My Top 40 Movies & Rock Music CD's (in no particular order)

1. MOVIES -The Big Lebowski - Solution for World Peace & Harmony - all guys should aspire to be like The Dude...
2. Swingers - Yes, We Men ARE pathetic, shallow & childish, but WE MEAN WELL...
3. Highlander - Add a bottle of Glenmorangie & a box of Kleenex (no, for sobbing into!) is ALWAYS sentimentally sensational - the male equivalent of a Chick Flick!
4. Withnail & I - Has any other movie ever evoked a time & place as well as this? (see my favourite quotes for the parting oration by Withnail at the film's end)
5. Contact - An intelligent & moving treatment of what it might be like if /when we finally make contact with an Alien Civilization. Based on a novel by Karl Sagan, one of Science & Wonder heroes..
   
6. Down By Law - "It's a sad & beautiful world". "I scream, you scream, we all scream for icecream". What more needs to be said? This one is a monochromed off beat noir classic like you never seen befor.
7. The Seven Samuri - Another monochrome must see classic with subtitles. So that's where The Magnificent Seven & Kelly's Heroe's & The Mission sprung from...
8. The Mission - Painfully, beautifully poignant. Another one that I'd best watch alone for fear of being caught blubbering at some point during it's screening.
9. Goodfellas -
   
10. Carlitto's Way - Almost Shakespearean in the way the Anti hero (played by Al Pacino) is tragically trapped by his own past. The fact he wants to do the right thing, wants to a be a Good Man, counts for nothing. A prisoner of his past, he fails to find the peace he seeks...
    
11. Love & Death - "& lo I shall walk, no run through the Valley of Death". In my opinion Woody's funniest movie, back when he used to actually make funny movies...
    
12. Young Frankenstein - "Wait where are you going, I was gonna make Espresso!", Mel Brook's a genius...
    
13. The Man With Two Brains - "Oh pointy birds, oh pointy pointy. Anoint my head, anoity nointy". Life changing screenplay...
    
14. Saving Private Ryan - Quite Simply the best War Movie ever made...
15. Come & See - A Russian one, possibly the second best ever made
16. Cross Of Iron - Third best?
    
17. Music Albums/CD's - Ten New Songs by Leonard Cohen
18. Up by Peter Gabriel - if you are all grown up or on your way - this CD is a must listen...
    
19. Blood On The Tracks by Bob Dylan - Blood, sweat & tears for a lost love...you either empathise or you don't.
    
20. Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin - they INVENTED the term "Heavy Metal" (check out "Trampled Underfoot"). But they were Heavy ROCK. This album is the perfect CD for the Open Road, turned up loud. I DARE you to listen to it in the DARK!
    
21. Hunky Dory by David Bowie - "Life On Mars" brings me back to Kilrush Co.Clare in the Summer 1973, it just doe's, OK? Suffice to say an album that brings back my early youth every time...
    
22. Rumours by Fleetwood Mac - I'm sixteen, in a converted attic in Granitefield (Daniel's) listening to Stevie for the first time ever on headphones...
    
23. Wish You were Here by Pink Floyd - The first LP John ever brought around to "The Garage" in about 1978. How I wish you were still here O'Donohoe...
    
24. SteveMcQueen by Prefab Sprout I'm driving down the A2 in Kent, circa 1990 thinking about Sandy. Still am every time I hear this...
    
25. Automatic For The People by REM - In my bedroom in Wolverton, it's Saturday night the Summer of 1993 & the bright lights of Dalkey are beckoning...
26. Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis - The Album that introduced me to the World of Miles, & Jazz. Still as fresh as the day it was recorded in Mar 1959
    
27. Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young - Gotta be the best live album ever,,,
    
28. Little Creatures by Talking Heads - Munich 1985. This album transports me there every time. My Wild Summer of Love & Braincell Death!
    
29. Marquee Moon by Television - With the best title track of any album ever?
    
30. Funhouse by The Stooges
31. Scott Walker Sings Jaques Brel
    
32. Gorecki's Symphony No.3 - I find it difficult not to get emotional when I listen to this, epecially the 2nd movement. I wish I'd discovered it before I was 40!
    
33. Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana - Another piece of music that hits me where it hurts, epecially the Intermezzo section