Visited the new aquapark in Lielupe today. Nothing unexpected. Been there, done that - so they say, and so do I. Most of the stuff pretty much reminded me of a similar institution I visited in Germany near Vlotho. One thing that was totally cool were the lifeguards which didn`t behave in a pleasant manner and refused to tell the exact time because the ticket lasted for 4 hours and for extra time extra money should be paid (and don`t you even think that there would be some clocks on the wall, those people aren`t stupid, you know.

Not so bad, actually. I wouldn`t say that I feel completely changed or anything like that, but nevertheless at some moments the impression of the read was quite strong.

Not as heavy as `Brutal Planet` but still pretty impressive. Nowhere close to my A list though for I don`t have an A list for music.

Well, I`m not so sure what I was looking for. Nothing in particular, I suppose. You see, this was an exhibition where you could see different kinds of chicken (because it`s the year of the rooster right now), and so I went there and checked them out. Chickens are just chickens, basically. Ok, there were some ducks, pheasants and quails as well but the amount of the birds wasn`t particulary big, nor were they particulary beautiful. On the other hand - the expectations for an exhibition like this shouldn`t be very high.

One of the classics in the literature for children that I had not read before. This time it was `Neco z Alenky` that made me eventually to read this little book here. Not that I liked it. As for literature for children `Alice` makes not very much sense at all - a few moments are good but that`s basically it. Even the partly absurd `Neco z Alenky` had better developed characters than the original book. Wordplay is good but the story goes pretty much nowhere. The rating is not lower only because I don`t have very high standarts in this category.

It had been years since I last saw this film. Not that I liked it much back in say 7th grade when I did, but without any clear reason I decided to give it a try in 2005. "Four Rooms" is a film that contains 4 separate segments done by four directors and those segments are connected by happening at the same hotel and including the same bell boy. The quality of those segments differs. The first one - "The missing ingredient", directed by Allison Anders, is quite a boring story about a cavern of witches that do some silly ritual in order to rescue their goddess from a piece of stone. Yet when it turns out that one of them hasn`t brought fresh sperm the Bellboy (played by Tim Roth) enters the game. One of the witches/bitches is played by Madonna, still the whole thing is quite similar to the disastrous film "Help!" by the Beatles. The second segment is titled "The wrong man", it`s directed by Alexandre Rockwell (not that I know who this director is). Bellboy who`s name is Theodore by the way enters the wrong room and encounters a man who has tied his wife to a chair and threatens Ted with a gun. The whole thing gets kinda bizarre and a bit boring once again. Now the third part is directed by Robert Rodriguez and this time it`s much better - we have Antonio Banderas, we have naughty children consuming alcohol, the part may not be particulary elaborate but at least it`s funny and interesting to follow. The last part - "The Man from Hollywood" is directed by Quentin Tarantino and he himself is the main star of the episode. Although many claim that he isn`t too much of an actor it doesn`t bother me at all. What Quentin and a pal of his do is they play a game stolen from one of Roald Dahl`s stories - the one where you light your cigarette lighter ten times in a row or your pinkie will be cut off, and the Bellboy is asked to be the butcher. Funny. Overall: 3/4/8/8=6. Still since the film ends on a higher note than it starts I give it a bonus half a point.

This documentary provides a lot of insight on to the material behind the "Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. It features interviews with some of the writers who inspired Brown for his bestselling thriller and it makes much more clear that there ain`t too much substance in Brown`s theories. Basically the main ingredient of everything seems to have been "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" - a bestseller from 1980s, one of the books that also inspired Eco for "Foucault`s Pendulum" - only he didn`t take "HBHG" too serious. Then there were some books on templars and some other books about Mary Magdalene. The film itself is done quite conventionally, without any narration, just some 5-6 people talking. Among the talkers you should see Dan Brown himself yet since my version of film unexpectedly ended after something like 95 minutes (instead of 135) I didn`t get to that part. Of all the talkers only the author of "Holy Blood Holy Grail" seemed to be an interesting person to me - he didn`t appear to be one of the crazy maniacs willing to change the world. Quote from him: "Any document proves only that it has been written and nothing more. Everything else is speculation." (ok, that`s not a direct quote, he used some other word and not speculation but I don`t remember it). What I found particulary amusing the way those posessed people mess with material using only fragments which they like. For instance, a lady mentioned a non-canonic early Christian writing called "The Gospel of Thomas" which supposedly was much more in Mary Magdalene`s favour than the canonic ones. She quoted a sentence from this gospel: "Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don`t deserve life."" By this she meant to show how jealous Peter was of Mary and Jesus` attitude towards her. From this fragment the reader/viewer might conclude that in reality there were HUGE reasons for Peter not to like Mary. Yet I wasn`t too lazy and found the whole text on the Internet. And what do you think was Jesus` reply to the accusation? "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven." That sounds particulary feministic to me, doesn`t it? Usually that`s quite similar to what one would say about his beloved wife whom one wants to give his reign over? Still I`m not going to rate this thing upon whether I believe it or not. It`s quite a decent documentary, perhaps not too deep but quite interesting.

As somebody said before the film - a subject of high importance for me. It`s not true, of course, nevertheless the film was better than I expected. Yes, I know that every romantic comedy from the other side of the huge pond does have one massive problem - the ending is more than just predictable. But I do enjoy films which are designed to make the viewer feel bad about the hero and his stupid behaviour and to think what he himself would feel like under such circumstances. It is no high art by any means and some of the jokes seem forced but that`s ok. Not to be watched many times but it is not the worst possible way to spend your time.

A man in his 50s lives a partly normal life until the day he sees a pigeon in the corridor leading from his room to the bathroom, and it scares him almost to death. Not the most popular beginning to a book? Quite so, and there you can discover Sueskind close to his best. A character that doesn`t make any sense, doesn`t do dirty things (unlike most characters in modern books) and is absolutely out of his mind. At some part of the book he has envy towards a clochard who begs money outside the bank the hero is guarding, but everything changes when he sees the beggar shitting in public and realises how tragically it is when a person can`t lock the door even in the most sacred moments. Groovy!

Not an easy watch certainly but still a very good film. Not that it told me something I didn`t know or made me change my mind or anything like that. But it`s quite a heavy one, as if anything else could be awaited from a film about a man in the Warschauer ghetto. As a matter of fact, I don`t really want to tell much about it. It`s highly realistic although I can imagine that it stills shows not the scariest image from the place and the time, but it was enough for me. And probably for the first time it was the case with me that while watching a good film I wanted it to end as soon as possible. But it wasn`t the case.