Shut up and make me a panini.

I'll have to check out that Calvino book.  I just read The Baron In The Trees, my first Italo Calvino and loved it.

I had this song, Thunder Road, stuck in my head 2 nights ago.  I even had the b-side, Back in My Honey's Loving Arms, stuck as well.  In the morning I went to my iPod and found that I didn't have it but I did have Calypso - Is Like So.  Jean and Dinah turns out to be perfect for first-music of the morning.

Powell and Pressburger are just amazing.  This film seems to start hesitantly with odd little plot points -  a mystery glue man? (possible spoiler) But the last half hour pulls everything together so well - the scene of the girl with the camper had me in tears.  Comes a close second to Colonel Blimp for me.

I think you nailed it in the review.  John Sweet's line readings are off-putting at first (they're like too loudly proclaimed) but somehow by the end of the film it all works.

I think it's a great rendition of a great song but if I had to note anything it is that there is no real chorus or bridge, just verses.  Kind of like Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  I think that what gets to some people is the repetition of verses without any changes in these kinds of story-songs.

If I want a deeper Led Zeppelin cut I'm thinking Howlin' Wolf.

Second Wave  from the Praeger Film Library is a collection of essays by different authors (Robin Wood, Ian Cameron, Jean Chabot) published in 1970.  So, for Oshima, it predates In The Realm Of The Senses.

Watched Mizoguchi's "Sansho The Bailiff" and realized I have read the story it was based on by Mori Ogai.  The film and the story are equally excellent - deep, soulful.

Charles Willeford was a great writer.  Pick-Up from 1955 is my favorite - one of the bleakest, most down-beat novels you'll ever read.

"Harold And The Purple Crayon" is the book that immediately came to my mind for book I've loved the longest.  So simple and creative.

Do check out Christmas Holiday though.  Despite the title and the stars, Durbin and Gene Kelly, it is not family-friendly fare.  She plays a whorehouse singer married to a psychotic killer in prison and is fabulously bleak and dark.

You may have already checked this out - Kafka's short stories/novellas are phenomenal.  In the Penal Colony is devastating, The Hunger Artist and, of course, Metamorphosis.

I read "Omensetter's Luck" by William Gass in preparation for reading his latest, "Middle C".  Once I got into Gass's stream of consciousness rhythms it was pure bliss.  A unique writer worth the effort.

After seeing Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, Nuri Bilge Ceylan went right to the top of my list of great directors.  Once Upon is the best but it's well worth checking out his others, Three Monkeys, Distant and Climates which stars Ceylan and his wife.

Interesting albums - I was a big fan of Art Ensemble of Chicago (and Muhal Richard Abrams) and should re-acquaint myself with them.  I used to play the hell out of Les Stances a Sophie and Bap-Tizum.  Any recommendations on your go-to AEoC albums?

Agree with Handlen on final episode of The Prisoner.  Wonderfully ambiguous and Leo McKern to boot!  In a similar vein I'd put up the final episode of Blakes 7 - equally ambiguous (what happens to Avon?).

Saw Echo & Bunnymen play in the 80's and it was one of the most boring concerts ever.  Around the same time I saw his old bandmate Julian Cope (Teardrop Explodes) and he was awesome.
Come to think of it - a hatesong with Cope would be excellent cause that guy's got opinions.

There were also Command Records which had a "Bongos" album in glorious stereophonic.  One bongo drum on the left channel, the other bongo drum - - - way - - - way - - - way over there on the right channel.
It seems that stereo was discovered around the same time as exotica instrumentation.

I've stopped paying attention to whatever murder, disappearance, kidnapping that's all over the news. There was the granddaddy of them, OJ, which was unavoidable and I followed Robert Blake's trial as I met him long ago and Phil Spector cause just look at him but I have no idea who Jodi Arias is, or what Drew Peterson…