Every once in a while, you finally get around to listening to/seeing/reading something that's supposed to be utter godhead, and holy shit if it doesn't turn out to be true. Hence...

Things That Turned Out To Be Just As Amazing As You'd Always Heard They Were:

Music
The Stooges - Funhouse (The inspiration for this thread--I only just bought it a few months ago and I can't believe how much I love it.)

Movies
The Seventh Seal
The Passion of Joan of Arc

Plays
Waiting for Godot
Angels in America

Books
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5

I purchased Fun House not too long ago and I wholeheartedly agree. Can't believe it took me so long to hear it though.

Yeah, after reading about this forever, I heard it a couple of years ago and promptly played it five times in a row. It still never gets old, it still blows me away.



I really need to read this.

I was blown away when I saw this also...pretty brilliant.

the seventh seal - i watched the first 30 minutes or so but didnt get to the rest.

I liked The Seventh Seal but it was a little dry.



I hope no one lists the new Strokes album in this thread.

Being that it's Bergman, I was expecting it to be a whole lotta dry. The earthy humor (like Von Sydow's sidekick) made it more accessible, not at all a chore to watch.

Agree on Funhouse, and throw in Television, The New York Dolls, and Suicide.

Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes
Nick Drake - Pink Moon

Movies:

In The Heat of the Night
Rear Window

T.V.

Dead Like Me
The Suze Orman Show

Guns Germs and Steel is awesome.

The Stooges are terrible.

Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim is floating in time...

Yeah I think that's the only Bergman film I've seen. I was kinda expecting it to be like that and that's probably why it sat, unwatched, on my desk for 2 months.

I absolutely understand that. Vonnegut straddles that "too clever by half" line that works like gangbusters for some of us and not at all for others.

Lemme add:

Swimming to Cambodia

Notice a pattern here? Swimming, Slaughterhouse, Godot, Angels in America? When it works, that mix of unexpected humor with serious gutpunch just slays me.

Say what?

Thats funny that you mentioned seventh seal beacuase I watched it today in my world cinema class. I like the concept but I fell asleep for a little while in the middle of it. parts of it are really good but it is slow

I never got the popular notion that Bergman is cerebral and dry. If you watch Saraband out last year as his last, filmed at age 86, it is gut wrenching human drama... full of poisonous anger and familial damage at a heroic scale. Anything but dry.

He's scary and chilly... but full of drama. To me.

Funhouse fucking rocks.

Slaughterhouse Five was kind of lightweight to me, a disappointment.

You'll be saying the same thing when you get a response from him.

[quote="HideousLump"]
The Passion of Joan of Arc

This is my 2nd favorite film of all time. I would add in Solyaris as well in the film category.

As far as music goes--pretty much all of Dylan. May go without saying but it was probably into my junior/senior yr of high school until I started listening to him, and prior to that all I heard was how amazing he was. Particularly for me, his first 3 albums. To me, this is what you always hear about with Dylan. Those albums which were the cogs needed to make the larger machine work.

Pet Sounds. Once again, it was a fabled album, and I think it was senior year of high school when I procured it, in 97/8. I was at the height of my punk rock love. I felt weird about buying it, but I had heard and read amazing things about it. I bought it, my parents were kind of shocked, and I remember I went to my bedroom, put it on, and was changed.

Velvet Underground records. Again, much written and said. Lived up + in my mind.

Movies:
I wasn't a huge fan of the Seventh Seal either, but I did like Bergman's Persona a lot.
It's a Wonderful Life - didn't see it until I was 20
Philadelphia Story - until I was 27
An American in Paris - ditto
Casablanca - ditto (it was a classic movie binge)

Music
Pet Sounds
Innervisions
Van Morrison - esp Moondance and Astral Weeks
London Calling
Miles Davis - esp Kind of Blue
John Coltrane - esp Giant Steps

Books and Literature
Shakespeare
George Bernard Shaw
Tom Stoppard
Ender's Game
Dune
Harry Potter - hard to admit, but they were better than I expected, maybe not amazing, but better than I expecteed

Video Games - Yeah, I'm lowbrow
Civilization
X-Com
Jagged Alliance
Grand Theft Auto

Other Media
NPR - WBEZ in Chicago

The Damned - Machine gun Etiquette (last year)
Joy Division - Everything (a coupla years ago)

Music
Pet Sounds
Another Green World
Big Star
Nick Drake
If You're Feeling Sinister

Movies
Casablanca
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?
Dr. Strangelove
Citizen Kane

Books
The Harry Potter series
To Kill a Mockingbird

For my own, the only ones that immediately come to mind beside The Stooges:

Music

Van Morrison's Astral Weeks - That was everything I had hoped it would be.

The Who's Live at Leeds - I recall reading something about this being one of the best live albums of all time. I tend to agree.

Books

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - I had been reading Rolling Stone since I was a kid, so I was fairly familiar with HST's writing. I just hadn't read his signature piece and it was sometime before I did. It completely lived up to the hype, I thought it was, and still is, one of the funniest things I've ever read.