'Surf's Up'

Surf's Up was released in 1971, after the commercially and artistically ordinary Sunflower.

At the time, the Beach Boys had problems. For one, they were very unhip. Two, they were not relevant in the least and they hadn't put out at least a popular album since 1967 when Wild Honey was put out.

"Surf's Up" was a castaway from the Smile sessions of several years before. A lot of those songs actually all wound up on other albums like Wild Honey and Smiley Smile.

Their third and final problem was that the band was split. It'd been held together with duct tape and Carl Wilson while Dennis was partying and Brian Wilson was busy going crazy.

Jack Rieley was brought in to straighten things out. They decided that Carl should be the "musical director" as the only talented guy still interested in making music.

Also, he attempted to bridge the gap between the artistic guys (the Wilsons) and the guys just trying to make as much money possible off the Beach Boys' name (the talentless trio -- Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and cousin Mike Love). The record company wanted the brothers driving the album, but they were a band still and clipping Jardin, Johnston and Love was out of the question.

Everyone contributed on the album, sharing lead vocals and writing credits. Part of Dennis' contribution wound up on his solo record Pacific Ocean Blue.

It's pretty album. A lot of good to come out of it as the Beach Boys will do. However, I'm a fan and most may consider this crap because it doesn't have a bunch of hits on it. I don't like people. Generally.

'FishScale'

"Fish scale" is a term for a very pure form of cocaine. So you know.
It's confirmed, the Wu Tang Clan has the greatest group of albums from the members as solo artists. They've overtaken the Beatles.

No, the solo albums are simply better than the albums as the Wu Tang Clan. Of all the musical artists in the history of recorded music, no set of artists that at one time performed as a group has released a better set of albums as solo artists, instead of the group.

Clear as mud?

FishScale is fantastic. I listened and listened and I was exhausted afterwards. I was simply blown away. The rapid pace and longevity of their verses are mind blowing. Right when you think it'll go to the chorus or possibly pass the verse off to another rapper.

Instead, they go on and on.

"Big Girl" is simply a good song. Not a good hip-hop song. Not a good sample. You can put that song toe to toe with any other song in rap, pop, hip-hop or rock and it's just as good as anything else.

'If ...'

I was interested in this film because it starred Malcolm McDowell. It is his first role. He was 25 playing a teenager. Still, he pulled it off.

He'd take on a role three years later as a juvenile in Stanley Kubrick's overtly brilliant A Clockwork Orange as the randy Alex.

He would bring back his character of Mick Travis in the films O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital.

Boarding schools are interesting. You would literally ship your kid off to college: They live on campus, sleep in a dorm and are practically raised by teachers and headmasters and prefects and whatnot.

I always dreamed about going to a boarding school. Now, it just interests me that parents would rather just pay a hefty sum to not have to see their kids, which is what boarding schools are really about. Parents might say that they offer some edge in education, and in Europe this might be the case.

All I know is that anyone that has a kid in the United States, somewhere along the way, gets some pressure to quit one's job and raise the kid at home. Shipping them off to Switzerland or England is completely out of the question. See, things aren't so bad now.

Why people have children is a total mystery.

'Ordinary People'

The 1980s were full of really intense, emotional, family-driven dramas. Like Steel Magnolias, Terms of Endearment, Kramer vs. Kramer and Beaches.

I wonder why that is. Any film that makes you feel like your in your best friend's living room and his parents are fighting in the next room.

That's drama. And that is what makes these films good. There's nothing spectacular about these films. No special effects. No elaborate make-up or costumes or sets.

It's just people. Ordinary people, I guess, with extraordinary problems. No, to have had Mary Tyler Moore as your mother as her character in Ordinary People is not normal or ordinary. Or healthy.

What makes this film even more extraordinary is that its Robert Redford's directing debut. He'd been looking to get into the game, read the short story and bought the rights.

Turns out, he wins Academy Awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screen Play and Tim Hutton wins for Best Supporting Actor (zero love for the great Donald Sutherland).

Ordinary People also beat out Martin Scorcese's Raging Bull. It would be the first time that he was beat out by a director making his debut. The second would be nine years later by Kevin Costner and Dances With Wolves. What bad luck.

'A Matter Of Life And Death'

This is a fascinating film made by the filmmaking duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The film starts on a cheery note. Peter, portrayed by the ostensibly British David Niven, is returning to England in a badly damaged bomber and about to jump out of the aircraft when he happens to contact June, an American radio operator.

The pair make a wireless connection in his supposed dying moments. He jumps, but due to a bad fog his ... death angel fails to collect him for the afterlife.

He happens to land near June, they meet and fall in love. Thus the quandary. He's supposed to be dead and the people in the "Other World" want to even the score.

The debate begins in the afterlife as to whether Peter should be let alone to live a life since he is in love and it wasn't his fault that they dropped the ball.

Suddenly, the film moves into the courtroom scene where a jury is chosen to decide whether Peter should stay alive or join them in heaven.

Initially, the jury is staked against Peter, the Britishman. It is filled with a colonial-era American, an Indian, a Chinaman and just about any other ethnic group that might be pissed off at the British.

Heaven, being fair, changes the jury. June, realizing the only way to save Peter is to take his place, she does and that does the trick. The jury rules in Peter's favor.

It's an interesting film because it deals so bluntly with the idea of death and kind of this ho-hum attitude about the whole thing, as if it weren't completely terrifying. And I guess it kind of was. But once you're existing in the afterlife, after some moments of clarity and understanding, I'm sure there is a high level of acceptance.

It's brilliantly made and highly worth a watch.

'Rio Grande'

Sing some harmony? Join the army!

I'd like to think that was the tagline for recruiting to the U.S. Army, for those who were not excited about seeing the sights of the American west and getting stuck by a bunch of crazy Indians.

To overcome the blues, they instead practice trick horse riding and singing five-part harmony around the camp fire. No telling how many decent soldiers were left back east because they weren't a tenor.

John Wayne starred in five films with Maureen O'Hara: Rio Grande and The Quiet Man, which was previously reviewed on this sight.

Initially, The Quiet Man was supposed to be made first, but it was the opinion of studio executives that it wasn't very good.

So, they went to work on Rio Grande, which was the final installment of John Ford's "cavalry trilogy," which starred Wayne was Kirby Yorke. It finds Yorke leading a ragtag bunch of good ol' boys and his son joins the ranks. And his mother -- Yorke's jilted wife -- comes along for the wife.

I'm sure Yorke loves that.

Anyway, they made Rio Grande and then they made The Quiet Man, which became the studio's highest grossing film.

'Chimes At Midnight'

I must admit, I did not watch this in its entirety. It was by no choice of myself. The disc suddenly became damaged, inexplicably really, and about nine-tenths through the film, it ceased to work.

Considering it's been rarely released over the past 60 years, I figured I'm pretty well off with what I've seen.

It's a slendid film. Taken from five of Shakespear's plays -- Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, Richard II, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

It stars director Orson Welles as the rouge Falstaff as he watches his friend Hal go from ale-swilling roustabout to the jolly ol' king of England.

Welles, frankly, is fantastic. It's good having the girth to really make Falstaff the large character that makes him such a treat on the printed page. "Larger than life" was probably more of a play on words for Falstaff than it is for other people.

Welles, dolled up in that ridiculous suit of armor, hiding behind the bush during the ball against Hotspur was as funny as anything Monty Python would produce a decade later. In fact, it would shock me to know that the Pythons didn't watch this film and find it extremely inspiring.

Most, including Welles, agrees with my thoughts. He is known to have said that if producing a film got one into heaven, Chimes at Midnight would be the one he'd show.

'Happiness'

Todd Solondz makes me sad. It is frightening and disturbing to watch his movies. They're a train wreck. They are a neverending series of circus freakdom, the world's physically and emotionally deformed.

He makes extremely 1990s films. The 1990s -- extremely underrated for being impeccably lame, some sort of bastardization of the 1980s -- was a soulless era. The style and the pop culture was a sort of evolution of 1980s culture. But at least the 1980s had pizazz. There was dancing. The 1990s was full of self-loathing as Generation X came of age and entered adulthood.
Meanwhile, everyone was desperately trying to be cool and it got out of hand. Solandz captures this desperation. It went, of course, beyond clothes and music, all of which soiled everything from art to religion. Happiness was released in 1998. However, he captures 1993 perfectly in all of his movies. Maybe its the wardrobe or the sickening provincialism and snobbery, despite being completely desperate and sad.

In this world, there is the slightly chubby, sexually frustrated young boy seeking his fist orgasm. His dad, the pedophile. His aunt, the professionally frustrated youngish woman, with no prospects in either her personal or professional life. His grandparents, who find themselves bored with their lives, but without the drive to be alone or seek other partnerships. His other aunt, the successful writer, who pines to live the sexually degrading exploits of her characters and who is obsessed upon by her neighbor, the overweight, socially awkward Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

There are poignant moments for each. The sister walking to work as a teacher, getting rotten fruit and vegetables thrown at her as someone crossing the picket line. The father who admits that he abuses young boys, but only "jerks off" at the thought of his son. The moment that Hoffman's character ejaculates on the wall, only to place a postcard on the wall for it to stick.

Then the boy. Walks into the dining room on Thanksgiving having reached orgasm on the balcony, and tells the family that he came.

If it weren't completely despressing, you might life.

'Reversal Of Fortune'

I'm happy I watched this film if for nothing other than understanding Jerry Seinfeld's joke on his sitcom when referencing his neighbor's coma as being (or not) a coma like Sunny von Bülow. I don't know why I just didn't look it up.

Anyway, the main theme of this film is justice and it provokes a certain amount of mental anguish attempting to deconstruct our current judicial system and the case of Claus von Bülow.

Claus was blamed for Sunny's vegetative state, which lasted 28 years until her death in 2008 (which completely passed me by), after was injected with insulin.

The film was adapted from Alan Dershowitz's book of the same name. Clearly, this was going to be a biased account in film.

Nonetheless, Claus is painted clearly as the murderer: He'd been unresponsive and lackadaisical during an earlier incident, they'd been on the verge of divorce and Sunny had all the money. Meanwhile, he was sleeping with another woman.

After Dershowitz took the case, it all changed. Facts were blurred or testimony questioned. Dershowitz and Claus won the appeal and the latter was set free. He'd later get a divorce and his daughter with Sunny actually took his side and she was written out of the will by Sunny's rich family.

What never changes is Claus' probable guilt. In the United States, you are innocent until proven guilty and you must be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt by a jury of your peers.

This is all fine and good until you come upon a case like Claus. By all intentions, Claus was guilty. I think his lawyers believed that and there's little to doubt that this is the case.

Claus didn't win in the longterm. He wound up divorce from Sunny and didn't get any of the money. He did escape prison, which means something.

What do you do with someone that is probably guilty, but do to any number of circumstances can not be convincted? By the great laws of this land, that person is innocent. Nothing you can do.

However, it's maddening seeing Claus simply get away with something. It's never right if someone is wrongly accused or even wrongly convicted of crime. To me, it's equally as wrong if someone is not convicted of a crime. We will never know if Claus drugged his wife. Maybe it was her recreational drug use that did her in. Maybe it was his syringe.

It is good enough to stand up for the rights of the accused (like Dershowitz) if, indeed, that individual is guilty? Here we must understand that attorneys are not merely defended a person or a company. They are defending the principals spelled out in our torts and Constitution. It's bigger than Claus or O.J. Simpson or Lizzie Borden or Charlie Manson.

It's about the truly innocent person accused next that needs cases like Simpson and Claus to work out the way they did, no matter how unfair it may seem.

In this film, Dershowitz is often cited as defending two black guys on death row for a murder they didn't commit. There is no resolution to this case in the film, but it's brought up all the time because its that case that is helped or hurt by whether or not Dershowitz and his team can get Claus off the hook.

'A Nod Is As Good As A Wink'

Why did they rename the band from Small Faces to Faces?

Because at 5-8 and 5-9, Ron Wood and Rod Stewart were marginally taller than the rest of the remaining band. Fun fact.

The Faces are one of my favorite bands one of the more understated 1970s rock bands. Artistically, they weren't as progressive as other bands like The Who, the Rolling Stones and others. The Faces were who they were. They had driving and deep guitar riffs that were unrelentless.

They were a rock band and they played rock songs. They were funny and goofy. They never took themselves too seriously and they wanted, more than anything, was a couch to sleep on and a gig to play that night.

'Olympia '64'

I like it when people are called "national treasures." Like The Beatles were considered like an actual product that belonged to England that only those English could fully enjoy and understand.

Jacques Brel was that to France. He's actually Belgian, but people rarely make the distinction either way. Edith Piaf was the same way and both of their careers overlapped as these ... singers.

The United States doesn't have singers of this type. Yes, we like singers and the closest comparison is probably Frank Sinatra. Then again, I don't know if we would consider Sinatra a "national treasure." The closest comparison is like John F. Kennedy.

The thing about Brel and Piaf is that they were regarded as a source of pride to a country. Kind of a hash mark for greatness, proof that France was better than any other country in the world.

Brel sold 25 million albums. He retired from touring at the tender age of 38, but if he was living the life like Piaf, he had a 50-year-old body.

Upon retirement from touring, he planned on sailing around the world (he'd already taken up flying) and wound up in the moving pictures. After a brief career up through the early 1970s, his health began failing. By 1973, at age 44, he knew he was dying. By 49, he'd died of lung cancer.

In terms of influence, I suggest listening to Brel (it's by no means bad music ... it's really good) and then listening to David Bowie and Scott Walker, who kind of crooning rock guys that almost shadow Brel's vocal stylings to the tiniest details.

Everywhere there is influence.

'Ananda Shankar'

To my surprise, I learned that Ananda Shankar is a guy. Which is a bit disappointing only because I thought "Ananda" would be a pretty cool name for a girl and the entire time I listened to this self-titled album, I pictured a female version of Ravi Shankar (essentially, sans beard) doing Rolling Stones covers.

Shankar is actually Ravi's nephew. Despite the sitar genius being in the family tree, Ananda learned the instrument at Banaras Hindu University under a different teacher.

In the 1960s, Shankar went to Los Angeles and jammed with musicians including Jimi Hendrix. This is when he released Ananda Shankar.

Shankar also wound up providing musical direction for a number of films and television shows. Later, his music was used post-humonously in the NBA sitcom "Outsourced" about an American sent to an Indian call center to manage.

But, to me, she'll always be Ravi's good-looking kid nephew.

'Pink Moon'

This is Nick Drake's final record capping a very short career.

It follows Bryter Layter, which Drake deemed was too crowded musically and received poor reviews. Downheartened, he fell into a malaise and refused to do publicity for Bryter Layter. The record company fell out of sorts with the artist.

Not expecting another album, they received Pink Moon, a stripped down record of just Drake and his guitar. It sold very little. He increasingly became more secluded eventually moving back in with his parents and smoking "unbelievable amounts" of marijuana, which is probably the most awesome description you could give to an individual.

Two years after the release of Pink Moon, Drake overdosed on antidepressants.

Then he'd get popular and sell records.

'Good Morning Vietnam'

It shocks me that Robin Williams somehow made it onto the 1,001 list.

To my knowledge, it's the only film included that has Williams in a prominent role. Not that he was doing Oscar-caliber work or a bunch of well-produced indie films ... but somehow Good Morning Vietnam made it, so who's to say something else wouldn't?

I did not see this film when it was released. I was far too young and all I remember are the television commercials with Williams animatedly screaming "gooooooddddddd moooorrrrrnnnniiiiinnnngggg Vietnaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmm!"

I continued to watch Williams' movies through the years. He almost always played someone that was at least 20 years younger than he actually was. He almost always had kids that were far too good looking to be his and married to a woman that would never marry a guy as ugly as he was, even if it was Sally Field. He played Peter Pan.

He also took dramatic roles or he played silly characters that had these really dark tendencies or circumstances. It was unfair. There's this silly guy and when he attempts to get angry or serious, all you want to do is laugh.

Good Morning Vietnam gives us two things. First, it's another chapter in 1980s films in which we got entirely too sentimental for the 1960s and the music. Films from this decade had more 20-year-old songs than they did songs from the era. Ferris Bueller danced to "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles.

It also gives us funny-serious Williams. This is the Williams that believed that a good joke could cure all ills. Like the Vietnam War. Either Williams' character is genius. Or he's a shortsighted idiot.

We'd like to think that laughter is a cure-all. Williams wants to laugh all the problems in the world away. That doesn't work. Naturally. So, Williams gets angry. He chases the Vietnamese terrorist seeking answers. He gets in fights and yells at people.

Meanwhile, I just laugh because no one is taking this guy seriously. He can't even act angry. Chances are, he was too high on coke anyway to be genuinely pissed.

'The Bigamist'

I failed to initially see the signficance of this film. A simple black-and-white picture about a man that almost absentmindedly falls in love and begins taking care of two women. He marries both and his life is unraveled after trying to adopt a child with Joan Fontaine's character.

It's marginally acted, hokey 1950s storytelling (where the protagonist tells how he got in the pickle he's currently in), no huge names and you can find films made in the 1940s with better production.

Why this film is important is the director. It was directed by Ida Lupino. She not only plays Phyllis Martin, the so-called other woman, but it was directed by her. (Also, it was written by Collier Young, who had been married to Lupino and was currently married to Fontaine. But not at the same time.)

By the early 1950s, the "poor man's Bette Davis" quit the studio scene in Hollywood and became a free agent. When work dried up, she became a director. She didn't direct many films. In fact The Bigamist was her final motion picture before making the huge leap to TV where she directed a ton of stuff, including being the only woman to direct an episode of "The Twilight Zone." Also, she was the second woman inducted into the Director's Guild.

Sometimes, the film is inconsequential.