'Europa, Europa'

Europa, Europa is 112 minutes long and it took about 107 minutes for me to realize that its based on a true story.

I think I enjoyed it more thinking it was fiction. Do you think we view or process things differently because we know its true or false? I think so. I just don't know how.

Don't biopics get boring? If you're not bored during the first viewing, they're not typically films you can rewatch time and again. At the end of the day, we like escaping and if you can have a true story that seems too hard to believe, like Europa, Europa.

The film follows Solomon Perel, a teenage boy living in Germany with his Jewish family. During the Night of the Broken Glass, Perel's family shoe shop is destroyed and his sister killed.

The family emigrates to Poland, where they think they can be safe from Nazi Germany. Instead, Germany invades in 1939 pulling the family apart. Solomon and his brother Isaac attempt to escape, but are separated. Solomon winds up in a Russian orphanage where he is indoctrinated into the communist brotherhood (and where he's forced to abandon his religious beliefs to fit in). Once the Russian-Nazi truce is broken, Solomon is pulled from side to side attempting to A) stay alive in the war and B) stay alive from the Nazi Holocaust machine.

He joins the Nazi army and becomes a war hero. Still a teenager, he is sent back to Berlin to join the Hitler Youth. Again, he struggles to not only keep his cultural secret, but also to control the typical teenage urges (not sexing up Julie Delpy). Through some fortunate coincidences, Solomon not only avoids being found out, he winds up avoiding death when a Russian officer hands a Holocaust survivor a pistol to carry out his execution. At the moment of death, Isaac finds his brother and they embrace.

I learn that its a true story in the final minute when the real Solomon is there in a field singing.

That's as good as fiction.

'Scream'

I saw Scream in the theaters way back in 1996 as a teenager. I thought it was pretty scary. I guess. It was very entertaining and, watching it today, it stands up pretty well. There is the archaic use of the cell phone. But it was 1996. What were they supposed to do?

It was a gigantic success. It garnered more than $173 million in the box office. At the time, I didn't remember many horror-slasher films before. Afterward, these films crawled out of the woodwork and, today, you can't go three weeks without there being a new one released. Again, maybe they were always being released, but at the time, it seemed that Scream re-launched this genre and 14 years later it still thrives.

The most fascinating aspect of the film (in fact, much of the dialogue revolves around this theme) is its reliance on referencing past horror-slasher films.

In the opening scene, Drew Barrymore's character is quizzed on her knowledge of slasher classes like Friday the 13th and Halloween. One of the characters -- the comic relief, Randy -- works at a video store (an essential profession in pre-DVD 1996) and has a encyclopedic knowledge of horror films and the "rules" of surviving a slasher film.

This is the same as an action film using Die Hard as a reference to surviving and beating the bad guy. Or a comedy using the jokes from Airplane! All of this doesn't make sense, but it makes perfect sense for the horror-slasher genre because it's simple and because it's the only film genre in which the viewer thinks they could do a "better job" than the actual characters.

Nobody watches Die Hard and thinks they could beat the bad guy better. They watch it to live an unreal scenario with a fake person. Nobody thinks they could figure out Diane Keaton in Annie Hall better than Woody Allen. Nor does anyone think they're actually funnier than Judd Apatow or Don Rickles.

It's relatively minor, but important part of Scream and something nobody else could pull off.

Interesting production note: Apparently one of the executive producers did not like the mask. So he was going to have the crew try out other masks. Frankly, that's a creepy ass mask and I couldn't imagine them using any other one.

'Giovanni's Room'

James Baldwin had the double whammy: Gay and black.

He moved to Paris in 1948 in order to divorce himself from the segregation and racism, especially in the American south. Still, he was primed to further alienate everyone with his blatant homosexuality and the way it envelopes his writing.

Baldwin being black further perplexes the fact that the characters in his second novel, Giovanni's Room, are all white. Although they're extremely gay.

What really must have kicked Baldwin in the nuts is that he was going to alienate all white people because of his race and sexual orientation. He was going to alienate the blacks with his sexual orientation. He was perpetually a man without a home and a man without a people. That had to be frustrating.

This alienation (him from everyone else, going both ways) bleeds through his stories.

However, Baldwin had it right. It's what makes him good. He took relationships -- whether homo- or heterosexual -- and turned them into emotional typhoons destroying everything in their paths. He wasn't in any way bias toward one orientation or another. He knew both could get pretty fucked up because people are pretty fucked up. He also knew that no matter who you like to be with or what color their skin is, these raw emotions are always the same.

'Notorious'

Ingrid Bergman. Hello nurse!

I didn't know that Bergman left her daughter and husband in New York City to do a film (and to do) with director Roberto Rossellini. The fat, balding Rossellini. Directors get all the good-looking chicks. She'd eventually have Rossellini's kid while married to the first guy.

Meanwhile, the daughter and husband are at home wondering where mommy went. They'd get a divorce, she goes to Italy and has more of Rossellini's children, including Isabella Rossellini, who is hot, but who I didn't know was Bergman's daughter.

I didn't know any of this. Got a little bit less respect for Bergman today than I did yesterday.

Notorious is good thanks to Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant. Set in Brazil, Bergman must infiltrate a group of Nazis who got their hands on some plutonium. Grant is her contact in the CIA.

As she gets deeper, her love for Grant (and vice versa) get in the way of the investigation and pinch. It was written based on a short story in the Saturday Evening Post by Hitchcock, who owed David Selznick a film. Selznick sold it -- the director, actors, script -- for $800,000 in addition to 50 percent of the box office take. Must be nice. Selznick probably wonders why Bergman didn't leave her husband for him.

'The Visitors'

Supergroup ABBA released eight albums. The Visitors was there last in 1981.

They sold 400 million albums worldwide and they never had one sell less than The Visitors.

Benny and Frida (the brunette) had just divorced a month before entering the studio for their final album. It's a dark album. Full of synths and ominious and less-cheery lyrics. ABBA had finally written grown-up lyrics about heartbreak and those moments when the tunes just don't sound too well.

If it's an consolation to Benny, Frida would later marry a prince. At least she moved up socially.

There are two ABBA albums on the 1,001 list, the other being Arrival, which is full of hits. The Visitors really had none. If you have a "greatest hits" knowledge of the group, then The Visitors is probably a pretty foreign group of songs. It's a piece of history because for one of the most popular and well-sold groups in music history, this is the one that most people have never heard.

'Speakerboxxx/The Love Below'

The most interesing "album" recorded in the past 20 years.

I say "album" only because they are packaged together for sale. There couldn't be two more different collections of music from two guys on different artistic paths. Sold seperately, you probably couldn't tell they were made by guys who once worked together.

Essentially, the members of OutKast recorded solo albums -- Big Boi did Speakerboxxx and Andre 3000 did The Love Below.

The Love Below was the most lauded of the albums. It had the two hits -- including the incredibly radio/club-friendly "Hey Ya" -- and is a critics fav because it's more experimental as Mr. 3000 dips his toes into several genres of music, most of which isn't hip-hop or rap.

Big Boi didn't stray too far from was he was already doing. Unfortunately for him, Speakerboxxx is the better album. It's expertly produced with some fantastic writing and performances from a who's who of cast members. It's shorter, which enriches the songs even more. Big Boi opted for the dunk instead of the half-court shot, but it was a spectacularly shot.

Andre 3000's The Love Below does deserve some credit. The hodgepodge of genres is something I don't much care about. But aspect of the opus is something I've never read about before and that is the fact that The Love Below is a concept album.

Mr. 3000 takes the journey of love from the beginning (a man talking to God, asking him/her to send him the love of his life) to the "climax" (the one-night stand) to the break-up ("Hey Ya") to the post-break-up letter. It's a brilliant comment on the man's perspective in the modern relationship.

'Red Harvest'

I had planned on reading some more Dashiell Hammet in the time I readRed Harvest. It didn't happen, so I thought I'd better include it before I forget it.

Red Harvest is the story told over and over. The street-savvy detective rolls into town in order to take down the powerful gangs controlling the city. Because he's so street smart, he doesn't get caught up in women (much) and he always plays one game ahead of the other people in the story.

Our protoganist winds up winning over the city and beating the bad guys.

The difference between Red Harvest and the rest of filmdom that's used the same plot is that we don't have to be paid to write a movie.