'Dog Star Man' & 'A Wizard, A True Star'

About 10 minutes into watching Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man, a 74-minute avant-garde silent film, I realized that there was no sound.

So, I put on Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star as a sort of filler or soundtrack to the film. I realize now what the people that paired The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon. It's funny how the sounds (despite the 10-minute disparity) and the pictures kind of a pair up. Silence with a blacked out screen or perhaps and explosion of sound with the flare from a shot of the surface of the sun.

Anyway, the two works are kind of similar in a way.

Rundgren was a pop-rock wunderkind, who had already made a name for himself with Something/Anything? Then, he started doing drugs and the cerebral exaggeration turned into sonic expansion in the studio. As the little insert in the album describes, Rundgren was able to play the studio instead of the instruments.

Side A is a medley of noise and aggressive numbers from instrumentals to extremely short songs. Side B is more like it. Another medley of R&B songs.

Brakhage had always been a different filmmaker. He was experimental from the start and Dog Star Man, filmed over a series of several years.

Like side A, it's a hodgepodge of reflections, visuals and art plugged together. A series of editing that must have taken forever considering all the cuts and splices he had to make.

These two pieces, however, have no real connection. I created the connection. I decided to ingest both at the same time as just an off-the-cuff decision. But on another level it shows how all of this fits together. That there's little difference between what all these artists are doing. That's kind of neat.

'Paisan'

Paisan is the second of a trilogy of films from Robert Rossellini (the director who knocked up Ingrid Bergman, lucky dog) set around World War II in Italy, the first being Open City, Rome.

Paisan is a set of short vignettes focusing on the American campaign in Italy focusing on the relationship forged or forgotten as the Americans ran the Nazis out of the country.

There's the story of a GI and a young guide. A drunken GI and a boy who steal his shoes. Several shorts focused on romantic relationship. Another set around some American chaplains (including a Rabbi) who face a certain amount of prejudice on not all being Catholic in an Italian monastery. Then there's the story of the American agents fighting with Italian partisans along the banks of the Po River.

Although the story is interesting, the American actors are awful. I suspect it's because they're not very good and because they're being directed by a foreign director. Still, could've been way better.

'The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring'

There's something about the modern epic that just turns me off. The acting, writing, technology and ability is all there. What kills filmmakers these days is sentimentality.

Peter Jackson and others like him want to force emotion on to you. They want you to sit there as and keep forcing the square peg in the circle hole. Eventually, they want you to somehow empathize with these characters in great anguish.

It's all The Fellowship of the Ring is. It's Elijah Wood's Frodo laboring under the pressure and alienation of carrying the ring. That of Viggo Mortenson's personal self-doubt as the heir to the Gondor throne.

It's Sean Astin as Sam Gamgee being overly emotional and eerily attached to Frodo. It's Sean Bean's Boromir wrestling with the undying urge to grasp the ring of power and to wield it as he saw fit.

This isn't The Lord of the Rings; it's an episode of Oprah.

These are not the emotions or actions of simple heroes. How can Aragorn be so conflicted about his own ability and role in the history of Middle Earth and yet look like the coolest motherfucker as he fights 100 orcs at one time? In battle, all of these characters have little doubt or question about their ability. They're killing machines and it's a wonder why they would ever field an army of orcs because it's a 200 to 1 killing ratio.

However, when the battle ends is when the emotions come out and the aloof nature of these characters and the forlorn looks and characters on the verge of tears. How insulting! We're not robots. We know how to feel. We do not understand the pressure of the chore or what it feels to be always in danger, but we can imagine. We can feel on our own. We don't need Elijah Wood doing it for us.

'Rumours'

The last ever cassette tape I purchased was well into the 2000s at a Hastings in Waxahachie, Texas.

Hastings, as discussed before, are a combo of book-music-movie store that are generally found in mid-sized college towns and typically have very little competition in forms of Barnes and Nobles and Best Buys.

Anyway, they always had really good music selections and they allowed you to special order hard-to-find records. Anyway, they also were the last retail joint to sell cassette tapes, and at the time the vehicle I was driving had a tape deck. Cassettes were insanely cheap. I bought Rumours for $1.

It's one of my favorite albums, but it's not altogether great. It's just good. I think whatever value it has comes from the fact that everyone in the band were in relationships with each other and they were all breaking up. The McVie's had gotten a divorce. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were like that couple you knew in high school that had some knock-down drag outs, but always made up later.

My favorite part of Fleetwood Mac was Buckingham's vocals and guitar playing. His pickless technique on guitar is often breathtakingly beautiful. His vocals are underrated. I think it's unique and good. You makes you think automatically about Fleetwood Mac and takes your mind automatically to his songs.

'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'

Around 2000, my junior year of college, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road completely took over my life.

I was living in an apartment and, by then, had a turntable and an ever-growing collection of vinyl including a lot of Billy Joel and John.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road may be the closest to the perfect pop record: It's melodic as hell. Thanks to Bernie Taupin, it was well written with a variety of tunes ranging from the serious to the raucous piano-guitar rock that made John what he was. It wasn't all the watered down piano soft rock that would define him when he started wearing a toupee and dressing like Donald Duck.

It had layers. As many guitars and pianos. Big drums and vocals. John wasn't worried about album sales or his reputation or reality shows. He just wanted to rock.

If I built a soundtrack to my life, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road would define year No. 20.

'Louisiana Story'

Interestingly, Louisiana Story, despite being a fictional story with actors, is considered a documentary. Makes you question the definition of "documentary." Although not factual, it is documenting a lifestyle and an important development of American industry: Oil.

The film was actually commissioned by the Standard Oil Co. It deals with a man and boy, who allow an oil company to drill for oil on their property. The boy and his raccoon jaunt around the bayou all day. The boy and man strike up a friendly relationship with the oil rig guys.

One accident takes place when a gas bubble is hit, but all things were made safe again. It's not so much a documentary as it is propaganda: A film to show that drilling to oil wasn't altogether safe, the professionals running things made it all OK.

Maybe it's not a documentary, but it's no ordinary film.

'Strange Days'

It's amazing that Kathryn Bigelow was responsible for before she hit her grand slam.

He biggest claim to fame before The Hurt Locker was Strange Days, which probably didn't do so hot in the box office because it's the worst possible title for a film. It's almost insulting.

Anyway, Strange Days is only significant because it caught a certain amount of cult mojo, which can go a long way these days, with the Internet and all.

But Bigelow had been directing since 1982 and she's already 59 years old. Not a spring chicken. About six bombs until she caught lightning (and Jeremy Renner) in a bottle with The Hurt Locker and scored big.

Strange Days, despite the title, isn't awful. Ralph Fiennes is excellent just about everything he does. Tom Sizemore is great, however, I doubt he was actually acting; seems to have been portraying himself on a certain level.

The story is deep and multi-faceted. It shocks you quickly into this fictional world where law and order has become a thing of the past in the United States. In fact, it's so electrfying, this world, that you start to wonder what happened for it all to get that awful. If nothing else, it almost overshadows the entire film.

A plot twist that I didn't see coming nor did I care about what the apparent romance between Fiennes' Lenny and Angela Bassett's Mace. I didn't really feel there was that attraction. Just kind of a pair of characters that care about each other because they have a conscience. Not because they were in love with each other.