'Persona' & 'Smiles Of A Summer Night' & 'Cries And Whispers'

By my count, eight of Ingmar Bergman's 63 films made the 1,001 list and, by my count, I've watched all eight now.

Persona, Smiles of a Summer Night and Cries and Whispers are three very different films made in three different decades. It's proof of Bergman's longevity, creativity and overall greatness.

Smiles of a Summer Night is thought to be Bergman's breakthrough, Persona is often considered his "masterpiece" and Cries and Whispers was the only Bergman film to be nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award and only one of two times Bergman was nominated for Best Director.

It's my first post of 2011. Thought I'd start out with a bang.

'Rain Man'

You know Rain Man is a 1980s film due to certain inclusions of ideal 1980s filmmaking.

There's the nostalgic use of a 30-year-old song ("At Last" by Etta James as Charlie teaches Raymond to dance). There's the scene where Charlie tests Raymond's ability to count cards. As Raymond impresses, they dash off in the 1950s Buick to Las Vegas as the playing cards on the car's rear end fly off in the dust. So 1980s!

There's the ridiculous suits. Tom Cruise. Sunglasses. The hot sports cars. Barf.

Did anyone else feel that Valeria Golino was going to the sexpot actress in Hollywood for years? After I saw her in Hot Shots, I thought I'd found my future wife. Then she disappeared and does Italian films now.

As I watched Dustin Hoffman (who is really, really good in this film) and Tom Cruise stand side by side, I wondered how they found someone taller than Cruise or how they made Cruise four inches taller than Hoffman. Then I remembered that Hoffman's like 5-5.

'West Side Story'

As 2010 floats away making room for 2011, I opine about one of the greatest accomplishments in American art. That being West Side Story.

I'm prejudiced. I like West Side Story. My mother for years has gotten season passes to Fair Park's Dallas Summer Musicals. As a teenager, she took me to see West Side Story. At the time, I had little interest in anything other than girls and rock and roll.

Still, I'd read Romeo and Juliet my freshman year of high school and I was pretty high and might. I was disappointed that West Side Story was just a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet. Or, moreso, I was disappointed that they didn't even try to hide it.

I brushed off West Side Story for this reason. Looking back, that's silly. West Side Story is better because it takes Romeo and Juliet's basic structure and adds a series of wrinkles including the use of jazz, the setting of 1950s New York City, a mecca of art, culture, growth and a seedy subculture fed by the beats and jazz generation.

It's also post-war America. These rough-and-tumble kids remember Pearl Harbor and the years between 1941 and 1945 when their friends, neighbors and family members were shedding their blood. This was a time for America to mature. As it aged, the middle class grew, the upper class got crustier and both left the lower class.

That's where we find the Sharks and Jets. One, grandsons of immigrants, who all worked blue-collar jobs seeing their position in life, as a lower rung, being challenged by the new wave of immigrants from Latin America. It was not only about jobs or housing. But a certain pride of being the backbone of this country. A certain pride in being the doormat of the higher classes.

In actuality, these two groups had bigger gripes on the rich. It wasn't the Puerto Ricans driving wages down or forcing these people to live in tenements. And the Puerto Ricans probably didn't know who to fight other than the person in front of them throwing punches.

This is one of the top 10 most significant works that America has put out. Should they unfreeze my head in 2120 and ask me what Americans got right, I would point to West Side Story first.

'The Shining'

No other film that I've reviewed here has had so many talking points as much as The Shining.

First, it's one of the few films in the 1,001 list that were trashed when they first came out and only after time where they reconsidered and labeled really good. Even Stephen King, the author of the book, didn't like the original complaining about Stanley Kubrick's "thinking" instead of "feeling." Which is kind of bullshit. If you want some shitty director doing a page-by-page reproduction of the book, then fine. Hire one.

But if you want someone that will give the story a different direction and perspective, then you get Kubrick to do it.

And, frankly, I think King goofs up a lot of great stories himself. Who says that the book is always better just because it came first? Man-eating topiaries? Seriously?

Anyway, fine detail that I missed in the film that was in the book was that Jack Torrance was kind of possessed by the demon(s) of the Overlook Hotel and in a brief moment of clarity brought along by Danny, Jack allows Wendy, his son and Dick to escape.

That detail is altered by another change of character from the book to the film. That is Jack's temperment. In the book, he's a good guy with an occassional bad temper, who desperately loves his son. What we don't know in the film is that Jack was fired from the teaching job because he beat the snot out of a kid. Thus he needs the hotel job.

It's that love for his son and eventually beat the hotel as he allows the boiler to overheat, another plot mechanism missing from the film.

Frankly, there's a lot missing, but nothing that takes away from the film. On their own, each holds up really well.

Then there's the different discussion points about the film. The difference between the two Gradys. Jack's history with the hotel and him being included in the picture.

Then there's Kubrick's issues. His apparent obsession with the Holocaust and the symbolism of the Native Americans. There's tons of other social issues that you can argue about regarding The Shining.

Or you can take it as simply the best horror film ever.

'The Lost Weekend'

B-O-R-I-N-G.

Alcoholism is boring and films about alcoholism are super boring.

Although, I've read that the book has the guy drinking because it's rumored he had a homosexual affair in college. A plot point taken out of the film. Would've helped. A little.

Can not believe this won four Oscars, including Best Picture.

'She's Gotta Have It' & 'Gertrud'

You might not think there's a lot of common ground with Spike Lee and Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Granted, Gertrud was released in 1964 and is Danish. She's Gotta Have It is Lee's first full-length. It was released in 1986 and is irretrieveably black and set in Brooklyn.

However, the stories are remarkably similiar.

She's Gotta Have It features Nola Darling as a 20-something liberated single artist. She lives in a kickass studio apartment in Brooklyn. She also has three lovers that bring three different scenes. There's the smart and kind Jamie, the hunky and stuck-up Greer and the aloof, poor and goofy Mars.

When forced to choose between the three, she makes a choice (Jamie) only to learn that she can't settle down with just one man. She needs variety.

Whereas Gertrud's Gertrud is married and within 10 minutes of the film's start, she asks her lawyer husband for a divorce in order to run away with her young, pianist lover.

Unfortunately, he's not that into her and a past lover comes into the picture wanting to stir up their old flame.

I hate both of these females. But I probably hate Gertrud the most. She sits there most of the movie looking all forlorn and lonely with that 1,000-yard stare as if life has dealt her some raw circumstances that no one should ever have to live with. She also says shit like this:

"No, one never remembers everything, but the creed went: 'I believe in the pleasure of the flesh and the irreparable loneliness of the soul.'"

Over and over with his bullshit. She winds up alone. As it should be with a idiot like her.

Actually, both Gertrud and Nola end up alone. Nola probably a bit more upbeat and Gertrud still starring off into space. However, both had three potential lovers and all three failed. So, good for them.

'Now, Voyager'

The absolute irony of Bette Davis starring as the homely, awkward and meek Charlotte Vale is delicious.

Davis campaigned to get the role. She got so involved that she was picking her own wardrobe.

She has a say and opinions into the director and male co-stars.

Charlotte Vale would never do anything of these things. She'd barely make it in front of the camera.

Instead, she was played by one of the most forthright actresses in film history: Bette Davis.

The film co-starred Claude Rains and Paul Henreid. The pair would finish filming Now, Voyager June 3, 1942. The next day, they would start filming Casablanca together.

'Walkabout'

My initial question after watching this film is whether or not they were killing actual animals as part of the production of the aborigine helping feed the two white children.

Apparently, filmmakers can harm as many animals that they want. There's no real law against it. At most, you piss off a bunch of liberals. You can chop up as many kangaroos as you want.

A walkabout is an actual rite of passage in the aborigine society where a boy of a certain age must go out into the outback on their own and survive up to a six-month period.

In the film, Walkabout, the aboriginal hero and the two stranded white children undergo their own walkabout; however, no matter what tests the wild threw at them, they couldn't handle or understand the most steadfast of life lessons.

The aboriginal boy learns to his death that love isn't as simple or, pardon the pun, black and white, as doing a courting dance. That not all nonverbal communication traverses cultures.

Whilst the white boy doesn't grasp that the aboriginal boy is dead; a concept that you think he would grasp considering he saw kangaroos and countless lizards killed and cooked for his nourishment. As tight and rugged as his skin go under the sun, nothing could truly prepare him for understanding the death of a human being.

The lesson here is that the time on this Earth is a long walkabout.

I was waiting for someone to explain the beginning. It's considered that the father begins firing a gun at the children out of nowhere, unexpectantly. Yet, the first 10 minutes there's this unspoken antagonism and silent tenseness between the girl and the father. As if she knew it was all going to end as soon as she got the picnic ready.

'Suspiria'

What is it about witches that makes them so much more horrifying than other supernatural beings in film?

I think it's because unlike vampires, Frankenstein, ghosts and whatnot, a witch chooses a certain path and that route has everything to do with conjuring Satan. Those others don't have a choice. Frankenstein was made. Vampires are victims of other vampires. Ghosts just want some sort of end to their existence.

Witches, on the other hand, have a yen for evil and the dark side of spirituality. So they get together and start dealing with the devil, quite literally.

Suspiria, I've got to admit threw me for a loop. I didn't know where everything was going until our heroine did and when it happen it scared the bejesus out of me. Much in the same vein of the jokers in Rosemary's Baby, the thought that witches are just ominiously lurking about looking for an unsuspected person to improve their cause triples the oddness of the witch. Witches also do creepy things like brainwash, snip people's hair, brew concoctions and harrass filmmakers like in The Blair Witch Project, which was creepy too.

According to the co-writer on the film, it was inspired by the experiences of her grandmother. We are thus led to believe that her grandmother was taught by a coven of witches at a dance school in Munich. I guess.

'(What's The Story) Morning Glory?'

Love this album. If you wanted to make a musical biography of my life, Morning Glory? has to be included.

I remember it well. It had released in late 1995 when I was still 15 years old and completely and utterly in love with everything to do with The Beatles. I couldn't get enough and the thought that a new band was as equally in love with them and doing kind of a generation-removed facsimile was right up my alley.

Then "Wonderwall" broke. How huge did it get? I remember having this friend, Shane, who had turned 16 already and was able to drive. So, he would always pick me up and we'd go into town and see what kind of trouble we could make. Mostly with girls.

Anyway, Shane and I were unusual playmates. Although we went to the same school, he was a meatheaded jock football guy. We went to the same school ... but we didn't hang out together outside of going into town and trying to make it with girls.

As our "groups" clashed, so did our taste in music most of the time. It didn't matter though. We just drove and drove and listened to pretty much whatever was popular. In the changer then was Notorious BIG's Ready to Die and Oasis' Morning Glory?, especially after "Wonderwall" hit American radio and absolutely blew up.

I listened to that song and that album probably 200 times between then and coming around to the next summer, when I turned 16 and I didn't need those rides much anymore.

To this day, I can sing every lyric no matter how little I listen to it today. It is by far one of the best records released in my lifetime, and I'm extremely proud to have helped make it that way. Maybe no other record means as much to me as this one.

'Videodrome' & 'Salvador'

Today, most youth see James Woods as the butt of jokes on The Family Guy, as the kids' high school is named after the actor. By all accounts, he plays along with the joke.

To be honest, I don't know a lot of Woods' work outside of Casino and Once Upon A Time In America. Otherwise, he's just a name. Probably not unlike Joe Pesci. I wonder how many 16 year olds know who he is. But they know Woods' from an animated TV sitcom parody.

These are two very different films.

Videodrome is a 1980s sci-fi, 1984-esque with a less-than-ideal view of the future of media consumption and television taking over our bodies and infecting or consuming us in some diabolical fashion.

Salvador's a bit more harrowing. Woods plays a down-on-his-luck photographer, who seemingly kidnaps his friend (Jim Belushi in a role he wouldn't approach until his stellar role in The Principal) to drive to El Salvador in order to get photography work during the civil war that ravaged the country for almost three years.

Salvador is directed by Oliver Stone, his fourth film and probably his first of note before he'd have a string with Platoon, Talk Radio, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK and The Doors. That's formidable series of films. Although Stone is known for stretching fact for the sake of making a point, I take Salvador at face value. I very much doubt that everything that he shows didn't actually happen (many of the characters were based on real people, some real actions). If not in El Salvador, somewhere. Many times over. Including, most of all, the United States' role in the chaos that erupts all around us, needlessly.

I do wonder if I could ever be a war photographer. I very much doubt it. I'd rather have a gun than a camera if bullets are flying. It's a miracle, actually, that more war journalists haven't been killed than that actually have. Even by accident. The fact that they just wave their arms at people firing the guns to hold up so they can get in a position between the lines is mind blowing.

After watching these twos, I do have a much higher respect for James Woods.

'El Topo'

I can say with all honesty that I have never, ever seen a film quite like El Topo.

It mixes the standard 1970s western with Christian imagery, Eastern philosophy, surrealism and unparalleled violence. It's one of the most bizarre films I've ever seen and ever will see.

Yet, I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

It is directed by and stars Alejandro Jodorowsky, a Chilean filmmaker, who has had almost zero commecial appeal, but a billion dollar's worth of cult appeal from counterculture types.

El Topo wasn't available in wide release until 2007. Before that, you had to catch it in midnight arthouse screenings and Japanese laserdiscs and the such.

It's fans include every weirdo and counterculture type from Marilyn Manson and David Lynch to John Lennon, Peter Fonda and Roger Waters.

There's also been a bunch of rumors of a sequel starting in the late-1990s and through the 2000s. It was set to be called The Sons of El Topo or El Toro. As late as 2009, there's been talks of the sequel, which was rumored to star Marilyn Manson.

Jodorowsky is an interesting cat. Deeply spiritual, he's been associated with everything from the occult to Zen Buddhism and Mexican shamanism. However, he's since developed his own belief system called psychomagic or psychoshamanism. Awesome.

'Blowup'

Modern media -- films, books, records, Internet -- have created this vast tapestry of ... art or culture or whatever you want to call it to the point that it's OK that nothing is completely original, but if you aren't inspired by something else, you're kind of missing the point.

Modern media creates a system where it's more important what you're referencing or who your influences are. It's not a knock, it's just the truth. I'm sure to a point that non-modern art was sort of the same way.

Blowup has a signature scene: The Veruschka photo shoot.

Blowup is about a randy fashion photographer, who kind of lives life on the edge of his pants. Kind of, if he gets laid that's OK and if he doesn't that's just as good. In fact, not getting laid is this delayed satisfaction that you could've gotten laid at any moment if you really wanted to.

Anyway, near the beginning of the film, he has a photo shoot with Veruschka, a Prussian model, who's heyday took place in the 1960s. It's extremely sexy and has provocative as you can get without any actual penetration.

This is this movie's scene. That's it. It's not a bad film. A bit of intrigue with an interesting plot that is not unlike The Conversation or, to a certain degree, 8MM with Nicolas Cage. Crime scene through the eyes (or ears) of a mechanical instrument.

However, without Veruschka getting probed with a camera, I don't know if we're talking about this film.

As I stated, art today is a mishmash of someone else's idea. Thanks to Veruschka, Austin Powers can do a provocative photo shoot with Ivana Humpalot. Culture is great!

'Babe'

I don't know what it is about a farmyard that can teach so many socio-political lessons in the most simplest of fashions.

Tons more cute than Animal Farm, Babe has a sermon not unlike that of Orwell ... or at least Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Preconceived notions of other groups, classes and species are perpetrated by ignorance, passed on through generations. Over time, these "notions" turn into a series of maxims and truths.

Resolution and understanding are achieved through communication. In the end, we each have a role, but our species does not limit or control our roles.

As for it being a good film, Babe is awfully entertaining. It's funny, organized in a very simple and effective manner with the chapters and it's really well written. It's sickening cute, yet it's extremely dark with the allusions to slaughter, the death of the older sheep, the near death of Babe (what small pig kills sheep and/or what farmer thinks this?) the violence between the dogs and the rather brutal treatment of the male dog after he bites the farmer. Lots of explaining to do to a 4-year-old.

'Madman Across The Water'

The album cover was actually embroidered over a period of two weeks by the wife of the art director. It would've been a shame had she done all that work and they decided to go with something else.

The final product was given to Elton John.

It was John's four studio album and actually probably a bit of a disappointment. The previous three all went top 10 in the United States. It's predecessor -- Tumbleweed Connection -- peaked at No. 2 in the United Kingdom.

Then Madman ... was released and peaked at No. 41 in the United Kingdom before having three of the next four go No. 1 in the United Kingdom. The next six would go No. 1 in the United States.

Madman ... is good, but it's not radio friendly in the least. Its hits -- "Levon" and "Tiny Dancer" -- averaged almost six minutes a piece. And that's the front half of side 1. And those are kind of the best songs on the thing.

Very much a transitional album (artistically and commercially) for John.

'Belle Du Jour' & 'Repulsion' & 'The Last Metro'

Question: Is Catherine Deneuve the greatest actress of all time?

Answer: Maybe. She's in the discussion.

All three of these films star Deneuve, the best performance probably being Belle Du Jour and hte best film being Roman Polanski's Repulsion, in which she plays a neurotic, lonely woman deathly afraid of men.

She's worked for seven decades making many important films. She's tied for having the most on the 1,001 list with seven. If she's good enough for Polanski, Francois Truffaut, Lars Van Tier, Jacques Demy and Luis Bunuel, then she's probably good enough to be considered for such a lofty honor.

The funny thing is, I'd never heard of her. This is really no surprise considering I didn't care much about films up until two years ago, but even then I didn't realize how good she was and what kind of legacy she's built since the 1960s. I'd heard of Brigitte Bardot, but not Deneuve. That's a shame because Deneuve is almost as sexy as Bardot (almost).

Case in point, I think I found her most desirable in Truffaut's 1980 film, The Last Metro, where she plays the proprietor of a Paris theater during Nazi occupation while hiding her Jewish husband and director in the theater's basement.

Carrying herself at an age when many are losing their appeal and being even more sultry and desirable than as a prostitute 20 years before says a lot about a woman.

'Viridiana'

I don't really remember a film interesting me -- in terms of the plot -- as much as this one.

A nun, Viridiana, on the verge of taking her final vows, is invited to the estate of an uncle. She seems relaly reluctant on going, but is urged to do so nonetheless.

Once there, the uncle is struck by how much Viridiana looks like his deceased wife. He asks her to put on his wife's wedding dress and he proposes marriage. He then drugs her and attempts to rape her. Still, she doesn't really know if he went through with it.

Attempting to leave, she is caught at the train station by the authorities to tell her that the uncle hung himself and left Viridiana and a son the estate.

With the disgrace weighing her soul, she decides to forego the church and, instead, decides to make her uncle's estate a haven for the local beggars and ne'er do wells. She places her entire faith that people are inherently good and only in need of a little charity.

She puts the beggars to work, gives them a purpose. All is going well until Viridiana, the servants and other family leave the beggars to their own devices one night in which they turn into drunken gluttons, trash the house and then attempt to rape Viridiana upon her return.

The film was directed by Luis Bunuel, at the time an exile of his native Spain and having to do the film in Mexico. Considered sacreligious, the film wasn't released in Spain until 1977, after Franco's death and after everyone got the sticks out of their asses.

It confirms one thing for people: Not that homeless beggars are reprobates and ill-deserving of our time and charity; but that people are inherently bad, no matter their standing in this world.

'The Player' & 'Day For Night'

Two "films within films."

Francois Truffaut's Day for Night follows the filming of a French movie. All the small things that happen from having to pick out a gun to dealing with boyfriends on the set and the very occassional meltdown.

I do admit that this film really opened my eyes as to the grand production that a film is. You've got hundreds of people doing hundreds of jobs and you, as the director, have to trust those people to do it well. To make the right decisions. To not be lazy. To not completely flake out.

That's tough because doing these type of jobs tend to attract flaky people and there's a massive opportunity to flake out. Left to your own devices, there's time and opportunity to fall off and possibly put the production jeopardy. I think this probably happens all the time. Some movies don't happen. Others fall behind. Others forge ahead and get the film done.

The Player is set amongst the movers and shakers of the movie world, directed by Robert Altman and all of his background conversations and noise. Hopefully this is the last Altman film on the list.

It stars Tim Robbins as a studio exec who is getting threatening postcards from a supposed screenwriter he rebuffed. In trying to find out who this person is, he winds up killing the wrong writer and courting that writer's girlfriend. All the while, he's trying to get away with the murder, keep his job and do something with his existing girlfriend.

It's supposedly filled with all this insider crap and I totally think all of this stuff actually happens: Running into Burt Reynolds at breakfast, being kinda blown off by John Cusack, the constant backstabbing, the constant pitches and this internal struggle to make somet hing "important" and something that sells.

Well, Robbins' stalker sticks around. He calls Robbins with a movie pitch about a movie exec who kills a writer, marries his girlfriend, gets away with murder and they do a movie about it.

As I watched this film and saw the constant parade of actual celebrities playing themselves (Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, Reynolds, Cusack), I wondered if they realized how this movie exec looked just like their friend Tim Robbins.

In fact, where was Robbins during this whole film. Wouldn't it have been super post-modern had they had Robbin's Griffin Mill get the actor Tim Robbins to be in a film?

'A Christmas Carol'

There are films, books, records and a lot more being printed, pressed, released and spread around the Internet that will never be seen by 99 percent of everyone.

There's countless others that'll be seen and forgotten. Good stuff that deserves a better fate, but it's all too much for even the most media-savvy jerks to take in.

However, more than 150 years after it was released, A Christmas Carol resounds over and over through the generations. The words "Bah!" and "Humbug!" are known. The denotations are clear and their source is well known. The moniker "Scrooge" is easily recognizable as someone rich, but stingy and unsociable and uncaring.

That kind of resonance is astounding. You couldn't buy that kind of importance or relevance. It just happens. It's lucky and amazing when it happens.

Charles Dickens means more today than he did in 1843 when he published the novella on Dec. 19. It sold 6,000 copies by Christmas Day. It was adapted for the stage almost immediately. All of this passed down through the ages in so many film and stage adaptations that it'd be dumb to count them all. It came to a head a year ago when Robert Zemeckis directed an animated version with Jim Carrey providing Scrooge's voice. It grossed $137 million.

That's relevance for you. It's almost the perfect story if it can still matter.

During its original publication in 1843, England had undergone a change in Christmas traditions harkening back to previous traditions like caroling.

By 1841, the German-born Prince Albert had introduced and popularized the Christmas tree in England. Two years later, Christmas cards took off. Following the publication of A Christmas Carol, the phrase "Merry Christmas" became popular.

Despite the ending of the story, A Christmas Carol is very dark. The imagery alone is frightening. Throw in the chained ghost of Marley, the ghosts, Scrooge seeing the grave markers of Tim and himself. It's a stark look into the mirror for not only the Scrooges of the world, but ourselves. It's a statement on the working conditions and the need to help the less fortunate. It's downright socialist.

I find it fascinating that it didn't take Scrooge very long to be convinced of the folly of his ways. In disbelief after Marley comes and goes, Scrooge is shaken. However, I think it's while the ghost of Christmas past is taking him through his long, forgotten scenes, Scrooge is already talking about making changes in his life. Yet, the ghosts still come. It was never over and never going to take until he saw the ultimate sacrifice to the way Scrooge was living.

Also, I don't quite remember Scrooge going to his nephew's house for dinner. I seem to recollect Scrooge and the Cratchits being the center of his change. Instead, there's an actual higher concentration on the relationship with his remaining family, the son of his beloved sister.

'Mott'

A seminal album in the glam rock movement in the 1970s spearheaded by David Bowie. Bowie actually offered Mott the Hoople his song "Suffragette City" to keep the band together. He later wrote "All the Young Dudes" for the group, becoming probably their most popular songs. Bowie's guitarist Mick Ronson would later join the band.

Mott is the band's all-time best-selling album. It all lead to the band's dissolution, which didn't apparently take too much as they seemed to be on the brink of break-up with every turn.

Like a vast majority of musical genres, glam became about style and fashion more than anything else. What T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, Bowie and others were doing is just pop-hard rock. Nothing that wasn't already done before and would be repeated since.

However, throw in some crazy hair, make-up, some tight clothes on emaciated bodies and the overbearing presence of homosexuality and there's the 1970s glam movement for you.

Watch Velvet Goldmine. You'll get the picture.

'Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs'

Eric Clapton is the world's greatest session guitarist. He jumped from The Yardbirds, John Mayall, Cream, Blind Faith, and Delaney and Bonnie and Friends.

All the while, he jammed and recorded who knows how many others including The Beatles and John Lennon's and George Harrison's solo albums.

What happened with Derek and the Dominos stems from all of this. He met his Dominoes while with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. He wrote his all-time greatest hit while being friends with George Harrison.

I'm not a huge Eric Clapton fan. He's too much of a blues guy. He stole George Harrison's wife (Harrison is either hte sweetest man in the world ... or he was tired of it already). And he was a drug addict.

But I do like the fact that he was always doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. Clapton was always a guy that wanted to play guitar with his friends for the rest of his life. Not unlike what I or million others did when they were 15 years old. Get good enough, sell enough records and you can do it.

Then again, Clapton's always been on the move. He could've stayed in one place and probably made a ton of money and retired. Instead, he'd go from one project to the next looking for the next great jam. That's something I can appreciate.

'Back To Black'

Malcolm Gladwell contends in his book Outliers that there are a number of variables that go into an individual succeeding and another not.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, a lot of success can be chalked up to luck. Kind of being at the right place at the right time and, thus, taking advantage from that point.

Amy Winehouse's Back to Black has sold 10 million copies as she released probably one of the most well-regarded albums of the past decade and definitely of that year. And I think it was a set of insane circumstances that put her on that level.

For one, the album is tremendously unique (for the current day) mixing the blend of 1960s R&B and soul with modern pop and R&B. It's fresh and raw. It was something the public was not ready for being ready for. It was extremely accessible for being kind of an oddball album (British girl goes Motown). People listened to it and couldn't wait to say to someone else, "Have you heard this Amy Winehouse chick?" Also, it appealed to the hipsters and music snobs in addition to all the marginal music fans. It was a true crossover hit.

As soon as the album started to stick and the Brits were going bananas, all the personal baggage surrounding Winehouse's life comes out. The drugs, alcohol and partying. The dependent boyfriend who was just as bad a drug whore as she was. To a certain point, it made the album dangerous and completely legit. Like 50 Cent getting shot or T.I. going to prison. Also, it put her in the headlines. Over and over and over. You couldn't buy the press Winehouse was getting for smoking crack.

It also should be noted that Winehouse had style. The hair, the tattoos, the eyeliner, the emaciated crackwhore look. Yet, there's a major hint of sex and degradation that exists that we all want, as evidenced by our pornography.

Back to Black doesn't sell without Winehouse. If Duffy or some other tart records that album, it fails. The album needed her far more than she needed the album.

'Tapestry'

When you're able to capture the mood of the album through the album cover, you know you've got something good.

The wild-haired, barefooted King sitting next to the window on that wooden bench with her cat encapuslates everything you'll take away from the actual songs on the record.

It's stripped down and intimate. Just King and her songs and a piano. Some backing vocals and instruments. But, on the whole, it's King almost in your living room pouring her soul out to you with these heartbreakingly sincere songs.

And that damn cat. Posing there on that blue pillow as if it were his/her album and not King's.

Tapestry is one of my favorite albums of all time. I've owned it for a decade and I remember buying it used almost solely on the album cover. It floors me that King was album to write "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" at the tender age of 18. I think it should be made illegal for an 18-year-old to feel the way the narrator of that song feels. It's just too unnatural. I blame Gerry Goffin or James Taylor. Not sure who.

'Daisies'

A very well-rounded protest film that doesn't seem like a protest film but it must be a protest film because it couldn't possibly be anything else.

A Czech film made and released amid Communist Russia control of the country in the 1960s. At certain points, you can't really tell if their lampooning Communism or capitalism. The West or the East. Probably both. Seeking some middle ground, I guess.

The film is part of the Czech New Wave that took place during this time period. As I will probably keep watching a bunch of these films, I think it'll be interesting to not only discover their thoughts on the Communist regime, but also how they dealt with the time after Nazi occupation and World War II.

Think about it: Large hunks of these countries' populations were killed, livelihoods destroyed and these people were placed under a regime on one "end" of the spectrum to the other "end" within several years of each other. That had to take a mental toll and I suspect that will show itself through these films.

'Youth and Young Manhood'

The Kings of Leon had the unusual circumstance that they were an American band that was entirely more popular in England.

Their first album -- Youth and Young Manhood -- is actually quite good. At the time, it was kind of a Southern gothic take on the garage/indie rock scene busting out at the time.

Even the band had this mystique: A family (brothers, a cousin) brought up in the southern Pentecostal world playing rock music together. This is how cults start.

Anyway, this album peaked at 113 in the United States and three in the United Kingdom. As they released more and more records, the bigger they got in England and, seemingly, the less popular they got in the United States. By their third album, they were not challenging anyone with their music. It was bordering on radio pop until their last album really burst on the scene and made them mega-rock stars in the United States.

I kind of can't stand them now. It's one thing for their sound to change and for me not to like the new direction. However, these guys are the epitome of a group of sell outs. They are quoted quite frankly that they wanted to be big in the United States and were forced to change their sound to achieve this. I don't begrudge the opportunity to make a buck. And I hope I'm not begrudged the opportunity to not like you.

'North By Northwest'

For my money, North by Northwest is the perfect Alfred Hitchcock film. His best and as close to perfection as the man got and he spent his career getting really close.

It's a brilliant, funny script set around Cary Grant being mistaken as some sort of American agent tracking down ol' James Mason, who's attempting to smuggle certain confidential information out of the country.

What's interesting is that Grant (Thornhill), naturally, denies being the agent, George Kaplan. Once he is almost murdered, he decides to investigate to either prove that he was right (that he was kidnapped and nearly murdered) or to clear his name as Kaplan so these other guys won't try to nearly kill him again.

At a certain point, he becomes Kaplan. He doesn't make this decision. It happens. As soon as he talks to the hotel maid as a means of finding out more information about Kaplan, he becomes Kaplan. Accordingly, he doesn't really blame James Mason and his goons for trying to kill him. e not only adopts Kaplan's name, but his problems. He becomes Kaplan.

Of course, Kaplan doesn't exist. He's a MacGuffin. Or so says Hitchcock:

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" and the other answers 'Oh that's a McGuffin.' The first one asks 'What's a McGuffin?' 'Well', the other man says, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers 'Well, then that's no McGuffin!' So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.

A MacGuffin is nothing. It's a plot device used to divert the audience's from the actual plot. Kaplan -- and, accordingly, Grant's character -- do not matter. They're used to distract everyone of the real plot: James Mason trying to get out of the country with the microfilm.

What shocks me the most is the beauty and clarity of the film. There are some shots, individually, that awe me for their color and clarity as if they were done with a high-definition camera. I don't think you see it this good with any other Hitchcock.

'Little Miss Sunshine'

I remember this film initially being promoted and hyped as "Steve Carell in a serious role." He'd had "The Daily Show" fame on top of Anchorman and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Therefore, playing the gay, suicidal Marcel Proust scholar was considered a seachange in Carell's career.

However, you come away from watching Little Miss Sunshine completely impressed with the people you weren't aware of like Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin.

Dano's on Joseph Gordon-Levitt level with me: I watch anything he's in. He's absolutely awesome in this film and he's fantastic in There Will Be Blood.

Breslin is an actress that had that one fleeting moment. She's gone on to do other films and they all suck and chances are she'll never be in anything worthwhile for the rest of her life. And that's OK. You don't need to set the world on fire twice in a lifetime. Most never do and Breslin happened to do it as a 10 year old.

Why was she so good? It wasn't her acting chops or her performance, per se. It was the look. The tacky clothes, the glasses and that awkward body that hadn't quite gotten rid of that baby fat and hadn't evolved into the slender, longer frame that she's surely adopt with age. They captured her on film at the perfect time. The scene where Dano's Dwayne lifts Breslin's Oliver up a steep embankment and her poochy belly sticking out is accidentally awesome. It sorta makes the film. That you can't teach and you can't script or storyboard.

'The War Game'

I like the people call this a "pseudo-documentary." Know what else is a "pseudo-documentary"? Jurassic Park. Birds. Titanic. Les Vampires. Night of the Living Dead. Halloween.

Categorizing something as a documentary is a cut-and-dry proposition. A "pseudo-documentary" is called a film. It's a drama, war movie, comedy or romance. The Office isn't a "pseudo-documentary." It's a sitcom.

Despite the inaccurate classification, it is still a very interesting and thought provoking film. It is done in a documentary-style, supposing some kind of nuclear attack between the United States and Russia somehow hit England. The film captures the aftermath. Kind of a pseudo-political rant against nuclear war.

I think people that are against nuclear war are funny. No one is for nuclear war. People know what's going to happen should it happen. We know the fallout. Maybe the generalization amongst most is that they don't realize the after effects of a nuclear bomb dropping. They do. But what exactly are we supposed to do about it. Protest all you want. If Russia wanted to drop one on Miami or New York, there wasn't too much anybody could really do about it.

There's craploads we don't have any control over and even more that we don't fret over on any given day. A "pseudo-documentary" doesn't really change any of that. But it can try.