Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Adrien Broady from "The Pianist" happens to die for the first tiem when he`s 27 years old. After that he happens to be living again and found guilty for killing a police officer. So he ends up in a mental institution. In this institution he`s put in the jacket and put in the morgue in order to be healed. Instead of being healed he goes into the future where he wants to find out why and how he dies the second time. It`s not that he really has any chance of stopping his death. Yet he meets a woman he new as a girl before the mental institution. And together they try to solve the mystery of his death. This is one of the weird films you can`t understand completely and that you can`t be sure about that it makes sense. But it`s interesting.

Silly, silly, silly. An old VW Beetle gets bought buy a young and good looking Lindsay Lohan with digitally reduced breasts (what morons would do that! idiots! stupid Disnay people ruin the best thing about this film). But it ain`t no simple VW Beetle that you`d find in any museum of old cars. No, this is Herbie. A car that once won quite a lot of races and that now is ready to free itself from the dust and take on "NASCAR", the races where only the best compete. Lindsay ain`t that enthusiastic but she really ain`t the leading hero in this film. If I were a ten year old girl I`d probably find the car that can smile and that can raise its eyebrows really cute. But as a matter of fact I`m not a ten year old girl. Oh, no, I`m a very dark and pessimistic fellow that listens to the Cure more than the guy next door. So I say - this film is made for little kids by people less intelligent than little kids. It`s scenario could have been found in a box of breakfast serial. Either that or this is a platiate of Speed Racer - a stupid cartoon I used to watch when I was around 10 years old.

R.O. isn`t particulary popular nowadays, I`m not really sure why. Probably because the best of his books - this one - is interesting only for the first 2/3 of it. DoaH tells the story of a guy named George that happened to be born in the late 19th century, that happened to have parents that were unluckily married and grandparents that were unluckily just as his parents were. They lived in a world of unsincerity and stupid pompous behaviour. They never said what they meant and they never really thought what they meant. George for himself was a nice guy, he had a wife he loved and a lover he loved. He thought that both of his women supported free love and had nothing against such a relationship. When he found out that words about freedom and not caring about what people think are not more than bullshit he went to war. There comes the last third of the book. It seems to me that you can`t possibly write about WW1 so that the reader wouldn`t have read the same thing by a different author. And it`s clearly the case with Oldington. Ok, he was one of the first to write but he ain`t one of the first to be read. Therefore I can say - my respect to you, but I can`t make myself love you.

"Take That" was one of my favourite bands when I was something like 12 years old. It`s no real wonder, of course, especially knowing that all of them apart from Robbie Williams were gay, and gay people are usually much better looking than all the rest. After the sweet quintet broke up and every one of its members found new lovers only Robbie Williams managed to start off his own career in style. This was his third album and it featured 4 hit singles, which is quite a large number. Yet out of those singles, only one is really good - that`s disco overriden "Love Supreme", the duet with Kylie Minogue "Kids" is good without really, "Rock DJ" is passable while "Let love be your energy" is useless. Then there`s 7 more songs which are about as good as "Let love..." but only more sappy. I wouldn`t buy this album if I had a chance.

Kino was one of the most important bands in USSR in 80`s and it still remains quite vital today, some 10 years after the bands singer died in a car crash. And you know what - the crash happened not far from here, in Latvia! It`s just so cool! It`s almost as if I was writing about a thing I saw with my very own eyes! On this album I found two songs that I was already familiar with - "Mom - Anarchy" is the best cut on the record for sure, having its roots in punk. I don`t really understand whether there`s some story line behind that song but it`s just cool enough that I don`t need any. Then there`s "Videli noch" which was also performed by "Zsob si zdub" - I probably have already mentioned it on my review of that bands album. As for the other songs, they aren`t bad but they do tend to get a bit monotonous, which is a chronical problem for Russian bands.

I`ll be the first to admit that this film wasn`t particulary cliche free, but at least it was watchable. Yes, plot holes were visible and much of it was silly. For example, everyone knew that this computer nerd named Dodge had some secret information hidden in a stupid floppy disc, but everybody knows that only a complete idiot would store significant data in this crappy medium without a single backup copy. Then there`s thing I hate in many American films - the makers of the film expect that the viewer has absolutely no memory - if a man loses his beloved woman 20 minutes before the end of the film when some crazy ass killer lays her down with a bullet through the eye, the hero will have it completely forgot by the end of the film and be happy about the victory over the forces of evil, as if it didn`t cost him a thing. But this flick with one of the Baldwin brothers wasn`t too bad either. Yeah, I know I didn`t really write about the story, but who cares anyway.

I`d probably never watch this film if I had my way, since it`s a bit similar to "Cruel intentions" for even younger teenies than the original one. Yet being on a bus to Hungary I had no real choice. So I watched it. There`s this chick that works in a magazine quite similar to "Cosmopolitan" but she`s too smart, to intelligent and all that to write about hair styles and new shoes, so she wants to impress her boss and convince her that she can do much more. Yet she doesn`t choose an exactly smart way to do that - she tries to write a guide to women how not to handle a relationship. On the other hand a dude whom she meets and plays her guide upon is in a bet that he can make any woman love him in just ten days. So it gets all romantic. A few hopeful scenes, several partly tolerable jokes and that`s it.

It was the second Mauriac`s novel I read in just a few days so the writer was no mystery man to be at the moment of the opening fraze of this novel. In this novel he also shows how social things mean quite a lot to him, depicting the bourgeouis idille in a way even commie writers wouldn`t be ashamed of. The central person of this book is an old rich man who writes a goodbye letter to his family that he despises and that is afraid of him and that hates him. The old man isn`t really a nice person, but most of his relatives are even worse, they all are perverts of some sort; they don`t sodomize, of course, but there`s really very little in all those peoples` lives. In the end the old man suddenly finds some inner peace/harmony which has to do with the fact that he`s already dying, on the other hand it doesn`t really influence anything a lot. I`ll probably never turn into a huge fan of this fellow but I can appreciate his work for sure.

Peter Greenaway! Jesus, I watched another of this freak`s films. Is he gay or something? At least one thing`s for sure - never before had I watched a film with that lot of exposed penises as this one. It was a spectacular thing for sure. If I was a woman I`d probably consider this a perfect film, or maybe not. First it did bug me a bit - I mean all this Japanese stuff isn`t exactly my forte, my favourite cup of tea or anything like that. Later I learned to appreciate Peter Greenaway`s work. Choise of Ewan McGregor as the leading non-japanese was a very wise one for sure. As for the story, there`s this girl who had a caligrapher as a father and who wrote upon her face, and now she`s looking for the perfect caligraphic lover. She finds one in Ewan`s character but it`s she herself that turns out to be the writer and he - only the skin. As Ewan turns into skin himself things get a bit complicated.

Oh my god! They make films in Latvia! They have already surpassed the "drawings on your cave" era and are actually making movies! That can`t be true. As a matter of fact, it is. And the film was kind of stunning. Contrary to the socialistic realism crap you`d expect from a film made in our piss poor country this is some alternative shit we`re talking about. If you want scenes of a lobotomy done upon a dead person, scenes of bisexuality, scenes of dead beggars - this is a film for you. If you want several stories about modern days Latvia, about what life`s really about and stuff like that this is a film for you. If you want shaky camera work, this is a film for you. If you want Elvis petting Pamela Anderson with Bruce Lee`s penis this is not a film for you. You are a sick idiot, man! How could you ever think of a thing like that! It drives me mad just thinking what it could be like being you. Oh, shit, I am you. How embarassing. See it if you can (the film I mean), if you can`t - don`t bother.