'Paradise Now'

Would like the Israeli-Palestinian struggle summed up in an anecdote regarding the awards season of Paradise Now.

When a film is submitted for an Academy for Best Foreign Film, the submission must be made by the home country. For Paradise Now, it is Palestine -- whatever that really is anymore. However, Palestine was not considered a sovereign nation and other Palestinian films had been not considered for the award due to this stipulation despite films from Taiwan, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong being considered.

Israeli officials attempted to not have the film labeled under the state of Palestine and they attempted to list it as "Palestinian Authority" and, then, "Palestinian Territories." Later, another writer pointed that "country of origin" is determined by who funded the film, and this case it was European. The director, Hany Abu-Assad is an Israeli-Arab.

Also, families of Palestinian bombings attempted to have the film not considered.

The Arabs and Israelis have been fighting for hundreds of years, and it will probably go on for another 1,000 years. Any more, it's not about land or sovereignty. It's about movie awards and hollow gestures. Good luck clearing that all up.

'Masculin Feminin' & 'Two Or Three Things I Know About Her'

Two of the eight Jean-Luc Godard films included on the list of 1,001 list. I've seen seven. I think.
I would ask how in the world Godard wound up getting all of these attractive young French women to be in his films, but I already know the answer. I would imagine it didn't take much for Godard to get just about any fashionable young woman to do just about anything. Which sort of makes me want to become a French filmmaker.

Two or Three Things I Know About Her is about a French housewife, who doubles as a prostitute on the side. There's little story and as intriguing as the plot may sound, it's only as sexy as your imagination can go eyeing all the gorgeous women Godard's camera tends to run into on the street, in stores or just hanging about.

Masculin Feminin is based on short stories by Guy de Maupassant and stars the breathtakingly beautiful Chantel Goya as a pop singer (a tough gig), who reluctantly dates this perturbed young man just out of his military service.

These two films have similiar themes and looks. They were also made within several years of each other and feature these beautiful women. I don't know if they're masterpieces, but you'd be increasingly hard pressed to find any better looking films.

'The Man From Laramie' & 'The Naked Spur'

I love that one of the notes for The Man From Laramie is that its considered a western version of King Lear. Nevermind that the only similarity is that it involves a crazy old man.

If a book or film has a crazy old man, then it's King Lear. Retarded.

These two films are just part of five western films directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart.

Made in the 1950s, these films are different. Stewart is menacing and angry. If you want the Stewart of It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, seek another film to watch. Stewart's Howard Kemp and Will Lockhart have histories too dark to differentiate between who they were and what they've become.

What they've become are hard-edged dusty cowboys unafraid with slightly askew values that balance between what's right and what pays their bills.

Mann's films show a west that is uncompromising and dangerous. Where life is as meaningless as the the dust on his characters' boots. It was the only realistic western films of the time and, without them, the modern western would never exist.

'Night And Fog' & 'Come And See'

Two films that project the darkest time in modern history in different ways.

Night and Fog is a French documentary. Released 10 years after the end of World War II and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. It was written and scored by Holocaust survivors.

It's dark (as you can imagine) and it includes stock footage from the camps in addition to current day (1955) footage from the camps.

Come and See is a Russian film released 40 years after liberation, but 46 years after the event of the picture. It is the perfect film, if there is one. Let's just say if there were a tournament, my entry would be Come and See.

Set in Belarus during the 1941 Nazi blitzkrieg toward Moscow, the film shows two boys attempting to find a buried rifle in order to join the Russian partisans fighting the German invaders. Our protagonist finds the rifle. He later meets a young girl and the pair set off for his home. There he finds his family has been slaughtered. Later, when the Germans arrive in a neighboring village, he hides out and escapes death while watching an entire village perish in a church fire, trapt.

This is a heartbreaking film. We see our hero -- a young boy -- grow old and weary with age. He become an old man within hours as a lifetime of disaster and death passes before his bagged eyes.

Belarus had 209 of its 290 cities and villages wiped off the map. Between two to three million Belarusians perished, nearly a quarter of the overall population. The country's population numbers didn't recover until 1971. The Jewish population of the country never recovered.

'Titanic'

Another chapter of the highest-grossing films of all time that I didn't see.

Let's face it, this was the dumbest movie of all time if you consider how much money it made and how good the film actually is. If you think about it, it's a $200 million chick flick. It's sort of unfair because James Cameron probably truly believes it's a marvel of modern filmmaking considering he recreated a marvel of past shipbuilding with computer technology and sheer will. And $200 million.

The fact that it is considered a chick flick may or may not bother Cameron. I would almost bet it does. Anyway, it did make $1.8 billion (as of 2003). In rentals alone, it's made $900 million.

At 194 minutes and $200 million, Titanic wasn't made to flop. It was made to impress. Not unlike the ship itself.

I don't know if I give the film -- as it broke every stinking box-office record in the world -- an ounce of thought back in 1998. I was able to live without it really bothering me or becoming an issue. I do remember thinking that Kate Winslet was a sort of a hack actress if she agreed to star in this dumb movie.

I'd not known Winslet then and I probably paid her no attention up until five years ago.

Now, I think she's the most perfect human being in the world and I would give up just about everything I hate for the opportunity to be her pool boy or gofer. She is gorgeous and I consider it an honor plugging through 194 minutes of Cameron's drivel just to see Winslet naked getting her portrait done by dumb ol' Jack (of course, outside of the people that lives, no one was luckier than Jack ... he was the only dead guy that got to have sex with Kate Winslet).

'Midnight Cowboy'

If I explained to you the plot of the film Midnight Cowboy, you'd probably laugh in my face.

A handsome Texan, who is not a "cowboy," dresses like a cowboy and takes a bus without any real provocation (but with a ton of skeletons in the closet) to become a high-priced gigolo in New York City.

He is duped out of some cash by a homeless drifter, who he eventually meets again and the pair form a relationship out of loneliness and desperation. They eventually decide to go to Florida to help with the friend's sickness. The friend dies on the bus going south.

In between, we get some unexplained flashbacks, Jon Voight becoming a male hooker and everyone's morals are in a tizzy.

I don't think too much about this film, but I also don't think it's all that great. I think Voight and Dustin Hoffman, individually, are good. The film itself ... lacks.

I guess the next time you see a homeless man or woman and you wonder what life decisions were made (or not made) that put them in that position, think about this film. At some point, there was a huge risk taken and it backfired. Or they became crackheads. And then became male hookers.

'The Sound Of Music'

I'm not going to beat around the bush here: The Sound of Music is one of my favorite films of all time and I can't imagine a time when I will not want to see it.

It not only has Nazis and a very intelligent take on nationalism and the ideological tug of war that was taking place all over Europe as the line was being drawn in the sand, but it also had insanely good music.

I would say that of all the musicals to pass through the genre, it probably has the best music and lyrics of them all. For my money, they're all superbly done. There's not one that gets fast forwarded when it comes on: The benchmark for a good musical tune.

I find some things very interesting about this film, the behind-the-scenes garbage. That Christopher Plummer doesn't like the film. That Gretl gained so much weight that Plummer requested a body double to carry in the final scene.

Another fact is that the real Von Trapps were upset by the way their father was portrayed. In real life, I guess he was a sweet guy. In the film, he's depicted as a law-and-order Naval captain, who didn't take any crap from his kids. After watching it 1,000 times, I disagree a little with the assertion that the Captain was strict.

There's a sort of jagged humor at the beginning when Maria comes to the house and dresses him down for the whistles. Like the Captain had met his match -- both personally and, in the end, romantically.

I think he's actually a lot more soft hearted than you think and this explains why he quickly changes his tune once he hears his children singing.

As a personal anecdote: I dated this girl in college and I became quite familiar with her family, including her aunt, who was perpetually single despite being A) insatiably cool; B) super cute; and C) in her late-30s.

Anyway, this aunt was a bit of a pop culture nut and she knew I adored this film. She called me the Goatherd Boy.