Sometimes when I am procrastinating or have insomnia, I list stuff. So, I'd like to hear your Top Tens (or approximate) on any or all subjects, humorous or serious.

wuthering heights- emily bronte
the book of laughter and forgetting- milan kundera
like water for chocolate- laura esquivel
key to rebecca- ken follet
return from the stars- stanislaw lem
dear and glorious physician- taylor caldwell
in cold blood- truman capote
october 1964- david halberstam
angelas ashes- frank mccourt
the ice queen- alice hoffman

Last Edited on 1-Jun-2007 10:10 PM

1. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
2. Lolita, Vladimir Nabakov
3. Through the Arc of the Rainforest, Karen Tei Yamashita
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. Abeng, Michelle Cliff
6. House of Spirits, Isabel Allende
7. Sula, Toni Morrison
8. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
9. The Toughest Indian in the World, Sherman Alexie
10. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
11. Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
12. Man's Fate, Andre Malroux

1. Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean
2. The Seven Samurai, Akira Kurasawa
3. City of God, Fernando Meirelles
4. Dead Poet's Society, Peter Weir
5. Once Were Warriors, Lee Tamahori
5. Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee
6. Princess Mononoke, Hayao Miyazaki
7. Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir
8. My Own Private Idaho, Gus Van Sant
9. The Singing Detective (original), Dennis Potter
10. City Lights, Charlie Chaplin
11. Time of the Gypsies, Emir Kusturica
12. Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Stanley Kubrik
13. West Side Story, Jerome Robbins
14. Crooklyn, Spike Lee
15. Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola
16. Bamboozled, Spike Lee
17. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee
18. Titanic (yes! I said it!), James Cameron
19. The Story of Qui Ju, Zhang Yimou
20. Bridge on the River Kwai, David Lean
21. Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Ang Lee
22. Thelma and Louise, Ridley Scott
23. L.I.E., Michael Cuesta
24. Smoke Signals, Chris Eyre and Sherman Alexie
25. Holy Smoke, Jane Campion
26. Amores Perros, Alejandro González Iñarritu
27. Before the Rain, Milcho Manchevski
28. On the Beach, Stanley Kramer
29. Y Tu Mama Tambien, Alfonso Cuarón
30. All About My Mother, Pedro Almodóvar
31. High Noon, Fred Zinneman
32. Divine Intervention, Elia Suleiman
33. Six Degrees of Separation, Fred Schepisi

Later, I'll have to add my next thirty. When I love a movie, I love it hard and long!

Ju Dou; and
Red firecracker, green firecracker

And you forgot almodovars best film

Mujeres al bordo de un ataque de nervios

and try also the french comdedy film

Le placard (wardrobe, closet)

It's got that old bum gerard le Pieu in it, but its got the better marcel auriel (or something like that)

Last Edited on 2-Jun-2007 4:34 AM

Sentimentality
From Wikipedia,

Sentimentality is on one hand a literary device that is used to induce an emotional response disproportionate to the situation, and thus to substitute heightened and generally uncritical feeling for normal ethical and intellectual judgments, and on the other it is a heightened reader response that is willing to invest previously prepared emotions to respond disproportionately to a literary situation

Maybe you just find it aesthetically offensive?

Last Edited on 11-Jun-2007 5:59 PM

1) People who take joy in their children and try to make the world a better place for them. Parents who help their children love both the world and themselves.

2) People who are not defeated by the cruelties and injustices of the world, and stubbornly move forward with their ideals. This is hard but necessary. Take a vacation to refuel.

3) People who turn more generous and wise with age. This is hard, since are brains become fossilized, but I have seen it can be gone.

4) People who are open and curious about the world enough to find ways to travel and attempt to immerse themselves.

5) Those who understand history and culture and ideology brainwash us, and therefore work to change, and keep changing, and discovering. In other words, those who embrace life as a process, not a determined product.

6) Recognizing that animals are sentient beings and need to be treated humanely and respected for the unique creatures they are. Also, respecting the earth.

7) People who are active, not passive, and work to change the system through various methods. Creative, daring minds.

8) People who realize that no matter how intense things get, laughter is the best medicine and will give us the strength to move forward.

9) Love, in all its forms. Brave expression of love, despite the ridicule of cynics.

10) People who can think of "we" and not only of "me."

Last Edited on 4-Jul-2007 8:53 AM