'Dog Star Man' & 'A Wizard, A True Star'

About 10 minutes into watching Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man, a 74-minute avant-garde silent film, I realized that there was no sound.

So, I put on Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star as a sort of filler or soundtrack to the film. I realize now what the people that paired The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon. It's funny how the sounds (despite the 10-minute disparity) and the pictures kind of a pair up. Silence with a blacked out screen or perhaps and explosion of sound with the flare from a shot of the surface of the sun.

Anyway, the two works are kind of similar in a way.

Rundgren was a pop-rock wunderkind, who had already made a name for himself with Something/Anything? Then, he started doing drugs and the cerebral exaggeration turned into sonic expansion in the studio. As the little insert in the album describes, Rundgren was able to play the studio instead of the instruments.

Side A is a medley of noise and aggressive numbers from instrumentals to extremely short songs. Side B is more like it. Another medley of R&B songs.

Brakhage had always been a different filmmaker. He was experimental from the start and Dog Star Man, filmed over a series of several years.

Like side A, it's a hodgepodge of reflections, visuals and art plugged together. A series of editing that must have taken forever considering all the cuts and splices he had to make.

These two pieces, however, have no real connection. I created the connection. I decided to ingest both at the same time as just an off-the-cuff decision. But on another level it shows how all of this fits together. That there's little difference between what all these artists are doing. That's kind of neat.

'Paisan'

Paisan is the second of a trilogy of films from Robert Rossellini (the director who knocked up Ingrid Bergman, lucky dog) set around World War II in Italy, the first being Open City, Rome.

Paisan is a set of short vignettes focusing on the American campaign in Italy focusing on the relationship forged or forgotten as the Americans ran the Nazis out of the country.

There's the story of a GI and a young guide. A drunken GI and a boy who steal his shoes. Several shorts focused on romantic relationship. Another set around some American chaplains (including a Rabbi) who face a certain amount of prejudice on not all being Catholic in an Italian monastery. Then there's the story of the American agents fighting with Italian partisans along the banks of the Po River.

Although the story is interesting, the American actors are awful. I suspect it's because they're not very good and because they're being directed by a foreign director. Still, could've been way better.

'The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring'

There's something about the modern epic that just turns me off. The acting, writing, technology and ability is all there. What kills filmmakers these days is sentimentality.

Peter Jackson and others like him want to force emotion on to you. They want you to sit there as and keep forcing the square peg in the circle hole. Eventually, they want you to somehow empathize with these characters in great anguish.

It's all The Fellowship of the Ring is. It's Elijah Wood's Frodo laboring under the pressure and alienation of carrying the ring. That of Viggo Mortenson's personal self-doubt as the heir to the Gondor throne.

It's Sean Astin as Sam Gamgee being overly emotional and eerily attached to Frodo. It's Sean Bean's Boromir wrestling with the undying urge to grasp the ring of power and to wield it as he saw fit.

This isn't The Lord of the Rings; it's an episode of Oprah.

These are not the emotions or actions of simple heroes. How can Aragorn be so conflicted about his own ability and role in the history of Middle Earth and yet look like the coolest motherfucker as he fights 100 orcs at one time? In battle, all of these characters have little doubt or question about their ability. They're killing machines and it's a wonder why they would ever field an army of orcs because it's a 200 to 1 killing ratio.

However, when the battle ends is when the emotions come out and the aloof nature of these characters and the forlorn looks and characters on the verge of tears. How insulting! We're not robots. We know how to feel. We do not understand the pressure of the chore or what it feels to be always in danger, but we can imagine. We can feel on our own. We don't need Elijah Wood doing it for us.

'Rumours'

The last ever cassette tape I purchased was well into the 2000s at a Hastings in Waxahachie, Texas.

Hastings, as discussed before, are a combo of book-music-movie store that are generally found in mid-sized college towns and typically have very little competition in forms of Barnes and Nobles and Best Buys.

Anyway, they always had really good music selections and they allowed you to special order hard-to-find records. Anyway, they also were the last retail joint to sell cassette tapes, and at the time the vehicle I was driving had a tape deck. Cassettes were insanely cheap. I bought Rumours for $1.

It's one of my favorite albums, but it's not altogether great. It's just good. I think whatever value it has comes from the fact that everyone in the band were in relationships with each other and they were all breaking up. The McVie's had gotten a divorce. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were like that couple you knew in high school that had some knock-down drag outs, but always made up later.

My favorite part of Fleetwood Mac was Buckingham's vocals and guitar playing. His pickless technique on guitar is often breathtakingly beautiful. His vocals are underrated. I think it's unique and good. You makes you think automatically about Fleetwood Mac and takes your mind automatically to his songs.

'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'

Around 2000, my junior year of college, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road completely took over my life.

I was living in an apartment and, by then, had a turntable and an ever-growing collection of vinyl including a lot of Billy Joel and John.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road may be the closest to the perfect pop record: It's melodic as hell. Thanks to Bernie Taupin, it was well written with a variety of tunes ranging from the serious to the raucous piano-guitar rock that made John what he was. It wasn't all the watered down piano soft rock that would define him when he started wearing a toupee and dressing like Donald Duck.

It had layers. As many guitars and pianos. Big drums and vocals. John wasn't worried about album sales or his reputation or reality shows. He just wanted to rock.

If I built a soundtrack to my life, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road would define year No. 20.

'Louisiana Story'

Interestingly, Louisiana Story, despite being a fictional story with actors, is considered a documentary. Makes you question the definition of "documentary." Although not factual, it is documenting a lifestyle and an important development of American industry: Oil.

The film was actually commissioned by the Standard Oil Co. It deals with a man and boy, who allow an oil company to drill for oil on their property. The boy and his raccoon jaunt around the bayou all day. The boy and man strike up a friendly relationship with the oil rig guys.

One accident takes place when a gas bubble is hit, but all things were made safe again. It's not so much a documentary as it is propaganda: A film to show that drilling to oil wasn't altogether safe, the professionals running things made it all OK.

Maybe it's not a documentary, but it's no ordinary film.

'Strange Days'

It's amazing that Kathryn Bigelow was responsible for before she hit her grand slam.

He biggest claim to fame before The Hurt Locker was Strange Days, which probably didn't do so hot in the box office because it's the worst possible title for a film. It's almost insulting.

Anyway, Strange Days is only significant because it caught a certain amount of cult mojo, which can go a long way these days, with the Internet and all.

But Bigelow had been directing since 1982 and she's already 59 years old. Not a spring chicken. About six bombs until she caught lightning (and Jeremy Renner) in a bottle with The Hurt Locker and scored big.

Strange Days, despite the title, isn't awful. Ralph Fiennes is excellent just about everything he does. Tom Sizemore is great, however, I doubt he was actually acting; seems to have been portraying himself on a certain level.

The story is deep and multi-faceted. It shocks you quickly into this fictional world where law and order has become a thing of the past in the United States. In fact, it's so electrfying, this world, that you start to wonder what happened for it all to get that awful. If nothing else, it almost overshadows the entire film.

A plot twist that I didn't see coming nor did I care about what the apparent romance between Fiennes' Lenny and Angela Bassett's Mace. I didn't really feel there was that attraction. Just kind of a pair of characters that care about each other because they have a conscience. Not because they were in love with each other.

'Kes'

Kind of a Billy Elliot except with a falcon.

At times during this film, I looked to somehow get the English subtitles going despite the fact that the film was already English. Filmed in Barnsley where the book is set, the actors maintained their Yorkshire accents, which lead me to not really understanding quite a bit of dialogue.

I pretty much depended on tone and behavior to understand, to some degree, what was going on.

I have a friend who is British and he says that certain British TV shows require subtitles due to the outrageous accents. Of course, I needed a translator for me to fully understand what he was saying.

'The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin'

I watched The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and went to work the next day when I asked a co-worker, who is very knowledgable of film, why they made such good films in the 1970s.

Films got better over time. I've watching first hand through this dumb timewaste of a project just how films were awful in the early days, got a lot better in the 1940s and 1950s, the French took over and then the 1970s happened when the medium peaked.

Then the bottom fell out. The 1980s were OK. The 1990s sucked. I just watched Jurassic Park for crying out loud. The 1990s were just awful for film and despite the fact that things have kind of turned around in the last 10 years or so, it makes you wonder what happened.

My friend thinks it's because they didn't care in the 1970s. Blood, guts, sex and drugs. Didn't matter. Make everything as realistic as possible. But this maxim doesn't affect The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. It's not bloody or sexy. It's just good.

The story is excellent: Small-town kid gets his feathers ruffled by the invading government after they kill his family. He goes and joins a monastery, where he learns kung fu. He does and goes back to avenge his family.

However, why does this film look fantastic in 1978 and yet I watch Jurassic Park and they have the worst stunt/effect of film's history when that obnoxious, scarf-wearing kid gets thrown off the live wire and is electrocuted. The 36th Chamber ... would've never done that.

'Tokyo Story'

An extremely sad and frightening story. So harrowing that it makes you want to call up your parents and tell them you love them.

It's about two elderly Japanese parents, who travel to Tokyo to see their children. They're son (a doctor) and daughter (a hairdresser) find themselves too wrapped up in their own lives, jobs and children to pay their parents the attention that they probably expected having come into town.

Instead, the widow of their son, who was killed during World War II, takes them around the town and entertains them. The daughter-in-law is a very respectful and loving person, who accepts her husband's parents as her own.

On their way home, they visit the youngest son. On the trip, the mother falls ill and when they get home, she dies.

The children along with the daughter-in-law travel to the countryside for the mother's last days and finally her funeral. The children sit for a very tense post-funeral meal. As the children chow down, the father seems restless and worried.

They begin talking about stay for a couple of days. Then all of them leaving that day. It only leaves the daughter-in-law and the youngest daughter, Kyoko.

In the final scene, the father gives the daughter-in-law the mother's watch and requests that she remarries and moves on from their son and from them.

It's very sweet. Very sad. On one level, you don't really blame the kids for having their own lives. On the other hand, don't our parents deserve at least the minimal amount of respect and time?

'Reservoir Dogs'

In filmdom, there are a ton of "what ifs" and "could have beens." Sometimes a certain role goes to a certain individual and it puts them squarely on the map. They're unforgettable.

Originally, Quentin Tarantino had cast himself as Mr. Pink. Steve Buscemi auditioned for Mr. White. Mike Madsen read for Mr. Pink and George Clooney was turned down for Mr. Pink and Christopher Walken turned the role down as did Vincent Gallo (what was he doing that was so important?).

Samuel L. Jackson auditioned for Mr. Orange and Tim Roth was originally slated for Mr. Pink or Mr. Blonde. Tarantino also wanted James Woods as Mr. Orange, the rat, but the offers never made it to Woods through his agent due to the salary being so low. According to legend, it forced Woods to get a agent because he was so annoyed with being left out.

Naturally, it worked out for the best. Tim Roth was a great Mr. Orange. Buscemi lives for Mr. Pink. Madsen nails Mr. Blonde. How good was he? He was very nervous about the torture scenes that he couldn't finish them after the police officer exclaims he has a kid. Madsen plays a disturbed sociopath and, yet, in his heart, he was the complete opposite.

Then Harvey Keitel got involved as not only Mr. White but as a producer helping raise the money needed for the already extremely low budget heist film with not heist.

'The Pillow Book'

Is there a top 25 actor in Hollywood today that we've seen more of his penis than Ewan McGregor?

In his early films, you couldn't keep McGregor's picker out from in front of the camera. Do you watch Star Wars or The Ghost Writer and see McGregor and think, "I've seen his penis; multiple times." You can't say that about George Clooney or Brad Pitt.

The Pillow Book, frankly, is kind of a brain screw. Based on the Japanese tradition of keeping a "pillow book," a sort of journal. The narrator and main character connects sexual pleasure with her earliest memories of her father's calligraphy painted on her body on her birthday.

From that time onward, she tries to find a man that can fulfill this Electra-like sexual need by allowing guys to write on her to the point that she starts writing a novel on her lovers.

McGregor becomes one of her favorites. He's also a homosexual favorite with the publisher. Naturally, we see McGregor's penis quite a bit. We thought Trainspotting was his edgiest film? No way.

'Odd Man Out'

My favorite part of the film is when James Mason's Irish accent comes and goes.

An interesting production note about this film is that it featured a lot of unknown actors from the local Irish theatre scene to portray a group of people that probably existed within their lifetime.

It's hard to truly figure out Ireland. It's two countries -- the Republic of and Northern Ireland. It's a country divided and that's being kind.

They can't even fight the British well or long enough for it to matter without them fighting each other as to whether they should be British or Irish or Catholic or Protestant. Why the religion thing matters so much is a mystery.

I'm a spiritual guy. I get religion. I don't necessarily begrudge anyone worshipping as they see fit. But I do not understand religion as a means of turmoil and violence. Nor do I understand why one's form of religion should matter to anyone else. Why it's such a hot topic amongst people baffles me, honestly.

It's more than relgion, however. It's all about the idea of sovreignty and freedom, too. Why they can't all agree that those two are pretty cool things and they're easily attainable is, too, a mystery.

At least it gives us James Mason films.

'Raise The Red Lantern'

I don't go expecting much from a bunch of these Asian films and, yet, I come out being very impressed by their acting, cinematography and direction.

Raise the Red Lantern details the lift of a young girl taken as a concubine at the house of a warlord. She quickly learns that the battle for the lord's attention amidst the concubines is pretty rough. She must capture and keep the man's attention in order to receive the perks such as foot massages and food.

The competition for attention heats up and goes overboard after our heroine rats out a fellow concubine for having an affair. That concubine is executed. Discombobulated by grief and guilt, our heroine goes crazy in the meantime in an uncertain emotional state that we assume she stayed in for the rest of her days.

'Shadows'

This is John Cassavetes' first film. Technically, his first and second.

He filmed the first version of Shadows in 1957 and then another version in 1959. By all accounts, Cassavetes preferred the second version (otherwise, why would you redo the first?) and the first was all but lost even when Cassavetes died in 1989.

Then in 2004, some Cassavetes scholar found an almost pristine copy of the first Shadows that was logged into a lost and found on a subway. It's odd how often this happens. You always hear about some film, photos or letters being found and it wind up being significant or include significant people.

Film are the oddest. How do you forget that you have game 7 of the 1951 World Series in your attic? How does a copy of a film get lost to especially the director only to be found by total randomness in a subway lost and found? It's ridiculous.

Also, the original soundtrack was to be that of famed jazz musicians Charles Mingus. However, he failed to meet deadlines and his music was not used.

It's also pretty significant that it deals with interracial relationships, which is still a sore subject 50 years later. Can't imagine it's reception in 1957.

'Klute'

I honestly can't imagine a more boring film being made despite the fact that watching Jane Fonda almost naked for two hours is very satisfying and the fact that I like Donald Sutherland.

Klute is Sutherland, the no-nonsense, small-town cop, who travels to New York City to investigate the yearlong disappearance of his friend. There he interviews Fonda, a call girl, who has an addiction to the lifestyle she's desperately trying to leave behind.

They become lovers and team up to investigate the friend's disappearance, Fonda's stalker, the death of some prostitutes and all kinds of other creepy happenings that turn out to be much deeper than we can imagine.

Sutherland's dry, but he's always kind of dry. Fonda is sexy as hell and she got a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal, despite not thinking she was all that good.

A year before the release of Klute, Fonda and Sutherland created Free The Troops, a vaudevillian traveling show along the West Coast, an anti-war USO. I expected this out of Fonda. Not so much Sutherland.

'Cabaret'

In college, I was quite the supporter of the arts. I went to dance and music recitals, I attended plays and musicals, and I went to art exhibits. All put on by my university.

Around my junior or senior year, I saw a production of Cabaret. Although a fan of the musical, I'd never seen or read about Cabaret so I had little to go on in terms of context or what the story was about.

I was floored. My jaw was wide open and fell to the floor. The influx of Nazis thrilled me beyond anything I could have imagined and I almost instantly went to Hastings to rent the 1972 film production starring Liza Minnelli.

I liked the stage production more. It had the emcee change into the striped uniform worn by Jews, Poles and prisoners of war and he walks into this door emitting this very bright light. It was harrowing, to say the least.

I like the film, too. Bob Fosse has a certain style. I noted it during my review of All That Jazz, which I found equally as haunting and dark.

Cabaret captures the same feeling. Not the death of a man, like All That Jazz, but the death of a people, the death of a time period and kind of a death of innocence. The death of a half century. The death of humanism. The Holocaust was more than the death of six million people. It was the loss of how we perceive global relations, politics and the role of the United States. It forever altered the way people act and think, the way leaders lead and the way philosopher's saw the world.

Everything changed. The only guy who knew this was the emcee, the grinning, mischievous Joel Grey. I've always perceived as being the devil, or Satan. Often, Satan doesn't always slither like a snake to tempt Eve with the forbidden fruit. I believe he stands by and wrings his hands together as catastrophe and mayhem ensue. He mocks the evildoers as he watches in glee as the innocent are destroyed.

We think the emcee as part of the solution. Instead, he's more of the problem.

Two very poignant scenes: Clearly when Max and Brian stop at the beer garden and the Nazi Youth leads a chorus of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me." The vehemence and sincerity of which these people sing, a torn and angry people, is spooky and telling of where the mindset of the German in 1931 was.

Two, is the ending. It's the impish emcee staring into the camera sing-songy saying goodbye. A final swan song and wave goodbye of life as we knew it. All the future and all the lives are in limbo. Only the worst can be assumed.

'Saving Private Ryan'

My friend Rajesh has always stated that he hated Saving Private Ryan despite the first 24 minutes of the film being one of the greatest 24 minutes in film history.

He always points to beginning and end of the film: When an aged Private Ryan is visiting an Allied cemetery in Normandy, France and the camera fades from his wrinkled face to the faces of Tom Hanks at the onset of the D-Day invasion of France and then back to the cemetery at the end of the film.

Yes. This is extremely cornball and it's unbelieve that Steven Spielberg would even do this in such a heartbreaking film.

I always kind of defended Saving Private Ryan. Not that I loved it or even really liked it. I saw it twice in theaters and not once since. However, I thought at least it was OK.

Watching it again, 12 years after the fact, I completely understand where my friend is coming from and I was in shock and horror as I realized what Spielberg did to this film.

What sucked about Saving Private Ryan:

Adam Goldberg's A Jew!
Goldberg is overtly Jewish. He kind of flaunts it. In Saving Private Ryan, he portrays Stanley Mellish, as wiseacre private and a veteran of many battle. Well, for the next two hours, he wants you, every moviegoer in the world and every character in France to know just how Jewish he is. He seems very aware of the German's attitudes of the Jews. He seems very unconcerned about how the French, Polish or Americans thought about the Jews. Anyway, he continues to blet us over the head with his Jewishness to the point that you thought he had an inferiority complex.

Barry Pepper's A Sniper!
Like Golberg, Pepper's Daniel Jackson is a stereotype: The wise-beyond-his-years southern sniper, who quotes scripture while picking off German soldiers and who is probably more used to shooting dove or deer rather than Nazis. But he kinda enjoys all of it. Shooting, that is. And he's damn good. And he takes every opportunity to let you know just how good he is. By 45 minutes into the film, you want to take Jackson by the shoulders and scream, "OK, you're a good shot! We get it!"

Tom Hanks Is Mysterious!
World War II was just a sidenote to this story. Hanks is the grizzled veteran. Not cut out for leading, killing or making decisions that clearly weigh too heavily on his conscience. To cope, Hanks' character, John Miller, keeps his life a secret. He doesn't talk about home and only to the point that his mission is failing and his troops are rebelling does he pull the curtain back a little bit. Miller's mysteriousness is a simple plot tool for Spielberg in a thinly veiled attempt to making a two-hour film into a three-hour film.

Matt Damon's A Crybaby!
So, Miller and Co. are charged with going deep into France amid angry Nazis to find Private James Ryan, of Iowa, in order to escort him back to the front and a one-way ticket home. They find him helping guard a strategic bridge with tired, underarmed troops. Ryan refuses to leave. Miller acquiesces, but in order to carry out his assignment, he stays to defend the bridge. Ryan gives this spirited speech about staying with the only brothers he still had alive. Blah, blah, blah. The Americans are outmanned and outgunned by "50" German troops and tanks. I say "50" only because we're told it's "50" up until the point that they kill about 70 Germans and there's still a dozen left over. ANYWAY, almost all the good guys die and the remaining few run back to the other side of this strategic bridge in order to A) survive and B) blow up the bridge. While trying to blow up the bridge, Miller is injured in an explosion. He's in a daze. There's an onslaught. All seems lost. Then we catch "brave" Ryan sitting with his knees to his chest, crying like a big ol' baby. What happened to that big speech? Ryan wasn't near as brave as we thought. Then again, it's Spielberg. If he can betray a character's spirit to making something tear jerking, he will.

That's why Saving Private Ryan sucks.

'Celebrity Skin'

I'd like to thank Courtney Love for making a guitar-pop Christian rock album.

This might be the worst major-market rock albums I've ever listened to.

The songs are awful. Written by an eight year old. Or Billy Corgan. One in the same.

Then there's Love's hounddog wail like she's the lady in the church choir that can't really sing, but she sings loud and you can't kick her out because ... well, you're a church choir.

'The Killers'

This adaptation was the first to pull Ernest Hemingway's short story onto the big screen. Actually, only the first 20 minutes or so are from Hemingway's story. The rest is completely original.

It would be remade two other times, the first by a 19-year-old Andrei Tarkovsky and then 10 years after that with Angie Dickinson and Lee Marvin.

Ava Gardner had a thing for Hemingway. She not only starred in The Killers, but also The Snows of Kilmanjaro and The Sun Also Rises.

Gardner was a bit of a vixen. She married Mickey Rooney (how he got so much tail, I don't know), Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra, and she had an affair with Howard Hughes. After her divorce with Sinatra in 1957, she went off to Spain and lived with Hemingway, althought it's not certain they were necessarily lovers.

Reportedly, she skinny dipped in his pool and he ordered that the water never be drained.

Anyway, I doubt it's an accident that Gardner was in all these Hemingway adaptations and she goes and hangs out with him, going to bullfights.

'The Black Cat'

I love the Wikipedia page for The Black Cat. It has general information and also a summarization of the film's plot.

It goes into detail of the train ride, the accident and all of the tension and bickering between Bela Legosi's and Boris Karloff's characters.

Then, as almost an afterthought, whoever wrote this plot mentions that Karloff's character is going to sacrifice the girl in a Satanic ritual. No big deal. Just a sub-plot of human sacrifice.

Speaking of, I heard one of the Tea Party candidates, just before the recent elections, opined on the very real problem of human sacrifice in the United States. She was not elected. I don't know why.

The Black Cat is a very dark film in case the inclusion of Karloff or Legosi wasn't clue enough. It's very much in the same vein of Edgar Allen Poe, who is credited in the film; however, the film itself bears nothing in resemblance with Poe's short story of the same name.

Karloff's Poelzig was created with the famed occultist Aleister Crowley in mind. And nothing's creepier than Mr. Crowley.

'If Can You Believe Your Eyes And Ears'

I hold this record in very high regard.

Growing up, we always had a turntable and hi-fi, which I didn't really know how to use for the longest time. Or it didn't work. Either way, it was tough for me to listen to the LPs my mother had because I couldn't hear the music. However, thanks to the vinyl record, you could place it on the turntable and start it and hear the slight sound of music as the needled glided over the grooves of the black record.

This was my introduction to rock and roll. And the Mamas and the Papa's best-selling album was my gateway drug that would envelope the rest of my life.

I still own that record as I do a number of my mother's records. It's still in the original cover with the four members of the group in a bathtub and the toilet right there. They'd later release it with song titles over the toilet because it was just too indecent for 1960s America.

Apart from being an important album for me personally, it's also a really good album. Their hits ("Monday, Monda", "California Dreamin'") are really good songs and other tunes such as "Straight Shooter" and "Got a Feelin'" are better than most other bands' top hits.

Sadly, the Mamas and the Papas didn't last long. Just four years only getting back together in 1971. Just five total albums. A legacy that most bands would kill for. Still, you get the feeling they peaked as artists and that is OK.

'A Room With A View' & 'A Room With A View'

People always tend to forget that every generation looks super fucking weird to every generation before them.

No one's exempt from this. No telling what the older people during the Renaissance thought of the artists of the time.

If you are over the age of 35, you think everyone younger than you is screwing things up in some form or fashion. It's a vicious cycle because in 20 years, today's 21 year olds will be bitching about the 15-year-old kids in their flying cars and gelatin capsule meals.

In A Room With a View, we find a certain amount of tension amongst the generations. The medieval older generation that believes in a certain set of standards. Then there are the Renaissance characters that seek a certain amount adventure, art, music, romance and true love based on mutual attraction and regardless of class or circumstance.

The Renaissance always wins out because everyone wants to secretly be one whereas nobody really wants to be medieval.

One of the medieval characters is Cecil. He's Lucy Honeychurch's fiance once she returns from Florence. He's a bookish dweeb, a classist and a sort of party pooper. Lucy finally breaks up with him after he won't play tennis with Lucy's brother and George Emerson.

He is portrayed by the great Daniel Day-Lewis, who achieves a certain amount of acting cred when he makes the Cecil character 100 billion times more obnoxious than the guy in the book.

Although, Cecil is caught in a tough spot. He doesn't want to play tennis. He's no good at it, he doesn't like playing so what's the point in forcing himself to do something he doesn't want to do?

It's a familiar spot for all men. For generations, men have been forced to do shit they don't want to do only because it's expected of them. It doesn't make any sense, but it beats being alone or fighting all the time. It's ultra frustrating that Lucy wouldn't even kiss him.

It's a book that spans generations of male frustration.

'Again'

Certain expectations and opinions of the members of Buffalo Springfield in future endeavors skewed my feeling about this album.

The truth is, I love Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash and all other albums associated with everyone involved with this album including The Wrecking Crew.

Unfortunately, we catch them here before they achieve a certain level of understanding what truly great music is. We catch them at that split second when the filament pops in the light bulb, but it's illuminated. It glows, but there's no light.

Over the next 15 years, those guys on this album would proceed to make some of hte most brilliant rock and country-rock music the world has ever seen.

That brilliance was not on display with Again. This is a dated piece: A relic of the 1960s with fuzz guitar, plodding baselines and sophomoric lyrics. I sit disappointed, but assured that they would do much better.

'Jurassic Park'

Jurassic Park was released in 1993, square in my early-teenage years.

I don't know why, but I took a strong philosophical stand against Jurassic Park. At 13. It's inexplicable because I barely have any principles now and I can't imagine having many at 13. I was more interesting in girls and heavy metal bands.

Anyway, I vowed never to see the film after seeing how utterly commercial it was. The studio spent $65 million in promotion. That means before the film was even seen, there were stores full of Jurassic Park apparel, toys, lunch boxes and junk. I was pretty punk rock in my own way.

Seventeen years later and I finally watch it.

And it's quite possibly one of the worst films I've ever seen.

There's not a redeeming quality to this film mainly because they cover up all the bloody parts with a well-placed branch or never opt to show the bloodshed. Jurassic Park is made in 2010 and we see Samuel L. Jackson getting treated like a Lunchable.

The cast is ridiculous. Laura Dern is the best we could get? Sam Neill. Cripes. The writing is awful, but the acting is worst. That little boy should have been taken in the jungle nad shot. He made me throw up in my mouth about a half dozen times.

'Murmur Of The Heart'

I like that someone on IMDB called this a "jolly coming-of-age story." "Jolly" is not quite the adjective I would use to describe Murmur of the Heart.

I do think that there's a certain amount of satire that Louis Malle tries to evoke. Kind of a thumb to the nose to all the "jolly" TV programs that show how light hearted and easy being a kid was.

Life for our main man Laurent is not has free and easy as they seem. Sleeping with prostitutes, drinking, smoking, getting girls and joyriding. Getting to spend time in a cush sanatorium. Seamlessly sleeping with his hot mother with no repercussions and even a hearty laugh to finish it all off.

This isn't "jolly." It's dark as hell. It's daunting. Confused beyond reason, Laurent is a young man totally devoid of the typical qualities that distinguish us from the ape family. The laughter that serves as an exclamation point to Murmur of the Heart is kind of a neurotic reaction to running askew of the laws of nature.

Dying in 1995, Malle did this well in his time.

'Peeping Tom'

Peeping Tom, the film about a serial killer who uses a film camera to not only capture his murders, but to also commit the murders, was written by Leo Marks.

Of course, written a handful of films and providing the voice of "the Devil" in The Last Temptation of Christ, was the least of Marks' many contributions as a human being.

Since being a child, Marks was interested in cryptography, or codes and puzzles. During World War II, he was used as a codebreaker and maker. His memoirs seem fascinating telling these true stories of avoiding capture by the Nazis and the harrowing circumstances surrounding radiomen during the war.

Marks died in 2001. Writing Peeping Tom is probably the least of his bullet points. In fact, his life as a film is probably 100 percent more interesting than any of his films.

'The Sorry And The Pity'

"Those guys in the French Resistance were really brave. To have to listen to Maurice Chevalier sing so much." -- Alvy Singer from Woody Allen's Annie Hall

In Allen's foremost film, Annie Hall, he and his girlfriend Allison go to the movies to see The Sorrow and the Pity. Must've been a pretty hot date.

It runs four hours, but it's probably the neatest four hours you'll spend watching a film. A much better investment than Das Boot.

It's a documentary with a ton of great interviews regarding the French Resistance, government, Nazi occupation, political dealings and attitudes during World War II.

France has always gotten a bad rap. Let's face it: If France was where Ghana, Sri Lanka or Jamaica are located, we'd think nothing of them except for some great art, fantastic books, groundbreaking cinema and the casino in Las Vegas.

Instead, by happenstance, they are located right next to stinkin' Germany. You don't see Sri Lanka, Ghana or Jamaica getting ridiculed because they're not having to deal with endless wars. France has been fighting a long time. From the Prussians, Russians, English, Spanish, Italians, Germans and themselves, it's been an endless ware after endless war.

The French have proven themselves on the battlefield and whatever lack of resistence they put up in 1939, it's tough for me to criticize or judge. They've seen more war in 100 years than the United States has in 250 and may ever see in the next 250 years.

Hell, maybe the French weren't so adverse to the Nazis. Since the French Revolution, the country hadn't been entirely that stable. From Napoleon through World War I, it was a country of upheaval. The Nazis probably represented quite a bit of stability. And if you're a country that is less than tolerable to the Jews, it probably didn't seem all bad.

I know I'm sounding like a Nazi sympathizer. I don't deny this. However, I'm trying to look at it through the eyes of the French, a country that's taken it in the shorts over and over since 1939 and nobody can truly judge them, especially Americans. Besides, where the English, Dutch, Polish, Swiss, Spanish, Scandanavians, Bulgarians or Belgians? Running and not fighting, too.

In The Sorrow and the Pity, things get real for the French people. It's part of the reason why it was never shown in France until the 1980s. It's the pockmark left over from the disfiguring time period through 1945. Through all the sorrow, I felt a little pity.

'The Third Man'

Graham Greene actually wrote this novella before writing the screenplay to the film starring Orson Welles.

Later, the novella was actually released. So, this book has the distinction of being a film before it was a book, so I don't feel as bad about watching the film before I read the book. Although, I do hate watching the film before reading the book. I kind of feel the book is less intriguing. All the suspense, I think, is gone when the film is already seen. Although, Welles' character's speech in the ferris wheel is still pretty awesome.

Greene was fond of films, or so his career would suggest. He began as a journalist doing film reviews. He eventually did a number of screenplays -- including The Third Man -- and later appeared in Francois Truffaut's Day for Night.

Greene also appeared to be quite the commentator on the human condition and human rights. In The Third Man, he builds his plot around a seemingly "ordinary" guy who sells tainted medicine to children, who die. In other books, he chronicles atrocities and lifestyles of people around the nation in downtrodden conditions.

'Close-Up'

This is supposed to be genius. One of the best films of the 1990s. I think that's because it's Iranian. If this were Indian or English or American, it wouldn't be as cool, but because Iran is so mysterious and kind of creeps us out, we overvalue any art coming from that country.

It is an unusual set-up. It's part documentary, part drama.

It's a documentary by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami about a man named Hossain Sabzian, who had convinced some random family that he was Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and that he wante dto do a film about them.

Of course, Sabzian is not Makhmalbaf, the family discovers this, calls the police and Sabzian is put on trial for fraud. They think he was intending to burgle them. Judging from his responses, he's kind of a nut, obsessed with movies and living in some pretend world. More or less, he's delusional.

Kiarostami films Sabzian's trial. Meanwhile, he also directs this acted story of how the fraud went down. Acted by the guy that did the actual fraud. He's goodball/criminal/actor.

I don't know why it's appealing. It's boring to be perfectly honest. It's an interesting story, sure. But kind of in that wacky, "Listen to what I just read in the newspaper!" type of things. Something that Yahoo! would put on the front of their mainpage to pique the random Internet-goer's attention.

'The Wolf Man'

Coincidentally, I received The Wolf Man, the 1941 horror classic, via Netflix on Oct. 30 -- the day before Halloween.

Considering its 70 years old and it was Halloween, I watched it with my four-year-old daughter. Of all parently things I've learned, determining what is appropriate for my child to watch or listen to has been one of the hardest.

I grew up in the 1980s watching horror films throughout that were 100 times more horrific and graphic than The Wolf Man. Then again, I lived a childhood scared to death of the dark, of monsters, of going to sleep (thanks to Wes Craven) and had vivid and awful nightmares.

Fortunately, my kid's pretty sharp. She said that she would probably have bad dreams with the wolf man in them, although I reasoned with her that the wolf man was, in fact, extremely silly and no harm to anyone.

I don't think anything in black and white can really strike fear in my kid's heart.

'All That Jazz'

I was pleasantly surprised with this film. I expected little depth, bad writing, Roy Scheider and a bunch of dancing.

Instead I got a lot of depth and insight into this troubled character, this Joe Gideon who is a dope fiend, alcoholic and social vagrant trying to piece together some simblance of a career as a Broadway director and as an absentee father to his daughter, Michelle.

Soon, we learn that Gideon is leading a disaster of a life, committing a slow and painful suicide, as we find out.

The film kind of putters along until the very end when Gideon and all of the characters in his life perform this grand finale with Ben Vereen. Some mystical, "run to the light" show-stealer featuring Gideon's final goodbye.

It's actually really sad and surreal. The moment, in elated release, Gideon embraces his daughter and his daughter, with a sense of finality, embraces her father for the last time. As if she were taking a bag of old clothes to Goodwill.

The film is based on the life of Bob Fosse, the film's director and famed choreographer. He got the idea while he was in the hospital after a heart attack. All of the characters are based on real people.

It's odd because of where it landed many of the actors. It was the only film from Erzsebet Foldi, who plays Michelle the daughter. Leland Palmer and Ann Reinking's marginal careers ended shortly after (it was Palmer's final film ... although she's not dead) and Reinking did little afterwards.

Scheider would do "SeaQuest 2032." No fate was worse.

'The Rules Of The Game'

Today, The Rules of the Game is considered one of the best films of all time. When you think of the best of the best you're supposed to think of this film.

Unfortunately, I'd never heard of the thing and when I saw it on the 1,001 list I regarded it as a mystery, much like the other 800 or so movies I'd never heard of.

Almost shockingly, when it was released way back in 1939 everyone hated it. The French and Vichy governments both banned it because they thought it wasn't good for morale of the country. You know, the country currently under Nazi control and Allies flying over and bombing everything.

During one viewing, a viewer apparently lit a newspaper on fire with the intentions of burning the theater down. Other such threats were made.

Much to the delight of these people including the Nazis, the negatives of the film were thought to be destroyed during Allied bombing. Not until after the war were negatives found and the film was reconstructed into its current incarnation, which runs about 20 minutes longer.

The Nazis or the guy setting the theater are fire were not pleased with this.