenly we were presented with the opportunity and the freedom to approach the music the way Massive Attackk does: as a collective, working on sounds, rather than with each person in the band playing a prescribed role. It was quite hard work for us to adjust to the fact that some of us might not necessarily be playing our usual instrument on a track, or even playing any instrument at all. Once you get over your insecurities, then it's great."

What?

"They are separate because they cannot run in a straight line with each other. They cancel each other out as overall finished things... In some weird way, I think Amnesiac gives another take on Kid A, a form of explanation. Something traumatic is happening in Kid A… this is looking back at it, trying to piece together what has happened."

"I think the artwork is the best way of explaining it. The artwork to Kid A was all in the distance. The fires were all going on the other side of the hill. With Amnesiac, you're actually in the forest while the fire's happening."

As if they were smoking crack.

"I read that the gnostics believe when we are born we are forced to forget where we have come from in order to deal with the trauma of arriving in this life. I thought this was really fascinating. It's like the river of forgetfulness. It may have been recorded at same time... but it comes from a different place I think. It sounds like finding an old chest in someone's attic with all these notes and maps and drawings and descriptions of going to a place you cannot remember. That's what I think anyway."

I'm convinced that Radiohead are just messing with us.

'Schindler's List'

Schindler's List drives my friend Rajesh batty. It basically comes down to the scene when the Crakow ghetto is being liquidated as Liam Neeson's Oskar Schindler looks on on horseback on an adjacent hillside.

In it, Schindler sees a small girl roaming away from the screaming Nazi soldiers and panicking Jewish settlers. The entire film is black and white except for the flame on a candle in one scene and the dull red jacket of this little girl.

Later, as the Nazis are burning a mountain of unearthed bodies, Schindler sees the red jacket of the little girl on a cart.

In reality, the girl in the red coat was probably based on one of two real people: Roma Ligocka, who was known for wearing her red jacket in the Crakow ghetto; or a girl shot by a Nazi during the liquidation remembered by survivor Zelig Burkhut. The difference being Ligocka survived he Holocaust and the other girls didn't.

My friend Rajesh contends that it's low hanging fruit. I counter that that's what Steven Spielberg does. He makes really great films, but muddies them up with slap-you-in-your-face symbolism. He makes great, poignant films for idiots.

I agree, to a point. It doesn't ruin the film. The girl in the red coat and the little boy that hides in the latrines amid the shit and piss and looks up into the light from outside are the lasting images of this film, and yet they compose an extremely small part of the film. It's like hating Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because you hate large rolling boulders.

If you wanted someone or something to represent this film, it'd be the fantastic Ralph Fiennes, who is utterly breathtaking as Amon Göth, the psychotic SS officer, commandant of Schindler's concentration camp and general foil for Schindler's hero.

Göth's portrayal took criticism because it was wrong to represent Nazis as simple sociopaths as explaining away the Holocaust to that of some evil men and just not guys that hated and killed was wrong. Also, Schindler was nowhere near the saint that he's even represented in the film, although he is still regarded as kind of a womaniser, profiteer and drunk. He was all those things times 100 in real life and probably didn't deserve near the respect that he received had true intentions been known.

There are better films and books about the Holocaust and Schindler. However, Spielberg's film brought this horrific period right into the living rooms of almost every American and made them realized that this happened, that it was real. It did more for educating people about the Holocaust than every book or film about the Holocaust ever did.

'The Age Of Innocence' & 'The Age Of Innocence'

I couldn't imagine a more boring plot than the one introduced by Edith Wharton. Although, I haven't found myself overwhelmed with Wharton's stories so I shouldn't be too shocked.

It's a turn-of-the-century American novel set in New York about high society and young gentleman, Newland Archer, who is engaged to and eventually marries May. But he falls in love with May's cousin, Ellen Olenska.

There are years of give and take as Ellen struggles with the social implications of a divorce and Newland wrestles with his desires while maintaining his own status and that of his family and wife, May.

It's a criticism of the institution of marriage or the way society forced certain norms upon us no matter how unnatural those maxims actually were to the human soul.

Ellen prevents Newland from making the sacrifice of his wife (and, as we find out, family) and the story ends 30 years later after May is dead, Newland is old and their children are grown. Although time and the joy of family has filled the hole left by Ellen's love, there's still an emptiness there.

There's a lot of fluff in both the book and the film. Costumes, name dropping, the opera, reading rooms and this snobbish, over-the-top way of explaining even the simplest of notions.

It's this fluff that drives me bananas and bores my pants off. It's the evidence of a bygone era and a bygone way of writing. Thankfully, it's as extinct as the dinosaur.