This was one perfect time for me to start reviewing films for my work. What can be better than a French version for the infamous stupidity of "Jackass" - the greatest TV show for teenage masochists MTV has ever come up with (apart from maybe a "Bon Jovi" marathon and the rise and fall of "Kiss"). A plot do you ask from me? Why of course not the case in this situation. (like my spelling and the word orded you might not but siht is the plot of the film). A porn flick would probably have more substance than this one. Naked bodys are present in this film but sexy they are not. Cameo appearances by Jibril Cisse and Amelie Mauresmo don`t really change the whole thing to be much better. It`s good that I didn`t pay for watching this film. It`s bad that the organisers didn`t pay ME for watching this film.

You may know the name of Carlos Santana, the leader of this band. He`s the fellow you must have seen on MTV on the videos for famous songs "Maria" and "Smooth". But surely this Santana ain`t the Santana of late nineties. Yet this isn`t exactly the early Santana that performed at Woodstock, this still is a real latino sound but the power of the Woodstock days has long gone. Yes, Carlos for sure knows how to play his guitar and some of the melodies on this album are quite interesting but not that interesting as you`d want. Singing doesn`t really appear much on this album, that`s not that bad probably but man are those latinos sleep inducing. Ok, I may be in a sleepy mood today but even if I weren`t I doubt that I`d call this record something for uber-activity.

The Bonzo Dog Band made its name having one of its singles produced by Paul McCartney. Later on one of its most important members - Neil Innes joined up with Eric Idle from "Monty Python" and they did the Beatles mockumentary "The Rutles". On this record you can see one great example of combining music and comedy (much more than on the Rutles album which was more about the music and less about the comedy). The opening track "Hunting tigers out in Africa" is my favourite, yet the hit single "I`m the urban spaceman" ain`t no worse as a matter of fact - with it`s uplifting melody the spaceman song sounds like an outtake from a Beatles recording session. The best way to describe this is to imagine that this band consisted of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Idle and, say, Michael Palin. The missing link between the Beatles and "Monty Python`s flying Circus" has at last been found, and it does a groovy song about "Ali Baba" that sounds just as if it came from a Soviet comedy, weird as it is. High art it ain`t, pretentious it ain`t, it`s just your fun record.

I could kill a person for writing a title this long. So the review will be particulary short because after finishing I`ll probably start a life long mission of finding and executing Mr. Delius. This book is a collection of essays about everything Mr. Delius considered important enough to write about. I expected it to be funny, it wasn`t. The organisation of the book in the form of a dictionary is enough to keep the rating above the water line but not more than that.

Mr. Miller, according to "Space" (not the French but the American band) is "our local vicar and a serial killer". According to Latvia Mr. Miller is either an editor of a magazine of private dirty clothes and a person representing a sexual minority. According to the local tradition Mr. Miller is some guy who happens to like driving fast cars without a licence and who is a young architect. According to American literature Henry Miller is one of the writers that first introduced explicit sexuality in American literature. He and his woman that is, forgot her name. In this book though you don`t encounter a single appearance of words like `penis`, `vagina`, `pussy`, `cunt`, `boner`, `cock` or even `Peter Tool` (I only used these words so you can find this record of the factoid by using the search option on the site), oh no, this book tells the story of Henry Miller going to Greece from his native States. In there he undergoes a treatment of life that`s just like he always wanted it to be - poor and unambitios (not that he was a rich man before going to Greece). That`s one weird thing - I always thought of this fellow being a brat that doesn`t give a damn about anything. But it proved that in fact he was just a nice and mellow fellow that despised the American dream more than anything. Oh, and he didn`t like the French because of them being too pretentious about themselves. Not that this autobiographic tale is particulary entertaining, but at least it gets more and more interesting towards the ending thus leaving a positive impression upon your humble servant.

Since in the past few weeks I`ve relistened to some of the records I enjoyed when I was younger (it`s the 75 year old me talking right now) I couldn`t skip HIM (his infernal majesty). Back in high school when I was a sad, sad person I used to listen to this album quite a lot. Not in the past few years though. HIM are a finnish band that plays its music in the style of goth rock relying on two subjects - love and death. For most of the time these two things are considered to be one. After those years these songs don`t even seem that overplayed to me, even "Poison Girl". The album doesn`t offer much more than its four singles, so I`ll rate them according to what I think of those songs. 1)"Poison Girl", 2) "Join Me", 3) "Right here in my arms", 4) "Gone with the sin". Actually back in school I thought of "RHimA" as the best cut but today the rocking track seems a bit too forced to me. The other three songs are a bit too similar to each other, of course, and cliches override this record but who cares - as music for pokemon people this ain`t bad at all. Oh yeah, and all the non-single songs apart from the opening "Prelude to tragedy" proudly suck. This still is music for depressed high school losers, even if you think it ain`t.

Some people call this band Abba of the nineties. This thing doesn`t happen to have no reasons behind it all - after all "AoB" just like Abba comes from Sweden, does poppy music in the Europop manner, relies heavily upon synthesizers (as a matter of fact, there seem to be no other instruments upon this record), the band also became popular on both sides of the Atlantic, the band contains two singing chicks and two dudes who don`t sing. I can probably find some more similarities but I find myself too lazy for that. Yet there`s one difference between these two bands that proves to be a significant one - while "Abba" surely had some fillers on even the best albums they at least weren`t offensively bad. It`s clearly not the case with AoB though. Apart from "All that she wants", "The Sign" and other three singles there`s very little this album can offer. And even the singles don`t offer that much - the vocal melody and the girls voices are ok, but generally there ain`t anything more than it. Music is generic dance pop, so cliched that at worst moments it sounds being created by using some cheap "Dance eJay". The non-singles tracks are just bad enough to be considered very bad. I won`t say that I haven`t heard anything worse than this record but there`s no real reason why I would ever listen to it again.

This is the novel that gave the world the name of the writer Iris Murdoch. But it isn`t the novel that gave the name of Iris Murdoch to me. Having already read "The black prince" and "A severed head" I had my restrains before even opening this book. Having really enjoyed the one about the prince, I didn`t have an exceptionally great time whilst reading the one about the head. Don`t really remember why, but it had its problems. In this book you get a slightly similar story to the one about the head with the noticable difference that this book is rather shy. Yes, a love quadriangle exists in this book between the main hero, a woman named Anne, her sister and a German dude named Hugo. But in this novel you won`t encounter a single sex scene between any of those four characters (as a matter of fact, there won`t be even a slightest sign of a relationship in the bonds of one sex, unlike what Murdoch wrote in the "head" book). The hero is an unsuccessful writer/translator who goes around acting strange after his girlfriend has kicked him out (which also resembles the severed head in some aspects). What`s weird is the world the heroes live in. It`s strange and untrivial.

What do you think - does Alice mean "balls" by saying diamonds? Well if he does, he`s a really twisted old fart at the age of sixty who can name his album "dirty balls". On the other hand, if he doesn`t mean that he`s still a twisted old fart. On his latest album Alice doesn`t sound particulary good, which is no wonder to me, since no album of his since "Brutal Planet" has had me particulary impressed. On this album he goes a bit retro, leaving the agression of late ninenties/millenium behind, choosing a more straightforward rock sound. On the opening "Woman of mass destruction" Mr. Fournier sounds like a man of around seventy who still tries to sound like a fifty year old. "Pretty ballerina" is a weird exception on the record (not in terms of singing, that`s a style Alice has mastered at manu stages of his carreer) but the whole romantic thingy does surprise me a little. Among other songs there`s nothing really outstanding (if only "Stand" with the stupid hip hop part). You can surely listen to this album but if you totally dig it you got to be out of your mind.

If you watch this film expecting it to be sharp and witty, if you`re in for a sense making plot, character development, memorable camera work, a perfect soundtrack and whatelse, you probably are a dumbass. Why such a conclusion? Since Brad Pitt is considered the sexiest male actor in Hollywood and Angelina Jolie who plays alongside with him - the sexiest actress in Hollywood, you`d probably watch this film from a different point of view than the latest Peter Greenaways work. And it`s no problem with me. If a film doesn`t have pretentious of being a flick for the intellectuals I don`t mind it being silly. Ok, the whole thing with two assassins living under the same roof as a married couple without actually knowing that the other one has a secret life, is a bit similar to chopping the tallest tree with a herring, but never mind that. It`s an adventure/comedy film we`re discussing and no smart ass director by the name of Woody Allen has been around for making this film. In terms of a quite sexy film about a man and a woman chasing each other with big guns and then making big love it`s a pretty good film. Unmemorable, of course, yet it has some quite sharp (for a film like this) jokes, a bit too little nudity (hey! way too little nudity!), but that`s ok, I think.