The son of a Golden-Age Hollywood agent, Independent filmmaker Kenneth Anger has an insider's jaded perspective on the film industry and all that goes with it. His scandalous 1958 expose of celebrity private lives, "Hollywood Babylon" (which discusses, among other things, the genital sizes of various

Avant-garde film, Catastrophe, Death, Homoerotic, Kaleidoscopic, Queer literature, Quirky

Smithson is best known for his large-scale earthworks -- including "Spiral Jetty" (located in the Great Salt Lake, Utah), "Broken Circle," and "Spiral Hill" (both in a Holland quarry) -- in which he reshapes landscapes in a way that recalls both the forces of nature and ancient archeological sites.

Catastrophe, Environmental art, Ethereal, Fleeting, Huge, Monumental, Religious

Shostakovich is often, in musical circles, called the greatest composer of the twentieth century. Yet the quality of his music is so uneven that, while a third of it is the brain-bombing work of a divine genius, another third is almost worthless, and another third scares young violinists into abandon

20th-century music, Catastrophe, Lyrical, Melancholy, Moody, Pathos, Visceral

Anxiety, Catastrophe, Ecstatic, Epic, Existentialist literature, High realism, Joyful, Manic, Psychological