Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

If you don`t live and die for Depeche Mode you`re worth nothing. If you haven`t gone through a stage of your life when Depeche Mode was a symbol for everything you stood for you`re either a retard or you`re still pre-teen. If you don`t know by heart the names of the band members you don`t deserve a name yourself at all. The only excuse for not worshiping Depeche Mode is having switched to "The Cure" instead.

The book is supposedly a detective. I`m not really sure that it is. Jacob Vogelwart is a fellow who was a writer once but has become a thief later on. He mostly looks in his neighbours windows and spies upon them. Then there`s a woman named Nicole that`s looking for her sister that is lost somewhere in the town. In reality she knows perfectly well where the sister is but she doesn`t want the others to know (she`s not dead and buried and not even held captive if you ask me). Then there`s a strange fellow who owns several bars in the town and who likes to pretend that he`s dying. What does it make as a sum? Not too much, the book is readable but not worth being read.

This starts of as a romantic comedy with a clerk and a wannabe lawyer Norman falling in love with a girl he meets in an art gallery. After spending too much time with her he gets fired from his work and ends up living with his aunt in a small town called Selchester. His love life doesn`t go particulary well, especially after he sees the woman of his dreams performing oral sex with her sisters boyfriend. So Norman goes home very sad and falls into the hands of a weird lodger of her aunties - a bishop with a lot of titles but without a church, without a religion. Yet this strange fellow ordinates Norman as a bishop as well and so Norman decides to give it a shot and become a clergyman. He goes to a thelogical college where everyone turns out to be gay and everyone has a female nickname and sodomy is practiced everywhere. Meanwhile Norman has a relationship with his first girlfriends sister, named Cleo, she`s in love with him therefore he obviously isn`t. The father of both of the girls is a dean who doesn`t believe in god and has made a lot of money from his God-mocking books. Norman dies in the end jumping from the top of a cathedral. This clearly ain`t the funniest book I`ve read in my entire life and some of it`s parts may a bit too obscene for my taste but easy to read and a bit funny it is, why shouldn`t one like that kind of books?

I have absolutely no idea why this isn`t in the factoid already. Weird, I was sure it was here. The film has a script written by Rainer Fassbinder and it ain`t no surprise to a person who know who Fassbinder was and what this film is about. First, burning rocks are represented by a young lad that`s invited to visit a man who ain`t that young anymore. So they start talking and the older man seduces the younger one and they become lovers. The young guy had a girl he wanted to marry but it doesn`t work out because of the older man. So they live together and the young dude gets more feminine day by day. But then the old man`s ex arrives - a transsexual person that was a man once but changed sex so the man would want him/her again. The young mans girlfriend comes to visit him to free him from the Water drops. But she also gets seduced by the Man. And in the end the young guy commits suicide, but the old man has sex with the young girl and the transvestite. Happy end, indeed. I don`t really know if saying "i kinda liked this film" would be a good thing in the exact case, but it`s true. The film may be a bit too perverse for my taste but it doesn`t necessarily make it worse. Or does it?

Did you get the title? I did not. Who cares anyhow? The whole thing is a collection of 5 stories that are somehow connected by a goddess bringing death. The characters include a man working in a museum who`s being turned into a sculpture after he`s seen the goddess with the head of the legendary Meduse in her hands, his wife and some other people.

Pēc tam, kad biju izlasījis otro Grošeka romānu - to, kas par pusdienām, no šī biju gaidījis vairāk.

The book contains three dramatic works by the famous German writer Herman Broch (ok, I`m not so sure that he was that famous indeed but his name seems familiar to me - and that`s something). Note: after consulting Wikipedia (I`ve been mentioning this source of information quite often lately but only because it`s very informative and not because They would pay me for it, although I`d feel happy if they would) I know that Broch comes from a Jewish family and that he`s considered an Austrian writer. He`s mostly known for his novel "The Death of Virgil" which I`ll probably read later to be more educated than I am now. Yet I can`t say that after reading some of his plays I`ve become particulary interested in Broch`s writing. Out of the three plays published in the book I got from my library - "Die Entsuehnung", "Aus der Luft gegriffen oder Die Geschaefte des Baron Laborde" and "Es bleibt alles by Alten" I found only one that really worked for me. The first play - a tragical piece about a factory is - is too sad, boring and has too many characters for me to really get it on paper (rating 4.0). The second is a comedy and it`s fine - I always like to read something about con-artists and villains (8.0). The last play is also a comedy and it`s nothing really - nor good, nor bad, passable and not more (5.5). Maybe it wasn`t the best start of learning to know Hermann Broch.

It was the reason why I watched "Deep Throat" in the first place. I learned a lot about the most profitable film ever yet I didn`t really learn why it was so popular in 1970s. I learned a lot about the stars of the film yet I didn`t learn what`s the difference between them and other porn stars. Oh, maybe on difference is clear - Linda Lovelace and her technique are unique for sure. The funniest part of the film is Linda`s change of attitude and becoming a feminist - c`mon who`d buy the whole "every time people watch this film they are watching me being raped"? Yeah, sure. I`m not so sure what was the message the makers of this documenatry were trying to pass over? Do they tell you that Gerard Damiano was a revolutionary, a rebel that "Deep Throat" was some sort of an artistic statement? I certainly can`t understand why that should be true. A rebellious porn director? Sure, and when a fellow told in the film that Damiano went for dirty pictures so he could get laid more easily he probably meant it metaphorically? I`m not sure whether I am or am not a morally conservative person but I`m absolutely sure that you usually don`t need group sex to make an artistic statement (unless we`re talking about the band "Circle Jerks" that did have an album titled "Group Sex"). So - how good is the documentary? It`s pretty entertaining but a bit pointless, so that makes the rating of 6.5 (now you know how I rate things).

It`s amazing to follow how far I`ve sunk. When I first started this factoid I wrote about Umberto Eco and "Abre los ojos". Nowadays I`m only capable of outing my thoughts on a porn movie. A hardcore porn movie to be more specific. How did this happen to me, you may ask. The thing is - I had to watch "Inside Deep Throat" which will be running in cinemas in Latvia quite soon. But who on earth would watch a documentary about a film he hasn`t seen? I certainly wouldn`t. So I decided to download and watch the godmother of all porn movies - "Deep Throat" with Linda Lovelace and Harry Reemes. Story: Linda can`t get an orgasm from sex and a wacky doctor tells her that her clitoris is bizarrely located deep in her throat. So she has to perform deep throat oral sex in order to get pleasure. I don`t suppose that I can really evaluate this film by any criterias - how would I know a good dirty picture from a good one?

It`s been a while since I last saw a war movie. And it`s been a while since I last wanted to see a war film. If I had it my way I`d never watch this film at all. Why not? I`m not particulary interested in the Soviet war in Afganisthan, nor do I have a need to see Russians fighting each other all the time. The film was so boring that I couldn`t really force myself to watch it. The film is trivial as an empty set - it starts with few young guys that have just joined the army sent to a boot camp, which is full of the beautiful experience Russians call "dedovshina" - you`re told that you are shit and that you are only good enough for dying. Then they go to war, and in the end only one of them survives after heroically performed a mission that noone really needs. It`s a bit similar to me - I watched this film and that was a pain in the ass, but nobody really needed me to overgo it.