'Panther Panchali,' 'Aparajito' & 'Apur Sansar'

Most people sit in their little corner of the world and all around them people are doing things that are extraordinary and building these legacies.

Filmdom never ended moving west past Hollywood or east past New York City. Life continued and flourished in every corner of the world and insanely good things were happening.

In this little project, I've learned a lot, but most importantly I've learned about a lot of different people doing a lot of cool things like Satyajit Ray.

Every country has their own Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini and Luis Bunuel. India -- a country that battles more stigmas than most -- has Ray.

His crowning achievement was The Apu Trilogy -- a set of three films started when Ray was 34 years old in the 1950s. It is the prime example of Parallel Cinema, another term for India's New Wave, which put a premium on realism. The Apu Trilogy was made with an amateur cast for $3,000.

Not 60 years later, Danny Boyle would film Slumdog Millionaire for $15 million and win an Oscar with basically the same story as Ray's Apu.

'Stephen Stills' & 'Manassas'

Stephen Stills was almost a Monkee. A snag involving a record company prevented his inclusion. He nominated his friend Peter Tork, who got stuck in the trap whilst Stills became one of the more distinguished rock artists of the 20th century.

Stills was almost Jimi Hendrix's bass player. The pair were friends and Hendrix had his manager pass the message along. The manager did not do his job and they hired Noel Redding and Stills went on to create Buffalo Springfield.

Following Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, he recorded his first solo record. His eponymous debut included the work of Hendrix and Eric Clapton (the first and only time this happened ... Hendrix never saw the release of the record) and ex-Beatle Ringo Starr.

This album I don't think is very good. Fortunately, his third solo record saw him connect with the ex-Byrd Chris Hillman by the name of Manassas.

This is a beautiful, rich, folksy country record. Worthy of any and all the praise that could be heaped on it.

You wonder if Peter Tork would have recorded these albums in a different dimension.

'Don't Stand Me Down' & 'Too Rye Ay' & 'Searching For The Young Soul Rebels'

I think it says a little something about a band to have all three of their records considered as part of the 1,001 list.

Dexys Midnight Runners existed for eight years, produced three albums, ran through 20 members and were probably responsible for the greatest pop single in the history of record music. I'll fight anyone to the death that doesn't believe "Come On Eileen" isn't the greatest single ever. To the death.

Dexys set their own standard. They're Irish and they're named after a drug. They wore overalls, work boots and wool hats. Their records bordered on Northern Soul, pop and traditional Irish folk music. They decided to attempt to be pretty unpopular and wound up pretty popular.

Too Rye Ay and Searching for the Young Soul Rebels were the Dexys' only hit records (two out of three ain't bad) and Don't Stand Me Down was a commercial failure after lead singer Kevin Rowland refused to release a single until it was far too late.

The band broke up and not bounce around a series of "comebacks" and rumors of comebacks.

'Like A Prayer'

Boy, nothing was more taboo, risque, intriguing and polarizing than Madonna in 1989 when she released this album.

As a nine-year-old boy, I didn't know what to think. I wasn't particularly interested in her music. Oddly, I was very interested in pop music and I sincerely can't remember a single song from this album on the radio. Maybe I just ignored it. Maybe I didn't know any better. Nonetheless, the only time I heard a Madonna song was through a music video or from my sister's CDs.

My youngest sister actually owned this album and no other mesmerized me like this one. I thought it was porn before I knew was porn really was. I knew it was taboo. I didn't think I'd be able to touch or look at it. I sort of felt that if I listened to Madonna's music, I'd turn into a sex freak.

Madonna at the time, as much as people wanted to stop her influence, was the most popular thing going. She was given $5 million to be a spokeswoman for Pepsi. She lost that gig once the "Like A Prayer" music video came out and she pissed off the Catholic Church after she showed burning crosses, stigmatas and other religious imagery.

Now, I don't know how much pull the Catholic Church would have if someone really wanted to piss the moral majority off. The evangelicals have taken over. It was not very long at all that the Catholics snapped their fingers and people jumped.

Listening to the record again, 23 years after the fact, it's still not music that exactly grips me. In fact, almost all Madonna music does not appeal to me and it's something that I can't imagine being appealing to others. I don't get Madonna I guess. At least, I don't get her as a musical artist. I don't get her outside anything other than a spectacle.

'Winter Light'

One of the 900 Ingmar Bergman films on the list and this might be his best. It's rumored to be Bergman's favorite and also the second part in the so-called "Trilogy of Faith" from Bergman.

Considered highly biographical, it follows the spiritual crisis of a small-town priest, who is in clear distress over his own belief in God and the seemingly frivolity of life.

He is confronted by the school headmistress, and former lover, who has denied her own faith and sees and smells the internal struggle inside the priest. Soon, he counsels a local fisherman, himself undergoing a period of frustration and despair. At this point, the priest admits its own disbelief. After the he leaves, the fisherman commits suicide.

Despite all the cards laid out on the table, nothing changes. The priest remains without his former lover and the charade continues some more.

If nothing else -- granted, it's not an uplifting film -- it's a beautiful film, maybe Bergman's most gorgeous and that's saying a little something.

'Vinyl'

A 70-minute, rambling Andy Warhol adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange about a decade before Stanley Kubrick would put his fine touches on it.

Mainly it's hipster digression mixed in around a bunch of radio hits and the actors and actresses dancing and smoking cigarettes.

I wish I could tell you more. There's nothing there. It sucks, but it was never meant to be very good so all opinions are pretty moot. More so, if you liked it, you're probably kind of weird.

'Sergeant York'

Sergeant York was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, winning just two for film editing and a second for Best Actor going to Gary Cooper.

It was released in the summer of 1941. Obviously, it's based on the true story of Alvin York, a dumb sharpshooting hick from Tennessee, who finds God then finds himself drafted for service during World War I. Initially against killing due to his new-found religion, York winds up using his leadership and shooting skills to take something like 130 German prisoners and wound up being the most decorated veteran from the war.

Months after the film's release, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor prompting the United States to enter into war against them and the Germans. Not that most young men needed much of a prod to join the fight, Sergeant York didn't hurt. Of course, the war didn't hurt box-office numbers of the film. It was the highest grossing film of 1941. And young men often left the theater and went straight to the recruitment office. If war were only as easy as Cooper's York made it appear -- capturing hundreds with a pistol!

Cooper actually resisted attempts to play York. Probably as much as York resisted attempts to purchase the rights to his story. Once he relented, he demanded Cooper portray him on the big screen. It takes balls to make such a demand. Then again, it was his story and it's not like York was an ugly man. He was quite handsome.

'The Cement Garden'

Of all the Ian McEwan novels that I have read, this is probably one of the best. It is about four children ages 17, 15, 13 and six.

Early in the story, the father retrieves a number of bags of concrete in order to turn the backyard into a "cement garden." The father promptly dies after a series of heart attacks.

Afterwards, the mother falls ill and despite her presence, she's bound to an upstairs bed and her children are effectively forced to tend to everything on their own.

The mother eventually dies and in order to keep out of the foster care situation and keep the family together, the three older children decide to encase the mother's corpse in a trunk and fill it with cement. Over time, the cement cracks and smell of the rotting corpse spreads throughout the house causing the eldest daughter's boyfriend to begin asking questions.

Meanwhile, this disturbing, semi-sexual relationship between the brother and the oldest sister that forces you to think the worst despite not knowing the entire truth. The feeling eventually becomes reality. The brother and sister engage in sex and the enraged and sickened boyfriend calls the police. This is the final scene of the book: The lights of law enforcement illuminating the bedroom, brother and sister in embrace.

'Salò' & '120 Days Of Sodom'

Is it weird that neither the film nor book made me bat an eye?

This all should horrify me, but it doesn't and I think it's because it's so blatantly insane and over the top. Still, I'd never let my daughter or mom read the book or watch the film.

I also suspect I've been numbed by so much violence and sex over the years and it doesn't really matter. The only way to go is more graphic and more insane. And there's probably a tiny part of my brain that likes all of this.

The film is considered one of the most controversial films in history showing an unparalleled amount of sadism, nudity, graphic sexual encounters and the eating of feces. All of it happening to mere children.

Still, it's 1/20th of what the book recounts as the old prostitutes tell the gathering about their past exploits for 500 pages as it goes from highly illicit fornication, torture and eventually murder. The difference between the book and film is the level and total amount of adventures, but what the film lacks in quantity it makes up for the wicked nature and emotion from the four libertines as they almost revel in the final scene of hangings, tortures and scalpings.

'Everything Is Illuminated'

A rather fascinating novel for such a young writer. Written in two parts, two novels. One is written by Jonathan Safran Foer, the same name as the actual author of Everything is Illuminated, but it is not that Jonathan Safran Foer, and tells the tale of a village in Ukraine named Trachimbrod (for whatever reason, changed from Trochenbrod) and its beginnings in the 18th century.

Strictly absurd, it traces the town's beginnings and the family line of Foer's family featuring a series of supernatural happenings.

The other "novel" is written by Alex, an immature, yet balanced you Ukrainian charged with transporting Foer to find the remains of Trachimbrod and a woman, Augustine, who allegedly helped Foer's grandfather escape elimination by the Nazis.

It is Alex's story that is most intriguing. Written with his youthful English tongue along with footnotes and letters directed at Foer, who is proofing the chapters in this super-fake scenario. There is almost more narrative and imagination set between the relationship between Foer and Alex than in any of the sub-novels.

The Holocaust casts a long, long shadow. It's impossible to escape and it infects everything around us.

Will there be a day when this is not the case?