'Sweet Smell Of Success'

This film was a turning point in Tony Curtis' career.

In the beginning, studio executives advised against taking the role because it could damage his relatively young career (he was 32 at the time). However, he wanted the role in the rather cerebral drama because he wanted to prove he could act.

So he did Sweet Smell of Success and The Defiant Ones -- the groundbreaking 1958 film that put race relations on its head -- in consecutive years and thus a legend was born. Although, he'd do Some Like It Hot a year later. Sometimes you do have to do the money makers (see: cross dressing) so you can do the roles you really want.

Initial moviegoer reaction was as expected. Fans didn't like their pretty boy Curtis in this serious role as a asshole character. Burt Lancaster also took a risk in the film in his role. He was already an established actor and working on a relatively boring film with a first-time director was probably not the keenest of gigs.

Instead, the film became the critic's darling, a cult classic and one of the greatest films of all time.

By the way, A+ on the poster above. Beautiful.

'Pandora's Box'

As much as The Smiling of Madame Beudet was a groundbreaking film in terms of being made by a female director and having a feminist theme, Pandora's Box pushed its fair share of envelopes.

Let this film be a lesson to all of us. If you go around messing around with a bunch of guys, you are bound to be gutted by Jack the Ripper.

That's the lesson here: Lulu was a free-living socialite piece of ass who played every rich guy for the fool until it all caught up with her and she winds up as a prostitute. The film has everything from lesbian overtones, double crossing and Jack the Ripper gutting the main character.

Lulu was portrayed by American actress Louise Brooks, who partied, drank and philandered more than any male counterpart in film at the time. She had any number of lovers, even quite a few lesbian affairs. She was a heavy drinker since 14. Even during the filming of Pandora's Box, she frustrated director Georg Pabst by going out partying every night with her boyfriend of the time.

Brooks acted sparingly after Pandora's Box as her career failed to flourish with films with sound. Her final film was in 1938. She would die in 1985.

'The Smiling Of Madame Beudet'

This film is notable because it is considered the first feminist film. Certainly, it had to be a film directed by one of the first female directors, Germaine Dulac.

Dulac was a military brat eventually winding up in Paris living with her grandmother before the turn of the 20th century. She grew up as an artist, but eventually turned to journalism and criticism writing for the feminist publication La Française, where she later became a theater critic.

Dulac was visiting Italy before World War I when a friend of her was scheduled to be in a moving picture. Here, she learned the ins and outs of the artform and industry. She returned to France as a filmmaker and hit the ground running.

The Smiling of Madame Beudet was released in 1922 or 1923. It is just 54 minutes long. It is about a husband, who threatens to shot himself in the head to his wife. Pissed, the wife puts bullets in the chambers ready for the next time he thinks he is faking the end of his life. Unfortunately, things go all screwy.

With the unveiling of talkies, Dulac's took a bad turn and she spent the rest of her life doing movie newsreels. Dulac died in Paris in 1942. Such an important figure and not one "feminist" espousing The Feminine Mystique in a college classroom today knows her name.

'Wildest!'

In the 1950s, with big-band music waning in popularity, Louis Prima found himself at a crossroads.

The Italian immigrant could continue to schlep around the East Coast doing gigs for gas money, just enough to get by while trying to provide for a family.

Or he could take the deal offered to him: Regular side stage shows at The Sahara in Las Vegas, one of the city's oldest casinos and clubs back in the day when that was the rottenest city in the United States if you considered the clientele and the gangsters running the casinos, books and all that jazz.

Prima took the gig and it wasn't long that it was an extremely popular show featuring Prima's signature vocals. In 1956, he and his band recorded Wildest! at The Sahara in order to capture the energy that Prima and his players brought every night in their live performances. They wanted to capture 3 a.m. at The Sahara in 1955.

This is a really good album, one that would not only somehow influence David Lee Roth, but also directly lead to the the ill-advised resurgence of swing music in the late-1990s.

However, I think Prima's best performance is that of King Louie in The Jungle Book and his song "I Wanna Be Like You."

'The Hour Of The Bewilderbeast'

Many times, if you watch enough films, listen to enough records or read enough books which are supposed to be some of the best ever written, recorded or filmed in the history of mankind, you find a few duds.

The Hour of the Bewilderbeast fits that mold. You listen to it expected something grand and compelling. A melody that lays its hooks in you or a groove that can't make you stop listening. Unfortunately for Badly Drawn Boy, I was just underwhelmed and bored.

That's not to say that its a bad album because there is enough to like and maybe if you like the guy behind Badley Drawn Boy, or if you like really boring pop music, you'd probably get a lot of enjoyment out of this album.

If you are looking for the exceptional, or perhaps one of the 1,001 records I should listen to before I die. That's not what you get here.

'The Good, The Bad & The Queen'

An interesting concept: A supergroup with no official name releases an album.

If only it were good. And I think Damon Albarn and Paul Simonon are two cool dudes and just about anything from Blur and The Clash is alright with me.

But this sucks. I could barely listen to it without getting bored. Maybe one day I'll give it another shot and see what happens. As for now, it's just the bad and the queen.

'High Sierra'

If the woman doesn't get you killed, the dog will.

Humphrey Bogart's Mad Dog Earle is killed during a shoot out with police on a mountain after he attempts to retrieve his dog, Pard (which was Bogart's actual dog, Zero, which is an awesome name for a pet), and is shot in the back. Just like Jesse James.

Women played a huge part in this little escapade, too. There was Velma, the club-footed hillbilly that Earle paid to get her foot fixed only to find out she was spoken for. Earle was probably wondering why the boyfriend didn't get her foot fixed, but he realized we are all pawns in this chess game of life. He was a pawn, used to set up Velma's next move. Hussy.

So he jumps to Marie, played by the extremely average Ida Lupino, who's been all over him the entire film but to no avail. He winds up getting treed up a mountain and shot in the back trying to get his sticking dog. It was all Marie's fault.

'Ordet'

A very fascinating film based on the play by Kaj Munk, a Danish pastor.

Munk's interesting in his own right. He was a foster kid after his parents died and he quickly found himself in the Lord's work. He had stated a certain admiration for Adolph Hitler for unifying Germany and even advocated a Nordic dictator that would unify Scandanavia. However, he opposed the Nazi occupation of Denmark, despised the Axis actions against the Jews and wrote plays and newspaper articles decrying these actions and criticizing fascism.

For one of those plays, Munk was arrested by the Gestapo and murdered and left in a ditch. He is considered martyr (which I thought was a religious thing, not ideological) and his death is considered a starting point for the Danish Resistance.

Ordet is not political. It revolves around the patriarch of a farming family and his three songs: One of which is a married father and athiest, the second studied too much Kierkegaard and thinks he's Jesus Christ, and the third wants to marry the town tailor, but is disallowed between differing thoughts on being a Protestant, which is about the most ridiculous thing in the world, but this Denmark. I mean, the film has a guy that thinks he's Jesus and the kids being disallowed to marry due to ecumenical differences is still the nuttiest thing ever.

Things round out when the crazy brother resurrects the eldest brother's wife after she perishes after child birth and also ends up bridging the gap with the marriage thing. And it ends happily ever after unless you consider having to live the rest of your life with the lady that was dead for an hour. Really creepy.

People really need more shame regarding death.

'The Big Red One'

Again, all kudos to the late, great Lee Marvin. The guy was a beast of an actor and he was a total true badass (having served in World War II and getting shot in the ass ... as previously reported on this blog ... and the rest of the Internet).

The guy was extremely good and he probably has a total of 40 lines in every film. "The Big Red One" does not refer to say a person, but instead an actual numeral, one (1) and the U.S. Army's First Infantry Division (which wore a big red 1 on its sleeve).

It's a surprising film given that it was released in 1980 (actually, one day after my actual date of birth) and probably had some of the most realistic battle scenes in cinema. Granted, it was no Saving Private Ryan, but the scenes are very chaotic and violent.

It also stars Mark Hamill during a time when a majority of human beings knew him as Luke Skywalker.

While watching it, I thought about when we were kids and we'd discuss which branch of the armed services we'd join if we were forced or decided to do it.

I can't really swim. Well, I swim better now than I ever used to so it seemed that the navy and marines seemed out of the question. In fact, I asked a recruiter in high school whether you needed to know how to swim to join the army. He said you didn't, but I only assumed he was lying because he was speaking to a library full of promising recruits and if all it took was a little white lie to get me join the ranks, then so be it.

All things equal, I think the navy seems pretty cool. I could probably get a lot of satisfaction out of touring the world and living on a submarine or battleship. However, I think it comes down to the army. They stick to solid ground a lot, the air force seems too hoi polloi and the marines are so stuck up. Army it is.

'Ashes And Diamonds' & 'Man Of Iron'

Going through these lists -- particularly the films and books -- you realize how much art from Poland regarding World War II, the Holocaust and post-war politics there's been.

I could review another four or five things I've read or watched the last two weeks that would fit into this theme.

Andrzej Wajda directed both these films. He's regarded as one of the best directors of all time, certainly one of the top three or five in Europe and certainly the best in Poland.

He is known for keeping his finger on the pulse of Polish politics and goings on addressing the Solidarity Movement (Man of Iron) to post-war assassinations, labor unions and coming to grips with whatever split apart their country.

It's a horrid little place despised and invaded by both the Russians and Germans within the span of a year. They fought and killed their neighbors and friends in a sort of self-preservation. Large chunks of their population disappeared in ovens and mass graves, in the swamps and forests, in a matter of three or four years. As much of a set of turdburgers as the Poles were in how the Holocaust went down, they also resemble a bunch of eight-year-old children, who don't know how to take care of themselves.

Fact is, nobody in that country can really trust each other. Wajda's father was killed when the filmmaker was 14 during the Katyn massacre (22,000 Polish prisoners of war were murdered by Russian decree).

A lot of Wajda's films focus on post-war, labor strife as the country attempts to build itself. Even in these cases, there is class warfare as the country tries to transition from an agrarian society into an industry juggernaut considering the size of the country and its location on the outskirts of Europe and Russia. All the while, per the characters in his films, they can't seem to escape the skeletons in the closet. Just can't stop tripping over themselves.

'Open Your Eyes'

I've seen this film and the American remake, the very underrated Vanilla Sky, over and over in order to see all the plot points in the flashback in addition to all the little things that I think make the film(s) pretty special.

There are the facial expressions, the words and tone of voice that the characters use. How things are said is very important due to all of the tense relationships and the fact that half the film is this guy's dream.

I think there are two characters who remain very ambiguous: Sofia and Pelayo. I don't think it's clear that Sofia and Pelayo are ever really "dating" or just going to a party together. Now, is it wrong to steal your buddy's date to a party? Sure. But, hell, you're the head honcho. And it's never clear whether or not Peyalo is really Cesar's real friend or if he's just maintaining good relations to maintain funding for his writing. Peyalo is a very untrustworthy "friend."

I think the most telling scene in the entire film is when Sofia agrees to meet Cesar, but winds up bringing along Peyalo. The trouble is that all the characters kind of talk out of both sides of their mouth. They say they are "OK" when they're really not. Sofia says she's OK with being around David and his disfigurement, but as earnest as Sofia is, I don't know if that's true.

Are Sofia and Peyalo uncomfortable because of the way Cesar looks or because he's such a self-hating, macho asshole?

The truth is that Sofia and Peyalo were going to leave Cesar behind in reality, the non-dream state, and that sucks no matter how you slice it. It was Cesar's dream to have these people love him. That to me is the acme of loneliness.

'The Maltese Falcon'

The fact that this was adapted 11 years after publication with Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart into one of cinema's finest films sort of does the book an injustice.

It's really good and I think better than some of Dashiell Hammett's works. It also marks the introduction of Sam Spade, one of the foremost literary detectives of all time and the model for Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.

Spade is interesting only because his train of thought, his motivations and his drive is completely and utterly unknown to everyone. Even the dumb characters in the book.

Spade works to "solve" a number of issues. He dislikes the cops as much as he dislikes the criminals that are working the other side. His partner is murdered and his motivation for finding the murderer lies with the adage that a guy has to stand up for his partner, even after they are murdered. He also says a partner getting murdered is bad for business. Meanwhile, Spade is screwing his partner's wife and, thusly, becomes suspect No. 1 for the police.

All the while, we get brief glimpses into what drives Spade. We think he is a character with morals. He's also a guy that suggests he'd let his girlfriend get away with murder if there were a greater financial reward.

Certainly, Spade is not a black-and-white character, not unlike the anti-heroes in popular cable TV series like Jimmy McNulty in The Wire, Tony Soprano in The Sopranos or even the serial-killer serial killer, Dexter. These are complex figures, who are probably inherently bad people, yet we can't help but think they are good and a lot of things they do is good.

Spade calculates the risk versus the reward in every scenario and skates the thin patch of slippery ice between being lawful and good and immoral.

Meanwhile, the Maltese Falcon is still out there somewhere.

'Das Boot'

A three-and-a-half hour German film about a submarine.

I dove right in and was thoroughly impressed maybe far more than I expected to be.

Das Boot is noted for its reality. The actual captain of U-96 of which the film is based and other consultants were brought in by director Wolfgang Peterson to make sure the film showed "what war is all about."

It is by no means an action-packed three-and-a-half hours. It's filled with as much tedium and boredom as the actual sailors felt while out to sea for six months. We, the audience, are tested along with the crew. We realize that serving on a U-boat was not extravagant and required a lot more chasing -- goose chases, if you will -- only to find out your prey have already gone somewhere else. Actually, neither of us are being tested. They're actors and we're on our couches eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

A big theme of the film is politics, or the relative lack thereof when you're in the middle of the ocean dodging depth charges. At the beginning of the film, the captain and crew are at a club in La Rochelle the night before their departure.

There a drunken crew member openly mocks not just Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler. While out to sea, we learn that just one of the crew was largely pro-Nazi. Most were apathetic or apolitical whilst the captain was openly anti-Nazi.

As this might seem ridiculous considering our ideas about Nazi Germany and everyone being on board, according to one U-boat commander, party loyalty or zeal were not considered for U-boat assignment until later in the war when the battle at sea was being lost and morale waned. Another historian has noted that U-boat crews were probably the least pro-Nazi of all the German armed forces.

'Down By Law'

I expected absolutely nothing out of this film and was pleasantly surprised by what transpired. All this due to Stranger Than Paradise.

Expecting 90 minutes of pompous pointless dialogue and Tom Waits being Tom Waits, I was given a story with compelling characters and a plot that moved and remained animated.

I still think Waits was caught being Tom Waits, which can happen. It's not like he knows how to "act" in the strictest of senses. He was probably just playing a disc jockey turned set-up con as he would play a milk man, farmer or Wall Street day trader. John Lurie, another musician, although way less popular, fit as the more natural fight in front of the camera.

My favorite Jim Jarmusch appearance is in the HBO show, Bored to Death, starring Jason Schwartzman as a struggling writer, who takes to being a private detective not unlike Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler's mysteries.

In one episode, Schwartzman's agent, played by Ted Danson, gets Schwartzman an opportunity to write a screenplay for a Jarmusch film. When he belatedly goes to turn in his screenplay, Jarmusch is found inside a largely empty loft riding a bicycle in circles.

If he doesn't do this, he should.

'The Adventure' & 'Red Desert'

Upon its first screening at the Cannes Film Festival, The Adventure was booed by the audience and director Michelangelo Antonioni and star Monica Vitti fled the theater. It was screened again and won the Jury Prize. People are fickle.

It did pretty well in the box office considering it has zero story and what action that is happening goes at a snail's pace. During one lengthy scene in which Claudia is running down a corridor in search of something, Cannes filmgoers repeatedly yelled "Cut!" Rough. It was also heavily edited for its supposed "immoral" love scenes. The swinging '60s hadn't really hit Italy yet.

The Adventure would launch Vitti's career as she become one of the foremost Italian actresses including Antonioni's Red Desert. Accordingly, neither film makes a heck of a whole lot of sense. The visuals and these wayward characters tend to serve as some sort of commentary. Like Red Desert has this almost dystopian view of industrial, post-war Europe. Even Vitti's character -- just after a suicide attempt -- is so sad and depressing, as you would imagine.

Interestingly, The Adventure begins with a group of young, beautiful society people on a yacht trip when they come upon a volcanic island. One of the girls, disappears, and the next 20 minutes of the film are these people searching for the girl and then the authorities coming in to find the girl or her body.

Instead, the film follows Claudia after the disappearance. They not only really address Anna's disappearance, but they don't even provide any kind of closure. Roger Ebert wrote that her disappearance and a lack of an explanation represented these people's pointless lives and how they can "disappear" at any moment. And he's a whole lot smarter than me so I'll go with it.

'Cat People' & 'The Seventh Victim'

Cat People was the unofficial prequel to The Seventh Victim made just two years before. A prequel only in that it was produced by the same guy and both co-starred Tom Conway as Dr. Louis Judd.

The odd thing is that it is intimated that Dr. Judd is killed by the cat woman in Cat People. Then he shows back up in The Seventh Victim, up to his ambiguously old tricks where you can't quite figure out of if he's a good guy or not. I tend to think not.

I find these films very interesting because them much like The Masque of Red Death deal with some very dark themes including Satanism. Maybe these evils seemed all too real in what we would consider a pretty straight-laced society. In the 1940s, a real evil existed in the Soviet Union and Germany. They had to seem other worldly and extreme much like the characters and demons existing in these films.

Simone Simon starred as the cat lady in Cat People. She was established in France and at the age of 24 she was signed to a contract by an American production company. Each attempt failed in the United States. Cat People is her biggest hit in the States. She made one film past 1956. She's 94 and hasn't done a film since 1973. Fallen totally off the radar.

It is notable that Simon had an affair with George Gershwin and Dusko Popov. Gershwin we know. Popov we don't. The relationship with Popov got the attention of the FBI as he was a double agent for the Germans and the British, apparently he was more of a teammate for the British than he was for the Germans.

Anyway, Popov had another acquaintance: Ian Fleming, who would allegedly use Popov, a ladies man, was the inspiration for James Bond.

Fun facts.

'The Tree Of Wooden Clogs'

This film played and I was in the room as it started and ended. I'm willing to leave it at that.

It's a three-hour film in Italian (many of the random conversations are not subtitled) using real farmers in the countryside as they kill pigs and do stuff.

I don't know what it's about. I couldn't literally understand 80 percent of it due to the subtitles and it may be good only because it's extremely real: Real people being filmed doing relatively real things.

All that's fine. But it was boring. And it was three hours of boring.

'A Night At The Opera'

At the time of its release, A Night at the Opera was the most expensive album ever made. Brian May later said that if the album hadn't succeeded, the bad would have broken up.

it was their fourth studio album and wound up No. 1 in the United Kingdom and No. 4 in the United States. So all the money spent wound up paying off.

Certainly, it's a well-produced album and listening to all the bells and whistles, it's no doubt that a lot of time and money went into the recording.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" alone seems like a cash cow of a song. Multi-layered vocals, complicated sections that flow from ballad to operatic interlude to hard rock head banging.

The film Wayne's World maybe didn't give us much as a society. What it did do is turn millions of 13-year-old boys in 1992 on to the genius of Queen and "Bohemian Rhapsody" all stemming from the scene coming from the club when Garth and Wayne are driving and miming theatrics around the song, meanwhile the backseat passenger just wants to be "let go" because he has to hurl. A real cultural touchstone.

The B-side to "Bohemian Rhapsody" is Roger Taylor's "I'm in Love with My Car," a tune that Brian May thought was a joke and that Taylor locked himself into a cupboard until Freddie Mercury agreed to put the song as the B-side. As "Bohemian Rhapsody" climbed the charts, "I'm in Love with My Car" also climbed the charts and got Taylor an equal amount of royalties.

This is only noteworthy because "I'm in Love with My Car" is probably the worst song in rock history.

It's so borderline vulgar and full of innuendo that you first assume its an analogy for a girl or lover or whatever. But when you really look at the lyrics it's really about Taylor's car, which is infinitely weirder.

'The Last Of The True Believers'

Nanci Griffith is a survivor.

Her high school boyfriend died in a motorcycle crash after taking her to prom. She was engaged to singer-songwriter Tom Kimmel and that was broken off. She survived breast and thyroid cancer. She battled a five-year case of writer's block until releasing her 2009 record, The Loving Kind.

The Last of the True Believers is her fourth studio album released in 1986 and is her first effort that steers from the folk efforts she previously had released and is much more country and western.

I've been very excited to listen to this album for no real reason. I do like the album title. It's hopeful. Also, I've had some luck on this 1,001 list with country female singer-songwriters and I was not disappointed here.

This is a very sweet, folksy album. Songs about innocent love and a slice of Americana. No complaints here.

'Whiskey Galore!'

This is a film about an island in the Outer Hebrides that has run out of whiskey considering the rationing during World War II and embragoes on shipping and whatnot.

Desperate, the island finds hope after a ship off the coasts wrecks and the contents -- whiskey -- are looting by the island's inhabitants and the adventure in keeping the contents from military and police officials.

It is based on real life: The SS Politician shipwrecked off an island in the Outer Hebrides and the inhabitants abscond with the spirited contents.

Watching these films and reading these books, you get to learn about places from all over the world. I try to research the settings as much as possible because I would think there are some meaning in how the author or director set his characters in a specific place and time.

The Outer Hebrides are a group of islands located northwest of Scotland. There are 15 inhabited islands in the Outer Hebrides. The islands were actually inhabited before the Romans came through, mostly by Norse invaders and the island was handed over to Scotland in the 13th century. Some structures on the islands, including the Callanish Stones, date back to 2900 BC.

Most of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Scottish Gaelic. On the island if Eriskay, the wreck site of the SS Politician, there are currently 133 residents. It should be noted that 28,000 cases of malt whiskey was made away with.

'Bob The Gambler'

If this film has any real fault, it's the name. Essentially Bob the Gambler in translation.

It really doesn't tell you much about the film itself. It's like retitling A Streetcar Named Desire something like Stan the Sadist, or Citizen Kane like Rosebud the Sled. There is so much they could've done to workshop the title.

Overall, it's a good film. A bit of a film noir and part French New Wave. About a good-hearted gambler, down on his luck, who plans the heist of a casino. The plan blows up -- basically, the players tell their girlfriends and wives and that never, ever works out ... ever -- and Bob winds up going on an unexpected winning streak at the table and forgets all about the heist.

He is escorted into a police car as they load his winnings into the trunk.

The director is Jean-Pierre Melville, a Jewish Alsatian, who joined the French Resistance once the Nazis took control and the Vichy government was installed. It was during the Resistance that he took the surname of Melville in honor of his favorite American writer.

During his time in the Resistance, he participated with Operation Dragoon, the very understated Allied invasion of the south of France during World War II, more than two months after D-Day and the invasion of Normandy. The Resistance were credited for cutting off communications among the German forces on the coast and helping with the relative ease of the operation as the Nazis were caught completely unaware.

After the war, he kept his adopted surname for the rest of his career.

'The Bird With The Crystal Plumage'

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is a part of the giallo film and literary movement in 20th century Italy of crime and mystery stories.

Giallo actually translates to "yellow" referring to the yellow covers of cheap paperback novels. The early inspiration was Alfred Hitchcock and corresponding genre took place in Sweden, France and Germany.

At the heart of the giallo sub-genre, was director Dario Argento, who got his start with co-writing Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in the West with Bernardo Bertolucci. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was his directorial debut and considering he had almost zero real experience in filmmaking. It was naturally a hit and defined Italian thrillers.

There's been worse debuts.

'Magnolia'

I watched this years ago when it was released on video, but I found it much better now than then.

I would not have figured that such a long film (three hours) with such a hodgepodge cast that makes a whole lot more sense now then it did then (most of those actors/actresses weren't nearly as popular then as they are now).

I don't know why I like it. I think Tom Cruise is really good playing himself, or the man that would be himself, T.J. Mackey. John C. Reilly steals the show and proves that it's kinda tragic that he's not doing any real drama any more. Philip Baker Hall proves himself one of the great character actors -- I mean, he was the librarian police on "Seinfeld" -- of our time.

The film is about irony, or coincidence, or chance or happenstance or all of that. How these selfish lives we're leading are a whole lot more connected than we think. We snarl and leer at people around us as if they're aliens or monsters. We abhor human contact and interrelations because we either assume they don't want to talk to us or we don't want to talk to them.

Instead, we never quite learn that it rains frogs at equal rate on one person as it does everyone else. Maybe it didn't need to rain frogs. But no one is forgetting that scene from the movie. Most will forget what the film is kind of about.

'Andrei Rublev' & 'Stalker'

OK. That's it. No more Andrey Tarkovsky. Finished all his films on this list. I feel like someone lifted a great weight off my shoulders, like the shackles have been loosed from my feet.

On some technical or artistic front, I'm Tarkovsky is the bee's knees. Granted, any filmmaker of note the past 50 years have paid their respects to the guy. And I'm not one to thumb my nose at a weird or offbeat film.

It's just that Tarkovsky doesn't make any sense, there's no characters to invest myself in and apparently "plot" doesn't translate to Russian. Oh wait. Sergei Eisenstein has more of a plot in his trips to the restroom than Tarkovsky has in all 4,000 hours of his.

Honestly, of all his films, I enjoyed Mirror and Andrei Rublev the most. The former you can tell came early in the game for Tarkovsky because it actually includes the frame of a story, even if it is three hours long, in black and white and in subtitles. Although, it did include a cow on fire (the cow was unfair, if not a bit freaked out - the horse falling off the stairs was shot).

Nonetheless: DONE!

'Me Against The World'

All things considered, Biggie's first album is substantially better than Tupac Shukar's marquee release that helped put him on the map.

Tupac's a bit to R&B for my taste. Too much single and even some atonal, irritating songs that split between Shukar's dark lyrics, mostly about getting shot and dying.

Clearly, he knew the route in life he was on. He had no misgivings. What I don't understand is what he died for? Was it a gang thing? Territory? Unless he was assassinated because he's the antichrist, war criminal or pedophile, I can't imagine a reason why Shukar's death was worth anything.

I guess he was "keeping it real" and I'm sure that was very important to him and all the guys just like him that consider this element of respect.

Remember, Shukar died riding in an expensive car in Las Vegans en route to spending an obscene amount of money at a club. Shukar wasn't on the corners. He wasn't still living the "thug life" or slinging crack. He was more than likely going to things (gamble, drink, get with a lot of girls) that your regular thug on the street would not dream of doing.

Maybe he came from that sort of life, but why he had to maintain it for the sake of getting shot to death makes zero sense. It's the definition of senseless.

Shukar, post-mortem, has somehow re-worked his image a bit. You can hardly read a world about him without referring to his reading and library of books left after his death.

I don't doubt he read these texts. I just wonder if he really understood them. Did he digest these books as a gang member and someone that would die to young or did he consider the books based on a life of peace and, well, living.

One of his favorites is Machiavelli's The Prince. If he'd read harder maybe he'd be here today.

'Physical Graffiti'

Led Zeppelin's a weird band. You start on your trek knowing about the popular albums (II, Zoso), then you dig deeper and begin to appreciate their bluesier side (I, III).

Just as you are about to call it a day, you discover their later albums and they knock your socks off and you can't comprehend why they would even release those other albums.

Physical Graffiti is an accomplishment, a benchmark in rock music. I can listen to the album over and over and have little problem with it. Double albums then were made because you had two albums' worth of great music. Physical Graffiti split into two would not have mattered in the least. The fact that they came up with all that music in one time period is remarkable.

The album cover is fucking awesome. The songs waft from driving and heavy to light and precise. Who kenw that the album almost never came about after John Paul Jones nearly quit to become a choirmaster at a cathedral.

One of the top 20 rock albums of all time. Book it.