How I love the beautiful days when I was young, the grass was green and Queen was keen to crash your spleen but there was no Ween and it was so mean for you to be seen by your school`s dean after you`d been doing something teen. So, I`m not a great poet but I once participated in a competition at poetry.com and my poem was selected for a book of crappy poems by people willing to pay for their poems being published among other pieces of crap that everyone could have written.

Brokeback mountain is a tragical love story about two souls that urge to be together but but they can`t because others wouldn`t let them to. They just happen to be cowboys, they just happen to be gay and they just happen to be living in the South of the States. Donnie Darko (I can`t spell his real name correctly even if I copy/paste it from IMDB) and Heath Ledger (who`s called Ennis, Anus or Penis in this film - it`s a matter of what you want to hear) are two young cowboys who take the job of guarding sheep for a summer in the mountains. Whilst they`re there, a flame suddenly arouses between them which is expressed in the form of the good ol` in-and-out. But it`s not easy being droogies if you live in the South of the states, where faggots aren`t appreciated. Oh, now, they are usually viciously killed by the local rednecks and dragged around by their dicks until they fall off. Man, are those rednecks some twisted sick fuckers! Our heroes don`t get killed, but they have to hide their relationship, both of them get married and even get children but they can`t forget what happened between them at Brokeback mountain, so they`re left with no other option but to go occasionally "fishing" to the place where they love first appeared. Time goes by, but they are somehow quite stupid not to notice that the times change and that if they went a bit North they`d be out of the crappy macho world of the Texans and meet the glorious world of the 80s where being gay was already in fashion. Yet how can two cowboys from the South know that? They only listen to country music and participate in rodeos, or drink heavily, they have no chance to know what happens outside their little towns.

After the first few minutes I put a question to the host of the even whether this was going to be a psychologically heavy movie (known as "gruzila" among our company). He stated that it was absolutely not a "gruzila". I still had my doubts about it because a film featuring some rich Jew travelling to Ukraine in order to see the village where all his relatives were executed rarely is a funny piece. Yet at least the first third of it wasn`t heavy. Later on when we switch a bit more to the Holocaust thematics it does get a bit more expected though. I may have stated this on my factoid more than once already but I`ll repeat it once again: I`ve had enough of the Holocaust already! I just don`t care for this subject anymore. I am aware that people are still researching everything about it but I am not interested. Not that I don`t care for different kinds of hate, discrimination etc, but I just think that there`s enough of films and books about the Holocaust already. This film was still a very good one, despite my attitude towards the subject. The closest parallel that comes to my mind is Emir Kusturica`s "Underground" - a supposedly comical tale that`s full of sadness and pain. And it`s even close in terms of musical content - only "E.i.I." doesn`t have Goran Bregovic or Kusturica doing the music, but chooses relying on the punky "Leningrad" and "Gogol Bordello". The weirdest thing about the film is the fact that it`s narrated partly in English (from the Jewish fellow who`s played by Elijah Wood), in broken English (a Ukrainian-Gypsy actor) and in Russian/Ukrainian - by the rest of the actors. That`s surely a rare case for an American film and I can be only very happy that I know both Russian and English for otherwise I`d miss a lot of it`s charme. By the way the fellow who plays the "cool" Ukrainian Alex is also the lead singer of the band "Gogol Bordello" which sounds very much like "The No-Smoking Orchestra" in deed, and since he`s a Gypsy himself - there`s no wonder about it. So, a very good film that`s bound to stay in my memory for a long time but I would watch it again only if I was forced by a gun.

How can this be true that women fall like crazy over Bill Murray? Is it just me or doesn`t this guy look particulary young or sexy? But no: first he had Scarlett Johansson in "Lost in Translation" and this time lots of hot chicks - including a minor aged one - fall to his grace. Don Johnston (B.M.) is an untypical macho figure that`s left by his latest flame and soon afterwards receives an unanymous letter that he has a 19 year old somewhere, so he goes on a search for the mystical son. Not that he wants to go on such a mystery quest but a neighbour of his - a devoted fan of crime/mystery solving - is able to persuade him to do so. So Don goes to meet some of his loves in order to find the one that has a son. We learn to know that the lives for his former girlfriends have played quite a lot of twists. One of them now works as a wardrobe organizer - she organizes the contents of people`s wardrobes and shelves. Another one has become an animal communicator - by that we understand that she`s able to talk to dogs, beavers and other furry creatures (there are two more women whom he visits but they aren`t that eccentric). Their attitudes towards Don differ from being willing to go to bed with him like in the good old days to starting to cry thus inducing Don being hit in a face by a rocker`s fist. The film is typical Jarmusch stuff, off course, - long pauses between sentences, beautiful imagery and not much going on. Jarmusch is certainly one of the directors who`s able to show that cinema is an art form not worse than any other, but what he lacks sometimes is "viewability" - although it`s not bad in "Broken Flowers" but it`s still far from the most amusing film I`ve seen in my entire life.

Was I out of my mind when I decided to watch this film? Supposedly, yes. How can it otherwise be explained that I gave the creator of "Bad Education", "All About My Mother" and "Talk to Her" one more chance? Ok, I do have another explanation for that - all of those films weren`t bad at all. And I thought - maybe when Almadovar was younger he didn`t make movies as full of perversion as he does nowadays. Now that was a wrong presumption. In "Kika" Almadovar uses most of his typical scenario elements:

Once again I find that my factoid is far from complete - I`m absolutely sure that I`ve read another of Boyd`s novels - "The New Confessions" - when my factoid was already online, yet I can`t seem to find a trace of that book anywhere around here. Probably it was one of the books I read before my computer broke down and it somehow got lost when I tried to recapture everything that was missing. Anyhow now it`s too late... no, maybe not - I eventually will add that book to the factoid although I remember very little from it. But enough about Boyd, it`s time to talk about Boyd. There was one fellow named Boyd who played for the Scottish national football team, Tom Boyd, if I`m not mistaken, yet he has absolutely nothing to do with this book.

I bought "Daniel Martin" when I was in London something like one and a half years ago. My logic was the following - a huge book that`s written by the author of the masterful "The Collector" - how can I deny myself the pleasure of reading it? Yet upon my return I somehow just couldn`t force myself to start reading it - it is very thick after all and I usually prefer smaller books. Yeah, I know that it sucks judging a book by its size but I have been observing a tendency that big books tend to be interesting in less cases than smaller books - because it`s hard to maintain a high level of a tight story for something like 700 pages.

I somehow always thought that Primal Scream was a heavy metal band - something similar to "Slayer" or "Pantera". When I saw this band compared to "The Stone Roses" this morning, it got me quite surprised. So I decided to give a try to the band`s most famous album - "Screamadelica". The first song seemed to introduce me to a Britpop band that I had somehow never heard. "Movin` on up" may not be the most catchy song I`ve ever heard and it sounds as it was taken from the B side of a "Rolling Stones" record. As a matter of fact, I would have nothing against it. But when I came to the second song on the album - "Slip Inside This House" it made me regret deciding to listen to this band. What is this shit supposed to mean? Is this some of the stuff you listen to at the Hacienda while consuming purple pills? I definetely think so - this is the case of britpop meeting house music. And you know what? I don`t like house music at all! "Don`t Fight it, feel it" as you can probably guess from the title, is worse. The Beatles influence isn`t there anymore and all there is is some ugly synth patterns - a mix of house and trance I presume (for I don`t know much about either). Most of the following tracks aren`t decent rock music either - it`s just some crap for potheads of the 90s. When I hear songs like "Come Together" on the radio I usually change channels. Although "Screamadelica" is considered to be one of the most important records of 1991 (alongside "Nevermind") in its unique mix rock and dance, I can only find something for me in songs like "Damaged" or the already mentioned "Movin` on Up" where the dance influence can`t be felt at all. On other songs, for example "Higher than the sun (A dub Symphony in two parts)" I feel that I`m listening to an ugly version of "Depeche Mode" and not being a fan of the real DM I have nothing to find in a band like this one. Especially when it is performing "dub symphonies". I guess it could have been better had I listened to the metal outfit that I had mixed up with this band - "Primal Fear".

I`m the kind of person that`s perfectly capable of falling in love with something just because of the name. For instance, if I`d ever meet a girl named Fedora Redhat I wouldn`t be likely to lose my mind because of her, but were she named Penny Lane - who knows.

The thing I love about read is that you never know when you are going to discover a hidden gem you somehow never heard about. Take this Per Ulov Enquist for instance - I had never heard much about him and now I`ve totally fallen in love. So, maybe I don`t fall in love with 70 year old Swedes in the carnal meaning of the word but this story about the magnetist clearly ranks among the best I`ve read in quite a long time. It is a partly true story about a man travelling around and practicing so called "magnetism medicine" - a somewhat mystical treatment of patients that sometimes tends to work miracuosly. What is good about the book is that despite the reader being aware the this Meissner is not a good man and that he is partly a fraud one can not wish him not to succeed - for after all his treatment is usually much more humane (and reasonable for that matter) than that used by the so called professional doctors. In terms of style it reminds me of Patrick Sueskinds "Perfume" - it takes part in the 18th century, it has its share of mysticism and unexplainable content, and the hero himself is also similar to the perfumer (he is also a bit crazy for sex, just like that other fellow). What surprises me the most is how could this book be published in the Soviet Latvia in 1980 - it`s a bit dirty, it doesn`t have no social moralizing whatsoever, it`s mystical and it does`t mention Carl Marx even once. Strange, isn`t it? Now the only thing I know is that I`m going to be looking for other books by Enquist in order to be dissapointed most likely. Yet "The Magnetist`s fifth winter" will surely find its place among my all time favourite books.