






Essentials
Essentials, or What are your favorite movies, music, gadgets, and whatevers?
(Feel free to debate and disagree)
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
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- 8 1/2
- The Princess Bride
- As with most movies, the book is much better.
- 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!)
- 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
- Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky