'Amadeus'

I watched this film some time in middle school. I don't remember why. It doesn't seem A) appropriate; or B) capable of being digested by an 11-year-old kid.

Watching it now, I realize how little I understood. I never realized that the man at the beginning was Antonio Salieri or that the old man (who was trying to kill himself) retelling the story was Salieri. I never got the mysterious man demaning the opera from Mozart nor did I get Salieri's feelings or motivations.

I even thought F. Murray Abraham was the actor that portrayed Mozart. Instead, it was the neurotic Tom Hulce, both of whom are fantastic in their respective roles.

Amadeus won the Best Picture Oscar and Sir Laurence Olivier was chosen to present the award. Instead of introducing the nominees and opening the envelope, he just simply said that the winner was Amadeus. He was right.

When it's all said and done and we are looking back over two centuries of film, critics will consider Amadeus one of the greatest films ever made.

'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn'

Worldwide, Pink Floyd's initial foray into recorded music would not chart until 2007 when the album was reissued. Initially, it peaked at No. 6 on the British charts despite it generally being really out there, especially in 1967 when the Beatles and other mainstream rock bands were peaking creatively.

Pink Floyd were advanced $5,000 once signing to EMI and their first single was "Arnold Layne," a song about a kleptomaniac transvestite.

Soon, Syd Barrett would suffer his rapid descent into madness. Before one show, he was found in his dressing room "gone," and he was propped on stage where he stood, with his guitar strapped around his shoulders. Standing there.

What's odd about Pink Floyd is that they were actual contemporaries of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. They formed in 1962 and began touring in 1965. That $5,000 was all they'd get for five years in addition to having to pay for their studio time and getting no royalties.

Pink Floyd would get theirs eventually, and they'd make much better rock albums. Just not with Syd Barrett or with Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

'Electric Music For The Mind And Body'

Country Joe and the Fish are interesting because they are one of the few groups organized for almost the sole purpose of protest.

Wrought from the turmoil of the United States in the 1960s, the name comes from a nickname for Joseph Stalin (Country Joe) and an adage from Chairman Mao (The Fish). I guess that might make them communists, a political situation that wasn't too keen on artistic freedom. Wonder if Country Joe knows the definition of "irony."

That's the only significance, mostly because the music sucks. Long live the 196os! When anyone could start a band!

'Off The Wall' & 'Thriller' & 'Bad'

If getting me to dance is your end, laying down some Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson is a very good starting point. Nothing makes me shake awkwardly and just behind the beat like that album.

I first heard the song "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" in high school when I was at my mother's house and she had VH1 and they played the video. I thought it was probably the perfect dance song. The whole album is like this.

Most musicians would kill for two straight albums of the caliber of Off the Wall and then Thriller. Most would kill for Thriller. There's little doubt that it's a fantastic album and the best pop album ever. I can't imagine there being anything like it ever again. How do you feel about that hyperbole?

Bad is when everything went ... bad.

In 1984, Jackson was severely injured during the filming of that Pepsi commercial. Thus the spiral began, little did most know. This was the turning point in Jackson's life. Trace everythign back to this incident all the way to his unfortunate death in 2009.

The comestic surgeries started. Then the rumors of his anorexia and other ailments. He bought a monkey and tried to buy the bones of the Elephant Man. He did Captain EO. He kind of went off the deep end.

Bad resulted. It was released in 1987. It's when the excessive use of the high-pitched "woo-hoo" and various other intonations. At times, his singing voice is barely discernible. Bad was no Thriller and Jackson would never approach that level of success again.

The resulting 20 years would prove disastrous. The child molesting junk. The theme park and becoming a recluse. Danging babies from windows. Then his death.

There's a whole generation of people that don't really know what Jackson was all about. Surely by now they've heard "Thriller" and other singles, but generally they don't realize what a cultural phenomenom he was. There was no one bigger.

A little Bad anecdote: In elementary school, we'd line up in the gymnasium and would first warm-up and the lesbian physical education teacher would push "PLAY" on the cassette boombox. There were five songs that were in the rotation. One was "The Way You Make Me Feel." I liked it, but at seven I didn't know who it was by.

However, I was always entertained when my friend, Andre, would pantomime the lyrics along with the back-up singers.

'Here's Little Richard'

Richard Wayne Penniman was born in 1932. He was the grandson of a preacher and a son of a bootlegger.

By 10, he was a faith healer. By 13, he was touring and performing. By 19, he was recording rock and roll music and changing the world.

Six years after that -- at the absolute heighth of his career with 20+ hit songs -- he saw a vision of angels holding his airplane and then he witnessed the landing Sputnik, thinking it a ball of fire. He found God and rededicated his life to the Lord. He began doing gospel tunes.

The line between gospel, the most racuous rock and roll in history and The Beatles is paper thin. Gospel would fuel Little Richard and Little Richard would soon fuel John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Penniman would forever battle his inner demons ... or, more accurately, his inner need to be a Christian, this biting need to make his family happy and probably this very real desire to have a relationship with God.

His father ostrasized him ealry on due to Penniman's mannerisms although his father was shot just when he was 19 outside of a bar. Notoriously sexual, he was rumored to be involved in orgies. Even after his rededication to Christianity, he'd forever struggle with the pleasures of this world.

Typical for a man famous for making music that made you want to shake your ass.

'La Vie En Rose'

If you read enough books, watch enough films or listen to enough records, you start to realize that all of this shit had already all existed. You see it, most times, in other films, books and records.

It's referenced and all these allusions -- had you not seen, read or heard them -- fly right over your head. You pretend to understand or you just ignore it.

It shocks me how many times Edith Piaf is referenced, especially in films. It's also shocking seeing Marion Cotillard in a number of roles, rarely are they ever as good as her portrayal as Piaf.

It's hard to properly put in context Piaf's influence and meaning to the country of France. I can't put it in persepective.

I would say it's kind of like what Barbara Streisand means to the United States, but that doesn't really capture Piaf's impact on France. There's too much that infatuates Americans especially in the past 20 years.

When Piaf was at her absolute peak, Piaf was everything to France, a country that had been ripped to shreds by World War I and then by the Nazis. It also probably gives meaning that Piaf died relatively early whereas someone like Streisand will probably go into her 90s.

This is a fantastic film on the brink of being an epic about this woman's erratic, destructive and fast-paced life. Cotillard deserve every award she received.

'An Affair To Remember'

It is said that "Hollywood has run out of ideas" concerning the propensity for producers to "re-make" old films or old TV shows.

Often, people ask why they would re-make something that was already good.

This, apparently, is not a new phenomenom.

An Affair to Remember, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr was released in 1957. It was a huge hit under the direction of Leo McCarey.

The thing is, it was a re-make. It was a re-make of a McCarey film titled Love Affair released in 1939.

Someone in 1957, despite the star-studdedness of Grant and Kerr, might have asked why they would re-make something that was good the first time. Love Affair was nominated for six Academy Awards. An Affair to Remember was nominated for just four. Losers.

An Affair to Remember does address one of the ongoing themes in old films: the cruise.

In a number of films it's the event or circumstance in which the film revolves. This is what people did between the 1930s and 1960s. When you think about it, I guess it makes sense. It's structured, they're typically long and you get to wine and dine for weeks on end visiting these far-out and exotic locales all around the world. It's romantic.

It is a call back to a simpler, more patient and slower age. When things were just about the destination, but just as much about the journey.