Just about all the videos in the Scholastic Video Collection are great but this one stands out as the absolute bestest. William Steig wrote and illustrated some my favorite children’s books, and Weston Woods created animated versions that equal the books in greatness. Doctor DeSoto is my favorite on this disc.

Also included among the extras is The Great White Man-Eating Shark which is brilliant fun. My kids and I enjoy watching these flicks over and over and over.

Just about everything is wrong with this movie. Oskar Werner is terrible as Montag. Casting Julie Cristie as both Montag’s wife and Clarisse is a mistake (Clarisse is a teenager for crissake.) The score by Bernard Herrmann is lovely but totally out of place. And the focus on book burning is simple-minded. The story isn’t just about burning books, it’s about a lost and dehumanized society.

I got the impression that Truffaut made the movie so he could burn piles of his favorite literary classics in front of the camera, as if that were shocking enough. Instead of giving us a fully-formed interpretation of the novel, he padded the movie with Hitchcockian tricks and cinematic quotations. This movie is just bad.

Plowden is something of an institution. I especially like his photos of the Great Plains and grain elevators. The square, spare black and white images are simply amazing.

This is perfect cloudy day ambient electronic music. It has a personal soundtrack feel. Put this on your iPod while going about your day and transcend the mundane.

Despite obvious rip-offs from Highsmith’s Ripley novels, the story deftly manages to illustrate the importance of luck over talent when it comes to getting away with murder (and lesser sins).

And it stars the lovely Scarlett Johansson which should be reason enough to give it a look-see.

I remember listening to Lodger a lot back in the early 80’s. After reviewing it a few times this week I can’t understand why. Other than the single D.J. this album is really unremarkable. Mine must be the minority opinion judging by the glowing five-star reviews on Amazon. Hmm. I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

I’ve started reviewing my old Bowie collection. Low was always one of my favorites, and it still is. You probably can think of that one artist or group who’s sound instantly transports you back to more youthful and less complicated times. Bowie is that guy for me, especially his stuff from the mid to late 70’s.

The first and only poem my oldest daughter memorized is The Babysitter:

Mrs. McTwitter the babysitter,
I think she’s a little bit crazy.
She thinks the babysitter
is supposed to sit upon the baby.

It is accompanied by a hilarious illustration of a pear-shaped Mrs. McTwitter with a full head of frizzy hair sitting upon a little bundle, two tiny feet sticking out.

This is great way to teach kids the fudamentals of sudoku. My six year old picked it up right away and can play the game by herself after I’ve setup the starting pieces where they should go. Manipulating the magnetic number squares gives it a tactile quality that seems to make it work better than plain pencil and paper. Also, the grid is 6×6 rather than the standard 9×9 which makes it easier for kids. It’s awesome!

To read the Baroque Cycle in it’s entirety was one of the first goals I put up on 43 Things. I have now completed it, and it was worth it! Cheers, Neal.