'The Pilgrim's Progress'

One of the greatest and most well-known religious texts of all time. It was published in 1678 and has never been out of print.

It's a Christian allegory, retelling the trek of "Christian" the pilgrim, who leaves his family and home to heaven, or Mt. Zion. Along the way, he meets and encounters a series of characters, appropriately named by their countenance or what kind of person they are ("Piety," "Timorous," "Prudence," "Obstinate" et al.)

The second part of the book is the tale of Christian's wife and her sons as they decide to follow their husband and father to Mt. Zion. Along the way, they collect a crew of characters.

The book in its entirety is a giant analogy for the trials and tribulations of a believer in the world as he or she is tempted and led astray and placed back on the straight and narrow by good characters and an unrelenting faith.

I've grown up in the Christian church and never did I know of The Pilgrim's Progress. I say this because religion is considered a sign of civilization. But never was it a sign of intellectualism, literature, thought and debate, which is a shame.

If you consider that the cornerstone of most religion are based on texts and the foresight of early progenitors to chronicle things that happened and the teachings of Christ or Buddha or Muhammad. It is thought and philosophy with its roots set solid in the idea of debate. Modern religion is not about just faith and belief in the things unseen. It's about what is real. That Jesus or Buddha were real people with real ideas about how we should treat others and act. Thoughts on what is good and what is bad.

Instead, it's become this parade of pep talks, TV networks, mega-churches and slogans. It's based solely on the idea that we real have no clue what happened so we have to live our lives within this bubble of faith instead of reality. Just doesn't feel right.

'The Ravishing Of Lol Stein'

The second book read on this list from Marguerite Duras, the first being The Lover.

Duras, from my estimation, gets the most out of less. In both books, there's not a lot going on. In The Ravishing ... Lol Stein (for whatever reason, the middle initial V is left off the American translation) is jilted at the age of 19 by her fiance at dance.

The story jumps years ahead to when Stein returns her to her childhood home after suffering her breakdown, getting married and having children, she inexplicably seeks out her former best friend, who she finds is having an affair, Jacques, who becomes the narrator halfway through the novel. Lol seeks companionship with Jacques and there's these weird, unspoken moments when you think the former best friend had some kind of hand in the incident at the dance when they were teenagers. And there's no real clue as to why Jacques is so sought after.

Anyway, read Duras and you are left with more questions than answers.

'Sansho The Bailiff' & 'The Story Of The Last Chrysanthemums'

Even when Japanese filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s weren't directly ripping off Shakespeare, they always seemed to mirror stories and plots from the the Bard (who stole all of his stories from the Greeks).

This isn't a criticism. In fact, I'd like to know more. Why does it feel that almost every noted film from Japan from this era seem to follow very consistent patterns in storytelling? Because they all do.

In Sansho the Bailiff, a governmental representative and his family are banished to an outlying land. Eventually, the children and mother are kidnapped and solid into slavery and prostitution, the children wind up at the camp of Sansho, a miserable, and violent steward of the camp, who brands the slaves if they try to escape.

Under the guise of taking a sick prisoner to the wilderness to die, the brother and sister hatch a plan of escape. The brother goes with the sick prisoner and the sister ends up drowning herself to prevent torture. The brother makes it to a monastery and eventually to a local governor, where he proves his identity, and due to his relation to his well-regarded father, is given his own governorship. From rags to riches.

As governor, he arrests Sansho and frees the slaves. He learns that his sister committed suicide and he begins a search for his mother, who he finds living on a beach, old and blind. There he learns his father is dead. And that's where it ends. It's so entirely Shakespeare that its a wonder the guy didn't write himself 400 years ago.

These two are films from Kenji Mizoguchi, one of the masters of Japanese filmmaking. He died at the relatively young age of 58 of luekemia. His work spanned from film's infancy in the 1920s to the 1950s, when Sansho the Bailiff was completed just a few years before he died.

If nothing else, Mizoguchi was regarded as one of the first and great feminist directors. I don't know if Mizoguchi intentionally directed female characters to be how they were, or if it merely happened the way it happened. To me, a feminist director is exacting and does things on purpose to espouse a certain message. I never got that his "feminism" was forced into the film as a sort of message.

Certainly, in The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, the female lead is the hero of the film, the voice of reason and encouragement as the male characters tend to rely on self-doubt and the destruction of relationships. Certainly in Sansho the Bailiff, the male lead is the "hero" in that he exacts the revenge and rights the wrong. But it is the bravery of the sister -- calmly, methodically drowning herself in order to not be a liability and also resisting the power of Sansho -- that keys the film's latter half.

'Forbidden Games'

There's an extremely poignant scene at the beginning of this film where a line of people in their wagons, buggies and cars are attempting to flee German bombers somewhere in the French countryside.

In one wagon, a little girl's dog jumps out of her lap and over a bridge. The little girl jumps off the wagon in chase. Her mother follows suit along with her father.

A German pilot strafes the area and kills the little girl's parents. Meanwhile, and my eyes maintained focus on this, the girl is holding her dog and it is without a doubt dead. It's limp body is there in her arms and she is not fully aware of the three losses she just incurred thanks to running away from the wagon.

A family comes by, throws the dog's carcass into the river and takes the girl, who runs away again and starts the full plot of the film as she winds up staying with a farming family and striking up an unusually strong bond with the youngest boy before she is taken to stay at an orphanage.

I still couldn't get my mind off that dead dog. I mean, I might have been a fake dog. However, there is no mistaking the twitching and movement of the dog's head and body as its whipped to and fro in the action. If it's not a real dead dog, then it's a brilliant prop that looks surprisingly like a real dead dog.

But this is the 1950s. Chances are it's a real dog and it was killed on the set, somehow. Just the oddest thing I've seen in a long time and I can't get it out of my head.

'The Ten Commandments'

A perfect example of a bygone era of films.

When the director walked from behind a curtain on the "stage" and introduced the film and cited the texts the writers used to construct the story. An introductory score. An intermission. A three-and-a-half-hour film about a Bible story.

We will never see these things again, even on their own, more or less in one film.

All the while, despite all this decorum, Cecil B. Demille changed the name of Nefetiti to Nefetiri because he didn't want people to make "boob" jokes.

This was Demille's final film. He actually had a heart attack during the film missing two days of work and then coming back, against doctor's orders. He probably figured if he's going to keep all those extras around for three weeks filming the "orgy" scene (sex in film at the time was a man picking a screaming woman up and running off with her), that he should battle through a bad ticker.

I remember distinctly every Easter eve finding this on ABC. I don't ever remember watching all of it in one sitting before this go round, but I've seen all of it in bits and pieces, here and there.

It's really a feat in filmmaking. This is 1956. This is the era of painted popcorn, filming large tanks of water and red dye in the water. No telling how they pulled off the trick of Moses' staff turning into a cobra.

Speaking of, isn't that a really weird part of the story. So, God turns Moses' staff into a cobra. OK. That's supernatural. This is God. He can whatever he wants.

Ramses proclaims its a magic trick and has his, I guess, magician pull the same trick. I guess my point is that what is more remarkable in this scene isn't that Moses has God's ear, but that the other guy is a real fucking magician and can conjure snakes.

'The Golden Coach'

This is a really good Jean Renoir film about an Italian acting troupe in Peru in the 18th century. It is an entertaining film and I highly recommend it.

I could go on and on about Renoir or the plot. Instead, let's look at these beautiful movie posters.

'Jane Eyre'

I finished this book today. I finished it in my local Starbucks.

As I was ordering my drink, the cashier noticed my book and said that he'd started it months ago, but could never get into it. That Jane Eyre was on his reading list.

I told him it was unbelievably good, and I stand by this judgement. I have many preconceived and unfair notions of 19th century literature from female writers. I think Jane Austen is insanely overrated. Yet, Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte are different.

Jane's a different character. She's not some relatively well-off, misguided and quirky Victorian damsel, who always finds the right man that wholly understands her and will always take care of her. No, Jane is not like that all.

She's an orphan, who is verbally and emotionally abused and deprived by a loveless aunt. She's eventually cast off to a boarding school, where she is depressed and downtrodden. She survives a consumption outbreak and eventually learns the place of a student to become quite the scholar.

No, she's not saved from poverty. She becomes a governess for Mr. Rochester's ward, Adele. She does wind up falling with love with Mr. Rochester, but the wedding is stopped when it is learned that Rochester is already married. In fact, it's the crazy loon living in the attic (as if he really thought he'd get away this this?).

Eyre, however, is independent and doesn't take shit off anyone. She leaves, sans cash, belongings, and finds herself destitute and on her final leg before she happens upon her long-lost cousins.

Eyre is an independent woman only because she values education and scholarly pursuits and she's unafraid of hard work and finds no position too low for her, probably stemming from her position as an orphan.

All of this pays off in a way when she learns that her uncle died and left her some 20,000 pounds, which she graciously shares with her three cousins.

With the foundation of scholarly pursuit, goodness and hard work, she is able to support her cousins and, eventually, Rochester, who lost his eye sight and hand after a freak fire.

Eyre's a different breed because there's literally none like her in all of popular culture. The self-defining, independent woman. If she were born in 1966, Jane Eyre would have become an engineer or something.

'The Beautiful Troublemaker'

A four-hour film based on a short story. Something just isn't right here.

A four-hour film about painting. Although the artsy nudity helps usher the non-plot along.

Jacques Rivette actually directed this film pretty late in like. He was 63 years old when the film released and its widely considered his best film ever.

Rivette's working in five different decades including five films in the 2000s and nothing since his shortest film (84 minutes) 36 Views from the Pic Saint-Loup in 2009.

As many minutes as Rivette's films run, you would assume there'd be something appealing about part of it, but there's really not. Snotty people complaining about their lives. There's only so much that I can take of this.

'Vagabond'

Vagabond was written and directed by Agnès Varda, known around these parts for previously reviewed films Cleo from 5 to 7 and The Gleaners and I.

If I can make a quick observation, I had no idea that this film was made by Varda and if you'd forced me to guess, I would assume it was a man.

This assumption based almost solely on the first scene in which Mona -- who we would learn is the main protagonist -- is found dead in a muddy ditch, her body twisted, her face and body frozen and looking like a corpse who died a second death. A vagabond, to draw in the film's English title.

There was something raw and unforgiving about the way Mona is laid out there and the rather callous nature of the onset of the investigation of her death, whether it was accident or homicide. I just assumed that only a man could treat a woman like this whilst a female filmmaker would provide a more feminine avenue for Mona's death. I think back to Cleo from 5 to 7, how neat, clean and sophisticated the vagabond (Cleo) was in that film made, granted, 20 years earlier.

Knowing Varda made the film now, I think stylistically it has a lot of similarities to her 2002 documentary, The Gleaners and I. Both set in the wind-swept and grey French countryside, the area that looks inhospitable and dank. Perfect settings for both films.

'Ariel'

The Finnish film industry is not as accomplished as you might think. Especially considering they're so close to Sweden and Norway.

No, the Finns are pretty good at hockey, not so good at making films. Or they don't try as hard.

Aki Kaurismäki is, by far, the most prolific Finnish director of all time often portraying the trials of the poor, rural proletariat struggling against the machine that spits them far more than it makes them millions or even remotely successful.

He is also known for making short films. Ariel runs 73 minutes. He has stated that a film shouldn't run longer than 90 minutes.

Maybe the Finnish aren't as prolific, but they're smarter.

'The Burmese Harp'

One of the earliest films that portrayed, fondly, World War II and the Pacific fighting from the point of the view of the Japanese. Years later, Clint Eastwood would do the same with Letters from Iwo Jima.

I think it audacious to think that the Axis troops -- the steadfast Germans and the proud Japanese -- were just cold-blooded murderers willing to die before surrending. Moreso the Japanese. Not tha they didn't have their convictions because they certainly did, to a point.

On the other hand, a lot of them probably did not want to die no matter how much they really wanted to procure small islands in the Pacific.

Of anyone's reasons to get wrapped up in such a war, I'm not entirely clear on Japan's. The Germans thought they were a superior people, whether that was racial or just philosophically superior in a continent with such a long and rich history. The Germans thought they were on top, a maniacal leader who thought he was destined rule the world for 1,000 years.

The Japanese are still a mystery to me, really. As much as Germany's militarization was caused by the aftermath of the Treaty of Versaille that ended World War I, it also perpetrated Japan's expansionist ideals. Japan fought on the side of the Allies during World War I and took a number of islands, other areas on the mainland and a large chuck of Siberia.

They were forced to give most of everything back. So, part of the expansionist doctrine is rooted in Japan getting the shaft after World War I, after fighting when others (see: Russia) quit.

I still don't know if all those 17-year-old boys were willing to die for all of it whether they chose to or not.

'Docks Of New York' & 'The Blue Angel'

Both films were directed by Josef Von Sternberg about two years apart. Of course, they are different breeds of film.

Docks of New York was silent, released in 1928. The Blue Angel was a talkie, the first in German, released in 1930.

The Blue Angel also was the debut of Marlene Dietrich and the first of eight collaborations with Von Sternberg. Oddly, typically when there are this many opportunities to work together, there is more than likely some kind of relationship. Reading both of Von Sternberg's and Dietrich's bios, they apparently didn't have, at least, a very open relationship. Anyway, it's not reported and the idea that Von Sternberg never got to sleep with Dietrich is sort of tragic.

Dietrich's portrayal of Lola Lola was the apparent inspiration for Madeline Kahn as Lili von Schtupp in Blazing Saddles, despite I thought it was built more around Dietrich's character in Destry Rides Again (a film in which she co-starred with James Stewart ... and they had an affair ... what was Von Sternberg doing?)

The film was also a collaboration between Von Sternberg and Emil Jannings, the first being The Last Command. The pair had a massive dispute before reconciling and starting a project about Rasputin and finally doing The Blue Angel.

Von Sternberg died of a heart attack at the age of 75. Having never slept with Marlene Dietrich. We think.

'Tsotsi'

A brilliantly beautiful film. Tsotsi is a local thug in the shacks outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Attempting to steal a car, he gets away by shooting the car's owner.

He later finds out that the woman's infant son is in the car. Not a total thug, Tsotsi's conscience plagues him and he takes the baby back to his shack. Realizing he can't care for the baby, he recruits Miriam -- a perfect stranger, who has a small son of her own -- to help out.

Meanwhile, Tsotsi is wanted and he's having to hide his recent acquisition from his gang.

Throughout, there are these moments of kindness and humanity. Whether its one of the gang not killing someone or the hesitation that happens when a crime is being committed. When a human life doesn't seem as cheap as we'd all like to think criminals consider life to be worth.

There are hardened people. Those calloused by loss and this animal instinct to survive at all costs. However, I think that's 10 percent of all criminals. And criminals are like five percent of all humanity. People are more often good (although they are not inherently good ... we must work at it) and even the bad people, the most desperate, have their outer limits. Places even they don't want to go to.

'Children Of Paradise'

An interesting film because it was voted as the greatest French film of all time in 1995. Since I've seen this film and about two dozen others from the 1950s and 1960s, I find this hard to believe.

It's also interesting -- and this may be why it received such a distinction -- point is that it was filmed during the Vichy regime or German occupation of France. It was released in 1945.

The film was a bit of a rebellion against the restrictions the government set out to make on French art at the time. A time limit was set for 90 minutes, so the film was split into two.

Many of the extras in the film were Resistance fighters needing daytime cover and having had to work elbow to elbow with Vichy sympathizers. Several of the production crew were Jewish.

After the Allied invasion of northern France, filming was suspended. Some think only (the film was done in the south of France) to have the film be released after liberation. Cans of film were hidden in case liberation did come before release (which sounds dirty).

Robert le Vigan portrayed a snitch in the film. Ironically, he was actually an informant for the Nazis and he was sentenced to death by the resistance. He was tried and convicted in 1946. Although one scene with le Vigan remains in the film, he was replaced by Jean Renoir's brother, Pierre.

Historically and nostalgically, this film is probably the greatest in France's history. But is context of release important to the film's total impact?

'Joan Baez'

Joan Baez recorded her eponymous debut album in four days in the ballroom of a hotel in New York City. According to an interview, she and the producers could use the room in every day but Tuesday because bingo was hosted that day.

It was just Baez, her guitar and a pair of microphones. Some songs took one take and they moved on. A very stripped down, simple album filled with folk and kiddie songs.

Baez had a very interesting home life. Her grandfather Alberto Baez was a Catholic-turned-Methodist minister, who emigrated his family to the United States from Mexico. Her father, Albert, considered the ministry before turning to physics and mathematics and being a co-inventor of the x-ray microscope and writing one of the most popular physics textbooks in the United States.

Early on, the family converted to Quakerism. Her mother was Scottish and the daughter of of an Anglican priest. The family also lived all around the world due to the father's work in science.

'Ready To Die'

I remember reviewing Oasis' What's the Story (Morning Glory)? a while back and mentioning that it was part of the soundtrack to my 14 and 15 year old self.

The other part: Biggie's Ready to Die.

At the time, hip hop was virtually persona non grata in my life. I didn't just not get hip hop, I hated it. It represented all I hated about thoughtless, soulless popular music.

Then my friend Shane got a pick-up truck after he turned 16 and he used to pick me up and we'd trawl the neighboring city for girls and junk. The constant in the CD player: Morning Glory ... and Ready to Die.

I learned to love that album and listening to it now it's ridiculously obvious how fantastic this album really is. Biggie rhymes and freestyles like a mad man trying to outrun the devil. Like a man who knew that his time on this Earth would be heartbreakingly short and he didn't take a song off or let up at all.

As the story goes, Biggie was brought into the studio and recorded part of the album with A&R guy Sean Combs. Combs was fired and started Bad Boy Records. Before he got his feet back on the ground, Biggie wound up in North Carolina dealing drugs.

Combs brought Biggie back in, they finish the record and it winds up changing the landscape of hip hop in popular music.

'Songs Of Love And Hate' & 'Songs From A Room'

These albums are significantly better than Leonard Cohen's 1988 release, I'm Your Man.

It's Cohen at his best, which, in my opinion, is still not very good.

It's folk music for pseudo-intellectuals. It's poetry sung. And it sucks. Cohen plays all of his cards right. He's a man of mystique. He lives in a Buddhist monastery. Doesn't say too much and yet can't seemingly get out of the headlines in indie rock magazines and blogs.

His lyrics make as little sense as possible and it works because the way to sell records is to not make any goddamn sense.

He also wrote one of the most popular songs of all time -- "Hallelujah" -- is also doesn't make any sense and if not for the terrific melody would be 1000 times less popular than it is. Otherwise, all that needs to happen is some singer on reality game show to sing it and it sells 1 million copies of Jeff Buckley's version. Still, Cohen makes bank.

He's run a very tight ship, Cohen has. It's made him rich. Gotten him laid and probably made him a pretty happy guy. They should make a business plan on how to be a popular rock star with the minimum of talent.

Finally, what needs to happen for Dustin Hoffman to portray Cohen in a biopic? They look exactly the same.

'Dookie'

It's funny that if you Google "Dookie" the first search result is the Wikipedia page to Green Day's third album, the 1994 smash hit.

The second result is the Urban Dictionary definition for poop.

There are albums on the 1,001 list that have value for different reasons, whether they pushed boundaries, were popular or just brilliant. Dookie was popular, but it also a four category: The game changer.

I was told by a college literature professor that of all the people that say they read Moby Dick, probably 95 percent were lying. I'll go ahead and assume the same for people born after 1980 or so that say they cut their punk teeth on Black Flag or Circle Jerks or The Germs. That percentage increases the further you get away from, say, Los Angeles, New York or possibly Washington, D.C.

For a dorky kid living in the East Texas country, Dookie was our Damaged. It changed everything and not in the way that Nirvana's Nevermind changed the game. We didn't get Nevermind. It was full of influences and darkness that your average 13-year-old kid didn't understand.

Dookie we understood. Yes, Green Day sold out, and it was wonderful. The album's a pop-punk paradise. Re-listening to the record now, it's shocking that I knew 95 percent of the lyrics and how many "hits" there were off the album. It's melodic and danceable and singable.

I distinctly remember my first exposure to the album. I was watching MTV in my mother's house (I was 13 ... my parents had just separated) and the video for "Basketcase" comes on. It's the band, hair spiked with these wide-eyed looks on their faces wheeled into the activity room of an insane asylum. The lead singer has a guitar placed around his neck and he starts with the power chord intro. "Do you have the time ..." Like it was fucking yesterday.

The chorus comes in and there are harmonies. Harmonies with a distorted guitar being beat on like a rented mule? Then the end of the chorus and the machine-gun drums come in with that bass that had the best sound ever.

As accessible as the music is, the lyrics are even more so. Billie Joe Armstrong talks about masturbation, loneliness, depression, boredom and girls. There was a darkness to it, but unlike a Metallica album, it wasn't an obtuse or confused anger. It was an angry frustration of just always feeling left out.

We might have wanted to rage like Metallica or mope like Nirvana, but all we really wanted to do was pogo with Green Day. And masturbate.

'The Last Seduction'

This always played on HBO or Cinemax back when I was a young teen and I always watched it for the sex scenes. Remember it clear as day.

Later when Linda Fiorentino gained more mainstream noteriety, I'd always know her as Bridget from The Last Seduction, a film that awakened by carnal instincts as a teenager.

Still today, the scenes intrigued me without getting overly graphic, and it never got overly graphic. Still, the scene when she's laying naked on the bed in the moonlight with all those curves and skin. Shit. Women are awesome, beautiful creatures.

Oddly, I don't think I actually followed the film, because I didn't even know Bill "Lone Star" Pullman was even in the film.

It's really a neat film, a real homage to the 1950s thrillers like The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. The smoldering woman continually playing the men in her life for some long, drawn out end where she gets all the money and everyone else winds up dead or in jail without a pot to piss in.

Granted, how dumb can Peter Berg's character really be? Can he not hear or see the phone off the hook after Bridget indiscreetly dials 911? Then he perpetually repeats how he was raping her and killed her husband, all on tape? He's as dumb as a bag of hammers. Ain't no skirt worth all that.

Fiorentino, by the way, is an interesting person. She's an avid photographer and received a bachelor's degree in political science. She's also done a total of five films -- none of which I've heard of -- since 2000.

'A.I. Artificial Intelligence'

This film, upon its release, created a little hubbub because, as the story goes, Stanley Kubrick directed half the film and died without finishing it.

Steven Spielberg came in and finished the film. Critics or so-called critics stated that the break between Kubrick's part and Spielberg's part were pronounced.

I watched it under this assumption and didn't care too much for the film, Kubrick (who I love) or not. Also, it should be noted, I was really ignorant as to what really made Spielberg who he was and what made Kubrick who he was.

Knowing more, I can't see any difference as to style or plot from Kubrick or Spielberg. It's a pretty good movie upon second viewing. I thought the story was neat, a bit of a sci-fi Pinocchio and a statement on human's arrogance and our dependence on technology.

Reading more about, the Kubrick-Spielberg split is non-existent. Kubrick began working on an adaptation of "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" in the early-1970s getting the story's writer, Brian Aldiss, to work up a film treatment.

Spielberg entered the picture (so to speak) in the mid-1980s as a producer. By 1989, almost 20 years since Kubrick had him start on the screenplay, Aldiss was fired and in the early-1990s a treatment was presented to Kubrick, who set the project aside as he finished other films. In the ensuing years, the film would enter pre-production.

However, in 1995 the film was handed over totally to Spielberg and Kubrick died in 1999. Shooting began in 2000.

So, Kubrick's role in the film is limited. Spielberg co-wrote the screenplay. He directed the entire film. All Kubrick did was hand it off to Spielberg in the first place.

Does this make it a better film? The general consensus is that Kubrick is an awesome director and that Spielberg is emotional, nostalgic and hokey. He is the man responsible for the little girl in the red coat in Schindler's List, the children of Jurassic Park and E.T.

Spielberg's mark is all over this film because its his movie. Frankly, there's a ton more Spielberg than there is even an ounce of Kubrick. There are very Spiebergian scenes. The gladiator-like scene where the robots are cruelly destroyed as celebrities cameo and robot Kid Rock and band play their own brand of hard rock. Meanwhile, somehow Jude Law and the kid escape.

Also, the aliens. I don't see Kubrick doing that. But I do see him including the Teddy. A character I did not remember the first time, but enjoyed greatly this go 'round. He was funny and sort of a touchstone for everyone in the film. As if robots need touchstones.

I did like the ending. Where the gigolo and the boy find William Hurt's headquarters in the drowned Manhattan, where the boy and Teddy travel to talk to the blue fairy. I liked that the boy wanted his "mother" cloned for that one day. It was very Wizard of Oz with the understated idea that what they were seeking they always had. We measure "real" based on our anatomy instead of how we treat others. That's a very valuable point I think.

'Fahrenheit 9/11'

I did not especially look forward to watching this film.

Mostly because it's a documentary about Michael Moore -- a guy that I kinda liked after watcher Roger & Me in college, but a guy I've learned is a bit hypocritical and self-serving.

There's a lot here. I do recommend watching it because as much as I dislike Moore as a person, as a documentarian, he knows how to "create" a pretty compelling and intersting narrative.

Is it all true, actual, factual and real in the context that we are seeing it? No. Is there information withheld to prove a point? Certainly.

I started reading some critiques of the film and one wrote that Fahrenheit 9/11 was a satire. That, frankly, is the best word to describe. It's satire. Satires typically have a lot more fact that you might actually think and that's why it works.

The reason I dislike Moore is because he works himself into his documentaries, one that is about the president of the United States, politicians, foreign affairs and war -- none of which Moore knows anything about or is involved in. Still, he's a celebrity. Or has made himself into one. He's on the cover of the DVD and on all of the film posters. In most of the posters, George W. Bush isn't included: It's Moore peeking over with his signature ball cap behind a vanilla envelope. By the end of the film, Moore is fed up with the lying liars on Capitol Hill and he's going to take action. With a former Marine, he approaches legislators to get them to sign their children up for the military.

I get it. The Congressmen who are more than willing to send other people's kids to war would be unwilling to send their own.

I don't know what reaction Moore expected. They either brush Moore off entirely, say they won't sign up their kid or attempt to sign up their kid. For one, what parent would actually sign their kid up to go to war based on a pretty compelling argument from a documentary filmmaker on the street while you're trying to go to work? You at least ask your kid first, right?

Mostly, Moore was brushed off. Or so it was shown. By all accounts, the entire film is filled with instances that seem stunted and lacking -- as if there is more. Who knows how those Congressmen really reacted.

On the other hand, what good did that do? What good did the film do?

I once got into a debate with a friend about Al Gore and the green movement. It was my argument that Gore's support of the fact of global warming and the progression of green technology actually hurt the movement because of Gore's political background and affiliation. My friend argued, as I remember (he'll actually probably remember this and correct me next time) that Gore's reputation made it high profile and even if a percentage blew off the idea of global warming, there were others that adopted it and maybe changed their behaviors or ideas. That two percent (or five or 20) was worth alienating another 30, 40 or 50 percent.

I see his point. I don't know if was the best tactic, but I get it. Months after the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, George W. Bush was re-elected as president of the United States. Some critics said Moore comes off as a bully and a smartass. It could be argued that Moore chased many folks away with his attitude and very satirical nature. Many conservatives saw it as an attack. Maybe others didn't take it seriously.

Probably what Moore argued and maintained could not be communicated any other way or any way that would make a difference in how we see the war, foreign affairs and our government. Maybe this was the best way.

The other reason I dislike Moore is that he's highly disingenuous. Fahrenheit 9/11 was the highest grossing documentary of all time making more than $222 million.

In February 2011, Moore sued Bob and Harvey Weinstein claiming that the producers owed him $2.7 million. The Weinsteins countered that Moore had made $20 million already, a claim he hasn't denied.

So, this film made $222 million (meaning the studio and financiers made their nut back) and Moore himself made $20 million and is suing to get $2.7 million more.

This is the same man that villifies Congressmen for not sending their kids to Iraq, Dick Cheney and Halliburton for profiting off the murder to Iraqi civilians and American soldiers, and he mourns the death of his hometown of Flint, Mich. while, himself, turning a nice profit during its death rattle. Watch Fahrenheit 9/11. A vast majority of it is stock footage and archives. The rest is Moore doing interviews in Washington, D.C. and Flint. He's not in Fallujah or Tikrit.

Listen, I don't begrudge Moore making money for what he does. However, you run the risk of becoming a giant hypocrite. I don't doubt that Moore's donated a lot of money to veterans' funds or even the Flint Chamber of Commerce. Maybe he has, maybe he hasn't.

Still, Moore is not hurting. Remember, a straight documentary doesn't make $222 million nor does it make Moore a 20-million-dollar-a-film-guy.

A lot of dough for simply critiquing Bush's response to Sept. 11, 2001 in a classroom full of kids.