'The Wanton Countess'

An aspect of the film actor is how they go about learning other languages. I've searched and searched for stories about Robert De Niro learning Sicilian for The Godfather II or whether it was something he had already known growing up in an Italian home (which was not the case).

So, how the heck did Farley Granger, an American actor, learn Italian so well and so (seemingly) fluently  to pull off playing an Austrian officer in The Wanton Countess?

Then I learned that it was overdubbed with an Italian voice-over guy. Then, why did they even cast Granger in the first place? Granted, he had had success in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train and Rope, but it was an Italian film, released in the United States almost as an afterthought. Co-star Alida Valli's career had hit a bump after controversy after the death of another actress connected her to nefarious happenings.

Granger's casting is a mystery. But it's good to know he didn't speak Italian on a whim.

'Amerika'

A most bizarre novel for a number of different reasons. First and foremost, you will not find another work from Franz Kafka quite like it. More realistic, Kafka admitted to taking cues from rereading Charles Dickens in addition to his own affinity for travel writing. This is more Jack Kerouac than anything else Kafka ever published.

Then again, Kafka didn't really publish Amerika at all. It was published posthumously by his executor, Max Brod, who disobeyed instructions to burn all unpublished works.

Amerika stems from a short story, "The Stoker," which serves as the novel's first chapter. The gaps therein, never completed by Kafka, are large. The questions unanswered turn maddening. Why exactly did his uncle -- who went through all the trouble of unexpectantly taking Karl in -- simply disown him for visiting another person? What was the intentions of Mr. Pollunder and Clara, especially in the scene involving Karl and Clara alone in the room and her fiancee lounging in the next bedroom? What were Karl's experiences with Delamarche and Brunelda, how did he escape?

Admittedly, these were never completed while Kafka was alive. And, by all accounts, we were never supposed to read this story in the first place to get so upset. So, I must blame Mr. Brod.

'The Unbelievable Truth'

The folly of undertaking such a cataclysmic task of watching all these movies or listening to a bunch of records is not understanding context.

Money has a lot to do with it. There's a huge difference in Independence Day or Titanic compared to The Unbelievable Truth, Hal Hartley's first feature film. Or, to compare apples to apples, there's a gigantic difference in Sleepless in Seattle and The Unbelievable Truth.

Titanic required the huge budget to achieve groundbreaking special effects to fake a gigantic luxury liner sinking into the frigid Atlantic. The amount of money to tell the story of two star-crossed lovers was, comparatively, cheaper.

Sleepless in Seattle required $21 million to essentially tell the same story as The Unbelievable Truth, which required $75,000. The two films were released four years apart.

Granted, Sleepless in Seattle is better than The Unbelievable Truth mostly because they spent more for better actors, better writing, better production and all the warm fuzzies that you get from watching the Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks romantic comedy. The other side of the picture is that no one was going to put $21 million into a film from an unknown director about a teenage girl that inexplicably falls for a guy just out of prison for manslaughter.

My point: The Unbelievable Truth wasn't even good for $75,000 and probably would have been exponentially better had they spent $4 million or $14 million. I suspect. Sometimes selling out is not the worst thing in the world.

'Scorpio Rising'

A short film from Kenneth Anger that explores, among other things, themes of hero/rebel worship, motorcycles, "cool" and even religion and Nazism.

Like it or hate it, the American Nazi Party (which I'm sure was increasingly popular in 1963) protested the film because they said it disrespected their flag. So, I guess if the Nazis are against it, it makes me for it in some associative order.

There's no dialogue outside of a persistent soundtrack of rock and roll music of the time, which doesn't necessarily tell a story as much as highlights the vague and ephemeral nature of "rebelliousness" or "cool."

'REPORT'

When you refer to filmmakers as "artists" you might be referencing guys like Bruce Conner more so than Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman or Orson Welles.

Conner was an artist and film -- or film collages -- were one of his media. He basically took existing newsreel footage and edited together with sounds to create film shorts. REPORT chronicles the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in October 1963 when Conner and his family were living in Massachusetts.

It's a quick-paced, tightly-edited 10-minutes short with camera footage of everything from Kennedy's arrival at Love Field to the limousine caravan through downtown to Lee Harvey Oswald's perp walk and his own demise due to the bullet from Jack Ruby's gun.

It was interesting to hear the news media orate the happenings, before they even knew what would happen, making odd references to guns or even to Jackie Kennedy's pink outfit. Other times, Conner takes a 10-second strip of footage, of the limousine carrying the president, and edits it to play over and over. You sit and just wait for the rifle bullets to blast through his skull. It's particularly tense.

'Seconds'

This is a spectacular film co-starring Rock Hudson, who is the incarnation of the middle-aged John Randolph, who decides to escape his hum-drum married/suburban/crappy job life for a ... do-over.

Not unlike Vanilla Sky (or the Spanish Open Your Eyes), he partners with some organization or company that that provides plastic surgery, a new home, career and life story. All the while, Arthur Hamilton remains uncomfortable in his new skin, home sick or possibly morally repulsed by being a living, breathing lie.

He partakes in an Bacchus-style orgy, hooks up with a hot neighbor and "becomes" and artist living on the beach and he can't handle his lie (or his liquor).

Randolph is best known, maybe, as Clark's grandfather in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (among more distinguished roles). He's virtually unrecognizable at 51 in Seconds. He had a round face and wider belt line. Although, if you looked close enough, you see it.

Interestingly, Seconds was Randolph's return to the big screen after being blacklisted. He had induced the Fifth Amendment while answering questions from HUAC and was a member of a Soviet-American organization (Randolph was a Russian Jew) that was an offshoot of a radical group from the 1930s. He didn't work from 1951-60 and didn't do a film until 1966.

'Sátántangó'

Seven hours later and I have conquered the "Satan's tango," or as the title translates to English.

It's a complex and insanely slow film ... or epic. Or gale of hot air. It's in black and white with very little dialogue and a ton of long takes. If you don't watch closely you miss a whole lot. And I missed a whole lot. But, hell, there's seven hours of film here. You make up for it with pure quantity.

As excruciating as this film was to watch, the most tense moment is when the girl, who later kills herself, is groping and harassing the cat and then later poisons the animal.

Otherwise, it's a real pick-me-up. 

'Performance'

Mick Jagger, at his absolute coolest, decided to become an actor. It was not a bad move.

It was short. Just two movies including the surreal Performance and as the Australian renegade Ned Kelly. The Rolling Stones were set to record a soundtrack for Performance, which co-starred the breath-takingly beautiful Anita Pallenberg, who was involved with guitarist Keith Richards.

Rumors flew that Jagger and Pallenberg were actually having sex during their love scenes. Richards, upon hearing the rumors, decided to sit in his car outside of the studio during filming. No, that doesn't seem completely insane.

Otherwise, it's really easy to see the influence this film, directed by Donald Cammell, on modern filmmakers, most notably fellow Brit Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino. The stylistic and plot similarities to Ritchie's film Snatch is almost eerie as there is characters akin to Turkish, Bricktop, Mickey, Cousin Avi and Bullet-Tooth Tony.

'Shanghai Express' & 'The Bitter Tea of General Yen'

These two films -- eerily similar in a lot of ways -- were released within a year of each other. Watching them and understanding how Asian characters, not unlike black or Hispanic characters, were portrayed in popular American culture, I started to think of our grandparents paying a nickel to see the latest film set in the mysterious and godless Orient and imagining their eyes when they consider the current China.

According to these films, the Chinese were an abhorrent, sneaky, manipulative and violent people, who were light years from the sensible culture of the west.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen is particularly disturbing or perhaps equally as groundbreaking in a lot of ways.

General Yen is portrayed by the Dane Nils Asther replete with drawn-on angled eyebrows and spike like a cartoon evil scientist. In a way, I don't know if it's about the barbaric nature of the power-hungry Yen as much about his wiles with the white missionary Barbara Stanwyck. Although she rejects Yen's advances, her subconscious betrays her as she has a series of dreams in which she is intimate with Yen.

Ironically, the film was controversial because it portrayed miscegenation as it shows the "Chinese" Asther kissing Stanwyck in addition to the insinuation of sex. Ironic because, obviously, it wasn't actual miscegenation because the Chinese man was portrayed by a white guy.

Stanwyck claims that the portrayed miscegenation was the reason it was a box-office failure.

Now, we see the kissing and sex as not very controversial at all considering ... it's pretty retarded to consider such a thing as controversial. And because Shakespeare wrote Othello 300 years beforehand.

Yes, I do think our grandparents probably never considered China as it is today, especially the pre-Communist China.

'Boogie Nights'

The beauty of Paul Thomas Anderson is how he puts together these stacked casts, these crazy web of characters and stories that build on each other rather than take away.

However, the truth is most of his casts are a hodgepodge of talent at different stages in their brilliant -- or soon-to-be brilliant -- careers.

Take Boogie Nights for example. Now, the cast is a who's who of actors and actresses. Then, it was a veritable collection of has-beens and nobodies.

The film essentially launched Mark Wahlberg's career post-music by, at least, legitimizing him as an actor.

Julianne Moore was an actress of some renown already and if anyone was nearing the top of her celebrity and ability, it was her.

Burt Reynolds was Burt Reynolds. The once stud of the 1970s and early-1980s had become a TV actor  of some success, but otherwise was an actor without any hits on the big screen.

Relatively speaking, Don Cheadle, John C. Reilly (who steals the show in Boogie Nights), William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (not to mention Luis Guzman and Thomas Jane) were in the infancy of their careers and hadn't near gathered the cred that they'd later relish in as award winners and bona fide stars.

It wasn't until Anderson did Magnolia did he truly have an all-star cast and many of them were just hold overs from Boogie Nights, most who would be in multiple Anderson films. They did a lot for him and he certainly made (and re-made) a series of careers along the way.

'Live at the Regal'

Artists and musicians very quickly find themselves cornered. Maybe it's partly due to their own doing, maybe for the sake of making money or whatever.

B.B. King probably became a bit of a cartoon character in the 1980s when he was on The Cosby Show, soap operas and commercials. You know you'd get a wide smile from that wide man and series of bluesy guitar riffs.

That's how King's music became sort of a punchline -- driving rhythm section accented by King's signature guitar from that noted Gibson ES-335, "Lucille."

And, honestly, he might have just gotten lazy, because his live album from 1965, Live at the Regal, is a jaunty and fun rhythm and blues record that goes beyond King's guitar playing. His showmanship and his group's overall repertoire and ability.

'Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water'

A long time ago I was in college. I'd almost always take morning classes in order to have my afternoons pretty free to do whatever I felt like doing.

Oddly, I found myself watching MTV's "Total Request Live" with host Carson Daly as  they rambled through the "top 10" music videos per viewers who were able to vote.

This is not as exciting as it seems. It was essentially the same seven to 15 musical acts, some of which were re-voted every day and they rarely even played the whole song.

A truncated list of the groups featured almost always pop princesses Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, boy bands The Backstreet Boys and N'Sync and "rockers" like Korn, Kid Rock and, naturally, Limp Bizkit.

I don't know the day the music died, but I surmise that the time between 1998 and 2001 was the lowest point in recorded American music in its brief history.

I could probably find a more vacant and asinine musical group than Limp Bizkit, but would it even be worth the search. Isn't Limp Bizkit the closest we will come to the gutter of American art? If it isn't, it's damn close and that's OK with me.

I don't understand the appeal. It's sanctimonious doofus rock oozing with masochistic overtones. Limp Bizkit and most popular rock bands of that time period and ilk were basically a series of apes pounding their chests. There is nothing of value here.

'Live and Dangerous'

One of the most masterful live records ever from one of the most underrated bands in rock history, Thin Lizzy.

They were an Irish band playing rock music  with a black lead singer. Their first hit, "Whiskey in a Jar," was a Irish folk song.

Live and Dangerous is connected to controversy as overdubs were used. To what extent is the question. The producer claims 75 percent of the album was done in studio. The band and others claim 75 percent was done love over the course of a few shows in London.

What is there is Thin Lizzy's undeniable groove and a line-up of face-melting guitar solos. Also, playing harmonica was "Huey Harp," or a bluesman known as Huey Lewis, whose own band, Clover, had just disbanded. Two years later, Lewis would be the frontman for one of the biggest selling bands in the world.

'Low' & 'Station To Station'

It's interesting listening to the 1,001 records I must listen to before I die and going through an artist's almost entire catalog, or at least a large portion of the music that they released.

This thrill is amplified if A) I don't know the artist very well or B) if he/she/it had various phases throughout a long career.

David Bowie fits this mold perfectly as never having the opportunity (or desire) to delve into his intensely varied and long catalog. I think Low and Station to Station are really neat records, maybe two of my favorite from Bowie's catalog, and I think they come at an interesting time in Bowie's career.

Station to Station was released in 1976 long after his Ziggy Stardust days and right after he released Young Americans, a soul record, which got him an invitation to perform on Soul Train, which sort of makes my eyes roll back in my head and causes seizures in my body.

Essentially, the 1980s started for Bowie as he got into Kraut rock along with synthesizers and cocaine. Whatever state his drug use was before, it skyrocketed during this time as he overdosed a number of times and come off in public as scatterbrained and ... well, a guy high on cocaine.

Station to Station also revealed his newest persona, the "Thin White Duke." Dressed in a dapper fashion, the Duke seems like an ordinary guy considering Bowie's pervious incarnations. Instead, he was a sort of of a representation of Nazism. The touring supporting the album put Bowie in hot water due to some hot opinions about Fascism, getting caught with Nazi paraphernalia and a photo which shows Bowie allegededly giving the Nazi salute.

Naturally, he moves to Switzerland and does an insane amount of drugs and does a lot of art. The next year he decides to clean things up and move to West Berlin. This sparked Bowie's Berlin Trilogy including the first album Low, another synth-inspired record, mostly known for its lyrical minimalism. Cited early on as a sales flop, it wound up selling a ton of records, even more than Station to Station.

You can't say that David Bowie didn't live life to its fullest.

'The Saragossa Manuscript'

I don't have a lot to say about this movie outside of the fact that it's extremely bizarre and and extremely long.

Running 182 minutes for a plot that wanders and skips to and fro is not an easy passage of time. It takes work and a certain dedication.

It entails a soldier during the Napoleonic Wars finding a book, the Saragossa Manuscript, that details the doings of his grandfather, also a soldier. While the film works as a sort of flashback to his grandfather's time, it also includes our hero interacting with a series of eccentric and odd characters from a sort of shaman to two Moorish princesses, who claim to be cousins and who also seduce him.

Or so we think. Whilst it is intimated that these people and scenes are real, the soldier regularly winds up waking up beneath some gallows.

I thought the movie would end with everyone realizing that the soldier is indeed dead, which might be the "truth" or the movie reality. And the people he encounters during the present are just ghosts or perhaps those helping the soul reach peace.

'Zabriskie Point'

An orgy. In the desert. With college girls.

Why isn't this film in college curriculum? In museums? Whole websites should be dedicated to that five-minute scene!

Orgy!!!!

'Duck Rock'

Malcolm McLaren is a pretty interesting guy even if his album seems pretty spare to me. Duck Rock supposedly exposed the British to hip-hop.

Duck Rock does have elements of hip-hop, but if it was really the catalyst for the genre breaking overseas, than so be it. It's nothing special: A veritable mish-mash of genres and world music set to a beat. It has no identity and that's it's major issue.

McLaren was an art school drop-out eventually becoming a bit of a tastemaker in London in the late-1970s when he managed the preeminent punk band, The Sex Pistols and most notably establishing the style aesthetic for the New York Dolls (who, if nothing else, are stylish) and the Pistols themselves. He was responsible for procuring their lead man, Johnny Rotten, and ushering in the band's wide-reaching influence and its look.

In his late 30s, I guess he got a wild hair and decided to do Duck Rock. Through the years, until he died in 2010, he was seemingly active doing quite a bit especially riding the coattails of Duck Rock and doing hip-hop albums and comps.

'Let's Get Killed'

Some time in the mid- to late-1980s, a 17-year-old Irish kid named David Holmes went to New York from his native Belfast.

He roamed around the city, the Bronx and Central Park and recorded the sounds of the Big Apple. He also recorded conversations he had with strangers, including the underbelly of 1980s New York City like pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers.

At one point, he and his companions were chased in the South Bronx as others attempted to steal his recording equipment. This incident and the resulting recordings inspired his breakthrough record, Let's Get Killed.

Sprinkled through the techno, trip hop and drum 'n' bass are the samples taken from the city and those conversations.

'Melody A.M.'

Röyksopp's origins go back to the early 1990s when Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland were 12- and 13-year-old kids interested in electronic music in a burgeoning Norwegian music scene.
 
Yet, you can point to one moment that turned their lives and musical careers on their ears: That’s when Geico, an American insurance company, used “Remind me” from Röyksopp's debut album, Melody A.M., for a commercial featuring a caveman on a moving sidewalk at an airport.
 
Is it better to burn out, fade away or get paid?

'Tom Tom Club'

Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz were bassist and drummer, respectively, of The Talking Heads and were married in 1977.

A few years after, they undertook a side project called the Tom Tom Club, named for the Jamaican club that they used for practice space. Frantz and Weymouth are the only constant members of the band as it serves as a swinging door of musicians and producers.

Weymouth, teamed with famed guitarist and producer Adrian Belew and two of her sisters, Laura and Lani, to produce one of the best debut records from any band, this eponymous album, and one of the greatest dance records ever. It proved to be my summer record ... 21 years after it was released.

'An Artist Of The Floating World'

Kaz Ishiguro's second novel is set after World War II in Japan when Ono begins to reflect on his life as an aging father and grandfather.

There's a series of mixed feelings on how he lived his life although it was always his to live. During World War II, Ono broke away from his master and got into right-wing politics (does right-wing politics mean the same thing in every culture?) and did propaganda posters in addition to an informant.

Reading Reinaldo Arenas' memoir Before Night Falls and talks about all the writers and good friends that became traitors to freedom and informants for Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba.

By my count, there's two reasons why you'd become an informant: You're looking to spare your life or the life of a loved one or you're an asshole, who generally hates freedom.

No matter what you may feel -- whether one side is right or the other is horribly wrong -- the idea of preventing one or the other to have an opinion is a rejection of freedom, a concept many people agree is a good thing.

'The Tin Drum'

Director Volker Schlöndorff looks like Bryan Cranston's Walter White from Breaking Bad.

Fun story: In 1997, a court in Oklahoma ruled that The Tin Drum was child pornography.

Law enforcement went to every store and confiscated every copy. They even intimidated movie rental stories to give up the addresses of those who had rented the film so they could go to the house and confiscate those copies.

Unfortunately, the judge had seen scenes (probably the young boy eating the sherbet from the girl's navel among other things) out of context. Lawsuits ensued and it was eventually overturned and all copies were returned. And, as it turns out, the confiscations were ruled unconstitutional. All this over a film about facsim and Nazis.

America.

'Black Sunday'

Black Sunday refers to a number of things: The death of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, the day the Denver International Airport Automated Guideway Transit System failed, the opening of Disneyland, the day the Colony Shale Oil Project was dissolved, the 1984 Super Bowl, a pair of fires in Australia and a day at Bondi Beach in Australia when a giant wave hit and killed five bathers.

 

In this instance, however, we refer to the 1960 Italian horror film, which was also titled Revenge of the Vampire and The Mask of Satan depending on which country you saw it in.

For a long time, it was heavily censored or banned altogether for its graphic blood and violence. Just shows how numb I am to it all because I just thought I was watching a pretty ordinary horror film of the time.

Except this movie is way creeper and an awesome addition to the “vampire in film” narrative. 

The film is apparently based on Nic Gogol’s story Viy as is the Russian film Vij so it makes me want to read it because neither movie is very much like the other.

'Traffic'

I'm glad I'm not a politician having to figure out the illegal drug thing.

As a kid, "Just Say No!" was a motto etched into my brain. It was hard to imagine a future in which drugs were not going to ruin so many lives, potentially my own. Looking back, it was pretty apparent just how calculated it all was. They harped on peer pressure and how it would make even the strongest-willed kid to crack (figuratively, literally) and yet I've never felt any peer pressure to do drugs, drink alcohol or do anything else.

Peer pressure exists, but it's the internal, perceived pressure that labors us. We think we need to be cool and we think doing something (stealing, drugs, drinking, sex, et al.).

I knew people that dealt and did drugs. I'd heard that hard drugs (cocaine, heroin) were pretty prevalent in my school growing up. Later, the rural area were I grew up with become of the biggest meth bases in the state of Texas.

One kid -- a brother of a classmate -- overdosed on heroin. Friends wound up caught up in the meth distribution and in prison or worse.

Generally, however, most everyone I know turned out OK. Maybe they're not making tons of money and some might smoke weed pretty regularly, but, in the end, drugs are pretty insignificant.

I don't know how to address or judge the influence of drug use in our society. I've heard of large swaths of time when there epidemics (like crack cocaine in the late-1980s and early-1990s or heroin in the indie rock arena). No doubt thousands were affected, but I don't know if it was really something that required our attention.

As a tax-paying adult, it's pretty clear there's no more of a losing, wasteful battle than that against drugs. It's odd, if you think about it. The United States has zero control of the borders and no matter how much technology we have, resources to throw at the problem or men and women dedicated toward fighting, the good guys are a perpetual 10 steps behind the criminal.

The United States isn't drug-addled at all, unless you consider over-the-counter drugs with a record-number of kids getting meds because they can't pay attention as being drug addled. Authorities might consider this a sign that they're winning and in a weird, obtuse way, they're right.

I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer. I once asked everyone I really know if they knew how to get some heroin and even those that did mild drugs did not have an answer. Is this a victory for the war on drugs or is it just proof that we know how to act like reasonable human beings?

What's worse: Big Macs or cocaine?

'Two-Lane Blacktop'

You probably wonder how a film about Dennis Wilson (my second favorite Beach Boy ... the one who actually surfed) and James Taylor driving across the country couldn't be awesome.

I think it's because Taylor was no longer a heroin addict. Yes, it would have been better if he were high.

'Cairo Station'

Youseff Chahine is one of the great directors of the world and probably the most renown from Egypt's less-than-stellar past as a filmmaking giant despite the innate intrigue surrounding the country's history.

Who could better make the story of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra than an Egyptian? Although, I'm sure there'd be a ton of bias. Who could better make a story of the Pyramids, the great pharaohs and the countless wars and one of the great early civilizations?

Chahine admittedly made films for himself even wanting international audiences more so than his homeland Egyptian audiences. Still, this might be because his films are genuinely Egyptian. Who else would you want to see your homeland -- its streets, rail stations and ordinary people -- than those on the outside looking in?

Chahine actually portrays the hero-villian in Cairo Station, the easily pitiful Qinawi, a beggar in a Cairo rail station, who gets a job selling newspapers. His sexual frustration is pasted onto a wall of his room where he's placed photos of pin-up girls. This desire is quickly focused on a soft-drink saleswoman, Hannuma, portrayed by the super-sexy Hind Rostom. 

In typical fashion, instead of buying flowers or attempting to woo her, he plans to kill him and stuff her in a crate on the eve of her marriage. He ends up killing the wrong girl and ... well, it doesn't end well for Qinawi. 

An interesting sub-plot is that of Hannuma's fiancé, a porter who is attempting to organize a union to strike. They spend just enough time on it to make it worthwhile, but generally it has little to do with the plot. 

Chahine did not shy away from controversial topics. He had gay and bisexual themes in his films and the brutal murder in Cairo Station certainly caught the eye of the government, who was not the friendliest or most progressive for filmmakers. Chahine once exiled himself to Lebanon to make two films in a sort of protest. 

'Kind Hearts And Coronets'

Eddie Murphy has nothing on Alec Guinness. Fifty years before Murphy attempted to portray several different members of a family, Guinness would have eight different parts in Kind Hearts and Coronets.

He also was Obi-Wan Kenobi. So there's that.

Give the American film censors some credit in 1949. They had the word "nigger" changed to sailor. Real progressives over in the states.

'Butterfly'

My favorite thing in the world outside of watching people on Christian television is listening to people overanalyze pure pop-star diva-driven pop music. 

Nothing against Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and the dozens upon dozens of other bubble gum pop stars through the ages, but you’re not curing cancer. 

You’re a pretty face with a pretty good to great voice. There’s nothing wrong with that. I wish I were a pretty face with a half-decent voice. Hell, I’d take the pretty face. 

Still, I find people that try to rationalize albums like these as having meaning and possible value. Honestly, I think Carey’s done much, much better albums. If I listen to pop, I want hooks. I want pep. (I’m pretty sure Tom Hanks’ character in That Thing You Do said the same thing.)

Butterfly is boring. There are no hooks and I can’t even sing to it. And I don’t want to hear about what the album is saying about Carey at the time. She may or may not be vulnerable and I’m sure at some point during the process she got her feelings hurt and I’m sure she was really happy and in love. 

Doesn’t make any difference to the songs. They’re not windows into her soul. They’re singles. 

'1977'

Ash may be the least serious Irish band of all time. 

The island that gave us U2, The Cranberries, Stiff Middle Fingers, the Dropkick Murphys and Van Morrison also gave us a band so enthralled with Star Wars that they dedicated almost their entire first album to it, including naming it after the year the first installment was released. 

The album begins with the purr of a TIE fighter. The final song is titled “Darkside Lightside” and another titled “Kung Fu” in honor of Jackie Chan. 

If nothing else, Ash are known for getting plum gigs in the video game and soundtrack industry recording an number of tunes for films and getting partnerships in providing songs for video games including a Star Wars game. 

I’ve never felt the Irish should be so series. 

'Akira'

To be honest, I had little to no interested in Japanese animation outside of an episode of “Voltron” before starting this project.

As it’s turned out, maybe some of the best films I’ve seen have all been Japanese animation: Spirited Away, Grave of the Fireflies and, now, Akira. 

Akira is the oldest of the bunch and it could be considered the frontrunner of those other films and others like it that have caught on in the United States. 

Akira is a very cool late-1980s dystopian tale of motorcycle gangs and a sci-fi twist about children psychics and the end of the world. Anything from Japan has some sort of theme that relates to the atomic bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima and for good reason. Good or bad, it sort of defined that country for a long time from the outside in and probably still remains this blot of scar tissue to this day. Like it’ll never go away. 

Made in the late-1980s and based on the manga, it has heavy Cold War themes and the destruction capable should the United States and Soviet Union choose to bomb the crap out of each other (Japan caught in the middle, of course). 

Naturally, the cult status of Akira has spawned at last four attempts to make a snowy white live-action version with actors like James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michael Fassbender, Gary Oldman, Justin Timberlake and Joaquin Phoenix being mentioned in one way or the other during the synthesis of the project. It’s hard to imagine this turn out well if it ever turns out.  

'Dispatches'

Dispatches and its author, journalist Michael Herr, are interesting on a number of levels. 

First, Dispatches is considered one of the best examples of New Journalism or a nonfiction novel. Popularized by Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Terry Southern and Norman Mailer, it came about in the middle of the 20^th century when journalists started writing novels like Capote and In Cold Blood, something that started out as an article in The New Yorker, but grew into a whole novel. Or it even came from fiction writers deciding to do nonfiction. 

New Journalism is subjective, raw and intense. It leaves little stone unturned and tells a more honest and, often, brutal portrayal of events. This is especially true for Dispatches, the reporting of Herr as a columnist for Esquire during the Vietnam War.  

It’s not only just a good novel: It’s one of the most truthful depictions of the Vietnam War and it was one of the first open for consumption by the American public. 

The fact that Herr later went on to work on scripts for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket – which contain composite characters taken from Dispatches to the point that it’s achingly obvious to anyone that’s seen the film – makes me love those films even more. 

Eerily enough, Dispatches includes two characters – Sean Flynn (Errol’s son) and Dana Stone – who were kidnapped by communist guerrillas and were never seen from again. They are presumed dead. 

Vietnam always scared me. I think the reasons are obvious. It was a destructive and silly war fought over ideologies. Land, money, spite or hate are reasons I can understand in war. Quibbling over ideologies is something I can’t grasp. 

It was a war fought in a strange land against a truly angry opponent that were smarter and very confident. It seemed no one came back from Vietnam the same way they left: Physically or mentally. It was chaos and seemingly the first complicated war where sides were blurred.