'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 It was published posthumously by his executor, Max Brod, who disobeyed instructions to burn all unpublished works.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.