Theoretically I should have disliked this film from the very first moments of it - you see, I`m not exactly fond of the Japanese culture and neither am I a huge fan of Hollywood takes on different cultures. But surprising it proved to be a very worthy film. I still can`t say that I can identify myself with geishas perfectly - I`m not 100% sure that I understand what`s so cool about them. And - why do Japanese make those cardboard houses that I could accidentally destroy after having slipped on a wet floor and crashed through the wall? Neiter do I get what`s so cool about wearing dressing gowns (I don`t care that they call it kimono - it`s still a gown to me), putting on lots and lots of makeup and - the part that bugs me the most - what`s about those shoes? I suppose Japanese people think that wearing ugly sandals with the sole a whole foot thick as the greatest idea ever, but I`ll quote Edmund Blackadder here: "It`s the worst idea since Abraham Lincoln thought to himself - I`m bored from sitting at home, I think I shall go to see a show tonight." The film itself though is good, a bit depressive of course, for there`s not much funny in being sold by your father to be a geisha (although geisha is not a prostitute and it`s very cool to be a geisha and everyone envies you if you become one) and your virginity is put on an auction after you`ve given rice puddings to the contestants, and you end up with your first sexual experience being offered by a fifty year old doctor called Dr. Crab. But that`s life I suppose. The dreary content doesn`t change the fact that the film is astonishingly beautifully directed and that there`s lots and lots of breath taking scenes in it (yeah, and there are no silly folks with blades in sight, just a couple of funny sumo warriors).

This is probably the best known post modern book in Latvian (or Latvian-Soviet) literature. It`s the same old story about Faustus and Mephistopheles but it has several differences. The so called Faustus is in fact a pharmacist from some minor city in Latvia, called Janis Trampelbahs, whilst Mephistopheles is a young and aspiring musician and writer who wants to get the rights for reworking a book of recipes that Trampelbahs has written lots of years ago (he wants to incorporate recipes in a book of his own and Trampelbahs` archaic style of writing suits him perfectly). When they meet Trampelbahs is sure that the servant of the Devil has come to him, so they have a deal: Cristopher Marlowe (yup, that`s the young fellas name) has to provide Trampelbahs with youth, whilest the pharmacist gives him all the rights for the cookbook. And Marlowe does return youth to the old fellow indeed (which he does by using lots of medicine), but after that everything goes a bit wrong - Faustus finds his Margareth, yet Marlowe also falls in love with her, Trampelbahs starts working for the Nazis, whilst Marlowe ends up being a bit of a leftist. Although the book has some soviet crap in it, it mostly seems to be a parody itself, like the novel is a parody of Faustus. That`s the perfect situation to quote Carl Marx: "History repeats two times. The first time as a tragedy, and the second - as a farce." The book is quite untrivial - it mixes different kinds of writing styles, incorporates recipes, jumps back and forth in time etc. I still am not sure that this is post modern literature though - it seems much closer to the modernism of E.T.A.Hoffman and (to some extent) Bulgakov. But this still is one of the best novels written by a Latvian writer.

Šajā filmā apvienojušās divas mockmūzikas skolas: Džeks Bleks un Kails Gess (kā Tenacious D) no vienas puses un Lījams Linčs (leģendārās "United States of Whatever" autors un izpildītājs) - no otras puses.

What`s wrong with me? I suddenly find myself enjoying a film about lesbians even if it doesn`t show much of hot naked bodies. And I suddenly have nothing against a transsexual in a film. What has happened to me and where have my homophobic feelings for murdering Jake Gillengaal with a sledge hammer twice in a row? "Better than chocolate" may indeed not be better than "Chocolate" but it`s still a very good film. Maggie has just quit the college and taken up a jub at a Lesbian book shop when she meets a travelling painter named Kim whom she falls in love with, they move together and everything seems to go nicely, until Lila - Maggie`s mother - and her brother Paul come to live with them. Needless to say, that Lila doesn`t know about her daughter`s orientation and that she doesn`t make coming out with it particulary easy (not that she`s that agressive, she just always has to speak herself and she`s far from a good listener). Apart from her not knowing that her daughter doesn`t need or want to impress boys, Lila also doesn`t notice that her new best friend Judy Squires is in fact a transsexual named Jeremy. And this Jeremy who passionately loves Frances, the owner of Maggie`s book store, is the kindest transsexual I`ve ever seen on film. Not that I`ve seen that many, I dare say, and as far as I know I haven`t met a single one of those in person so far (at least I`m almost sure that there wouldn`t be any of them amongs my friends, for I`ve known them since we went to school together and I would have noticed, had for instance a fellow named Andrew been written in the class book by the name of Andrea. Anyhow, the place where those people live does seem a bit odd - I doubt that Vancouver mostly consists of gays and neo-nazis, but who knows. Still this is a very warm love story, never mind the gender question - and in some ways I find it better than Brokeback mountain (maybe because it`s women that are making out and not men; or because I liked the song "I`m not a fucking drag queen" sung by Judy/Jeremy at a gay club).

I don`t know what`s wrong with me - how come I watched another Woody Allen movie? I had already promised myself more than once not to give this absolute freak one more chance to seduce my mind with his very monotonous kind of filmmaking. But so I thought - maybe back in 1969, when he was still quite young, Woody hadn`t learned to play the same old shtick over and over again yet? Well, I was a bit wrong, but I can`t say that the film was an utter dissapointment. First, this was almost the debut for Woody as a director - he had done "What`s Up, Tiger Lily?" before that but that wasn`t really a film of his. For the Tiger Lily film Woody just bought the rights for a Japanese spy movie and changed the story by adding a new soundtrack. That`s it. But sadly back in 1969 he already was able to play the foolish and not particulary successful cretin that he has impersonated for quite a while now (like I learned from a review of this film, he had already been a known stand-up comedian in the States for years at the time, and I`m sure that even in the clubs he already had come up with his character). Anyhow, Virgil Starkwell is a wannabe criminal that hasn`t yet performed a successful job, but he`s perfectly able of getting behind the bars. And you know what - he falls in love with a beautiful woman that also falls in love with him! Man, do I hate all those beautiful women embracing that stupid little freak who`s so whiny and wimpy that he drives me crazy. The character itself would have been pretty good - the way he says that crime pays and that it`s an interesting career with lots of travelling, that`s cool but the film isn`t really a film but much more of a one man`s show in a club disguised as a film directed by Woody Allen. And he once again (or, to be precise, for the first time) uses the classical Woody Allen aproach to film making - where everything is done in some form of a documentary, with actors speaking in the camera and not behind the camera, with some stupid interviews with people that knew Virgil Starkwell etc. I say, it would have been a very decent film, had Allen not repeated this shtick many times over and over. I can`t understand how come people call him inventive, for he`s about as diverse as AC/DC, only he doesn`t rock so hard.

The latest at the moment film by J.P. Jeunet reconnects him with the biggest star of any of his film - Audrey Tautou whom he made really big in "Amelie". As it`s quite characteristic to Jeunet most of the other actors have also appeared in his films before, most notably in "Delicatessen" and "City of the lost children". "A very long engagement" is probably the most realistic of the major works done by Jeunet (I`m not counting "Alien: resurrection" as a major work for obvious reasons, for it`s merely a try to get more money). Five French soldiers are condemned to death in WW1 for trying to injure themselves in order to get away from the war. Those include an ex-carpenter, a former peasant, an ex-pimp, a technical worker and a young boy named Manech, who`s fiancee Mathilde is waiting for him at home. They are sent to no man`s land where they are bound to be killed either by the Germans or by the French. Now, when the war is over, Mathilda still wants to believe that Manech is alive and she finds to find any survivors from the group of five. She is being helped by being rather wealthy from the money her family`s lawyer got her when her parents died in an accident when she was litte. She is a bit limited because of her legs that don`t work really because of some injuries that she has suffered. And then she learns to know that she isn`t the only one looking for survivors - so is Tina Lombardi, a prostitute and lover of the pimp of the group. Could she be on to something? I don`t want to tell much, I only want to say that this was one of the best war movies I`d seen so far and that I would now even be ready to see "Cold mountain" although I have some belief that the latter would be a bit more patriotic than "A very long engagement".

Imagine a B movie and take the square root of it. Then divide it by ten and let it rest in a waste basket for a year or so. And then you`ll have this film in a nutshell. "Suckers" has to be one of the least mainstream and popular films I`ve seen in my entire life. Ok, I may have seen a lot of European crap that has less votes on the IMDb than this one but I know that they were at least popular in their native countries. "Suckers" doesn`t have much to brag about - everyone involved in this film is very far from popular (if you don`t count actors that have participated in a few episodes of some sitcoms), the video quality seems to be screaming "VHS" out loud (although this even isn`t designed to be a TV movie) and the script is hardly realistic. But it does give some insight. And insight to what? It shows the life of used car dealers and of the way they think when they trick you to spend twice as much as your car is worth. The owner of the car plaza in this film is a complete moron who knows how to take the last penny of you so that you`d end up broke one day, and he just love taking IT from the poor! The hero is a good person in his heart, of course, but he just can`t change the way things go for he really needs the money (he`s in debt to some criminals). In the end there`s a big showdown when drug dealers, car dealers and gangsters organize a great massacre of one another, but that`s no surprise in a low form film like this one. Yet some of the jokes are pretty good and this certainly is a film to learn from. Well, maybe you can`t learn much useful stuff from it, but who cares anyway - the main thing for me now is being very, very careful when I buy the next car. Although I might choose buying a car from its previous owner, for that could turn out to be a little less dangerous.

My acquaintance with Manfred Mann started when I was some ten years old and my dad put "Nightingales and Bombers" on a tape machine (by "tape machine" I mean the huge thing that played those large round casettes). I remember quite liking that record, but that wasn`t really recorded by "Manfred Mann" (the band) or by Manfred Mann (the fellow who gave his name to the band) but by "Manfred Mann`s Earth Band" (a later band founded by the same individual who was a real jerk by the way - as far as I know he was only the drummer in all those bands and not the singer, the songwriter, the guitar player or at least the girl that the latter three have occasional sex with. Yet how can I say - just a drummer. Is the drummer less important than the lead vocalist just because nobody cares about him and wouldn`t mind him exploding on stage? No, drummers are very important. Take Phil Collins, for example, or all those 17 drummers "Spinal Tap" used to have).

This is a film that`s mostly known due to a soundtrack done by Pink Floyd at the time when the band was out of the Barrett domination period and was still looking for a new style. I guess there`s no need to describe the album here, for this actually is a film and not a music video. The story is following: Stefan, a young German, goes to Paris where he meets a young and sexy American chick Estelle. They fall in love easily and go together to Ibiza, where Estelle teaches the young man the pleasures and pains of taking drugs. They start off with marihuana, but it`s heroin that does the trick. And what`s the trick? Addiction of course. Stefan wants more and more (hence the title) yet he can`t get more and he can`t escape either. In the end he ODs and dies, just like you`d expect it from a film from late 60s, early seventies. In terms of style it`s quite similar to "Zabriskie point" and other movies my Antonioni, as well as to the French new wave, especially that goes for the abrupt ending which is a typical characteristic for films by Truffaut, Godard and other crazy fellows. The weirdest thing, apart from the music, was the language of the film. Barbet Schroeder is an Irani born German, Stefan is German, but he speaks with some accent in English most of the time, so does Estelle, yet some characters speak German between them, while others use French and still some others prefer Spanish. For me it was quite complicated, not being able to understand the Spanish and French parts (and non-removable subtitles in French didn`t help much with that). As for the film - it`s your basic story of sex, drugs and rock`n`roll and what you have in the end. By the way, it features a bit of Lesbian stuff, a thing I found to be strange for a film from this age. Even "Deep Throat" didn`t have that (as far as I remember). I guess, there`s no need to watch film like this, unless you want to be making out in the process or unless you`re a fan of Pink Floyd. Since I sadly had to skip the first point myself, I had to do with me being a fan, which was ok, but not as good, of course.

Terry Gilliam certainly takes his time in directing films. In thirty years that he`s been in the business he has directed just 11 films, with two out of those being Monty Python films, while the two most recent films came out just last year. I am now actually pretty close to having seen all of his works - only "Tideland" (the latest film that hasn`t been actually released yet) and "Twelve monkeys" remain on my "to see" list, so I guess I can call myself pretty comprehensively educated in Terry Gilliam`s filmmaking. I had quite a lot of trouble getting this film in question, for it isn`t particulary popular and the first version of it I got was in Russian. Then I said to myself - who on earth would want to watch a Terry Gilliam film in some crappy translation? Not me, for sure. So I deleted it and completely forgot about this. But now, almost a year after my last unsuccessful attempt to watch it I managed to get this film once again, and this time in much better quality. Alas, I was hugely dissapointed when I found out that this version of the film was in fact... in French. Damn! Anyhow I decided to watch it even in French, for I doubted that I ever would find an English version. But some ten minutes into the film I thought to myself - why don`t I check whether the film doesn`t have a second audio track. And it did have a separate audio track in English indeed. And there was much rejoicing. So now I`ve seen "Baron Munchausen" in English. What is this film about? It`s about Munchausen, of course - the fool who tells his stories about strange adventures he has had. Now he`s old and wrinkled and his companions are just like him, but his heart is still young and still burning and he`s still capable of great deeds. And the world`s fastest man, Bernard, is played by Eric Idle. That`s positive. The film isn`t just funny, just like any Gilliam comedy it leaves you with questions and who cares that this is supposed to be a film for the entire family. In fact it`s quite similar to some other Gilliam`s works - most notably "Jabberwocky", "Time bandits" and "The Brothers Grimm". I can`t say that it`s the absolutely best film of his career, but it`s good enough for me.