Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

The story is as old as the world itself. Allen, the main hero of this novel (which is written from the first persons perspective as some kind of a diary) becomes the only heir of a very big amount of land when his brother suddenly dies. Being in the age of circa 20 years and not interested in his heritage at all Allen wants to pursue a much more spiritual life than that of a rich landlord. Still he can`t escape from the immense influence his mother has over him, and he knows that one day he will marry a girl who`s just 12 now but who also will inherit lots and lots of land. His life suddenly changes when he meets a woman working at a bookstore (he`s some kind of a reading freak). Although the woman is some 10 years older than he is and much wiser they become lovers (in the spiritual form of the word) and Allen is almost ready to break free from his mother. But he fails, despite the help by the woman (who doesn`t want to become his wife knowing that because of her troubled past she will be only a burden to a man of his statue) and a six-fingered man who almost became a priest but was much closer to becoming a lost soul. When everything seems to be lost it only gets worse - Allen suddenly finds a crush in himself on the 12 year old girl after seing her bathing naked in a lake but she knowing how much he hated her before runs into the woods where she gets raped and murdered by a local farmer.

The central hero in this novel has got a name quite similar to mine - he`s called Raymon. The novel revolves around two scenes in his life and concerns a weird polygone of love. Let`s start with the earliest episode. Raymon was an unsecure teenager in a family of a doctor. He wasn`t aware of his good looks and had he lived in the modern age he`d be probably called a goth for he wasn`t the most cheerful person in town. His life took an unexpected twist when he met Mary Cross on a tram. She was a woman of a very doubtful statue despised by many because of her affair with an elder man from the high classes. What Raymon wasn`t aware of was the fact that Mary was a patient of his father`s and that his father was unhopefully in love with her (she on the contrary didn`t notice his love considering him a saint). But that didn`t stop Mary from devoting a passion towards the young Raymon and almost seducing him (Raymon learned to understand that he wasn`t a freak after all but he blew everything about their possible romance by his foolish teenagers behaviour). After everything came to a logical conclusion Raymon still had a lot of bitterness towards Mary who had rejected him and planned to revenge himself by becoming a victor in the battle for many womens` hearts. He succeeded at that but when he met Mary some 15 years later he learned to know that he hadn`t come over his passion towards her (she didn`t see in him anything at all anymore) and that his father was also still mad for her. So they both - father and son who had never understood each other were tied by this woman that didn`t care for either of them. Sad, sad, sad.

Despite the name this band hasn`t a lot to do with United Kingdom, instead you should understand the name U.K. as a short form for "Udriitis" "K." - I`m not sure what the name of the second member of the due is. The former is quite a popular musician in Latvia as the singer for the band "Hobos" which is even mentioned somewhere on this factoid. On "K.U." he leaves behind his usual language of singing - English - and switches to his native Latvian. What this album has a lot of is pretty arrangements - what it doesn`t have is a lot of interesting songs - in terms of melodies there`s not too much to get from this album. "Tirgus" has a very resonant chorus in the language of the roman people. "It`s cold in Beijin" is by far the most catchy song on the album and it`s no wonder it became the first single of the record. "Gljuk" which is sung in Russian reminds of a Russian band DDT which is neither a plus nor a minus. Overall if you listen to this record a lot of times in a row you probably can find it quite a nice thing to listen to but once you`ve pressed the stop button on your cd player "U.K." ceases to exist for you.

If I knew anything about music I`d probably call "I`m a bird now" one of the best records (if not THE best) of 2005. And there`s no wonder why - this is music for intellectuals and not just some shlock for the average Joe. The lyrics are incredibly deep and emotional, the production is very accurate and full of pain and helplesness. But there`s one thing bothering me about this album - I don`t like it. Despite what THEY tell you I can`t find this disc particulary catchy. What is interesting is the feeling that this Antony is a 70 years old black man although in fact he`s neither black nor old. But his gospel-soul music isn`t exactly what I would want to find under the Christmas tree. He may be smart, he may be talented, he may be whatever he is but it`s still that old time rocknroll I want to hear and not his religiously sounding wailings.

I certainly remember having started to read this play quite a long time ago. Especially I remember it because of an episode where Max, a successful actor, talks about his problems selecting his favourite music for a radio programme because the only thing he likes is low quality pop music. If he was a fan o "Pink Floyd" it would be okay, but he was mostly addicted to bubble-gum stuff and music of the quality of The Everly Brother. Another moment I remember is also about music - it`s when Henry, a playwright, tells how Bach has stolen from Procol Harum and can`t even get the notes right. Apart from that the novel is quite a witty story of love and betrayal, with a particulary grotesque character of Brodie who`s gone to prison for lighting fire to a war memorial and who can only think in revolutionary categories but in fact he`s acting like this only to impress Annie, Henrys wife. Since I`m a fan of Stoppard`s I probably can`t dislike this play. Or maybe I`m a fan of Stoppard`s because I like his work, I don`t know. But "The Real Thing" is a real thing in deed. I`d love to see it on stage.

Since iceage there have talks around whether computer graphics have reached/will ever reach the level of reality that you won`t be able to tell the difference between a film done by living actors and a film created entirely in a computers lab. Being a born sceptic I usually spend a lot of time trying to convince every living soul that computer animation sucks and that no polygons will ever be as pretty as the rear of JLo (although I wouldn`t be surprised if her butt was surgically improved after all) but since I`m trying to be a different kind of myself this time I`ll critisize "Polar Express" for completely different reasons. After all, you don`t dislike Salvador Dali for his pictures not looking real enough but you dislike him for being an asshole. PE could have been a brilliant cartoon had it been circa 25 minutes long, but as a normal length feature film it just doesn`t have the story to back the visual setting up with. A little boy without a name doesn`t know whether to continue believing in Santa Clause or is it time to accept the truth that there is no Easter rabbit. As he is full of doubt he gets an opportunity to go on a train to North Pole to see Santa. So he does. And he finds enough belief for his whole life. End of story. Tom Hanks speaks most of the voices behind the characters and, if I got it right, he also does the motions of most of them (which explains which children move quite creepily in this film).

Weird. I was absolutely sure this was already on the factoid but here I look and it just isn`t there. Strange. Anyhow "Sputnik Sweetheart" may have a perfect title but it`s not a perfect novel by any means. In fact it`s just a love triangle between a man and two women. Yet the fact is that the man is only sexually interested in one of the women, the other woman has no sexual life whatsoever, while the first woman has found out that she is a lesbian. Since I`m not particulary keen on reading about women desiring making love to one another (ok, that may be good on film... wait a moment, I didn`t say that... I`m not a pervert) "Sputnik Sweetheart" isn`t the book for me. Sugiko (that`s the lesbian one) goes with Meo to Greece and suddenly dissapears after she has told Meo that she wants her. After that the book gets a bit mystical, a thing not too uncommon for Murakami`s novels but it still doesn`t become one of my favourites. First, it offers very little new elements to the ones I`m already familiar with. Second, the content is a bit too sexual with Murakami going a bit too much in detail. It is true that I can tolerate more sexual content on film than I can in a book. I don`t really know why, probably because in a book you usually feel that it`s written by a middle aged person from the viewpoint of a young one, and you don`t get that much on film. Maybe it`s because films rarely dig that deep, they just stay on the surface and if something goes wrong it doesn`t go terribly wrong as it is with books.

James Blunt may be one of the most successful performers of 2005 but his album lacks emotion and sticks to patters that leave no doubt that every beat in it, every sound is perfectly calculated in a way so teenage girls will like him. In terms of sound James Blunt is a replica of Coldplay with Elton John for singer done by the record industry. The big hit on this record surely is "You`re Beautiful" which is beautiful for sure and I have to admit that I like it as a sort of dirty pleasure. The tempo on most of the songs is slow and uninspiring. "Wisemen" sounds as if it was lifted straight off "Electric Fire" by Roger Taylor (I kinda like when Blunt changes his intonations for a few seconds for something pretty British and says "dirty bastards" though). "Goodbye my lover" is the piano equivalent for guitar strumming - it has close to no melody and sounds particulary silly. If James Blunt was a Leonard Cohen it would be perfectly fine but he ain`t no old Canadian Jew. "Tears and Rain" sounds ripped off from some oldie, maybe from James Taylor. Intro to "Billy". I just found out that James plays a lot of instruments on this album but that doesn`t really change anything. The album has catchy songs, it`s polished to perfection but it just doesn`t click emotionally and that`s a huge problem.

Never judge a book by its cover! And never take to read a book without inspecting what are you going to read. I have been lately wise and foreseeing enough to check whether I am not taking a book of poetry but this time this method wasn`t enough. First, Adelbert von Chamisso is basically a poet. But that`s not the main issue. I`d probably have very little problem with this book being poetry for I`d just decide not to read it then. But "The Prussian from France" is a biography. Hell, why didn`t I notice that A.von Ch. wasn`t the author but some obscure P.Lahnstein was! So I thought - why shouldn`t I read the biography of some strange writer who seems to have lived a long time ago and who I don`t know a thing about? After reading the book I know the answer. And it is: because I don`t care. So, this Adelbert was some sort of a biologist who travelled for 3 years and did some scientific work and apart from that he also wrote poetry. He was a Frenchman by blood but his family (an aristocratic one) fled from the Revolution so they ended up in Prussia. What else is there to say? Not much, that Lahnstein fellow seems to be a rabid fan of Chamisso`s and the way he describes his hero is sometimes funny but the book as a whole is probably worthy for people interested in Adelbert von Chamisso but it`s a waste of time for someone like me.

This was one of the few occasions when I watched a film entirely because of the fact that I knew it was going to be terrible. Although such reasons may seem quite obscure in reality it does make sense (at least mildly). You see, if a film is terribly bad it`s sometimes funny to watch. That doesn`t apply to comedies usually because a bad comedy is one that isn`t funny. But in case of sci-fi films a horrible film can mean an awful lot of fun. It was exactly the case with this film. It was so goddamn bad that I just couldn`t stop watching it. Sean Astin (also known as Sam the fat hobbit) is a geeky scientist who happens to have developed a time travelling device. The device isn`t particulary strong though - its power is enough only for a journey ten minutes back in time. Describing the story of this film is kinda silly for it doesn`t make particulary much sense. On the contrary, everything on here is done without a clear purpose, even the camera usage and editing are bizarre. Not bizarre as in crazy but bizarre as why couldn`t they do it better. As a matter of fact it`s hard to judge a film like this one. How bad is it? If you watch it and expect at least decent acting of okayish special effects you`ll be dissapointed. If you expect the worst film in film history you`ll also be dissapointed. If you expect a very stupidly done sci-fi film, "Slipstream" is the film for you. The idea itself was quite a good one but everything they did with it was so goddamn stupid that I can`t even express how stupid it is.