Essentials

Essentials, or What are your favorite movies, music, gadgets, and whatevers?

Essential Movies

• Empire Strikes Back
• Brazil
• Shawshank Redemption
• Blazing Saddles
• The Abyss
  • Really? Caught the last half-hour last night on the Sci-Fi channel. I saw the movie almost 10 years ago and was quite impressed, but since then... The Abyss doesn't fall in either the category of a landmark event, or the last word, in any genre. For e.g., I would go with "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" if alien contact was my thing. I don't understand this choice - except that it announced the coming of James Cameron (sic). -Rahul Bhotika
• Toy Story 2
• City of Lost Children
• Koyaanisqatsi
  • What's this? (MT)
  • Look here. -Marco
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• 8 1/2
• The Princess Bride
  • As with most movies, the book is much better.
    • Ironic, isn't it?
• The Network
• Monty Python (in general) Holy Grail (in particular)
• Zed
• Run Lola Run

Essential Music

• Depeche Mode, Violator
• The Cure, Disintegration
  • Great music for dark, rainy days
• Prince, Lovesexy
  • Energetic, free-flowing tracks of music. Most annoyingly, the CD places all tracks into one track
• Prince, Sign 'o the Times
  • Arguably Prince's best work – a double CD defying classification. At first listen, you probably won't like it – it's definitely an acquired taste
• Led Zeppelin I,II,III,IV(ZOSO)
• Beatles compilations (Red and blue albums)
• Radiohead, OK Computer
• Tori Amos, Boys for Pele
• Bjork Debut, Post, and Homogenic
  • These are awesome... (MT)
• Pi Movie Soundtrack
• Rammstein Sehnsucht

Essential Gadgets

• Can opener (it's a desert island, right? ;)
• Leatherman

Essential Food

• Pizza
• Tofu
• Chocolate
• Eel sushi
• ice cream

Essential Book(s)

• The Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy (and I mean the book, not the book about the book!)
  • Now available, an Earth edition.
• Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Unlike most trilogies, the books don't get worse as you go along. Great hard science fiction.
  • Anyone have a copy I could borrow? MT
• Foundation (Asimov)
• Farenheit 451
• Rendezvous with Rama
• The Fountainhead
  • http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/06/13/rand.tech.idg/index.html
• Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky