What's in Your DVD Player?

The Chicago Tribune had a diverting story in the Entertainment section on Tuesday. Writer Louis R. Carlozo asked various celebrities what DVDs they'd been watching lately. Some choices were against type, while others were fairly close to what you'd expect. Stan Lee is an example of the first. Instead of high adventure, he prefers what he calls "date movies."

I love to watch movies where there are these little romantic plots where it's a little bit outrageous and funny and has a happy ending. A lot of them seem to star John Cusack. The Wedding Planner was one that I saw recently that really tickled me.

Michael Palin revealed that he's quite the Bill Murray fan and extols the virtues of Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. John Cleese, on the other hand, prefers to read.

There are some great and important books out there, and at my age, they feel more important to me than what's on TV. Time is an increasingly scarce resource when you become 66.

But the best comment has to come from Dennis Miller. It's not the DVDs he's watching--the miniseries is well worth your time, even if he has too high a regard for it--it's the lesson he's learning from it.

I took Ken Burns' The Civil War on the road with me. I think it's the definitive artistic achievement of our generation -- either that or the B-side of Abbey Road. I think PBS would do a service to rerun that. What we see over and over again is that war is a stumble: It is not a game of Stratego. Burns cuts in these brilliant newspaper headlines of the day; "Lincoln is stupid, a moron" -- and where have I heard that before? One person dying is a heartbreak, but 620,000? No wonder Lincoln was hated.

Yes, he's implying the comparison you think he is. I guess we all see what we want to see, but talk about faulty logic.