'Madman Across The Water'

The album cover was actually embroidered over a period of two weeks by the wife of the art director. It would've been a shame had she done all that work and they decided to go with something else.

The final product was given to Elton John.

It was John's four studio album and actually probably a bit of a disappointment. The previous three all went top 10 in the United States. It's predecessor -- Tumbleweed Connection -- peaked at No. 2 in the United Kingdom.

Then Madman ... was released and peaked at No. 41 in the United Kingdom before having three of the next four go No. 1 in the United Kingdom. The next six would go No. 1 in the United States.

Madman ... is good, but it's not radio friendly in the least. Its hits -- "Levon" and "Tiny Dancer" -- averaged almost six minutes a piece. And that's the front half of side 1. And those are kind of the best songs on the thing.

Very much a transitional album (artistically and commercially) for John.

'Belle Du Jour' & 'Repulsion' & 'The Last Metro'

Question: Is Catherine Deneuve the greatest actress of all time?

Answer: Maybe. She's in the discussion.

All three of these films star Deneuve, the best performance probably being Belle Du Jour and hte best film being Roman Polanski's Repulsion, in which she plays a neurotic, lonely woman deathly afraid of men.

She's worked for seven decades making many important films. She's tied for having the most on the 1,001 list with seven. If she's good enough for Polanski, Francois Truffaut, Lars Van Tier, Jacques Demy and Luis Bunuel, then she's probably good enough to be considered for such a lofty honor.

The funny thing is, I'd never heard of her. This is really no surprise considering I didn't care much about films up until two years ago, but even then I didn't realize how good she was and what kind of legacy she's built since the 1960s. I'd heard of Brigitte Bardot, but not Deneuve. That's a shame because Deneuve is almost as sexy as Bardot (almost).

Case in point, I think I found her most desirable in Truffaut's 1980 film, The Last Metro, where she plays the proprietor of a Paris theater during Nazi occupation while hiding her Jewish husband and director in the theater's basement.

Carrying herself at an age when many are losing their appeal and being even more sultry and desirable than as a prostitute 20 years before says a lot about a woman.

'Viridiana'

I don't really remember a film interesting me -- in terms of the plot -- as much as this one.

A nun, Viridiana, on the verge of taking her final vows, is invited to the estate of an uncle. She seems relaly reluctant on going, but is urged to do so nonetheless.

Once there, the uncle is struck by how much Viridiana looks like his deceased wife. He asks her to put on his wife's wedding dress and he proposes marriage. He then drugs her and attempts to rape her. Still, she doesn't really know if he went through with it.

Attempting to leave, she is caught at the train station by the authorities to tell her that the uncle hung himself and left Viridiana and a son the estate.

With the disgrace weighing her soul, she decides to forego the church and, instead, decides to make her uncle's estate a haven for the local beggars and ne'er do wells. She places her entire faith that people are inherently good and only in need of a little charity.

She puts the beggars to work, gives them a purpose. All is going well until Viridiana, the servants and other family leave the beggars to their own devices one night in which they turn into drunken gluttons, trash the house and then attempt to rape Viridiana upon her return.

The film was directed by Luis Bunuel, at the time an exile of his native Spain and having to do the film in Mexico. Considered sacreligious, the film wasn't released in Spain until 1977, after Franco's death and after everyone got the sticks out of their asses.

It confirms one thing for people: Not that homeless beggars are reprobates and ill-deserving of our time and charity; but that people are inherently bad, no matter their standing in this world.

'The Player' & 'Day For Night'

Two "films within films."

Francois Truffaut's Day for Night follows the filming of a French movie. All the small things that happen from having to pick out a gun to dealing with boyfriends on the set and the very occassional meltdown.

I do admit that this film really opened my eyes as to the grand production that a film is. You've got hundreds of people doing hundreds of jobs and you, as the director, have to trust those people to do it well. To make the right decisions. To not be lazy. To not completely flake out.

That's tough because doing these type of jobs tend to attract flaky people and there's a massive opportunity to flake out. Left to your own devices, there's time and opportunity to fall off and possibly put the production jeopardy. I think this probably happens all the time. Some movies don't happen. Others fall behind. Others forge ahead and get the film done.

The Player is set amongst the movers and shakers of the movie world, directed by Robert Altman and all of his background conversations and noise. Hopefully this is the last Altman film on the list.

It stars Tim Robbins as a studio exec who is getting threatening postcards from a supposed screenwriter he rebuffed. In trying to find out who this person is, he winds up killing the wrong writer and courting that writer's girlfriend. All the while, he's trying to get away with the murder, keep his job and do something with his existing girlfriend.

It's supposedly filled with all this insider crap and I totally think all of this stuff actually happens: Running into Burt Reynolds at breakfast, being kinda blown off by John Cusack, the constant backstabbing, the constant pitches and this internal struggle to make somet hing "important" and something that sells.

Well, Robbins' stalker sticks around. He calls Robbins with a movie pitch about a movie exec who kills a writer, marries his girlfriend, gets away with murder and they do a movie about it.

As I watched this film and saw the constant parade of actual celebrities playing themselves (Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, Reynolds, Cusack), I wondered if they realized how this movie exec looked just like their friend Tim Robbins.

In fact, where was Robbins during this whole film. Wouldn't it have been super post-modern had they had Robbin's Griffin Mill get the actor Tim Robbins to be in a film?

'A Christmas Carol'

There are films, books, records and a lot more being printed, pressed, released and spread around the Internet that will never be seen by 99 percent of everyone.

There's countless others that'll be seen and forgotten. Good stuff that deserves a better fate, but it's all too much for even the most media-savvy jerks to take in.

However, more than 150 years after it was released, A Christmas Carol resounds over and over through the generations. The words "Bah!" and "Humbug!" are known. The denotations are clear and their source is well known. The moniker "Scrooge" is easily recognizable as someone rich, but stingy and unsociable and uncaring.

That kind of resonance is astounding. You couldn't buy that kind of importance or relevance. It just happens. It's lucky and amazing when it happens.

Charles Dickens means more today than he did in 1843 when he published the novella on Dec. 19. It sold 6,000 copies by Christmas Day. It was adapted for the stage almost immediately. All of this passed down through the ages in so many film and stage adaptations that it'd be dumb to count them all. It came to a head a year ago when Robert Zemeckis directed an animated version with Jim Carrey providing Scrooge's voice. It grossed $137 million.

That's relevance for you. It's almost the perfect story if it can still matter.

During its original publication in 1843, England had undergone a change in Christmas traditions harkening back to previous traditions like caroling.

By 1841, the German-born Prince Albert had introduced and popularized the Christmas tree in England. Two years later, Christmas cards took off. Following the publication of A Christmas Carol, the phrase "Merry Christmas" became popular.

Despite the ending of the story, A Christmas Carol is very dark. The imagery alone is frightening. Throw in the chained ghost of Marley, the ghosts, Scrooge seeing the grave markers of Tim and himself. It's a stark look into the mirror for not only the Scrooges of the world, but ourselves. It's a statement on the working conditions and the need to help the less fortunate. It's downright socialist.

I find it fascinating that it didn't take Scrooge very long to be convinced of the folly of his ways. In disbelief after Marley comes and goes, Scrooge is shaken. However, I think it's while the ghost of Christmas past is taking him through his long, forgotten scenes, Scrooge is already talking about making changes in his life. Yet, the ghosts still come. It was never over and never going to take until he saw the ultimate sacrifice to the way Scrooge was living.

Also, I don't quite remember Scrooge going to his nephew's house for dinner. I seem to recollect Scrooge and the Cratchits being the center of his change. Instead, there's an actual higher concentration on the relationship with his remaining family, the son of his beloved sister.

'Mott'

A seminal album in the glam rock movement in the 1970s spearheaded by David Bowie. Bowie actually offered Mott the Hoople his song "Suffragette City" to keep the band together. He later wrote "All the Young Dudes" for the group, becoming probably their most popular songs. Bowie's guitarist Mick Ronson would later join the band.

Mott is the band's all-time best-selling album. It all lead to the band's dissolution, which didn't apparently take too much as they seemed to be on the brink of break-up with every turn.

Like a vast majority of musical genres, glam became about style and fashion more than anything else. What T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, Bowie and others were doing is just pop-hard rock. Nothing that wasn't already done before and would be repeated since.

However, throw in some crazy hair, make-up, some tight clothes on emaciated bodies and the overbearing presence of homosexuality and there's the 1970s glam movement for you.

Watch Velvet Goldmine. You'll get the picture.

'Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs'

Eric Clapton is the world's greatest session guitarist. He jumped from The Yardbirds, John Mayall, Cream, Blind Faith, and Delaney and Bonnie and Friends.

All the while, he jammed and recorded who knows how many others including The Beatles and John Lennon's and George Harrison's solo albums.

What happened with Derek and the Dominos stems from all of this. He met his Dominoes while with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. He wrote his all-time greatest hit while being friends with George Harrison.

I'm not a huge Eric Clapton fan. He's too much of a blues guy. He stole George Harrison's wife (Harrison is either hte sweetest man in the world ... or he was tired of it already). And he was a drug addict.

But I do like the fact that he was always doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. Clapton was always a guy that wanted to play guitar with his friends for the rest of his life. Not unlike what I or million others did when they were 15 years old. Get good enough, sell enough records and you can do it.

Then again, Clapton's always been on the move. He could've stayed in one place and probably made a ton of money and retired. Instead, he'd go from one project to the next looking for the next great jam. That's something I can appreciate.