It took many years, six, I believe, for Margaret Mitchell to complete the writing of her Pulitzer Prize winning book upon which the feature film is based. The novel shows it, and it was still being written with major changes, for example, in its title and the name of its leading protagonist from Pansy to Scarlett even while its publisher, Macmillan, was preparing it for print.

The film also took years in development, including the great struggle to locate exacting matches for its characters and then the application of some of the finest crafts men and women in what might have been the peak year of Hollywood's Golden Age. The film shows that as well. It should be included in all curricula on filmmaking and in long form writing. It is a finely etched, beautifully considered character study. As such it is a triumph in American literature in both novel and film forms. Like all finely accomplished works of the human heart it has become timeless.

Beyond all of that we are left with a depiction of artistry in both literature and movie making when as in other forms, such as architecture, love was part if the gestalt of creation and profit at bottom line accounting and the marketplace were not the major compelling issues. Here, we have an example of serendipity and timing of arts at a moment in our history when it was possible to create the enduring classic that this is. "Gone with the Wind" might also describe the possibility of such a moment.

Enlightenment ushers in the realizations of being. The import of the external world of perception fades while fear is revealed as illusory and the meaning of love is finally understood. We come to know that we are love attempting to express upon a third dimensional (physical) reality. Many of us grope, struggling in the darkness or worst, lost entirely within it while great teachers have repeatedly brought these truths to us. The way to enlightenment is clearly shown by teachers such as Eckhart Tolle. Those so inclined, do not wait for a friend to lend you Tolle's "book" nor should you consider the Tolle work just a book but a course on the Path and do not think that this "book" can just be read and put aside. It should be used until its information is inculcated at the cellular level and the objective of enlightenment is accomplished.

When Siskel and Ebert left PBS for greener pastures at Buena Vista in 1982 an equally competent and even brighter team of movie reviewers, Michael Medved and Neal Gabler replaced them. Unfortunately these replacements never achieved the soaring if ephemeral popularity of the originators of Sneak Previews.

All too soon Jeffrey Lyons replaced Neal Gabler before we got to know him. In 1988, Gabler's book, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Created Hollywood, was published.

Here, the Golden Age of Hollywood is presented as an Age of Brass. We get to know on a first name basis the small group of Jewish immigrants, from the turn of the last Century rejected from mainstream American corporate business but with equally human hunger for comfort and wealth. They left their father's limited little businesses to jump on the Thomas Edison often-derided risky bandwagon of moving pictures and realized its true promise. They did this not out of the motive of a pioneer's dream of courageous exploration and but with the lust for gold of the Conquistadors.

Neal Gabler's book is a competent work. It offers an erudite tour through the various personalities in the early years and the reasons why this most unlikely group, using the most powerful and influential medium ever invented actually shaped the American Dream that we know today.

Since I first read this book in 1972, when it was first published, and was fortunate enough to have spoken to Jane Roberts a few times while she was still in comparatively good health, I ventured on to Amazon.com just to see how this wonderful book had weathered the decades. What I found most astonishing is that even today, nearly 100 years after the publication of Albert Einstein's papers on relativity, and the birth of quantum physics, that even people who give the book five stars don't seem to quite get the message of this book- that of the miraculous phenomenon of individuated consciousness in a sea of energy. That the book is spectacular is not the question. It is! Anyone can see this by the number of stars awarded it by the overwhelming number of people who read the book. The few who tried to bring the book down to their level are quickly revealed by the quality of their "reviews". To those who are still lost in the process of trying to figure out this book, but are fascinated by it and indeed, had their lives changed as I have, the simple line on the cover of the original is the key. Read this line carefully: [A complete book by the "Personality" who has dictated over 6,000 pages on the universe beyond the senses]. As it happens, 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of the universe is beyond human senses. Those of us, who are too arrogant, self deluded or blind enough not to realize this, take a look at the electromagnetic spectrum. You will see that visible light is a minuscule sliver "centered" where you are. The rest of the spectrum continues into infinity. Those who wisely continue to study this book for the balance of their lives ultimately come to realize the truth to the age-old apothegm; "knowledge is power." There is no greater power than the discovery of what you are.

With the exception of a gaping gorge of missing data critical to "knowledge of God" this is a fairly good compilation of current understanding held by most on the Spiritual Path. There is also an erroneous conclusion that Deepak Chopra has made in his comprehensive, that the soul enters an "incubation period" upon death. There is no death since time does not, in fact, exist and cannot be proven to exist by any scientist or logician.

Since we are here and now, we are here and now forever, despite any change of perceptual venue, form, appearance, or conceptual reality. Temporal reality is perceptual only, in the mind and a construct of human consensus. It does not and cannot in fact, exist. A "period of incubation" implies the existence of a temporal reality beyond our own fixation of one at the perceived material level. Those who have traveled beyond the mind body fixation know of the astral and causal planes beyond the Earth or Third Dimensional Plane. The soul or the more permanent "Self" is known to enter one of these "heavens" after the transition called death and the shedding of the atomic sheath called the body. This is a change of mind, not a death.

These entire fields of traditionally acknowledged comprehension is mysteriously left out in this otherwise proficient work, while being prominent in many now classic studies of existence. ###

I Compagni is memorable. When we consider why films move us, affect our lives, indeed, create us to some extent, we think of films such as this. This is not just an artistic triumph for all its filmmakers, but also a moving document of humanity. We take measure of Mastroianni not by his range of performance but by his deep involvement. Like France's Charles Aznavour has his heart in his song, Marcello Mastroianni is fully engaged in his performance. As Professor Sinigaglia in I Compagni, Mastroianni is at his best form. The source of his intensity is not his surface emotion, but the depths of his soul.

This is the very best filmed version of Franz Lehar's delighful operetta. The cast is perfectly matched, the music and songs wonderfully rendered. Though black and white, one rapidly begins to see all the true color. This is a charmer from Hollywood's Golden Age that holds up well. Forget the 1952 version, it does not have the vitality of Ernst Lubitch direction, nor does it have a peak Maurice Chevalier nor the lovely Jeanette MacDonald. You will want to watch it many times, as a picker-upper.

A classic book which will never be out of print. The spiritual seeker runs across this title, reads it, hears the bells but the verity in these pages is so stunning and the intellect so overriding that it is easy to dismiss as wishful thinking. Only after much effort and time, perhaps years of spiritual practice, does it all come to us in absolute clarity. Then we go back to THE GAME OF LIFE and nod to Ms. Shinn, with profound gratitude but with no small amount of regret that it took us so many years to grasp these immutable truths.