Mike Treder

Because his book about A President Run Amok is #1 today in sales at Amazon!

I’m a big screen snob. That is, I think that movies always should be seen in a theater, with an audience, on the biggest screen possible. Otherwise, you’re simply not seeing the movie that the director made.

Yes, I know I should be more tolerant, and let people do as they like. But I can’t, you see, ‘cause I’m a snob.

Ok, here’s a movie meme. It’s the list of “movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies” and for the most part I think it’s a good list.

Otherbloggersarebolding the ones they’ve seen, so I shall do the same.

• ”2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
• ”The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
• ”8 1/2” (1963) Federico Fellini
• ”Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
• “Alien” (1979) Ridley Scott
• ”All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
• ”Annie Hall” (1977) Woody Allen
• ”Bambi” (1942) Disney
• “Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
• “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
• “The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
• ”The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
• “The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
• “Blade Runner” (1982) Ridley Scott
• “Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
• “Blue Velvet” (1986) David Lynch
• “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
• “Breathless” (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
• “Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks
• “Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
• “Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curtiz
• “Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
• “Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
• “Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski
• “Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
• “A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
• “The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
• “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) Robert Wise
• “Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick
• “Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
• “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
• “Do the Right Thing” (1989) Spike Lee
• “La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
• “Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder
• “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
• “Duck Soup” (1933) Leo McCarey
• “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) Steven Spielberg
• “Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
• “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) Irvin Kershner
• “The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
• ”Fargo” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
• “Fight Club” (1999) David Fincher
• ”Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
• “The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
• “The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
• “Gone With the Wind” (1939) Victor Fleming
• “GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
• “The Graduate” (1967) Mike Nichols
• “Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter
• “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
• “Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
• “It’s A Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
• “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra
• “Jaws” (1975) Steven Spielberg
• “The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
• “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) David Lean
• “M” (1931) Fritz Lang
• “Mad Max 2” / “The Road Warrior” (1981) George Miller
• ”The Maltese Falcon” (1941) John Huston
• “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
• “Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
• “Modern Times” (1936) Charles Chaplin
• “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
• ”Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman
• “The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
• “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
• “North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
• “Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
• “On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan
• “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
• “Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
• “Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
• “Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
• ”Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
• “Pulp Fiction” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
• “Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
• “Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
• “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) Nicholas Ray
• “Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks
• ”Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
• “Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
• “Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
• ”The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
• “Schindler’s List” (1993) Steven Spielberg
• “The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
• “The Seven Samurai” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
• “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
• “Some Like It Hot” (1959) Billy Wilder
• “A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor
• ”A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
• “Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
• “Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
• “The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
• “Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
• “Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
• “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) John Huston
• “Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
• “Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
• “West Side Story” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
• “The Wild Bunch” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
• ”The Wizard of Oz” (1939) Victor Fleming

Heh, it looks like it would have been easier to bold the ones I haven’t seen (only 11 out of 101). Guess you can tell I’m a cinephile…

Because Bad Boys Get Spanked!

For teaching me about breathing meditation.

Like many brilliant artists, he suffered from depression. During an especially low period, he tried to kill himself, but, fortunately for us, did not succeed.

For her courage, commitment, compassion, and admirable Buddhist equanimity.

FYI, there’s a great (but not well-known) film that includes her as a tangential yet pivotal character. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend Beyond Rangoon.

Green eyes!

For his poetic, intellectual lyrics—and his inspired drumming!