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You need to imagine you are back in 1969. Many of you will have no idea what a different world it was back then. So many things did not exist, like computers and the internet and cable television. So much is available now that people could only fantasize about then. Now any unsupervised 10-year-old can see just about anything they want. It's hard to imagine how big a difference that is. Hiding Playboy magazines under the mattress was about as bad as it got back then. There was a huge unfulfilled demand for adult entertainment when adults couldn't find much that excited or titillated them. But there was a change coming slowly without calling too much attention to itself. Radley Metzger saw an opportunity to create a kind of art film that would let him break new ground.

The film The Lickerish Quartet was one of a number of films Metzger created as a film distributor and director. The films look quaint now. They were filmed beautifully with excellent production values. For instance, The Lickerish Quartet makes superb use of an actual castle (Balsorano in Italy's Abruzzi Mountains) by the gorgeous seaside and countryside. It attempts to use Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author as an inspiration for its existential musings. Metzger's forays are pretentious, but they did break ground in upscale eroticism. Both Andy Warhol and NY Times film critic Vincent Canby gave it high praise.

Many small unheralded horror films are produced, and they easily slip through the cracks. The Frankenstein Theory is one. It has an interesting premise, though. In 2012, Professor Jonathan Venkenheim takes a film crew to the Arctic to document the attempt to prove that Mary Shelly's Frankenstein was a true story based on his great, great, great grandfather's letters. Venkenheim is a highly educated, nervous, and nerdy academic who is obsessed with this possibility. The documentary crew and Venkenheim's own girlfriend think his obsession is driving him a little mad, but they want the job, and Venkenheim will not be deterred. The engine that drives the professor’s obsession is the belief that his family name should be credited with the greatest scientific discovery of all time.

The film crew seems a little immature and unprofessional and adds an air of silliness to the initial attempts to get footage as they go on a journey through Canada. The professor's nervous intensity is also somewhat comedic. A welcome gravitas comes from the stern guide who will guide them through the north country. After a while the guide seems more and more like Quint from Jaws. In this case Jaws might be the Frankenstein monster. Most of the cast is relatively unimpressive except for the guide, played by Timothy V. Murphy, who has a very recognizable face from film, TV, and commercials.

The Real Vikings is a DVD collection put out by the History channel and is comprised of three separately-produced programs about the reign of the Vikings.

The last one is the best and is part of the Warriors series hosted by Green Beret Terry Schappert.  Schappert delves into some of the key battles of the early Viking invasions and the methods that made them such effective warriors. In the late 8^th century A.D. the Viking state is disorganized, and the easiest route to fame and glory is through conquest. Conquests then would lead to a rallying behind a leader. In 793 A.D., The sacking of the monastery at Lindisfarne in Northern England sends shock waves through Christian Europe because of its senseless and merciless violence. The Vikings superiority was based on ships which were designed to strike anywhere. Viking warriors were driven by a culture that revered death in battle and made them utterly fearless. It was an honor to be first in battle. They trained relentlessly with many unique techniques and weapons. By the 9^th and 10^th century the Vikings raided anywhere and everywhere unexpectedly, and their mere appearance was often enough to cause their victims to give up. The program also goes into details about weapons, armor, forts, battle styles, and most importantly of all, the invincibility of the Viking war ships.

Gossip Girl ran six years on the CW and is based on a series of books written by Cecily Von Ziegesar. It is about the very rich and young of the upper east side of New York City. The gossip girl of the title has remained secret throughout the series but is revealed in the final episode. I won't be revealing the secret. The series is best described as glossy fun. It is a soap opera in the extreme with a heavy emphasis on fashion and all of the expensive toys of the ridiculously rich. It also deals primarily with teenagers who are “maturing” while trying to deal with the difficulties of a life that has no boundaries.

When the show started, the idea of blogging was still relatively new, before Perez Hilton, TMZ, and a legion of internet dirt mongers became popular. It could be said it was ahead of its time, but we are not talking Nobel-prize-winning innovations. It became a sensation and highly rated on the network, but that is relative to ratings in general. In other words, the ratings weren't very high when compared with shows on other networks but still were always popular with teens. It won Teen Choice awards a few years running. It also ran in 196 countries.

Comedy Central is the main access for exposure for most comedians today. They regularly broadcast up and coming comedy specials, and Amy Schumer seems to be one of their latest favorites. She has a new sketch comedy show coming out this spring on Comedy Central called Inside Amy Schumer. She was also featured on the celebrity roasts of Charlie Sheen and Roseanne Barr with a number of better-known performers. Her material is fairly fearless, targeting anyone and everyone. Her material in this comedy special is a good example. When it says mostly sex stuff, it is completely accurate. She leaves very little to the imagination about her sex life. This DVD is clearly NSFW or not safe for children or probably not safe for your mother or grandmother. Funny enough, but Schumer has her mother and sister there while she says lots of bad words about them.

It is pretty much impossible to say too much about what she says in this stand-up concert. It was done for Comedy Central, but you would have to buy this DVD to hear it without hundreds of bleeps. She comes off looking very sweet on stage, and she knows that's part of the appeal. Her uncle is Chuck Schumer, one of the most powerful members of the Senate. I can imagine he is going to want to keep a distance from that wing of the family.

If you were to print out all the quotes from the interviews in Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, a 116-minute documentary, you would swear that Lewis himself wrote them all. Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, Carol Burnett, Billy Crystal, Chevy Chase, John Landis, Carl Reiner, Richard Lewis (no relation) and Alec Baldwin are all so effusive in their compliments as to almost defy belief. Woody Harrelson says if you don't like Jerry Lewis, he doesn't even want to hang out with you. Comedian/Actor Richard Belzer (Law and Order) shows off his Jerry Lewis tattoo. Jerry Seinfeld says that if you don't laugh at Jerry Lewis, you don't understand comedy. Everyone interviewed in this film is completely unreserved in their love and respect for the man.

The film is a fairly comprehensive, looking at the 80-year career of the 85-year-old hyphenate (he is comedian/director/writer/actor/singer). Director Gregg Barson was given pretty much a free hand to record Jerry Lewis, the man behind the scenes in his daily life and activities. What comes out is a fairly vibrant and fresh perspective on the legend and icon. I was personally surprised how intelligent and sharp he still is. From news reports in recent years, it was easy to get the impression that he was a doddering and delusional old nut job. One omission from the documentary is any mention of Lewis's involvement in the Muscular Dystrophy Association which he singlehandedly turned into the most prominent charity in the world over many generations. It seems recently he has become disenchanted with the management, but it is not clarified here. What is brought into perspective is the truly monumental success of the man's life and career. It is hard to estimate the money he has made, but it must be astounding. At one point during a comedy tour he had a little time to churn out a movie. He made The Bellboy for a little under 1 million dollars with no studio help and has personally pocketed over 300 million dollars from that film alone. For many years, Paramount Pictures wouldn't have known what to do if they didn't get two Jerry pictures a year, he was that important to their bottom line.

One of the things that HBO does best is to tackle an issue-orientated hot button topic in an adult and in-depth manner. It does this better than big-screen movies, because Hollywood is afraid to do it because it doesn't pay. Hollywood likes to win awards and get Oscars, but it's money first. HBO can do intelligent programs with modest budgets that appeal to their subscribers and fit their format. They know they are the best at a certain type of programing, and they know what they're doing.

Game Change is interesting in a lot of ways. It is an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at an important moment in the modern Republican party. The 2008 presidential election is still relevant and in the hearts and minds of most Americans. Game Change gives us a close up of what exactly happened and what we don't know about what happened.

Enlightened is a new HBO series that tries to find a place in the storied and award-winning shelf of great shows from the cable giant. Many HBO series have had a strong hook to hang on like the gangster epics The Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. Enlightened is a far more elusive concept. At the center of this series is Laura Dern's character, who is a source of constant angst and confusion. Dern has already won a Golden Globe for her performance. The character is full of contradictions and internal conflicts.

The series starts with Dern having a breakdown at work and leaving for an intensive therapy center in Hawaii. When she returns, she is enlightened, or is she? The first season has ten episodes, and in those episodes we see Dern go through an emotional rollercoaster of highs, lows, and more lows. There are endless conflicts and moral outrages erupting in this character. She works for a vaguely sinister and bland corporate entity that seems to be the source of enormous health problems for the public but about which most of the workers have apathetic nonchalance. But Dern's character has so many outrageous outbursts of issues great and small that most people have dismissed her as crazy and just wish she would go away.