"The age of innocence that was the sixties ended, it is often said, at Altamont Speedway, miles from the peace and love of San Francisco, one cold fall evening in 1969. The Rolling Stones, frustrated to have missed out on the Woodstock festival weeks earlier, chose this location to stage their own festival, and taking advice from Jerry Garcia, brought in local Hells Angels chapters to handle security, paying them with as much beer as they could drink. The concert was a disaster, and ended with manslaughter. The documentarian brothers Albert and David Maysles were there to film the run-up to the event, the performance itself, and the aftermath. Mick Jagger has never looked so lost onstage, nor would he be quite so out of control again. Strangely, it seemed only to fuel the Stones’ rise to power—but then, the Beatles were about to call it a day. Essential viewing for anyone who loves contemporary music and the culture that surrounds it."

"Fellini is a deep, deep master of film. As time goes by I adore him more and more. La strada is quite perfect. It is like “The Ancient Mariner.” A haunting film for all time; one cannot insult innocence without a lifetime of cost. I don’t know why it is, but it is so, a spiritual truth, that both Coleridge and Fellini knew and tell in their respective stories. Fellini is the most fluent filmmaker of them all. His shots and storytelling are so at ease and elegant, it’s as if he’s thinking his shots through a camera in his mind and straight onto a screen. I went to his funeral in Rome in 1993, where people in the crammed huge Piazza Republica gathered to salute farewell. It was also a time when no one wanted to see a Fellini film. Every year since then his legacy appears more remarkable and more incomparable."

"This is my favorite movie of all time, and the only one that I watch on an annual schedule (Thanksgiving) other than A Muppet Christmas Carol (Christmas). I first saw it on that holiday, and the experience was so meaningful that I suppose I’m always trying to recapture it. Coincidentally, on Thanksgiving my family used to travel to West Virginia, where the novel’s author, Davis Grubb, was from, and where the book is set. Grubb arguably doesn’t get enough credit for the look and feel of the film: I can’t really think of a movie that is more faithful to the tone and even letter of its source, and Grubb also essentially storyboarded the film. It’s such a rich parable of good and evil, and a boundlessly profound exploration of intangibles like innocence, loss, deceit, and the yearning to be loved. Although terror is a central theme, it’s ultimately a very comforting film."