371. The Fight Scene from Bambi

If you're my brother, then you never watched Bambi as a kid. It turns out there's a really artistic fight sequence in there. So I guess Bambi's not all sunshine and daisies and lessons about the evils of humanity, after all.

370. New York Diaries

A compilation of diary entries written in what is now New York City over the course of the last 400 years. Not surprisingly, people from the past turn out to be much more eloquent than bloggers.

369. Golden Brown

The most reliable predictor of whether I'll like a song seems to be whether it has an unusual time signature. Golden Brown certainly fits the bill.

368. If I Told Him

Gertrude Stein wrote some weird poetry.

367. Gandhi

The movie, not the man.

366. The Other Washington Monument

Located in Maryland along the Appalachian Trail, this was the first monument to George Washington to be completed. It's not quite as perfect as the obelisk, but it gets the job done.

365. A Long December

That's one year down, and still going strong. For those keeping track, Aaron has only acknowledged two of the first year's works as being better than that scene in Ferris Bueller: Great Gig in the Sky and Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. Still, I persevere.

364. Wheatstacks (End of Summer)

I haven't watched that Ferris Bueller scene lately, but this painting may well be in it. The whole series of haystack paintings is good, but I think this one is my favorite.

363. The Mouse that Roared

A satirical Cold War novel about nuclear weapons upending the traditional international hierarchy. (There was also a film version starring Peter Seller's. It's presumably pretty good.)

362. The Swoosh

Simple, easily recognizable, and oddly evocative of athletics. What a logo.

361. The Story of Doctor Dolittle

Actually, upon reflection, this sounds rather racist. I guess it's a good reminder of the colonial mindset, at least.

360. The Royal Tenenbaums

359. The Big Ben Clock Tower

358. St. George Fights the Dragon (in Saarbruecken)

My favorite part is how the dragon is positioned in such a way that its rain exposure keeps it green.

357. The Great Gate of Kiev (from Pictures at an Exhibition)

Listen here.

356. The Prince

355. All You Need Is Love

354. The Prisoner

I think it was probably a parable about the diminishing role of individuality in modern society. Or maybe it really was about an ex-spy trying to outsmart his captors. Who knows?

353. Subterranean Homesick Alien

Listen here.

352. No Exit

L'enfer, c'est les autres.

351. A Christmas Carol

One of those pieces that's so ingrained in our culture that you could probably reproduce much of the original work just from sitcom parodies of it.

350. Gawain and the Green Knight

You know what I like about this story? It doesn't make any sense. Apparently it's all Christian symbolism or something.

349. I Heart Huckabees

The director says: "Here’s how I described it to the people who financed the movie. Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin are existential detectives who you could hire to investigate the meaning of your life. They are formal, they wear suits, they are Paris-trained and their clients include Jude Law, Naomi Watts, Jason Schwartzman and Mark Wahlberg. Their nemesis is Isabelle Huppert. Hilarity ensues."

348. The animation from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

Before CGI, Ray Harryhausen managed to do some amazing things with stop-motion animation.

347. The Grey Album

The mashup of Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles' White Album. I also like the cover art.

346. Nude Descending a Staircase

And here's a time-lapse photo of Marcel Duchamp descending a staircase (while clothed.)

345. Born to Run (the song)

Joel, I stand corrected. However, it's a good thing the blog isn't called "1000 great things that came out of New Jersey", because then I'd be in real trouble.

344. The Red Wheelbarrow

The poem:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I think this has a strong case for being the best thing to ever come out of New Jersey.

343. I Will Follow You into the Dark

Joel, if you're still keeping up with the blog, this song is guaranteed to make you a hit with the ladies. (This and Instant Pleasure.)

342. The Gardens of Versailles

These came up recently in a discussion of optimal path placement. The paths at Versailles emphatically do not get you from point A to point B in the shortest possible distance.

341. To Kill a Mockingbird

A moving look at discrimination in the American South.

On a side note, someone should start a website called "Literary classics, badly formatted, in Comic Sans."

340. The Waltz from Gounod's Faust

You know it's not a terribly popular piece of classical music when the only clip you can find is the Monty Python sketch that uses it.

339. The Lincolnshire Poacher

A traditional English folk song, not to be confused with the numbers station of the same name.

338. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

337. Guernica

336. The Battle of Helm's Deep (from the movie of The Two Towers)

You know, except for that part where Legolas surfs down the stairs on his shield.

335. Fight Club (the book)

A classic in the unreliable narrator genre.

334. Chocolate Chip Cookies

When would you guess the chocolate chip cookie was invented? If you said 1930, you're right!

333. Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard

332. The Far Side

331. World War Z

Zombie war is hell.

330. Annie Hall

329. April in Paris

Here's the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong version.

328. Eris and the Apple of Discord

That's Stephen Colbert, not Eris, but you get the idea.

327. The Carnival of the Animals

Here's the swan movement, introduced slightly jarringly by James Bond.

326. The Molitor Stradivarius

A Stradivarius violin, made in 1697, that may have once been owned by Napoleon.

325. The Pirates of Penzance

The happiest art I could come up with off the top of my head...

For he is a pirate king, he is, hurrah for the pirate king!

I had no idea Kevin Kline had played the pirate king. I'm going to have to watch that version.

324. Angela's Ashes

Yes, this is like fifteen downers in a row. I think it's the beginning of winter that's causing this trend.

323. The Opening to Little Miss Sunshine

The introductions to each of the characters are just perfect. I particularly love the father giving his terrible motivational speech and the son doing pushups under his home-made Nietzsche portrait.

322. The Rosetta Stone

Back to monochrome.

321. Confetti Death

The blog has been very monochromatic lately, so here's some color without letting go of the morbidness.

320. Jane Eyre

According to Phoebe from Friends: You'd think she's a woman, but she's not. She's a cyborg. This book was very ahead of its time.

319. Home on the Range

The song, not the terrible movie. Also, this is the guy who wrote it. I would have guessed his beard was at least 50% bigger than that.

318. Shadow of the Colossus

A game that asks you to kill beautifully intricate monsters and then reflect on your motivations for doing so. This was the probably the most-cited artistic game in the brouhaha that arose after Roger Ebert blithely claimed "Video games can never be art."

317. The Rite of Spring

I was going to say that it's not often that an abstract piece of music causes a riot, but then I found this list of "classical music riots". Apparently it happens more commonly than I was aware of.

316. Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother

315. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

An extension of the golem legend, in which an aspiring magician helps smuggle the Golem out of Czechoslovakia to keep it out of Nazi hands. Surprisingly, although this is how the novel starts, it tends towards realism after that point.

314. The Golem of Prague

The legend goes that the rabbi of Prague created the golem to protect the Jewish ghetto against antisemitic attacks. Depending on the version of the story you hear, this either goes very well or disastrously. I like that the idea of monstrous, uncontrollable technology was around as early as the 1830s (and certainly much earlier in other stories.)

313. Baby Got Back

After posting this, I realized it looked like an unfortunate political statement. This is in no way meant to be a commentary on #312.