David Brake's Top Tens

Favorite Web Links

Favorite People

Note: I have attempted to provide links to all of the items below, but I haven't had the time to find the best possible ones - if you know a better link to any item, please post it in my discussion forum.

Films:

All films are in the Internet Movie Database. It is extraordinary how many of the earlier films don't seem to have home pages anywhere else. Until recently, the only pages I could find for Sunset Boulevard were for the musical!
  • Blade Runner
  • Brazil
  • Brief Encounter
  • Chinatown
  • Crimes & Misdemeanours
  • The Last Seduction
  • Ran
  • Star Wars
  • Sunset Boulevard
  • The Third Man

    • Television Programmes

  • Blackadder
  • Duckman
  • Fawlty Towers
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus This is extraordinarily popular on the Web.
  • Northern Exposure
  • The Prisoner
  • Seinfeld The closest I could get to Woody Allen on TV...
  • The Simpsons I preferred Groening's Life in Hell, but this is good too.
  • Twin Peaks I didn't like any of these Yahoo links when I tried them last.
  • Yes Minister The best archive of information about this classic satire on British government is in Holland, for some reason!

    • Writers/Playwrights/Poets/Cartoonists

    Not surprisingly, in this post-literate age, there are fewer Web links to authors.
  • Auster, Paul
  • Chandler, Raymond
  • Colette
  • Davies, Andrew
  • Donne, John
  • Groening, Matt
  • O'Rourke, P J
  • Rostand, Edmond
  • Wilde, Oscar
  • Wodehouse, P G

    • Classical Composers

    I am disappointed that there isn't a good single public source for information on classical composers. The Global Music Network is a good source of general information and music clips (including biographies provided by the authoritative source, Grove's Dictionaries), while sketchy biographies and detailed lists of works are available from AllMusic
  • Chopin, Frederick [AllMusic] and GMN
  • Elgar, Edward
  • Gershwin, George
  • Mozart, W A
  • Puccini, Giacomo [AllMusic] and GMN
  • Rachmaninov, Sergei [AllMusic] and GMN
  • Satie, Erik [AllMusic] and GMN
  • Schubert, Franz [AllMusic] and GMN
  • Sullivan, Arthur
  • Verdi, Guiseppe [ClassicalNet] and GMN

    • Jazz, R&B (composers & artists)

    I'm still looking for good general Jazz resources. So far, DownBeatJazz and JazzOnline seem to be in the lead, but for clips plus artist bios (from All Music Guide) Tunes.com appears to lead, and for depth of (rather dry) reference material the All Music Guide people are, as usual, hard to fault.
  • Blues Brothers, The
  • Commitments, The
  • Franklin, Aretha [UBL] also Tunes.com
  • Goodman, Benny
  • Joplin, Scott
  • Reinhardt, Django
  • Simone, Nina
  • Ralph Sutton
  • Waller, Fats

    • Contemporary/Other

  • Beach Boys, The
  • Beatles, The
  • Eurythmics, The
  • Joel, Billy
  • Madness
  • Orbison, Roy
  • Sade
  • Simon & Garfunkel
  • Talking Heads
  • They Might Be Giants

    • Artists:

    Check out the Web Museum, Paris (once known as the WebLouvre) for more art and information about artists than you can shake a stick at - the brainchild of one talented individual and one of the earliest really astonishing Web projects (though it doesn't appear to have changed much since 1996). Corbis has a massive database of art and of pictures with themes and you can send any of them as electronic postcards. I am also impressed by CGFA- Carol Gerten's Fine Art, another huge one-person effort.
  • Hieronymus Bosch [WebMuseum] or CGFA
  • Botticelli [WebMuseum] or CGFA
  • Dali, Salvador
  • Dürer, Albrecht[WebMuseum] or CGFA
  • Hokusai
  • Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres [WebMuseum] or CGFA
  • Munch, Edvard [WebMuseum] or CGFA
  • Raphael [WebMuseum] or CGFA
  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir [WebMuseum] or CGFA
  • Rosetti, Dante Gabriel [WebMuseum] or CGFA

    • Travel Destinations

    The rec.travel Library has lots of handy travel info, as does City.Net
  • Antigua
  • Barcelona
  • London
  • Luxor I particularly recommend Egypt Interactive
  • New Orleans
  • New York
  • Paris
  • Prague
  • San Francisco (Plenty of Web info available here, surprise surprise!)
  • Venice

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