a grand and one

'The Invention Of Curried Sausage'

2012-02-12T20:57:00.000-08:00

Germany during World War II from the point of view of a German intellectual.

Granted, our intellectual, Uwe Timm, was only four years old when the Russians and British fought their way to the German border and Hamburg, when the story is set.

Still, it's not the author telling the story. It's from the point of view of a single mother, her husband and son lost in the battle lines -- dead or captured. Mere days before the Allies take over. Before justice is levied on the Nazis and years before things are considered "normal."

She starts shacking up with a AWOL naval officer. She delays telling him that the war is over in order to keep him with her. Sort of wrong. Yet, it showed this vulnerability when life for a lonely woman, just trying to live, was impossible.

Timm was too young to fight in World War II, even if he wanted. Timm would actually get active with a number of leftist parties and organizations in 1960s. He would not become the friend of any Nazi as he came of age.

Timm's brother and father did fight. The former died. I think there was probably quite a bit of guilt for a war and a party that he would not have supported and probably died trying to defy. I also think Timm was quick to defend Germany. Not Nazi Germany. But Germany: this collection of vulnerable and sad people swept up in this wave, many drowned and we are apt to blame all of them for building the beach.

It's not a fair assumption. Timm probably understands this as much as anyone. He didn't see the full impact of the war on his family and home. He did have a front-row seat to how it would rebuild the next 25 years. You don't need to see the destruction to understand the rebuilding.

'The Great Gatsby'

2012-02-12T20:55:00.000-08:00

The Great American Novel.

The Great Gatsby may or may not be this. I do know that it's great, it's American and it's a novel. A beautifully written novel about America at its most glorious and its most vulnerable. The Roarin' '20s showed America at an odd time: Conspicuous consumption mixed with the self-righteousness of Prohibition and those in-between years after the Great War, before the Great Depression and a good 20 years before any able-bodied men were shipped back to Europe for another Great War.

It was a time of innovation. Ironically or not, in terms of this blog, it was pretty monumental. It was high tide for literature, the birth of film and popular recorded music was not far from being in every home as part of a mass medium.

Funny thing, friend saw what I was reading and she noted that she "hated" Daisy. I found Daisy, actually, was probably the most sympathetic character in the entire novel.

She was a product of a mysogonist culture where pretty young females were supposed to "marry up" and just enjoy the ride and ignore the other women. Tom was the real asshole, naturally. Daisy was caught in this trap that it was impossible to get out of. Maybe she was melodramatic or whatever, but she was the real victim. She's the real story here. Gatsby was only "great" because of Daisy.

'The Chirping Crickets'

2012-02-03T20:37:00.000-08:00

It had to be pretty cool to be a rock-and-roll fan in Lubbock, Texas in October 1955.

Elvis Presley came to the West Texas cattle town to play a concert. I could only imagine it raised quite a bit of fuss. I'm sure the fine residents of mid-1950s Lubbock didn't take to Presley's hip-juking, slap bass and provocations.

Nonetheless, Lubbock was treated to a show. For the random teenager taking in the show, they had to fight through an opening band led by local boy Buddy Holly. In hindsight, attendees probably now realize how important that night was. It was an older kid (The King was 20) providing an opportunity for the younger kid (Holly had just turned 19).

What Presley had done for Holly, Holly would win up doing for The Beatles, whose first recording session included a worked down cover of "That'll Be The Day."

Holly died in that plane crash just two years after recording The Chirping Crickets, his first album. He only "recorded" two other albums although he had enough material that the record company kept churning out collections of his tunes.

It's fascinating to think that this guy lived just a mere 22 years and his life was snatched around a series of circumstances and decisions that just as easily have gone a different way. This wasn't Mama Cass chocking on a ham sandwich or Janis Joplin choking on her own vomit.

Yet, he left this brilliant legacy of music. The adage that artists do all this creation and whenever they pass this work will all survive centuries and centuries afterward. Picasso was 91 when he died. Hemingway was 61. Their work resonates still. Holly's legacy started a little early.

'A Date With The Everly Brothers'

2012-02-03T20:22:00.000-08:00

This is a story of a song. "Love Hurts" was written by Boudleaux Bryant, who also penned "Bye Bye Love" and "All I Have To Do Is Dream," both hits for the Everlys.

It was first recorded by the Everlys on this album in 1960. Over the next 50 years it'd be recorded by another two dozen artists in some form or fashion, everyone from Emmylou Harris, Heart, Corey Hart, Pat Boone, Cher, John McLean, Journey, Joan Jett, The Who and Roy Orbison.

The song would wind up charting four different times (Orbison, Cher, Jim Capaldi, Nazareth). Ironically, it would be the biggest hit with Nazareth. All those great artists and no one quite hit it like Nazareth.

A song I largely ignored for most of my life, I've since learned to love it after hearing Harris and Gram Parsons cover it and release it on his posthumous album, Grievous Angel. It's really a gorgeous song, full of loss and regret. And it all started on this album in 1960 without any aplomb.

'Rust Never Sleeps' & 'Ragged Glory'

2012-01-16T19:09:00.001-08:00

By my count, this is the final two Neil Young albums on the 1,001 list. Which means I'm finished.

Certainly, my horizons have expanded by watching all these films and listening to all of these records. Young might be the best example of an artist that I cared so little for and knew so little about that I found out I liked a lot.

These are two of his later albums included on the list, Ragged Glory released in 1990 and Rust Never Sleeps, a partial live album, released in 1979. There was about a five-year stint where, according to whoever comes up with this list, Young wasn't putting out very good albums.

Granted, artistically and commercially, this was a dry spot for Young. I guess through five decades you are bound to have one or two.

I think both albums are pretty good. Early in his career, I felt he could do no wrong. That caught up with him. Still, it's all very good.

'Fun House' & 'Raw Power'

2012-01-08T10:21:00.000-08:00

With Raw Power, never had you cared about a mix of an album in the history of rock and roll.

It's the third album from the incarnation of The Stooges, at this point they were Iggy and the Stooges, following Fun House and The Stooges. In my opinion, it's better than those other two. A lot more rawer. Listening to The Stooges, you realize just how much modern "alternative" bands owe to them. Some of today's rock songs are almost direct rip offs of Stooges songs. And to be honest with you, I doubt today's bands are ripping The Stooges off as much as they're ripping off The Clash, Nirvana or the Sex Pistols.

As for the mix on Raw Power, Iggy Pop initially did mix using just three of the 24 channels available, putting guitars on one, vocals on another and drums on the third. The record company refused to release it. So, David Bowie was brought in and he remixed seven of the eight songs in a day on an extremely old board. He added what he could talking over the changes with Iggy and putting out one of the most influential albums of all time.

As it is, Iggy is complementary of the mix and the apparent members of the group don't like it all. In 1996, Pop was invited to do a remix, which he did, and everyone hated it. Maybe we should learn that when David Bowie does you a favor, you just accept it.

What I find most humorous about the band disliking the initial Bowie mix was that they were all either heroin addicts or alcoholics and the musical chairs that was the line-up, they had zero room to really complain. The "band" lasted about five years, they broke up once, fired any number of guitarists and were lucky to probably make two albums like Raw Power and Fun House.

'The Adventures Of Augie March'

2012-01-07T20:40:00.000-08:00

One detail that Saul Bellow never includes (at least, I overlooked it) is Augie March's age.

There's a broad and varying amount of happenings for March as he comes of age and, yet, we really don't know how old he was when he was stealing books, training an eagle to catch lizards in Mexico, working for a union, working for the Einhorns or volunteering for the Merchant Marines during World War II.

There are hints throughout how much time elapses. We can gather relatively accurately how much time elapses between stages in March's life. We just don't know how old he is, and I think that's important. Chances are, it was entirely on purpose: Age maybe not putting March's personal philosophy in the right context. However, a 21-year-old March running down to Mexico is different than a 29-year-old March running down to Mexico. I think.

Really good book. The fact that all these women are falling over themselves for Augie March makes it a perfect fiction.

'Back In Black'

2011-12-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

A gigantic, popular album and for good reason. There are good songs here and they're very accessible to the Everyman. I don't think it's bad, but it certainly doesn't get my blood flowing like it did 12 years ago.

What I want to know is where this Brian Johnson guy came from.

AC/DC's original lead singer, Bon Scott, died of alcohol poisoning in February 1980 at the tender age of 33.

The band recorded Back in Black, after discussing disbanding after their lead singer bit it, in April and May of 1980 and they released the album in July 1980.

The band had already, as you might expect, starting writing material for the album with Scott before he died and finished writing it with Johnson, who penned the lyrics over Angus and Malcom Young's music. Mind you, Back in Black has the band's most popular songs including "You Shook Me All Night Long," "Given The Dog A Bone," "Shoot To Thrill" and "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution." Johnson just didn't continue the band. He essentially put the band on the everlasting map of rock music. He helped make them one of the most popular rock bands of all time.

Johnson had been in a band called Geordie (which sounds completely retarded) and released two albums through the 1970s. He was brought in by AC/DC after apparently their manager recommended him and even Bon Scott himself had mentioned Johnson to his bandmates at a time as being someone that sounded like Little Richard.

He auditioned and got the gig. He wasn't anyone special. Worked just as hard as probably a million other musicians. But not everyone get's Bon Scott's attention. Fewer have Bon Scott die of alcohol poisoning opening up their spot on a world-renowned rock band.

Fun facts: Johnson's brother Maurice works as a cook for the band. Also, AC/DC's last five albums have sold one million, 2.5 million, two million, five million and five million records. Not only can you not name either of the five albums (on purpose) but you can't name a song of any of them.

'Muddy Waters Live At Newport 1960'

2011-12-24T20:46:00.000-08:00

Often, when you go through the 1,001 lists for books, records and films, you discover art that is truly influential, that really made an impact on others and spurred a plethora of other art, some of which could very well be considered better. But it never exists without that first step.

This album might fit that mold. By the time Muddy Waters, the famous bluesman, performed at the Newport Jazz Festival and released it several months later, he was already well known around the world.

By 1960, he'd made a name for himself as rock and roll began to really break. Thing is, unlike Buddy Holly or Elvis Presley, Muddy Waters had already made his mark.

Born in 1915 (or 1913, depending on the story), by 17 he'd already picked up the guitar and was performing around the country and making Chicago the hub for American blues in the north. He'd already recorded and by 1950s he was already recording on his own and making pretty good bank.

All before Elvis, Buddy and the Beatles. Meanwhile, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Rod Stewart and every other bluesy rocker in England were cutting their teeth on Waters' bark and his steely guitar. Live at Newport was evidence of the changing tide in rock music as it showed a proven bluesman going electric. Never had those infamous guitar heroes heard the instrument like the day they put the needle on this record. Now that's an album to hear before you die.

'The Man Who Fell To Earth'

2011-12-21T20:49:00.000-08:00

I was talking about this film with a friend and the conversation turned to that of filmmaking in the 1970s. Primarily, how directors could do whatever they want and the films, generally, are better.

Certainly standards were lax back then, but I think there was also a very influential cadre of directors willing to make the film they wanted to make and as long as they stood firm they would continue to make the films they wanted.

I also think the filmmakers weren't as focused about making money as studios are today and films done by renowned directors tend to make money nonetheless.

Also, I'd be naive to think that everything done in the 1970s was fantastic and everything done now is pathetic. Truth is, I wasn't even born in the 1970s and I've failed to largely see any of the bad films because I'm sure there were plenty.

The amount of sex and nudity in The Man Who Fell To Earth is ridiculous. Ridiculously awesome. It's also something today's filmmaker wouldn't be able to do without giving it an R rating and not making any money because 14 year olds can't get into the theater.

This film completed a pretty nice run for director Nicolas Roeg, who did Walkabout, Don't Look Now and this film in succession.

'The Rise & Fall'

2011-12-21T17:33:00.000-08:00

The greatest non-ska ska album. Probably ever.

The Rise and Fall was not released in the United States (for reasons unknown to this reporter) despite "Our House" being a pretty popular single (No. 7 in the United States after it was released on the compilation album, Madness.

This album is called "experimental." Only because a ska band didn't make a ska record and basically made a pop album. And that's "experimental." It's not experimental, it's just a band that wants to make a popular record so he can make more money. There's nothing wrong with that, but if I go to a restaurant where I always order a hamburger and order a hot dog, that doesn't make me "experimental." Just hungry.

'Roots'

2011-12-21T17:23:00.000-08:00

This album was unbearable. Seventy-three minutes later and I finished the son of a bitch.

Metal sucks. Most of it sucks. Most sounds like 1970s hard rock. Deep Purple is nominally more heavy than most heavy metal and that includes Sepultura, apparently.

The infusion of "Brazilian" beats and whatnot was a complete failure. In fact, I think it's pretty pretentious to play metal and attempt to work in some Latin element so you can prove about how Brazilian you are.

I don't know. This is no longer a part of my life. I'm pretty sure I could have died without listening to this album.

'Bad Company'

2011-12-20T19:22:00.000-08:00

I've never understood why a band with four hits and two years of relevance 30 years ago is still important. Every couple of years they get back together -- or someone gets together to play music -- or Paul Rodgers joins what remains of Queen to tour.

It's really pathetic. A bunch of old guys that think what they do is good and that people still want to listen to "Can't Get Enough" for the trillionth time. I guess they have to pay the bills just like all of us.

"Bad Company" has had six bass players, five guitarists, three lead vocalists and one drummer, Simon Kirke. So I think we've identified the hanger-on here.

Kirke hasn't saved enough money from Free and Bad Company so he doesn't have to get Bad Company back together for another North American summer tour playing outdoor amphitheatres with Journey or Foreigner opening up. Advertise in the local newspaper and 60-year-old goofs nudge each other in the ribs saying how cool it'd be to get out and see Bad Company. Instead, they fall asleep.

'...And Justice For All' & 'S&M'

2011-12-20T19:02:00.000-08:00

Appropriate bookends: Metallica, one of the world's foremost heavy metal bands, at their rawest and most dirty and grimy and then Metallica, the polished superstar metal band performing with an orchestra.

Granted, they can do what they want. I don't think they need to prove anything to anybody. They probably could have made the same ol' thrash metal album for 25 years and by 1996, when S&M was released, we probably would have criticized them for trying to be the same band they were in 1986, growing their hair out despite the receding hairlines and wearing the same scowls, T-shirts and ripped blue jeans.

Still, an orchestra. The Metallica of ...And Justice For All would have beat up the Metallica of S&M and thems just the facts. I think they're pretty content with things the way they are.

What frustrated me on the release of S&M was the band coming out of the woodworks to talk about how they were always inspired by classical music and all that jazz. What. Ever. If they'd covered The Carpenters, they would have talked about how they were so inspired by 1970s AM soft rock.

Essentially, Metallica is a band that can do what George Lucas does with the Star Wars films: Repackage them every couple of years and force everyone to rebuy it. It's a boon for the classical community -- and brought a lot of attention to symphony orchestras -- and it's a multi-platinum album for Metallica re-recording 20-year-old songs.

Also appropriate that ... And Justice For All was Jason Newsted's first album and S&M was his last. I can't do this stuff on purpose.

'The Blithedale Romance'

2011-12-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote some weird stuff.

The Blithedale Romance starts out as The Blithedale Bromance between Hollingsworth and Coverdale and then you begin to think that everyone's in love with Zenobia when in fact everyone's in love with Priscilla, Zenobia's half-sister. When left by Hollingsworth for Priscilla, Zenobia winds up drowning herself (see: Ophelia, the girl from Sansho the Bailiff).

I found Coverdale pretty obnoxious and egotistical in the first part of the story until you realize that everyone else is entirely more annoying and full of themselves. As it turns out, Coverdale is left on his own as he breaks up the relationship with Hollingsworth and the Zenobia is a flaky tramp.

Who I liked the most is the Fosters and Old Moodie. Also, I would have liked to read more about Blithedale and this commune action going on in the 1800s. People would just come to a farm to take advantage of the environment and hard work. Blithedale is based on Brooke Farm, a real life Transcendentalist commune in west Massachusetts that Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and others all frequented.

Eventually, it became a socialist farm: You put in the work, everyone shares the spoils and you get to dick around the rest of the time and talk about ghosts. Because, apparently, all anyone talked about in the 1800s was ghosts.

'Brighton Rock'

2011-12-18T21:07:00.000-08:00

A good book confuses the shit out of you for the first 50 pages only to go over what happened in detail those first 50 pages for it not to really matter.

I think. Maybe that's why I haven't published any of my novels. Gathering dust there on the shelves. I kid. I kid.

I think what confused me the most is Fred Hale leaving business cards around town for people to find and if they turn them into the newspaper, they can win 10 pounds. I guess this is a thing from the 1930s because it sounds like one of the most ridiculously awesome things ever. Imagining having a pretty bad day or even a so-so day and you're doing your usual thing and you turn around and find a card that gives you $50 (which I assume would be the equivalent for 10 pounds in the 1930s). That probably felt pretty good.

Brighton Rock's been turned into a play, a musical, a film (twice) and a radio program. Certainly, Pinkie is one of the best characters -- certainly in the sociopath genre -- in modern literature. Not unlike Alex in Clockwork Orange, a young man of his times and his environment. However, the pair are separated by Alex's need for sex and Pinkie's unanswered repulsion of human contact and sex. Not everything was carnal for Pinkie. It made the violence a bit more disturbing.

'The House In Paris'

2011-12-18T20:58:00.000-08:00

I read this a kajillion years ago and I haven't written about it because I have absolutely nothing to say about it.

Certainly, I've researched several times attempting to knock it out once and for all and I can't find anything. I thought it was boring and trite. Too wrapped up in these family histories that are supposed to be important as these self-important people disappoint their loved ones over and over again.

Big deal.

There, I did it.

'The Unmarried Woman'

2011-12-18T19:04:00.000-08:00

Women's liberation in its purest.

Woman is left by her husband. Fighting all of the despair, she bonds with her friends and gets laid. Soon, she finds her freedom refreshing.

I wish there were more to say here. I did find it completely obnoxious that Erica had the douchebag husband that left her for the secretary and so she decides to have this relationship with the douchebag artist.

I only kind of bring this up because I'm sure the director/screenwriter thought he was having Erica live the free, burdenless life by shacking up with an artist. However, wouldn't it have been more poetic if she hooked up with a construction worker or police officer. The artist, in the end, is only going to make her miserable in the end, and everyone knows it.

What this teaches us is that Erica isn't really free at all. She always needs a man and she always needs to be on the verge of destruction in her relationships. It's almost an anti-women's lib film although no one's willing to admit that the artist relationship was not going to end well. And we all know it won't. Don't be so naive.

'Wings Of Desire'

2011-12-18T18:12:00.000-08:00

I strongly recommend doing one thing before you watch Wings of Desire.

Read a summary of the film. Or read this blog post because I'm about to blow the doors wide off.

It took me three-quarters of the film to realize that the two main guys were angels "existing" on Earth to overhear people's thoughts and that Peter Falk used to be an angel before choosing feelings and life over immortality. I'm at a spot now that I really just want to re-watch it.

It is an interesting plot and I think its pulled off pretty well. Slow at times, there are really interesting and investible characters, characters in need of a little love.

The film is a bit of a who's who showcase. The screenplay was done by noted Austrian writer Peter Handke. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds plays a set in a club scene. And the cinematographer was Henri Alekan, the Frenchman that worked with Jean Cocteau on the 1946 film Beauty and the Beast and who, ironically, fell out of favor in French cinema during the New Wave movement of the 1950s and did a bunch of conventional American films and only three during the 1970s.

The cinematography in Wings of Desire is exceptional, which is the only reason to bring it up.

'Ossessione'

2011-12-18T17:58:00.000-08:00

Finally, one of the few times the Europeans have taken an American piece and turned it into something of their own (done three years before the American adaptation).

Ossessione, of course, is an adaptation of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, the well-known story of the tramp that has an affair with a restaurateur's wife and the pair connive to kill the husband to not only run away with each other but also collect on his life insurance.

The film was almost not seen by anyone outside of anyone that saw it upon its release in 1943. Director Luchino Visconti had sneaked the film beyond the Fascist censors and upon its released it outraged everyone. The Fascists burned the film.

Visconti, thankfully, kept a duplicate negative. Even still, the film was never distributed outside of Italy until 1976

'Vulgar Display Of Power'

2011-12-17T23:18:00.000-08:00

Pantera had a lot going for it. It wouldn't be until 1994 or so when Far Beyond Driven hit that the band would really overtake the high school crowd and be found in every CD collection, car and truck of teenagers everywhere no matter their actual taste in music.

By high school, I had friends that were major metal dudes listening to everything going as heavy and loud as Napalm Death, Morbid Angel, Danzig and Cannibal Corpse. They loved Pantera.

By Vulgar Display of Power in 1992 and Far Beyond Driven, they'd gone damn near mainstream. I remember girls I would have never dreamed having something in common with having that album, blaring it from their car speakers leaving the parking lot. Guys that wouldn't know Dave Mustaine if he punched them in the asshole were suddenly well aware of Dimebag or Diamond Darrell Abbott.

Pantera were very marketable. Their music really wasn't. I should say it was very marketable, but it always needed a "hit" and metal people are wont to necessarily seek radio singles and are even less likely to create them quite like Lennon and McCartney. That's why Pantera eventually become an afterthought.

Still, experts call what Pantera does "groove metal" although I don't think it sounds too entirely different from other sorts of metal or even hard rock. Abbott's blistering solos turned him into a mainstay in every guitar magazine and many were calling Phil Anselmo one of the bet metal singers ever. It had groove so it sold. For a while.

There were other factors. Not unlike an American Idol contestant from Texas, they had an audience willing to accept and love them. Entrap the hearts and minds of teenagers in rural Texas and you can sell some records.

Also, they did an image change. In the 1980s, Pantera were not unlike many glam bands. At some point, they dumped the teased air, leopard-print vests and heroin chic for bulbous faces, dirty jeans, beards, long stringy hair and trucker's caps.

They projected everyman to everyman and it worked. It doesn't help that the songs were good and that they evoked a certain amount of connection with the audience. A lot of things went write for Pantera. Except for ... well, you know.

'Back At The Chicken Shack'

2011-12-17T23:05:00.000-08:00

First album featuring an artist that was an organist. The organ has never been quite as cool.

Oddly, for a guy with such renown, Jimmy Smith's birth date is in question. He was either born in 1925 or 1928. Not 1926 or 1927. Those years are right out. Maybe the "5" and "8" were smudged on the birth certificate, although you'd think a "6" could be just as easily smeared on a piece of paper. Or maybe that some family member -- like his father who got him into performing -- would be able to remember.

Smith was formally trained having gone to music colleges after serving in the navy. He also went on to record about 70 albums as the bandleader and also recording with artists from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson.

There's nothing extraordinary about Back at the Chicken Shack other than being good. I don't think it'll blow your mind, but there's way less accessible jazz out there and way worse. Nothing pretentious here.

'King Solomon's Mines'

2011-12-17T21:57:00.000-08:00

Some pieces of art need to placed in context. It makes a bit more poetic.

Consider that not only was travel abroad only for the insanely rich, slaves or those in the military or that a vast, vast amount of the planet had actually been fully explored, the idea of going abroad in a book, for a nickel or penny or however much books cost at the time, was probably the closest most people came from seeing the African plains, the jungles of Asia, the tombs of Egypt or the mystery of South America.

In 1885, when H. Rider Haggard started an entirely new genre of literature, the Lost World, with King Solomon's Mines, surprisingly, most of the world had been at least "found." Meaning, colonized. The Germans, Dutch, British and French had massive holdings in Africa, South America, North America and Asia. In fact, explorers had gotten bored and was looking for ways to getting to the poles and up the highest peaks.

Still, the interiors of these lands were still a mystery (think Joe Conrad and The Heart of Darkness). There's still parts of the Amazon river basin still unexplored. There's still allegedly parts of the Appalachian Mountains in the United State still unseen by outsider's eyes. The Valley of the Kings would be soon discovered in Egypt and the secrets of the Assyrian empire were being dug up. The rich culture and history of the colonized people around the world suddenly had a lot of depth and people wanted to know more. The sun might have rose and set on the British empire, but time started elsewhere.

Here you had Haggard bringing it all, based on real accounts, real people and somewhat real adventures (perplexing natives by taking out false teeth was a real trick played on the poor souls of Africa), all of which sparked an entire genre from H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Burroughs and all those crazy adventures novels that would follow. Let's face it, there's no Indiana Jones without Allan Quatermain.

'Good Morning, Midnight'

2011-12-17T21:45:00.000-08:00

Good Morning, Midnight was published in 1939 about a woman who returns to Paris between the two great wars and finds nothing but insecurity and instability.

No money or nobody to depend on or to county upon the next morning or night. Hunger and desperation a perpetual companion as she plans her next step. At least many of the feelings and circumstances surrounding our protagonist were probably those of Rhys herself, who had a series of failed relationships, marriages, a near-fatal abortion and a son who died at a young age. Nothing was permanent in Rhys' life.

Right after it was published, author Jean Rhys fell completely out of the limelight making many think she had died. Rhys turned back up in 1949 when someone decided to turn Good Morning, Midnight into a play and they were forced to hunt Rhys down and get her permission. Alas, she was living very quietly in the English countryside.

She did not publish another piece until 1960, 21 years later.

'A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian'

2011-12-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

An interestingly easy read that is much as laugh-out-loud humorous as it is a tale about all the bullshit that people put up with when they have families.

Who knew that something that could provide so much love, so much support could be such giant pains in the ass?

A widowed father, a Ukrainian immigrant and former engineer, shocks his two grown daughters -- who are estranged due to the division of their mother's inheritance -- when he announces he is going to marry a much younger gold digger, Valentina.

As the daughter unite to oust Valentina, whose intentions are clear that she is looking for citizenship and any cash the father might have, the secrets of the family are unveiled as are Valentina's and as much as we would like to hate someone (the father, the daughter, Valentina, et al.) we just kind of feel sorry for all of them. Almost all at the same time.

What is most perplexing is how foreign everyone feels. It's set in England. However, it might as well be happening in some Ukrainian hamlet because it perpetually feels that no one fits into their adoptive country (as it's revealed, most are there illegally) even the grown daughters, who have married Englishmen, work and thrive in the country. This is a wholly Ukrainian novel, an immigrant's story.

'Paranoid'

2011-12-17T17:58:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I've given Black Sabbath enough thought to even form an opinion.

But that's a good album. The riffs are meaty, the guitar leads are blistering (for the time), it's sludgy, British metal, and yet it doesn't forsake the melody. There are good songs here.

Foremost, I think there's "Iron Man." I've probably listened to the Cardigans' cover of "Iron Man" more than I've listened to the original.

However, I dare you know to put this on the stereo and crank it. It's a great, great song. Geezer Butler's bassline is incredible. The guitars just absolutely kill it. The lyrics make as little sense as possible.

I think you can say what you will about Ozzy Osbourne. Maybe he's a cartoon character now, but I would say that he's always been a cartoon character. His look and his antics are not entirely too different than being on a reality show and being a sort of a punchline. I don't think he cares. I sincerely believe he knows that he's had one heck of a life, one blessed compared to toiling in some Manchester coal mine or factory.

'I've Got A Tiger By The Tail'

2011-12-17T17:56:00.000-08:00

A simply fantastic lil' country album. A whole lot of twin-fiddle, steel-guitar, three-chord early country mixed with a little early rock and roll.

There's not a bad song on the record. Mostly their about sleeping with women and generally really not wanting to settle down, which sounds agreeable.

Ironically (or not), Owens himself married five times and divorced all five times. One marriage, to a fiddle player in his band, lasted a couple of days before she threw in the towel. Either Owens knew exactly what he was singing about or he knew absolutely nothing about what he was singing about. You could probably write a book about it.

Owens is actually a Texan. Before he made Bakersfield, Calif. as a kind of hub of musicians, he was born in Sherman (there is a mall currently on the property where his house once stood) and later attended school in Garland, which in the 1930s was probably a series of farm and pasture land.

Owens died of a heart attack, in his sleep, in 2006. By all accounts, he had a chicken fried steak, was about to not perform until he learned a group of fans from Oregon came to see him and decided to play anyway. He played the gig, went home and died in his sleep.

Not the most glamorous of deaths, he didn't die of alcohol poisoning in the back of his car, but he's a hell of a way to go.

'Dirty' & 'Goo'

2011-12-13T19:10:00.000-08:00

Sonic Youth's first two albums after signing a five-album, $300,000 deal with Geffen after the moderate success of Daydream Nation.

I personally think they're terrific. A step up from Daydream without losing any of the edge. The band was not required to run songs by the record company but they did nonetheless. Sonic Youth seems to do what they want, when they want.

Both albums sandwiched Nirvana's Nevermind, regarded as the quintessential rock record of the last 25 years. Despite being pushed as such, Sonic Youth was never able to capture the mainstream success of their counterparts in the post-punk genre. It probably makes sense.

Although Nirvana are not some bubblegum pop band, there was a lot more structure and melody. Sonic Youth was grittier with less craft and a lot more caterwauling from Kim Gordon.

Still, they're a band I respective the crap out of and I still have like two albums to listen to for this list.

The real question is just how rich are Sonic Youth? They've never sold more than 500,000 of any one album, these two being their most popular. They've gotten no radio airplay. They also don't tour excessively. Not like 200 dates in a year. They still have to eat even if their old. Thurston Moore did say that they could have made a lot more money had their broken up in the early 1990s and done a reunion tour like The Pixies or Dinosaur Jr. At least he's honest.

'Garbage'

2011-12-13T19:01:00.000-08:00

When this album was released in 1995 -- I was 15 -- I thought this was music aimed at marginally disenfranchised females and make-out music for the slightly fringey kids.

Again, I was 15. In theory, this album should have been aimed at me. It wasn't.

I kind of feel the same about it. Girls liked it because the lyrics were vague and hinted at being unsatisfied about stuff. Like guys, I guess.

Guys kind of liked it because the band had a female singer, who sang lyrics that were a little titillating and suggestive. But not suggestive in the least. They were probably about cheeseburgers.

The band seemed rock starry and foreign. The singer was Scottish. In fact, they're from Wisconsin. Rock capital.

'Nothing's Shocking'

2011-12-09T20:35:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe that his album is 23 years old and that it's Jane's Addiction first studio album.

It's good. I've never disliked Jane's Addiction, but I've also never really liked them. Mostly because I don't think they've truly been as good as they are on Nothing's Shocking and they also have not been around for very long, at least with the original line-up. Also, the members -- at least Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro -- have gotten too far into themselves as moderately popular rock stars.

Leather pants, make-up, crazy hair, trying to juggle the life of a hippie, artist and a libertine all at the same time. Seems all a bit too disingenuous.

I would daresay you could play Nothing's Shocking on modern airwaves while not indicating who the artist or record is and letting all the young hipsters figure out that it's older than them.

Apparently, a lot of the tension within the band stems from this album. Before it was recorded, lead singer Farrell demanded 62 percent of royalties for lyrics and music. Clearly, the other three members weren't behind this and they almost broke up.

Farrell and bassist Eric Avery had a further riff when it was thought the latter attempted to hit on the former's girlfriend. Also, Avery went sober. There was apparent tensions between all the members except Stephen Perkins, and who could hate a drummer?

This album also belongs in the censored album covers package. Walmart tends to frown about nude women.

'Devil Without A Cause'

2011-12-09T20:10:00.000-08:00

Geesh. There's not a bigger phoney baloney quite like Kid Rock. Some greasy-haired white kid sucked into liking hip-hop, is halfways decent at rapping to the point that he's not completely laughed out of the room, he decides he wants to get big, embraces rock music and then spends the next decade telling everyone about how he's still the same ol' gracious kid that grew up Detroit and came from the most modest of backgrounds.

Kid Rock's like one of those formerly small towns that is suddenly too big for its britches and still advertises how small its schools are.

This album is terrible and it brings back a lot of bad musical memories. I've written before that 1998-2000 was just a bad time for music or for music that was A) popular and B) played on MTV at the time. I was in college and there was literally nothing better to do than watched Total Request Live and Kid Rock had a perpetual video in the top 10 and they were all from this album.

The songs are terrible. They focus on banging girls, partying and drinking. Still, Kid Rock knows when to bring it all back down with "Only God Knows Why," a pretentious, probably sacrilegious prayer from the woeful Kid Rock bemoaning the fact that all this money, drugs, alcohol, women and success could never heal the hurt and loneliness. What a dick. He spends the other 11 songs telling us how great money, drugs, alcohol, women and success are and how personal fulfillment is pretty overrated.

I wish harm on no one. If Kid Rock disappeared -- he's currently assaulting country and western charts -- I wouldn't be too upset.

'Sweet Smell Of Success'

2011-11-29T20:11:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-29T19:20:00.001-08:00

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'

2011-11-29T19:00:00.000-08:00

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!'

2011-11-28T21:23:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-28T20:54:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-28T20:31:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-27T19:34:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-27T19:16:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-27T19:01:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-27T17:47:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-27T17:18:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-24T20:12:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-24T19:46:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-21T13:26:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-21T13:04:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-18T22:06:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-18T21:54:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-15T20:54:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-15T20:25:00.000-08:00

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!'

2011-11-13T17:50:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-13T17:20:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-13T16:57:00.000-08:00

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'

2011-11-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

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'

2011-11-02T19:14:00.000-07:00

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'

2011-11-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

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'

2011-11-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

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.

'The Pilgrim's Progress'

2011-10-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The Ravishing Of Lol Stein'

2011-10-30T10:21:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

2011-10-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Forbidden Games'

2011-10-29T22:36:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The Ten Commandments'

2011-10-29T20:59:00.000-07:00

A perfect example of a bygone era of films.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The Golden Coach'

2011-10-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

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

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

'Jane Eyre'

2011-10-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The Beautiful Troublemaker'

2011-10-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

'Vagabond'

2011-10-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

'Ariel'

2011-10-26T21:57:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

'The Burmese Harp'

2011-10-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-10-22T21:18:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Tsotsi'

2011-10-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

'Children Of Paradise'

2011-10-22T20:42:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Joan Baez'

2011-10-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

'Ready To Die'

2011-10-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

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

The other part: Biggie's Ready to Die.

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-10-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Dookie'

2011-10-19T20:36:00.001-07:00

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

The second result is the Urban Dictionary definition for poop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The Last Seduction'

2011-10-11T20:36:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'A.I. Artificial Intelligence'

2011-10-05T21:40:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Fahrenheit 9/11'

2011-10-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

I did not especially look forward to watching this film.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Surf's Up'

2011-09-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

Surf's Up was released in 1971, after the commercially and artistically ordinary Sunflower.

At the time, the Beach Boys had problems. For one, they were very unhip. Two, they were not relevant in the least and they hadn't put out at least a popular album since 1967 when Wild Honey was put out.

"Surf's Up" was a castaway from the Smile sessions of several years before. A lot of those songs actually all wound up on other albums like Wild Honey and Smiley Smile.

Their third and final problem was that the band was split. It'd been held together with duct tape and Carl Wilson while Dennis was partying and Brian Wilson was busy going crazy.

Jack Rieley was brought in to straighten things out. They decided that Carl should be the "musical director" as the only talented guy still interested in making music.

Also, he attempted to bridge the gap between the artistic guys (the Wilsons) and the guys just trying to make as much money possible off the Beach Boys' name (the talentless trio -- Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and cousin Mike Love). The record company wanted the brothers driving the album, but they were a band still and clipping Jardin, Johnston and Love was out of the question.

Everyone contributed on the album, sharing lead vocals and writing credits. Part of Dennis' contribution wound up on his solo record Pacific Ocean Blue.

It's pretty album. A lot of good to come out of it as the Beach Boys will do. However, I'm a fan and most may consider this crap because it doesn't have a bunch of hits on it. I don't like people. Generally.

'FishScale'

2011-09-21T19:31:00.000-07:00

"Fish scale" is a term for a very pure form of cocaine. So you know.
It's confirmed, the Wu Tang Clan has the greatest group of albums from the members as solo artists. They've overtaken the Beatles.

No, the solo albums are simply better than the albums as the Wu Tang Clan. Of all the musical artists in the history of recorded music, no set of artists that at one time performed as a group has released a better set of albums as solo artists, instead of the group.

Clear as mud?

FishScale is fantastic. I listened and listened and I was exhausted afterwards. I was simply blown away. The rapid pace and longevity of their verses are mind blowing. Right when you think it'll go to the chorus or possibly pass the verse off to another rapper.

Instead, they go on and on.

"Big Girl" is simply a good song. Not a good hip-hop song. Not a good sample. You can put that song toe to toe with any other song in rap, pop, hip-hop or rock and it's just as good as anything else.

'If ...'

2011-09-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

I was interested in this film because it starred Malcolm McDowell. It is his first role. He was 25 playing a teenager. Still, he pulled it off.

He'd take on a role three years later as a juvenile in Stanley Kubrick's overtly brilliant A Clockwork Orange as the randy Alex.

He would bring back his character of Mick Travis in the films O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital.

Boarding schools are interesting. You would literally ship your kid off to college: They live on campus, sleep in a dorm and are practically raised by teachers and headmasters and prefects and whatnot.

I always dreamed about going to a boarding school. Now, it just interests me that parents would rather just pay a hefty sum to not have to see their kids, which is what boarding schools are really about. Parents might say that they offer some edge in education, and in Europe this might be the case.

All I know is that anyone that has a kid in the United States, somewhere along the way, gets some pressure to quit one's job and raise the kid at home. Shipping them off to Switzerland or England is completely out of the question. See, things aren't so bad now.

Why people have children is a total mystery.

'Ordinary People'

2011-09-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

The 1980s were full of really intense, emotional, family-driven dramas. Like Steel Magnolias, Terms of Endearment, Kramer vs. Kramer and Beaches.

I wonder why that is. Any film that makes you feel like your in your best friend's living room and his parents are fighting in the next room.

That's drama. And that is what makes these films good. There's nothing spectacular about these films. No special effects. No elaborate make-up or costumes or sets.

It's just people. Ordinary people, I guess, with extraordinary problems. No, to have had Mary Tyler Moore as your mother as her character in Ordinary People is not normal or ordinary. Or healthy.

What makes this film even more extraordinary is that its Robert Redford's directing debut. He'd been looking to get into the game, read the short story and bought the rights.

Turns out, he wins Academy Awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screen Play and Tim Hutton wins for Best Supporting Actor (zero love for the great Donald Sutherland).

Ordinary People also beat out Martin Scorcese's Raging Bull. It would be the first time that he was beat out by a director making his debut. The second would be nine years later by Kevin Costner and Dances With Wolves. What bad luck.

'A Matter Of Life And Death'

2011-09-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

This is a fascinating film made by the filmmaking duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The film starts on a cheery note. Peter, portrayed by the ostensibly British David Niven, is returning to England in a badly damaged bomber and about to jump out of the aircraft when he happens to contact June, an American radio operator.

The pair make a wireless connection in his supposed dying moments. He jumps, but due to a bad fog his ... death angel fails to collect him for the afterlife.

He happens to land near June, they meet and fall in love. Thus the quandary. He's supposed to be dead and the people in the "Other World" want to even the score.

The debate begins in the afterlife as to whether Peter should be let alone to live a life since he is in love and it wasn't his fault that they dropped the ball.

Suddenly, the film moves into the courtroom scene where a jury is chosen to decide whether Peter should stay alive or join them in heaven.

Initially, the jury is staked against Peter, the Britishman. It is filled with a colonial-era American, an Indian, a Chinaman and just about any other ethnic group that might be pissed off at the British.

Heaven, being fair, changes the jury. June, realizing the only way to save Peter is to take his place, she does and that does the trick. The jury rules in Peter's favor.

It's an interesting film because it deals so bluntly with the idea of death and kind of this ho-hum attitude about the whole thing, as if it weren't completely terrifying. And I guess it kind of was. But once you're existing in the afterlife, after some moments of clarity and understanding, I'm sure there is a high level of acceptance.

It's brilliantly made and highly worth a watch.

'Rio Grande'

2011-09-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

Sing some harmony? Join the army!

I'd like to think that was the tagline for recruiting to the U.S. Army, for those who were not excited about seeing the sights of the American west and getting stuck by a bunch of crazy Indians.

To overcome the blues, they instead practice trick horse riding and singing five-part harmony around the camp fire. No telling how many decent soldiers were left back east because they weren't a tenor.

John Wayne starred in five films with Maureen O'Hara: Rio Grande and The Quiet Man, which was previously reviewed on this sight.

Initially, The Quiet Man was supposed to be made first, but it was the opinion of studio executives that it wasn't very good.

So, they went to work on Rio Grande, which was the final installment of John Ford's "cavalry trilogy," which starred Wayne was Kirby Yorke. It finds Yorke leading a ragtag bunch of good ol' boys and his son joins the ranks. And his mother -- Yorke's jilted wife -- comes along for the wife.

I'm sure Yorke loves that.

Anyway, they made Rio Grande and then they made The Quiet Man, which became the studio's highest grossing film.

'Chimes At Midnight'

2011-09-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

I must admit, I did not watch this in its entirety. It was by no choice of myself. The disc suddenly became damaged, inexplicably really, and about nine-tenths through the film, it ceased to work.

Considering it's been rarely released over the past 60 years, I figured I'm pretty well off with what I've seen.

It's a slendid film. Taken from five of Shakespear's plays -- Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, Richard II, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

It stars director Orson Welles as the rouge Falstaff as he watches his friend Hal go from ale-swilling roustabout to the jolly ol' king of England.

Welles, frankly, is fantastic. It's good having the girth to really make Falstaff the large character that makes him such a treat on the printed page. "Larger than life" was probably more of a play on words for Falstaff than it is for other people.

Welles, dolled up in that ridiculous suit of armor, hiding behind the bush during the ball against Hotspur was as funny as anything Monty Python would produce a decade later. In fact, it would shock me to know that the Pythons didn't watch this film and find it extremely inspiring.

Most, including Welles, agrees with my thoughts. He is known to have said that if producing a film got one into heaven, Chimes at Midnight would be the one he'd show.

'Happiness'

2011-09-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

Todd Solondz makes me sad. It is frightening and disturbing to watch his movies. They're a train wreck. They are a neverending series of circus freakdom, the world's physically and emotionally deformed.

He makes extremely 1990s films. The 1990s -- extremely underrated for being impeccably lame, some sort of bastardization of the 1980s -- was a soulless era. The style and the pop culture was a sort of evolution of 1980s culture. But at least the 1980s had pizazz. There was dancing. The 1990s was full of self-loathing as Generation X came of age and entered adulthood.
Meanwhile, everyone was desperately trying to be cool and it got out of hand. Solandz captures this desperation. It went, of course, beyond clothes and music, all of which soiled everything from art to religion. Happiness was released in 1998. However, he captures 1993 perfectly in all of his movies. Maybe its the wardrobe or the sickening provincialism and snobbery, despite being completely desperate and sad.

In this world, there is the slightly chubby, sexually frustrated young boy seeking his fist orgasm. His dad, the pedophile. His aunt, the professionally frustrated youngish woman, with no prospects in either her personal or professional life. His grandparents, who find themselves bored with their lives, but without the drive to be alone or seek other partnerships. His other aunt, the successful writer, who pines to live the sexually degrading exploits of her characters and who is obsessed upon by her neighbor, the overweight, socially awkward Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

There are poignant moments for each. The sister walking to work as a teacher, getting rotten fruit and vegetables thrown at her as someone crossing the picket line. The father who admits that he abuses young boys, but only "jerks off" at the thought of his son. The moment that Hoffman's character ejaculates on the wall, only to place a postcard on the wall for it to stick.

Then the boy. Walks into the dining room on Thanksgiving having reached orgasm on the balcony, and tells the family that he came.

If it weren't completely despressing, you might life.

'Reversal Of Fortune'

2011-09-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

I'm happy I watched this film if for nothing other than understanding Jerry Seinfeld's joke on his sitcom when referencing his neighbor's coma as being (or not) a coma like Sunny von Bülow. I don't know why I just didn't look it up.

Anyway, the main theme of this film is justice and it provokes a certain amount of mental anguish attempting to deconstruct our current judicial system and the case of Claus von Bülow.

Claus was blamed for Sunny's vegetative state, which lasted 28 years until her death in 2008 (which completely passed me by), after was injected with insulin.

The film was adapted from Alan Dershowitz's book of the same name. Clearly, this was going to be a biased account in film.

Nonetheless, Claus is painted clearly as the murderer: He'd been unresponsive and lackadaisical during an earlier incident, they'd been on the verge of divorce and Sunny had all the money. Meanwhile, he was sleeping with another woman.

After Dershowitz took the case, it all changed. Facts were blurred or testimony questioned. Dershowitz and Claus won the appeal and the latter was set free. He'd later get a divorce and his daughter with Sunny actually took his side and she was written out of the will by Sunny's rich family.

What never changes is Claus' probable guilt. In the United States, you are innocent until proven guilty and you must be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt by a jury of your peers.

This is all fine and good until you come upon a case like Claus. By all intentions, Claus was guilty. I think his lawyers believed that and there's little to doubt that this is the case.

Claus didn't win in the longterm. He wound up divorce from Sunny and didn't get any of the money. He did escape prison, which means something.

What do you do with someone that is probably guilty, but do to any number of circumstances can not be convincted? By the great laws of this land, that person is innocent. Nothing you can do.

However, it's maddening seeing Claus simply get away with something. It's never right if someone is wrongly accused or even wrongly convicted of crime. To me, it's equally as wrong if someone is not convicted of a crime. We will never know if Claus drugged his wife. Maybe it was her recreational drug use that did her in. Maybe it was his syringe.

It is good enough to stand up for the rights of the accused (like Dershowitz) if, indeed, that individual is guilty? Here we must understand that attorneys are not merely defended a person or a company. They are defending the principals spelled out in our torts and Constitution. It's bigger than Claus or O.J. Simpson or Lizzie Borden or Charlie Manson.

It's about the truly innocent person accused next that needs cases like Simpson and Claus to work out the way they did, no matter how unfair it may seem.

In this film, Dershowitz is often cited as defending two black guys on death row for a murder they didn't commit. There is no resolution to this case in the film, but it's brought up all the time because its that case that is helped or hurt by whether or not Dershowitz and his team can get Claus off the hook.

'A Nod Is As Good As A Wink'

2011-09-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

Why did they rename the band from Small Faces to Faces?

Because at 5-8 and 5-9, Ron Wood and Rod Stewart were marginally taller than the rest of the remaining band. Fun fact.

The Faces are one of my favorite bands one of the more understated 1970s rock bands. Artistically, they weren't as progressive as other bands like The Who, the Rolling Stones and others. The Faces were who they were. They had driving and deep guitar riffs that were unrelentless.

They were a rock band and they played rock songs. They were funny and goofy. They never took themselves too seriously and they wanted, more than anything, was a couch to sleep on and a gig to play that night.

'Olympia '64'

2011-09-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

I like it when people are called "national treasures." Like The Beatles were considered like an actual product that belonged to England that only those English could fully enjoy and understand.

Jacques Brel was that to France. He's actually Belgian, but people rarely make the distinction either way. Edith Piaf was the same way and both of their careers overlapped as these ... singers.

The United States doesn't have singers of this type. Yes, we like singers and the closest comparison is probably Frank Sinatra. Then again, I don't know if we would consider Sinatra a "national treasure." The closest comparison is like John F. Kennedy.

The thing about Brel and Piaf is that they were regarded as a source of pride to a country. Kind of a hash mark for greatness, proof that France was better than any other country in the world.

Brel sold 25 million albums. He retired from touring at the tender age of 38, but if he was living the life like Piaf, he had a 50-year-old body.

Upon retirement from touring, he planned on sailing around the world (he'd already taken up flying) and wound up in the moving pictures. After a brief career up through the early 1970s, his health began failing. By 1973, at age 44, he knew he was dying. By 49, he'd died of lung cancer.

In terms of influence, I suggest listening to Brel (it's by no means bad music ... it's really good) and then listening to David Bowie and Scott Walker, who kind of crooning rock guys that almost shadow Brel's vocal stylings to the tiniest details.

Everywhere there is influence.

'Ananda Shankar'

2011-09-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

To my surprise, I learned that Ananda Shankar is a guy. Which is a bit disappointing only because I thought "Ananda" would be a pretty cool name for a girl and the entire time I listened to this self-titled album, I pictured a female version of Ravi Shankar (essentially, sans beard) doing Rolling Stones covers.

Shankar is actually Ravi's nephew. Despite the sitar genius being in the family tree, Ananda learned the instrument at Banaras Hindu University under a different teacher.

In the 1960s, Shankar went to Los Angeles and jammed with musicians including Jimi Hendrix. This is when he released Ananda Shankar.

Shankar also wound up providing musical direction for a number of films and television shows. Later, his music was used post-humonously in the NBA sitcom "Outsourced" about an American sent to an Indian call center to manage.

But, to me, she'll always be Ravi's good-looking kid nephew.

'Pink Moon'

2011-09-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

This is Nick Drake's final record capping a very short career.

It follows Bryter Layter, which Drake deemed was too crowded musically and received poor reviews. Downheartened, he fell into a malaise and refused to do publicity for Bryter Layter. The record company fell out of sorts with the artist.

Not expecting another album, they received Pink Moon, a stripped down record of just Drake and his guitar. It sold very little. He increasingly became more secluded eventually moving back in with his parents and smoking "unbelievable amounts" of marijuana, which is probably the most awesome description you could give to an individual.

Two years after the release of Pink Moon, Drake overdosed on antidepressants.

Then he'd get popular and sell records.

'Good Morning Vietnam'

2011-09-12T21:15:00.000-07:00

It shocks me that Robin Williams somehow made it onto the 1,001 list.

To my knowledge, it's the only film included that has Williams in a prominent role. Not that he was doing Oscar-caliber work or a bunch of well-produced indie films ... but somehow Good Morning Vietnam made it, so who's to say something else wouldn't?

I did not see this film when it was released. I was far too young and all I remember are the television commercials with Williams animatedly screaming "gooooooddddddd moooorrrrrnnnniiiiinnnngggg Vietnaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmm!"

I continued to watch Williams' movies through the years. He almost always played someone that was at least 20 years younger than he actually was. He almost always had kids that were far too good looking to be his and married to a woman that would never marry a guy as ugly as he was, even if it was Sally Field. He played Peter Pan.

He also took dramatic roles or he played silly characters that had these really dark tendencies or circumstances. It was unfair. There's this silly guy and when he attempts to get angry or serious, all you want to do is laugh.

Good Morning Vietnam gives us two things. First, it's another chapter in 1980s films in which we got entirely too sentimental for the 1960s and the music. Films from this decade had more 20-year-old songs than they did songs from the era. Ferris Bueller danced to "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles.

It also gives us funny-serious Williams. This is the Williams that believed that a good joke could cure all ills. Like the Vietnam War. Either Williams' character is genius. Or he's a shortsighted idiot.

We'd like to think that laughter is a cure-all. Williams wants to laugh all the problems in the world away. That doesn't work. Naturally. So, Williams gets angry. He chases the Vietnamese terrorist seeking answers. He gets in fights and yells at people.

Meanwhile, I just laugh because no one is taking this guy seriously. He can't even act angry. Chances are, he was too high on coke anyway to be genuinely pissed.

'The Bigamist'

2011-09-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

I failed to initially see the signficance of this film. A simple black-and-white picture about a man that almost absentmindedly falls in love and begins taking care of two women. He marries both and his life is unraveled after trying to adopt a child with Joan Fontaine's character.

It's marginally acted, hokey 1950s storytelling (where the protagonist tells how he got in the pickle he's currently in), no huge names and you can find films made in the 1940s with better production.

Why this film is important is the director. It was directed by Ida Lupino. She not only plays Phyllis Martin, the so-called other woman, but it was directed by her. (Also, it was written by Collier Young, who had been married to Lupino and was currently married to Fontaine. But not at the same time.)

By the early 1950s, the "poor man's Bette Davis" quit the studio scene in Hollywood and became a free agent. When work dried up, she became a director. She didn't direct many films. In fact The Bigamist was her final motion picture before making the huge leap to TV where she directed a ton of stuff, including being the only woman to direct an episode of "The Twilight Zone." Also, she was the second woman inducted into the Director's Guild.

Sometimes, the film is inconsequential.

'Protection' & 'Blue Lines'

2011-08-31T21:19:00.000-07:00

My perception of Massive Attack was extremely off.

I found them -- at least on these two albums -- neither "massive" nor catgorized as an "attack." More like a "Marginal Affront."

I thought Massive Attack was aggressive and driving: A lot of songs assaulting the ear drums and pushing the limits of the human mind in accepting sonic ice cream headaches.

Instead it's a bunch of mellow electronica. Dance music for Generation X to drive their kids to soccer practice.

I can't imagine anyone listening to this. Moreso, if anyone did listen to it, I don't know where they'd do it. Possibly while doing heroin.

'Trafalgar' & 'Odessa'

2011-08-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

I was very excited at one point to learn that the Bee Gees were not just the disco vocal group with the dead brother Andy and the relatively ugly looking twin brothers.

At one point, in the beginning, they were a band, with drummers and stuff. They wrote and released their own songs and were mild hits.

Somewhere beyond the falsetto vocals and danceable beats was a band of brothers that just wanted to be The Beatles.

With the highest and most interested of expectations, I was extremely disappointed to listen to these albums and be assaulted by a series of caterwauling. Geez Louise.

I though Barry Gibb's falsetto was obnoxious on those disco tunes, but the screeching that takes place in their early years is abhorent. It's cancer to the ears. It's simply one of the worst things ever.

I don't care if they did write "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?"

'Stripped' & 'Back To Basics'

2011-08-30T20:16:00.000-07:00

I have a friend is more than likely to extol the virtues of South Korean punk if you talk music. He's also sort of a dork when it comes to music.

He loves him some pop music. Bad pop music. Pop music is popular. Thus "pop" music. It is full of basic lyricism and insanely catchy hooks. Songs without either are not popular, typically.

I was shocked one day when my friend -- Mr. Punk Rock -- said that Christina Aguilera's albums were not as bad as you might think and that they have value.

"Pshaw," I retorted.

And I was right. I'm not right often (just ask my wife!) (please!), but I'm right here. Christina Aguilera sucks. Her songs suck. The albums suck.

Let me tell you something about good-looking singers: They are a dime a dozen. They are every where. Are they all necessarily as polished as Aguilera or do they sing as high? No. But what difference does it make whether she can hit a high "C" and someone else can hit an "A"?

Go into any church on a Sunday morning. Watch "American Idol" some time. Those kids that don't win are all good singers and a lot of them are good looking. Slap some double Ds on them, inject some botox, dye the hair and run those vocals through enough processing to stun a mastodon and you have Christina Aguilera.

'Metallica' & 'Master Of Puppets'

2011-08-29T20:59:00.000-07:00

These two albums, I think, show the growth of a band and the mainstreaming of heavy metal.

Master of Puppets is raw and unforgiving. It's Metallica at its most angry, the most punk and the most hardcore. They punch you in the face only to get you on the ground and put their foot on your throat. It would have been a treat to be 17 and a Metallica fan.

As for the self-titled album, it launched this little metal band in the outermost stratosphere. It spanned from the metalheads to the preppy kids to the guitar nerds to the band geeks. It did more than rock. It was a production. Their first with Bob Rock -- Mr. Mega Rock Album Producer -- and it shows. It's slick and pretty. It's the opposite of Master of Puppets in some ways and yet completely better in quite a number of others.

Metallica is chockful of stuff. I'd forgotten just how jam packed it really is: "The Unforgiven," "Wherever I May Roam," "Enter Sandman," "Don't Tread On Me," "Nothing Else Matters" and "Sad But True." Insane songs all of them. It's thick and meaty. The manic punk urgency that is missing instead is exchanged for this heavy, pounding sounds of drum, bass and guitar.

The Metallica of Master of Puppets would never have foreseen the Metallica of Metallica. I don't know if the fans from 1986 could have imagined them in 1993 or the band that they would become: Spoiled, slick-haired old men still playing their electric guitars and making faux-scowling faces in the cameras. Suing kids illegally downloading their music.

The 1986 Metallica would've punched the 2011 Metallica.

'L.A. Woman'

2011-08-29T20:52:00.000-07:00

L.A. Woman was the swan song for one of the worst, most overhyped and underwhelming bands in modern pop culture, The Doors.

The album itself actually isn't that bad. For The Doors it's pretty good. It's a bare bones project without a lot of production or over thinking things. Not all the lyrics are Jim Morrison's incoherent dribble.

The album was recorded between December 1970-January 1971. The album would be released in April 1971. In December 1970, The Doors began a tour in the south starting in Dallas. The next night was in New Orleans and that's when Morrison ahd his infamous freak out. He smashed the stage with a microphone stand and sat down refusing to perform.

The rest of the band agree to stop touring. Eight months later, Morrison would wind up dead in Paris. At least they went out not being total miserable assholes. Except for them actually all being assholes.

'American Pie'

2011-08-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

I think the song, "American Pie" is just the greatest song ever. Or one of the greatest. It's really good no matter how you slice it.

I remember my young teenage years when I first heard it and I remember trying to figure out the lyrics, obviously some kind of ode to "The Day the Music Died" when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and everyone not Waylon Jennings died in that airplane crash.

However, it's a cryptic song. I asked my mother about it and she thought it was religious. Don McLean references "the devil's only friend," "Satan," "the father, son and Holy Ghost," "God," "Bible" and "soul."

She said that Satan was the choir leader (for lack of a better word) before he was cast down from heaven for getting all high and mighty. That would be the "day the music died."

It's flimsy. I tend to agree with the general consensus that it refers to McLean's discovery of the crash, the 1960s and the turmoil (assassinations, whatnot) that took place that killed the "innocence" (getting girls pregnant in the back of cars, smoking weed) of the era.

Some brilliant lyrics in here. Some of my favorites:

"Now for 10 years we’ve been on our own/And moss grows fat on a rollin’ stone/But that’s not how it used to be."

"Do you believe in rock ’n roll/Can music save your mortal soul/And can you teach me how to dance real slow?"

"Well, I know that you’re in love with him/`Cause I saw you dancin’ in the gym."

Later, Madonna would cover the song and Grand Rapids, Mich. would make a music video using the song as a way to promote their city.

As to what McLean said the song meant to him: " "It means I never have to work again."

Funny.

'Blood, Sweat And Tears'

2011-08-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

Blood, Sweat and Tears are known for their horn-driven R&B blues rock and the fact that they've had about 130 different players in the band.

Horn sections will do that to you, but Chicago hasn't had the line-ups that BS&T has had over hte years. It also doesn't help being around for 40 years and keeping the band all together.

Eventually, you have to begin to wonder whether or not being in BS&T really means anything anymore. It's like attempting to fall in love with the town prostitute. Can you really fall for someone that everyone's had a go at?

As far as the music, I can take it or leave it. That lead singer's voice is obnoxiously gravelly. The tunes are mundane at best. At worst, they're forgettable. I don't know what is actually worse.

Another fun note about this album is that it won a Grammy over The Beatles' Abbey Road, which is one of the singular worse things ever.