Five favorite things, or playing along

Seaside Girl tagged me the other day with a five random favorite things meme, and since I have never done a meme before, I decided to play along. Without much ado:

Five favorite songs:

1. Space Oddity--David Bowie
2. Ring of Fire--Johnny Cash
3. Help--Beatles
4. Umbrella--Rihanna
5. Ha Uma Musica Do Povo--Mariza

Five favorite films:

1. Burnt by the Sun (Utomlenie solncem) by Nikita Mihalkov--I've seen it about a dozen times and I think it's a masterpiece. It manages to be both a historical film (the story takes place in the late 1930s in the Soviet Union) and a drama of complicated personal relationships.
   
2. Before the Rain (Predi dazhdot) by Milcho Manchevski--another one I've seen many times, and my stomach ties into a knot every time I do. It's a story about love, about the Balkans and therefore about vicious circles of hatred and violence, but it isn't a war movie. Acting is fantastic, the shots of harsh Macedonian landscapes stunning, and the soundtrack is very mystic and powerful.
   
3. Casablanca by Michael Curtiz--great dialogues, meticulous crafting. Of course, some things look a bit naivistic (the movie was shot in 1943) but it is still a fantastic movie after all that time. So many punchlines and witty exchanges--by now I know most of them by heart.
   
4. Il Gattopardo by Lucino Visconti--film based on the novel of the same name by Giovani Lampedusa, about an aristocratic family in Sicily trying to come to terms with the tumultuous times in Italy in 1860s. It has an incredible cast: Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon, Burt Lancaster.
5. Picnic at Hanging Rock by Peter Weir--this one I have seen only once, as a child, and never heard of it again until someone mentioned it recently (in a blog post, I think) and the memories came back. I remember that it was very thrilling and mysterious, or maybe I was just young and impressionable.

Five favorite books:

1. "Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov
2. "The Tomb for Boris Davidovich" by Danilo Kis
3. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera
4. "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
   
5. "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachet

Five favorite crushes:

1. Toni Kukoc--probably the best Yugoslav (then Croatian) basketball player of the early 199s and very cute at the time.
   
2. Roger Moore--the best James Bond ever.
3. Michael Johnston--an online communications guru. I attended one of his workshops a few years back here in Budapest and fell in love with the whole new media thing as a result. So this is more a new media crush than Michael Johston crush, although he's a pretty smart and fun guy in his own right.
   
4. Theodosii Spassov--a Bulgarian musician, plays caval (an instrument similar to flute). Saw him live once at a concert in Budapest and was stunned--he's one of those men who oozes sex apppeal without coming accross as macho or pretentious.
   
5. Sherlock Holmes--I just happen to like clever guys.

Five random favorite things:

1. Haribo jelly bears
2. The Adriatic Sea
3. Smell of fresh print
4. Beautiful notebooks
5. watching my kids asleep

OK, now I'm supposed to tag another 5 people. They are:

Delwyn from A Hazy Moon
Tulsa from The Art of Living in Japan
Polly from Sotto Voce
Squirrel from The Realm of the Lone Gray Squirrel
B from Cuttings on a Blog