Books, movies, or art works that have had a profound impact on your life?

Books=
The Hurricane
Harry Potter
Lord Of The Rings
A Song Of Ice And Fire

Films=
Fitzcarraldo
Red Beard
Raging Bull
A Clockwork Orange
Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father

 

Some of these are certainly more "profound" than others, but they've all certainly left their mark in some form or fashion.

Books:
- The Hobbit
- The Lord of the Rings
- Dragonlance (the Weiss/Hickman ones, anyway)
- The Count of Monte Cristo
- Don Quixote
- Virtually every religious/mythological text you can think of
- Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life
- The Inferno (some day I'll get around to the rest of the Divine Comedy)
- The Dirt
- To Hell and Back
- Most everything Poe
- Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
- The Screwtape Letters
- The Power of Myth

Movies:
- Star Wars (the originals)
- Lord of the Rings
- Indiana Jones
- Amadeus
- Office Space
- Pulp Fiction
- The Big Lebowski
- The Godfather (all of them, even part 3)
- The Dark Knight (one of the best films I've ever seen and certainly the best film based on a superhero I've ever seen)

Music:
- Black Sabbath
- Led Zeppelin
- Pink Floyd
- Ozzy
- Motley Crue
- Eighties speed metal
- Heavy metal, period
- All of Mozart's operas (Magic Flute, Il Seraglio, Figaro, Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, etc.)
- Everything Beethoven ever did
- Everything Mozart ever did, really
- Actually, classical music in general

Art:
- van Gogh's Starry Night
- Anything and everything da Vinci
- Raphael's The School of Athens


I know I'm leaving out a ton, especially where music and religion/mythology are involved. I've been up all night.

 

Movie:
-Swordfish

 

Movies:
Clockwork Orange
Cinema Paradiso
Blue Velvet


Books:
Siddhartha
The Rum Diary
On the Road

Art:
Robert Rauschenberg

Salvador Dali

 

Not your typical self-help mumbo-jumbo. This book is amazing:



Movies that affected me profoundly:

American History X
Boyz n the Hood

And naturally:

 

Interesting topic.

Books:
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkein as I explained in DD's thread I read that before The Lord of the Rings and was the first Fantasy book I had read.
The Elric of Melnibone Series, Michael Moorcock
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
100 Years of Solitude, Gabrielle Garcia Marquez
Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
The Journey to the West - The Chinese epic of the Monkey King's journey to India.
The Foundation Series, Isaac Aasimov
[edit] Forgot to include 2 non-fiction books that have had a profound influence on me.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X / Alex Hailey
Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier

Movies
Glory
Dr. Strangelove
Enter the Dragon
Airplane!
Henry V - Kenneth Branagh adaption.

Music (albums and songs)
Quadrophenia, The Who
Blues for Salvador, Santana
The Four Seasons, Vivaldi
Sing it Loud, Sing it Proud, Dropkick Murphys
London Calling, The Clash
9th Symphony, Beethoven
Some Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
If I Should Fall from the Grace of God, The Pogues
The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty, Willie Nelson version
Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash

 

Whoops forgot art:
The Gandhara Buddha


Robert Irwin's "Slant Light"


Guo Xi "Early Spring"


Hokusai "Great Wave"


Mu Ch'i


Etienne Boullee, Newton Cenotaph


Robert Smithson "Spiral Jetty"


Lebeus Woods "New City Project"

 

When I was in Amsterdam at the Van Gogh museum I was blown away by Wheat Field with Crows. It almost brought me to tears for some reason, I guess it's imagery was parallel with my life at that time.



I was introduced to this song probably a week or so after breaking away from my fiance that I had been with for 7 years. Still can't listen to it without getting upset - hit very close to home. It's really brutal for me to listen to.

Ray LaMontagne - Empty

lyrics:

Spoiler

She lifts her skirt up to her knees,
walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing.
I never learned to count my blessings,
I choose instead to dwell in my disasters.
I walk on down the hill,
through grass, grown tall and brown
and still its hard somehow to let go of my pain.
On past the busted back of that old and rusted Cadillac
that sinks into this field, collecting rain.
Will I always feel this way?
So empty, so estranged.

And of these cut-throat busted sunsets,
these cold and damp white mornings
I have grown weary.
If through my cracked and dusted dime-store lips
I spoke these words out loud would no one hear me?
Lay your blouse across the chair,
let fall the flowers from from your hair
and kiss me with that country mouth, so plain.
Outside, the rain is tapping on the leaves,
to me it sounds like they're applauding us the the quiet love we've made.
Will I always feel this way?
So empty, so estranged.

Well I looked my demons in the eyes,
laid bare my chest, said "Do your best, destroy me.
You see, I've been to hell and back so many times,
I must admit you kind of bore me."
There's a lot of things that can kill a man,
there's a lot of ways to die,
listen, some already did that walked beside me.
There's a lot of things I don't understand,
why so many people lie.
Its the hurt I hide that fuels the fire inside me.
Will I always feel this way?
So empty, so estranged.

 

Snakes on a Plane
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus
The Good Shepherd
Gigli

These have had a profound effect on my life.

 

Thought of another book:
Hagakure/The Book of the Samurai. I dig it.

 

Yeah, I liked Unbreakable quite a bit and I should have included Fear and Loathing in my original list. It made me want to try every drug in existence yet at the same time completely terrified me regarding them, all while cracking me up.

 

To the OP: How has the Calling of St. Mathew impacted your life? I just find it really interesting that that piece of art is there. I just learned about it too in art history.

Movies
- The Pursuit of Happiness

Music
- Anything on the piano

Art

- Sistine Chapel ceiling



Is Michelangelo saying that God is created from our own brain?

 

Movies:

Jaws.

 

Music:
Almost everything by Elvis Costello between 1977-1982
Motown
Bossa Nova, Samba
Anything by Bob Dylan before 1975 especially Highway 61 Revisited - that one album changed my view of rock and roll.

Movies: Almost everything by Woody Allen before 1987 especially Annie Hall

 

Even though it's considered art, you might want to NSFW Spoiler that.

 

Books:
"Diplomacy" by Kissinger.
"Histoires et sciences socialies: la longue duree" by Braudel
The Fountainhead
The Bible
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The World is Flat
Fate/Stay Night, though that's not quite a book.

Art:


"And when did you last see your Father?"

 

Books:
Crime & Punishment
The Great Gatsby
1984
Animal Farm
The Once and Future King
Isaac Asimov (everything: Foundation, Robot)
Moby Dick
All Quiet on the Western Front
Heart of Darkness
Native Speaker
Invisible Man

Movies:
Requiem for a Dream
Star Wars
Back to the Future
Ladybugs
Eternal Sunshine
Oldboy