'Boogie Nights'

The beauty of Paul Thomas Anderson is how he puts together these stacked casts, these crazy web of characters and stories that build on each other rather than take away.

However, the truth is most of his casts are a hodgepodge of talent at different stages in their brilliant -- or soon-to-be brilliant -- careers.

Take Boogie Nights for example. Now, the cast is a who's who of actors and actresses. Then, it was a veritable collection of has-beens and nobodies.

The film essentially launched Mark Wahlberg's career post-music by, at least, legitimizing him as an actor.

Julianne Moore was an actress of some renown already and if anyone was nearing the top of her celebrity and ability, it was her.

Burt Reynolds was Burt Reynolds. The once stud of the 1970s and early-1980s had become a TV actor  of some success, but otherwise was an actor without any hits on the big screen.

Relatively speaking, Don Cheadle, John C. Reilly (who steals the show in Boogie Nights), William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (not to mention Luis Guzman and Thomas Jane) were in the infancy of their careers and hadn't near gathered the cred that they'd later relish in as award winners and bona fide stars.

It wasn't until Anderson did Magnolia did he truly have an all-star cast and many of them were just hold overs from Boogie Nights, most who would be in multiple Anderson films. They did a lot for him and he certainly made (and re-made) a series of careers along the way.

'Live at the Regal'

Artists and musicians very quickly find themselves cornered. Maybe it's partly due to their own doing, maybe for the sake of making money or whatever.

B.B. King probably became a bit of a cartoon character in the 1980s when he was on The Cosby Show, soap operas and commercials. You know you'd get a wide smile from that wide man and series of bluesy guitar riffs.

That's how King's music became sort of a punchline -- driving rhythm section accented by King's signature guitar from that noted Gibson ES-335, "Lucille."

And, honestly, he might have just gotten lazy, because his live album from 1965, Live at the Regal, is a jaunty and fun rhythm and blues record that goes beyond King's guitar playing. His showmanship and his group's overall repertoire and ability.

'Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water'

A long time ago I was in college. I'd almost always take morning classes in order to have my afternoons pretty free to do whatever I felt like doing.

Oddly, I found myself watching MTV's "Total Request Live" with host Carson Daly as  they rambled through the "top 10" music videos per viewers who were able to vote.

This is not as exciting as it seems. It was essentially the same seven to 15 musical acts, some of which were re-voted every day and they rarely even played the whole song.

A truncated list of the groups featured almost always pop princesses Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, boy bands The Backstreet Boys and N'Sync and "rockers" like Korn, Kid Rock and, naturally, Limp Bizkit.

I don't know the day the music died, but I surmise that the time between 1998 and 2001 was the lowest point in recorded American music in its brief history.

I could probably find a more vacant and asinine musical group than Limp Bizkit, but would it even be worth the search. Isn't Limp Bizkit the closest we will come to the gutter of American art? If it isn't, it's damn close and that's OK with me.

I don't understand the appeal. It's sanctimonious doofus rock oozing with masochistic overtones. Limp Bizkit and most popular rock bands of that time period and ilk were basically a series of apes pounding their chests. There is nothing of value here.

'Live and Dangerous'

One of the most masterful live records ever from one of the most underrated bands in rock history, Thin Lizzy.

They were an Irish band playing rock music  with a black lead singer. Their first hit, "Whiskey in a Jar," was a Irish folk song.

Live and Dangerous is connected to controversy as overdubs were used. To what extent is the question. The producer claims 75 percent of the album was done in studio. The band and others claim 75 percent was done love over the course of a few shows in London.

What is there is Thin Lizzy's undeniable groove and a line-up of face-melting guitar solos. Also, playing harmonica was "Huey Harp," or a bluesman known as Huey Lewis, whose own band, Clover, had just disbanded. Two years later, Lewis would be the frontman for one of the biggest selling bands in the world.

'Low' & 'Station To Station'

It's interesting listening to the 1,001 records I must listen to before I die and going through an artist's almost entire catalog, or at least a large portion of the music that they released.

This thrill is amplified if A) I don't know the artist very well or B) if he/she/it had various phases throughout a long career.

David Bowie fits this mold perfectly as never having the opportunity (or desire) to delve into his intensely varied and long catalog. I think Low and Station to Station are really neat records, maybe two of my favorite from Bowie's catalog, and I think they come at an interesting time in Bowie's career.

Station to Station was released in 1976 long after his Ziggy Stardust days and right after he released Young Americans, a soul record, which got him an invitation to perform on Soul Train, which sort of makes my eyes roll back in my head and causes seizures in my body.

Essentially, the 1980s started for Bowie as he got into Kraut rock along with synthesizers and cocaine. Whatever state his drug use was before, it skyrocketed during this time as he overdosed a number of times and come off in public as scatterbrained and ... well, a guy high on cocaine.

Station to Station also revealed his newest persona, the "Thin White Duke." Dressed in a dapper fashion, the Duke seems like an ordinary guy considering Bowie's pervious incarnations. Instead, he was a sort of of a representation of Nazism. The touring supporting the album put Bowie in hot water due to some hot opinions about Fascism, getting caught with Nazi paraphernalia and a photo which shows Bowie allegededly giving the Nazi salute.

Naturally, he moves to Switzerland and does an insane amount of drugs and does a lot of art. The next year he decides to clean things up and move to West Berlin. This sparked Bowie's Berlin Trilogy including the first album Low, another synth-inspired record, mostly known for its lyrical minimalism. Cited early on as a sales flop, it wound up selling a ton of records, even more than Station to Station.

You can't say that David Bowie didn't live life to its fullest.

'The Saragossa Manuscript'

I don't have a lot to say about this movie outside of the fact that it's extremely bizarre and and extremely long.

Running 182 minutes for a plot that wanders and skips to and fro is not an easy passage of time. It takes work and a certain dedication.

It entails a soldier during the Napoleonic Wars finding a book, the Saragossa Manuscript, that details the doings of his grandfather, also a soldier. While the film works as a sort of flashback to his grandfather's time, it also includes our hero interacting with a series of eccentric and odd characters from a sort of shaman to two Moorish princesses, who claim to be cousins and who also seduce him.

Or so we think. Whilst it is intimated that these people and scenes are real, the soldier regularly winds up waking up beneath some gallows.

I thought the movie would end with everyone realizing that the soldier is indeed dead, which might be the "truth" or the movie reality. And the people he encounters during the present are just ghosts or perhaps those helping the soul reach peace.

'Zabriskie Point'

An orgy. In the desert. With college girls.

Why isn't this film in college curriculum? In museums? Whole websites should be dedicated to that five-minute scene!

Orgy!!!!