I`m not sure whether I expected this film to good or bad. As a rule I`m not too fond of movies about Victorian or Georgian England - I`m not really the most sentimental fellow in the world and I didn`t like the first 50 pages of "Sense&Sensibility" that I managed to read (yeah, I know that it`s a different book). But on the other hand I tend to enjoy non-Hollywod movies better than those coming from the factory of dreams. This film proved to be neither exceptionally bad nor exceptionally good. There`s this family of quite good but not great origin that has five daughters in the right age to get married and everything seems to be going perfect when a very rich fellow comes to their village from London, yet his prejudiced friend named Darcy (and recycled for "Bridget Jones`s diary") forces him not to marry the oldest of daughters but to return to London. Meanwhile Darcy himself falls secretly in love with Elizabeth, the second daughter and the hero of this film (and most likely - also of the novel behind it).

Since I did not get the meaning of this film at all I`ll just shit on my rules of fair-play and copy/paste here the plot summary for this film from the IMDb: "One of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century, Sergei Parajanov`s "Color of the Pomegranate", a biography of the Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova (King of Song) reveals the poet`s life more through his poetry than a conventional narration of important events in Sayat Nova`s life. We see the poet grow up, fall in love, enter a monastery and die, but these incidents are depicted in the context of what are images from Sergei Parajanov`s imagination and Sayat Nova`s poems, poems that are seen and rarely heard. Sofiko Chiaureli plays 6 roles, both male and female, and Sergei Parajanov writes, directs, edits, choreographs, works on costumes, design and decor and virtually every aspect of this revolutionary work void of any dialog or camera movement."

This film first attracted me because of the casting - the leading roles in it are played by Fanny Ardant and Gerard Deparieu - two of the most prominent French actors. When I read a bit more about this film my attitude became much calmer - I noticed the word "prostitute" in the plot. I guess I`ve seen enough films featuring prostitution already - especially that goes for European films. But since I had very limited other options on my film list today I decided to give it a try. The film started with Catherine (Ardant) and her husband Bernard (Depardieu) who didn`t have a very good stage in their life as a married couple, especially considering that Bernard was cheating his wife now and then. So after receiving and addressed to her husband message from some woman stating "we had a great fuck last night" Catherine goes to a private club. And now I got really worried - will it be something like "Belle de jour" where she - a successful gynaecologist would eventually become a prostitute for no reason. But no - she hires Marlene (Emmanuelle Beart from "Mission Impossible" and "8 femmes" - films that I haven`t seen) to seduce her husband. And when she does and apparantely Marlene (who now calls herself Nathalie) also has some attraction towards Bernard (except for the money Catharine is paying her), the wife becomes jealous and starts terrorizing her husband. Everything would be fine, had the husband fallen for Nathalie - in the end when the story unveils Nathalie admits that she hasn`t done anything with Catharine`s husband for she just proved not to be his type but she wanted to earn some money without the need to be having sex for it. The whole triangle is kinda strange, of course, including Marlene who has quite a decent job as a hairdresser but who just can`t quite her nightlife, Catharine who enjoys suffering and knowing that a moron her husband is, and Bernard - who`s clueless about what`s going on and who in fact only wants to have sex with his wife.

It`s really a shame for me to say this but I`ve lost something in my heart that I guess will never return - it`s the passionate and ever understanding love for everything each and every single member (or former member) of Pink Floyd has done in his life. Take this new David Gilmour LP for instance. Most of the experts say it`s nice but I can`t really enjoy it for I can`t find anything at least remotely fresh in it. If a musician has used the same musical ideas over and over again (and his name isn`t Angus Young) you have very little need to listen to his latest work if there`s plenty of better music in his back catalogue.

I`m not sure whether this was recorded before or after the bands leader Robert Wyatt fell out of a window and got paralyzed from the waist southwards but he still doesn`t need much of his drumming skills on this album. The record is very quiet and absolutely uncommercial (which is no wonder knowing that Wyatt rarely has tried to become a charts favourite on the course of his quite long career). The album opens with my favourite Matching Mole song ever (which isn`t that much of an achievement though for the band with two albums) - "O Caroline" is a very heartfelt and beautifully arranged ballad. The following "Instant Pussy" is much more daring with quite a few mood changes and weird laughing sounds (a bit similar to that on Wyatt`s solo "The end of an ear"). The third song - "Signed Curtains" - has some of the greatest lyrics captured on a record ever, mostly it`s just a piano with Wyatt singing the number of the verse, including the following lines: "And this is a chorus / or perhaps it`s a bridge / or just another part of the song / that i`m singing". On "Part of the dance" the band suddenly learns to rock out and does that pretty well. After that follows another song with the word "instant" in the title, this time it`s "Instant Kitten" - quite a good instrumental. That is followded by "Dedicated to Hugh..." - now that`s a song I don`t like, for it`s somewhat head-ache inducing. And the following "Beer as a braindeer" isn`t very apalling either. And in the end we are treated with another "Curtain" song - "Immediate Curtain". What`s with the song titles anyway? Perhaps there`s some sort of a story behind the album although that would be strange considering that most of the pieces are instrumental. Anyhow, I really enjoy the first side but the second side is too untrivial for my dumb taste.

This book is a legend, of course. It`s probably the first gothic/science fiction novel ever written and it isn`t the worst of the genre by any means. But I should have been living in a box in order to really enjoy it. The story isn`t flawless, the leading character is much too stupid for creating a monster and the monster itself is too fast evolving. A short summary: Victor Frankenstein is a man interested in natural biology and he just happens to create a living monster. Then the monster escapes from him and Victor almost forgets about its existence (the creature doesn`t have a name by the way). Then some two years later Victors little brother is murdered, and Victor has no doubt that it was the creature who did it. So he meets his creation and the monster tells him how he wanted to be good but how everyone was afraid and terrified by him so he became angry with his creator and started seeking revenge. After that the wretch (another word for the monster) tells him that he would be willing to leave for South America never to be seen again, if Victor would create a woman for him. So Frankenstein goes to England (he`s Italian/French/Swiss himself) and starts working on a new creature. But then he realises that monsters like that would spread all around the world in that case (it means that they were sexually reproductive) and that humanity would blame him for that. So he tells it to the monster, who gets angry and promises to be with Victor on his wedding night, after which he kills Victor`s best friend. So Victor returns home and starts preparing for the wedding - the monster`s words about being with him on the wedding night somehow have slipped from his mind. And you guess what? The monster kills Elizabeth, Victor`s wife, on their wedding night! Who would have thought of something like that! Anyhow the daemon tells Frankenstein that he`s very upset that the master was expecting to be happy himself when he knew that his creation was bound for long and painful suffering. And after that Victor starts following the creature all around the world and trying to kill him at which he doesn`t succeed. Silly, isn`t it?

I sometimes wonder how easy it is being me - I tend to have quite low expectations from most modern bands so their records aren`t likely to dissapoint me. Take "Placebo" for instance. I never cared much for them, so when "Meds" came out my reaction was quite calm. So, the possibly gay Molko character has a new record under his belt? The album starts with Molko`s cooperation with the singer of the band "The Kills" (I haven`t listened to that band much) - it`s catchy enough, alghough even I am able to recognise this as a very typical Placebo song. "Infra-Red" is another typical Placebo composition, although it`s good enough for me. One of my favourites is the third song on the album - "Drag" with its optimistic repetitive riff. "Space Monkey" on the contrary is some sort of crap, which once again reminds me of Roger Taylor`s solo work - and who would love to be compared to the drummer of Queen? "Follow the cops back home" is a REM-like composition, boring as hell but passable. "Post Blue" is much better (I don`t know why I like it but it seems to be a good song). "Because I want You" has something stolen from "Every me, every you" - funny how a band runs out of ideas and starts emulating its best. Like it`s usually the case with me I`ve once again given up going through the song list, especially considering that Placebo isn`t the most diverse band in the world. "Broken Promise" where Michael Stipe of REM assists Molko is even more boring than the rest of the record - which comes to me as absolutely no surprise, considering that I find Stipe to be one of the least interesting fellows in showbiz. To conclude: a very monotonous album, probably perfect for a "Placebo" fan, for me it seems to be just a Placebo record. I doubt that I would find any of their best works much better than this though - for it`s just not my cup of tea.

History hasn`t been kind to the Blackadder dynasty. Whilst the first of the Blackadder`s was a royal prince, the third Blackadder is nothing but a butler. Of course, he isn`t just a butler but a butler to the prince of Wales who amazingly turns out to be the same fellow who played the villain in the last episode of season two. In the first episode a very young William Pitt the younger wants to overthrow prince George whom he considers a no good money spender (who he surely is), and only Blackadder and his cunning plans can stop Pitt from achieving it. In the second episode prince George has agreed to be the patron of the first English dictionary, yet Baldrick accidentally makes a fire out of it and the whole episode consists of Blackadder trying to write a new dictionary to replace the original - and in the final we learn to know that Baldrick has burned an entirely different manuscript - written by Blackadder himself (by the way this was directly lifted from season two and the execution episode - only this time nobody wears a sack on the head). Episode three is about the French revolution and Scarlett Pimpernel - it`s not that great I gotta say. Episode 4 is actually a single very streched sketch - it`s about prince George who can`t tell the difference between play and real life. But I like the political content about the revolutionary stuff - it`s quite leftist after all. Episode 5 is absolutely worthless about Blackadder trying to find a wife for prince George so he would have more money but as you can probably guess it doesn`t go very well. And finally episode six is about prince George having made love to two nieces of duke Wellington and duke Wellington is ready to kill prince George. Blackadder duels Wellington instead of him, they change clothes and Wellington kills George for being a bad butler. Summary: not a particulary good season, there`s enough of good jokes but I`d love to have more from it.

This is one of the books that I have bound myself. No, I haven`t started a new career in book binding but when I persuaded my mother to throw out some of the junk lying in the pantry next to my room (mostly that concerned old literary magazines from the soviet years) she wanted to cut out some of the contents and then have it bound in the form of books. Probably it wasn``t exactly the brightest idea for having a book bound costs more than simply buying a book. Anyhow, I decided to spare some costs and do a little binding of my own. First I tried it on Boris Pasternak`s "Doctor Zhivago" (which I intend to read at some time in the near future), and after that proved to be quite a success I bound some other stuff as well (and that was less of a success, of course). So what is a "widows` steam botat"? It`s a novel/long story written by a Soviet writer/mathematician who used a pseudonim that could be translated into English as "Miss Y". The story revolves mostly around several women living in a communal flat (a very typical case for the USSR). The main hero is a woman that has lost her entire family in WW2 and is now partly crippled herself. Then there`s four other women - a religous one, a physically advanced and rude one, a romantic one and one that had participated in the war herself and returned with a child who`s father wasn`t her husband who returned from the war quite late himself but he didn`t have the strength to start a new relationship with his wife, so he started drinking heavily until he got run over and killed by a tram (just like Berlioz in Bulgakov`s "Master and Margarita"). The story itself is nothing special - a typical everyday life of typical everyday persons, struggling to remain alive. There`s nothing particulary Soviet about it - there`s no communist pathos anywhere in sight, it`s just the life of the little people. I`m not sure whether I`m one of the little people myself, but the book comes off as a very sincere piece of literature, far from earth shattering, of course, but just as it`s the case with "Bednyy, bednyy Pavel" that I wrote about earlier - not the worst possible way to spend your time.

It was several weeks ago when I went to a book shop in order to buy a book in English. I spent at least quarter an hour choosing, what book it would be - nothing apalled to me enough. I had nearly already bought one of Haruki Murakami`s novels when I decided in favour of Iris Murdoch, and now, after having read the book I can clap on my own shoulder upon a wise choice. "A fairly honorable defeat" portrays the lives of several members of London`s middlehigh society as they are put through a test by an unconventionally minded biologist named Julius King. Like it`s mentioned on the back cover of the book - people are just puppets in Julius` hands who punishes people for them being too vain. Rupert and Hilda are a happy married couple with quite successful lives and a black sheep for a son - Peter wants to quit Oxford and live in a different way than his parents had lived. Rupert`s brother Simon is gay and has been living with Rupert`s colleague Axel in a steady relation for three years now. Morgan, Hilda`s sister has just returned from the States where she had an affair with Julius King and by whom she was essentially forced to break up with him. Morgan still hasn`t gone over her husband Tallis, whom she left two years ago for Julius. Tallis now lives together with his father, who just happens to be quite a pesky person but who Tallis truly loves. Then there`s the problem that Peter who now lives at Tallis`s place is secretly in love with Morgan, who isn`t quite cold about her nephew either. But it would all be good for the lot of them, had Julius not decided to teach Rupert a lesson. You see, Rupert claimed himself to be a man of goodness and a man of good knowledge about what`s black and what`s white and he had even written some sort of a philosophy book. And when Julius started a sly game to make Morgan and Rupert believe that the other one of them is secretly in love with the other, all the good relationships between the heroes started to collapse about as beautifully as the twin towers. As for what I think about all this stuff - the book is mostly about one of the most important problems of the modern age - people don`t talk to each other, and a little white lie can turn into a heavy stone around your neck because of that. The ending isn`t as dark as it could probably be for Julius isn`t an evil mastermind, he just wants to prove his point, which he does perfectly. Although he puts the cards on the table a bit too late, so Rupert has enough time to drown himself. I can`t really say that everything in the book is particulary realistic, considering that Julius was sending Rupert letters that Morgan wrote to himself during their relationship while Morgan was receiving letters that Rupert wrote to her sister some twenty years ago - I seriously doubt that people usually write love letters in such a manner that they never mention any people`s names or events so there`s no way to tell that a letter isn`t exactly new. Still it is quite an amazing book with bright characters and witty dialogue.