Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

After having read "The Mansion" I found myself really interested in Faulkner`s work. But "Intruder in the dust" proved to be such a demanding read that I couldn`t convince myself in it being interesting. No, not that it wasn`t interesting, it was written in a style too complicated for me. And, if you want to know, I read it in my native Latvian language, not in English. The story is quite simple - a black man is blamed for shooting a white man in the back but it wasn`t him really. His only chance is that of two teenagers and an elderly woman digging the corpse from the grave and proving that it wasn`t killed by the black man`s gun. In terms of the story "Intruder" reminds me of some Mark Twain`s work (something quite like "Tom Sawyer" in style). But there`s a major difference between Twain and his follower, Faulkner. Faulkner writes in such a manner that his book doesn`t flow too simply, it`s much like some of Joyce`s or Prouste`s work - you get a very simple story done with so much reflections and in a crazy grammatical style that you can`t get the story as easy as you`d probably want to. It`s pretentious in style but it`s to twisted in the writing for me to enjoy such a book.

I`m not much of a fan of documentaries about animals. I never considered it a necessity to watch the famous film about migrating birds, I don`t own the entire National Geographic 200 disc box set and I don`t go in the wilderness in order to watch rabbits mate. This film was recommended to my girlfriend by one of her professors at law studies. By the way, it was a fellow specialising in authorship rights. Does that mean anything? Yes, it means that he gave an advise that resulted in an illegal downloading action. Let`s skip the authorship question and jump straight over to the film. The film tells us about the mating habits of the Emperor`s penguin - the largest penguin there is. It proves to be quite a complicated thing which involves long walks for some 20 days (which are repeated many times over the mating season), starving without food for 4 months, dying from the cold, surviving in the most grave circumstances in a cold where you`d most likely die sooner than you could say: "Penguin!" The film is done in an interesting manners where penguins tell you about their lives themselves, proving to be loving and caring as you`d never expect from a funny bird like that one. It`s a sad film, of course, since many of the penguins don`t survive. But it`s a beautiful film, a majestic film, shot in a way you`d expect from a big budget movie and not from a documentary.

Not a great songwriter, but a great performer, that`s who Joe Cocker is. On his debut album he`s performing prime quality material and he delivers it as only he could. You couldn`t believe from the sound of this record that Joe was a young fellow back when he done it, on the other hand you`ll most likely never believe that Cocker was ever young. His partly bald head is such an unmistakable characteristic that you can`t imagine him looking differently. His style is quite similar to that of "The Band" (actually I`m talking about the backing band and not about Cocker himself, but who cares). This record is mostly famous for having the title track on it - a great cover of the Beatles original. Then there`s "The New age of Lily", a cover of "Just Like a Woman" by Bob Dylan, a cover of "I Shall be Released" by Bob Dylan and a cover of "Feeling Alright" by I don`t know whom. It`s a very good record but I`m not in the mood discussing it right now.

This was one of the few films I was really waiting for. Terry Gilliam hadn`t done a film for quite a while and I was certainly eager to find out what he`s managed to come up with. Will it be as great as "Brazil"? As silly as "Jabberwocky"? As crazy as "Fear and loathing in Las Vegas"? As useless as "Time Bandits"? It had a bit of it all. Will and Jake Grimm are two con artists travelling around Germany in early 1800s and fighting the dark spirits which they themselves create. But when they have to go to a forest where a group of their peers supposedly work they find out that strange things have a place in their world. A wicked witch played by the beautiful Monica Belucci, a child-eating horse and lots of other stuff for your pleasure. Gilliam has been better and he has been worse. Matt Damon and Heath Ledger are the brothers Grimm. THey aren`t really those two folk tales collecting weirdos from the history. They are way too cool for that. The film is quite a creepy one, but it`s not really what I`d dream it would be. Yet I wasn`t dissapointed - after the very low standarts of expectations different people like Roger Ebert provided with their reviews I was ready to be happy about anything Terry would give me. What was missed was at least a single MPFC member in a silly little role. But that`s the sad thing with those films nowadays.

Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson. That`s impressive, isn`t it. A strange spaceship is found in the pacific ocean that seems to have been there since the 1700s. A group of scientists including the already mentioned trio and a guy whos name I`m not familiar with gets on the board of the ship and discovers a strange goldlike sphere. It proves that the sphere is a living thing and that one can enter it. The trio of stars are the only survivors in a submarine after the others die under strange circumstances and they have to find out who the strange fellow named Harry communicating with them is, also needing to stay alive. I can`t really say that this was a smart film, not really. It was a bit strange, a bit creepy but not particulary good. Sci-fi may be one of my favourite genres but not every film in it is good. Talkin` about "Sphere" I gotta say there`s nothing really in it that will make me remember much about the film in the years to come. Basically a throwaway.

I`ve had this record in my collection for quite a while but I never managed to listen to it entirely before. Actually it`s a bit surprising, since this 14 songs containing LP is less than 16 minutes long. But now after having done an interview with Mark Prindle, the legendary Mark Prindle, who considers this a hefty fine album, I thought - why not. Do you have something against group sex? Well, I do. Anyhow, this record is something unique. Not uniquely great but certainly not the kind of stuff you forget 2 minutes after finishing listening to it. Basically it`s an hardcore punk record, but the key ingredient to it is the speed. The Ramones are just some teeny-weenies playing college rock, while the Sex Pistols sound like Aerosmith in comparison with the Circle Jerks. They don`t sound too professional, of course, but at least some of the songs are quite good. My favourite track is "Beverly Hills", but "Operation" - a track about a guy getting castrated - comes close to it. "World up my ass" is also good. A few of the songs might sound a bit monotonous but it`s not that much of a problem for an album this short. I admit that the rating is much higher than you`d enjoy this record unless you`re into hardcore punk (I`m not really) but it does have something about it. Still I`m not sure whether I`ll listen to most of these songs again.

This film isn`t the only meeting between Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, but it`s undoubtely one of Burton`s strangest works. Edward Wood Junior is a historical person, but I didn`t know that and therefore it took some time to figure it out what`s this all about. Ed Wood is a young film writer/producer/director who wants to make it big in Hollywood. He`s a fan of Bela Lugosi - a hungarian actor who`s old and poor nowadays but who played Dracula when he was younger. So Ed makes him the star of his first few films. But all his attempts fail. He tries harder and harder yet nobody really likes his work. And you know why? Because he`s a bad writer, a bad producer, a bad actor and a shitty director. That`s probably the punchline - it`s usually considered that if you try hard you have a chance of making it, only if you believe in yourself. But it doesn`t help in the case of Ed for he ain`t got no tallent at all. That`s probably why this film failed to become a hit - people have nothing against losers that don`t achieve their goals because of somebody not allowing them to, they like losers that don`t do anything, they like even everyday losers. But a guy who believes in his work and does his best but it proves that his best is worse than anybody else`s worst - that`s not a cool character by any means. The film was quite good though, not brilliant in my book but certainly better than you`d expect.

CGI cartoons are becoming more and more popular and less and less good. "Valiant" is considered a minor cartoon even in this genre that doesn`t produce too many great works. Yet to my eye it didn`t appear to be that bad at all. Animation isn`t breathtaking, of course, and the plot is predictable as that of a soap opera. Valiant is a young pigeon who wants to be a homing pigeon in WW2. Since the homing pigeon force of UK doesn`t have enough decent pigeons Valiant and a group of 4 other misfits get a chance to fulfil a dangerous and extremely important mission under the command of an older and wiser pigeon. But it proves that even such silly creatures can outmaster the falcons of Hitler. The main reason why I liked this one was probably the voices behind those pigeons. Most important of those were Ewan McGreggor as Valiant and John Cleese as Mercury (a pigeon held hostage by the falcons). Oh, John Cleese, you get a big chance to blabber useless nonsense - that`s the right thing for you! Your voice may seem a little old for a pigeon but who cares! McGreggor`s voice doesn`t come perfectly for Valiant - after all Ewan is a fully grown man and not a teenage pigeon but man do I love those British folk! Were this thing done by Americans (as "Madagascar" was) I doubt I`d like it but so, despite all the minor flaws, it was quite a good cartoon.

Lately it`s been quite a trend for adventure movies following the pattern set by "Indiana Jones" and the like. "Sahara" is one of those films. In 1850s during the American civil war there was an idea by one of the leaders of the Southeners that the new American dollar should be entirely from gold. And according to the legend five golden coins were maid and given to four generals and a pal of the guy who made the coins. But in the modern days an adventurer finds a coin that nobody knew that existed so he logically comes to the conclusion that there may be more coins like this. Then there`s a gorgeous doctor (Penelope Cruz) that`s come to Mali for a healt care organization and she finds a strange disease in the poor and war demolished country. She teams up with the adventurer and his goofy pal (you know that every cool guy has a weirdo for his best mate), and they take on finding a ship that could be somewhere in Mali and that should be carrying a lot of gold; but they also have to find the source of the disease and beat the bad war leader of Mali who`s after them together with the nasty french guy from "Matrix" who`s also French in this film. Even in comparison to "National Treasure" this is not a serious film and even if your brain is in the size of that of a hamster you`ll most likely not think that there`s some truth beneath the film. No there is not, it`s just a fun piece made entirely for your amusement and not for your thinking. If you take it as it is you will be able to appreciate it, if you`re an ellitist, don`t bother.

This is the Gibb brother at their most pretentious. If I`m not mistaken this is a concept album about Napoleon Bonaparte. I don`t really care whether I`m right or I`m wrong but that seems to be a funny and not a serious idea to me. Ok, had it been done by "The Kinks" or some other heavy weight band, but the Bee Gees for chrissake aren`t exactly what you usually call prophets! I don`t actually have a few songs from this album but if they aren`t any different (which according to what I know they aren`t) I guess I can say that this is quite a boring sappy record. The songs aren`t particulary fast paced, for Bee Gees aren`t known for their rocking sound but for them being slow and overblown romantics. "It`s just the way" is a typical Beatles rip-off, "Trafalgar" is a non-typical Beatles rip-off, "When do I" is a pretty song, not too cool, of course, but not as bad as you`d probably thing. Yeah, that`s the best track on the record for sure. I don`t really know why I bother to listen to this one.