Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Emir Kusturica goes to Hollywood! Just like Frankie did a long time ago. But to my opinion Emir failed in the States. Ok, he got Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway to star in this film, but this film still isn`t the best from Kusturica I`ve ever seen. And why is that? First, there`s very little interest in me for the characters - ok, probably Paul - the wannabe actor is interesting, but even Depp isn`t interesting to watch. What does the story tell? He is an orphan who`s uncle sells cadillacs, he meets Her who`s not so young and has a daughter of his age. He and She fall in love (sort of) and the daughter is jealous. The uncle dies. He is almost ready to switch from the mother to the daughter, but she commits suicide. And there`s also a partly developed story which came to Him in his dream - about some guys in Alaska and a fish. I had heard that this film had an amazing soundtrack - but I didn`t find that to be true also - ok, there was this totally marvelous song by Iggy Pop called "In the Death Car" plus the mexican "Besame Mucho" but that was it, plus quite a lot of Goran Bregovic songs which I don`t find particulary interesting. The audial material to "Life is a Miracle" is certainly better than this. Still, this isn`t really a bad film, it`s just nothing special. Oh, now when I want to add something to my comment: the behaviour of the daughter reminded me of a short film I watched something like a year ago, it was entitled "You killed me first" - and it was about as obscene as this thing, and really similar to Grace`s behaviour. Oh - and I remembered her name!

I don`t know why but the records in this factoid tend to get smaller and smaller day by day. Once I used to write long sentences about everything concerning the book/film/album in question but nowadays it`s basically a one-liner with very little meaning. It may be me losing the faith in my factoid or I`ve just been too tired lately to come up with long descriptions even for books I`ve liked (since a book provides much more ground for a long discussion than a musical disc). Francois Mauriac has become quite a common name on this factoid although I have a lot of doubt whether I really like him. I read the first two novels because I happened to find a book by a French writer whom I didn`t know on a shelf at home. After that I completely forgot that Mauriac existed at all until I was at my girlfriends place and had nothing to read. So I made an inspection of books there and noticed a familiar name. This novel`s title can be probably translated into English as "The monkey". It`s the story of a child of 12 living in a castle with his aristocrate parents (his mother wasn`t actually an aristrocrate but the mayor`s daughter) who hated each other, the young boy lived worse than most of his peers despite being particulary rich on paper. He wasn`t a smart fellow by all means - he barely was able to read and write but the main thing he lacked in his life was love - nobody loved him for he was just an unwanted abuse for his mother who was ashamed of having such a child, while his father was a bit of an idiot and mostly just didn`t care. The mother tried to convince the local school teahcer to give private lessons to her son (in fact she only hoped to have an affair with the teacher). First the teacher found out that the boy wasn`t as terrible as it had seemed to him in the beginning but after a longer consideration he refused to take the boy which led to the monkey understanding that he was unwanted once again. And in the end the father drowned himself and took the boy with him for he saw that there was no place in the world for either of them. Sad, sad, sad.

Kurta Vonnegūta romāns "Ietupinātais" pēc paša autora domām uz viņa citu darbu fona būtu vērtējams ar A (amerikāņu sistēmā - 9), kas ir sliktāk nekā "Kaķa šupulis" un "Lopkautuve nr.5" un kas ir vienā līmenī ar "Titāna sirēnām", "Lai Dievs Jūs svētī, Rouzvotera kungs" un "Māti nakti". Tas tā - informācijai.

Lai arī es to nezināju, šai filmai ir diezgan "kruts" režisors. Izcelšanās ziņā, ne tādā ziņā kā labs. Ivans Reitmans ir Slovākijā dzimis ebrejs, kas uzaudzis Kanādā un kā producents piedalījies daudzās vairāk vai mazāk labās filmās.

This is a film that I almost went to see when I went to King Kong instead. After failing to convince my girlfriend to go and watch this film I had to watch it at home and all by myself. I am personally far from the most Eastern-oriented person in the world but I thought: why can`t this Korean movie be great if everyone who has seen it claims that it is. A young fellow lives by breaking into empty houses and living there for a few days (or until the owners return). He sometimes repairs some stuff in the house which he has broken into and he also waters the plants. But what he doesn`t know is that when he breaks into a huge mansion is that the house isn`t empty at all... If you thought this was supposed to lead you to a horror story about dead chicks you`re dead wrong. A woman is in fact present in the house but she`s neither dead nor haunted, she`s just sad, unhappy and she doesn`t speak very much (neither does the lead character who doesn`t say a word during the entire film). When the husband of the woman arrives the young fellow hits him with golf balls (using a 3-Iron club) and escapes together with the woman. Eventually they get arrested and the guy is charged for murder (they find a dead man in one of the houses they`ve broken in). In the end he`s freed from prison and he returns to the house where the woman lives with her husband but he has achieved some ability of being invisible to people so the husband doesn`t see him. Therefore the husband thinks that his wife has suddenly come to her senses and started to enjoy the life with him but in reality she`s cheating on him with the boy. The film suffers from its main strength - the untrivial attitude and choice of techniqe - it`s brilliant but it`s boring. I`m surely happy that I didn`t watch it at a cinema for I`m sure that almost everyone whom I might have dragged along would find this a terrible way to spend his/her time.

Iedomāsimies, ka šis nav apraksts albūmam, bet intervija. Es intervēju Džeimsu Hetfīldu - Metallicas dziedātāju. Protams, šāda intervija nekad netaptu, jo es neesmu mūzikas žurnālists un Hetfīlds parasti atsakās no garām intervijām blogiem ar 10 lasītāju auditoriju. Un tomēr...

Atzīšos godīgi - es pavisam nebiju ieinteresēts šī Krisa Roka stand-up comedy raidījuma skatīšanā. Vispār muldošie komiķi nav gluži mana iecienītākā humora variācija. Un vēl jo vairāk mani neinteresē rupjības bārstoši melnie amerikāņu kumēdiņisti. Tomēr es tiku piespiests to skatīties.

The Coen brothers are truly a legend. They were the masterminds behind "The Big Lebowski" - certainly not a perfect film, but quite a solid one nevertheless. And in this film they decide to remake the "Odyssey" by Homer. With the slight change that Ulysses ain`t the man who fought at Troy but a dude who ran off with two of his pals from Parchment farm in order to return to his wife who wanted to marry another man. Although at the first glance you won`t see very much resemblance to the Odyssey, but actually almost every scene is connected with the legendary epic. There are syrens, there are cyclops, there are prophets - you name it. And there`s hell of a good music - despite the fact that action takes place in 1930s. Ulysses, Delmar and Pete form a band named "Soggy Bottom Boys" and the play nice old-time music. By the way, Ulysses is played by George Clooney - I never expected him to appear in a film like this. The dialogue is witty, the characters are very interesting, the only minor flaw is that the film has too much singing in it - especially in the middle of the film, when it`s not the main heroes who do the singing. Still, there`s one more thing - the IMDB says this film is basically British, although everyone in it is American. I say - I never disagree with IMDB.

It`s been a while since I last heard anything from "Wheatus", a band that struck it big when I was still in high school and could perfectly associate myself with the loser person prom who`s perspective "Teenage Dirtbag" was sung. Since then some things have changed in the world while others have not. There was 9/11. Greece won at Euro 2004. My personal life has changed a lot (from zero to planning getting married). Ray Charles has died. Bob Geldof has organised a new Live Aid. Elton John has officially married his boyfriend. But the singer of Wheatus still has that cute falsetto he used on the last verse of "Teenage Dirtbag". The band still plays the same kind of alternative pop-rock as it did in 2000, relying on catchy choruses and simplistic instrumentation. The last aspect doesn`t come off as a wonder since the band has left a major label and is now recording and producing its album on its own. My personal favourite on this record is "I Am What I Is", a song with a title reminding of "You Are What You Is" by Frank Zappa. Overall the record does have one big problem - as it gets closer to the end the songs tend to get less and less interesting and more and more adventurous. Since I`m not interested in Wheatus for the bands ability to experiment I rather stay with "Something good" and "BMX Bandits" pop paradise and keep away from the less straightford tracks.

Viņš bija tikai vienkāršs divpadsmit gadus vecs zēns. Taču viena liktenīga nejaušība pārvērta viņa dzīvi. Tā Rūdijs Volcs kļuva par dubultslepkavu. Līķu Pēteris bija vārds, kurā viņu sauca.