This is the first time I encounter the fellow with the name of Rybczynski. Since my Internet connection is down at the moment I have no way of checking who he is/was and how much fame he has. This film, "The orchestra", is more of a music video than an actual film. It doesn`t have a real plot, it has no text and it doesn`t come off as trivial. The film contains several parts revolving around several pieces of classical music. There`s a part of old people waking up and being harrassed by a butler; there`s a part in front of a church with a whole lot of people playing the march of death, there`s a segment of boy/girl aging while walking along a long piano; there`s dancing in the Louvre; there`s a butler walking in the sky; there`s a couple flying in a cathedral and there are people going up a ladder to communism (probably I forgot to mention something but that`s not that important). The favourites of mine are the boy/girl sequence and the Louvre part. But the others aren`t half-bad either. This film is mostly for your eyes, of course, but it is done beautifuly without a doubt. The minimalistic camera work that rarely switches from one camera to another, but chooses sliding the same camera for quite a long time thus creating an illusion of a sequence being shot in one scene (which probably applies only to some layers of the sequence while others were added later on). The last part with the stairway is a bit overlong, that`s a thing I can`t deny, but otherwise I have no complaints at all. Watch it if you can! And if you can`t borrow it from me and watch it anyhow!

By reading this I continued my acquaintance with the genre of memoirs. I gotta admit that reading diaries and letters of a person that you don`t already know by its work seems a bit weird. I haven`t read a single poem by Byron, that`s for sure. On the other hand I`ve read a few books about people interested in Byron ("Arcadia" by Stoppard and "The luxury of exile" by L.Bass are the first two works to come to my mind). As for this book it can probably by described as a novel in letters although it surely ain`t no fiction. Lord Byron himself can be seen this way without all those exterragations historians have put upon him. Basically he was a fine young upper class fellow without much money and with his mind set on women and adventures. In his letters to his friends he`s quite honest and sarcastic, his letters to his lovers don`t come off as particulary honest but probably he meant what he wrote (at least during the writing and probably some ten minutes afterwards). Byron`s travels and the self-chosen exile for the most of his adult life can be understood pretty well. Without a doubt I don`t claim that this book is particulary interesting to read - the witty passages where Byron pokes fun at some of his contemporaries or the times when he tells funny stories in his diaries are a treat but some of the stuff only for biographers isn`t particulary what I want from a book.

Captain Beyond has absolutely nothing to do with Captain Beefheart, in case you wonder. No, it was a hard rock/prog rock outfit from LA which had Rod Evans of Deep Purple for the vocals (ok, he left "Purple" before they became really huge, but he did sing on "Hush"!), a guy who had played with Johnny Winter (so what? is Winter that much of a hero for me to know every ballsucking dickwad he used to play with? ok, probably I was a bit harsh about him but who cares), Lee Dorman who played the bass for "Iron Butterfly" on "In-da-gadda-da-vida" and one more fellow who seems to be an average loser not even capable of being tossed out from a band like "The secondhand Beatles". So, they all got together and recorded an album of jolly molly rock music, which is somehow marketed as progressive rock. To me it`s just your basically hard rock of "Deep Purple" without Ritchie Blackmore but with more emphasis on more complicated sound and a concept for the record. I`m not particulary interested in the concept, of course, since to me the record is an inoffensive collection of hard rock songs, sometimes spoiled by some silly sounding crap like the talking on "As the moon speaks the sea". Oh, I figured - this band is a mixture of "Deep Purple" and "Cactus". Listenable, but not memorable at all.

This release surely ain`t targeted at the average Joe who knows "Pink Floyd" by the title "Another Brick in the Wall" and probably has heard "Money" on his FM radio. It`s not targeted at the fan of "modern" Pink Floyd - a guy who knows his "Division Bell" by heart. And it isn`t even targeted at the regular Roger Waters era Pink Floyd fan who considers "Dark Side of the Moon" the most important piece of music created in the post-Beethoven world. No, Sir, this is a bootleg video of Pink Floyd in 1970 - the days when Syd Barrett was long gone and mad as a hatter but Roger still didn`t have his "vision" for the band. On this video we hear and watch the performances of 6 songs - "Set the Controls for the heart of the sun", "Cymbaline", "Atom heart mother", "Granchester Meadows", "Green is the colour" and "Careful with that axe, Eugene". The performances are lenghty and some of them are even interesting. Yet the quality of both video and sound is dissapointing, and only braindead people in the psychedelic years could consider showing boring landscapes to the sound of some of those songs instead of the musicians a sensible idea. Man, it reminded me of Latvian television when it didn`t have enough clips of "Coca Cola" and "Always" to fill the gaps between programs and showed some rubbish landscapes accompanied with elevator muzak instead.

This is not fiction, or at least it`s supposed not to be fiction. On the other hand fiction is quite often less impressive than documentary. A norwegian journalist depicts a story of a muslim family in Kabul. The story is about Sultan - a book merchant - , and his family - two wifes Sharif and Sonja, his sons and his other relatives. The thing that`s most weird about the whole thing is that none of those people come off as being completely intolerable assholes, evil muslims or something like that. Sultan, for instance, is a man of culture who was a real rebel (or something like that) in the days of those crazy taleban sickos, he is liberal at some things yet he literally buys a second wife about thirty years younger than himself, he doesn`t care that his sons don`t get no education and is a real tyrant of the house. And that`s the case not only of Sultan. Probably it was the thing that saved this book for me - it wasn`t too preachy - a thing I dreaded it would be. No, it was quite interesting to learn what life can be like for a muslim. The main thing probably is that life not only sucks if you`re a muslim woman, but also if you`re a muslim man. And it puts a bit a different perspective to a lot of things, especially to my own attitude towards the whole Afganistan thing and the US. By the way, by this book it seems that Soviets weren`t one of the worst things that ever happened to Afganistan, which also is a thing I`d never think of otherwise. As a literary statement this book surely has no value, despite the fact that it does contain "stories" about people of the family.

I don`t pretend to know much about this band, `cos I don`t. I`m only pretty aware of the fact that it`s quite a new one for sure (at least it wasn`t formed in 1964 by a younger brother Paul McCartney never knew he had). What FoW do is basically playing unoffensive college rock for teenies of 1990`s/2000`s. They don`t pretend to make any significant artistic statements, they don`t pretend to be the next Captain Beefhearts or whatever. They are capable of `Mexican Wine`, a poppy song that somehow reminds me of Weird Al Yankovic. They are cepable of writing memorable melodies and quite decent lyrics. But they aren`t really capable of rocking hard, and they certainly aren`t capable of breaking the formula of college rock. And at that they aren`t particulary different from your average "Busted", with the exception that they are much more talented and aren`t just dummies used by some corporate assholes. Yet apart from that teeny-weeny thing they are just like those silly "Busted" punk-wannabees.

Let`s stick with the Coen brothers, shall we? Way back in 1991 they made this film, which most critics seem to be mad about. They claim that the film was mostly influenced by David Lynch. Probably they`re on to something, but to me it`s still much more a tribute to Woody Allen than anything else. First, the hero. He`s played by John Turturro and is a thirtyish Jewish writer who goes to Hollywood and signs a deal to write a film about wrestling. A goofy Jewish person with a nerdy behaviour is pretty much what I`d expect from Mr. Allen and certainly not what I`d expect from the Coen brothers. Not that the film is bad, but it can be hardly described as iteresting or something you can`t stop to watch. Ok, I didn`t fall asleep during this film but I also managed that with "Radio Days". Ok, this film is better than "Radio Days", since it`s surreal and weird, especially weird it becomes when the woman Barton has spend the night with happens to be murdered in his bed while he was sleeping. But it`s surely not a film I`m likely to watch ever again.

Most people call this the best film about the man who wears a mast on the upper part of his face ever. They say that it`s more serious than anything ever to come out of Gotham city and that it leaves the story of comic books behind. Did I notice the difference? Partly yes and partly no. Yeah, there are several things about this film that make it less silly than some of the previous Batman flicks - at least there are no half-penguin like creatures or scientists that go crazy after some accident at an experiment. But there are several silly things as well - first, it`s the whole thing with those Tibetean ninjas or whatever they are called that happen to be a secret organisation called the "league of shadows" which has existed for several thousands of years (masons! masons! grab your sticks and kick them in the face!). Then there`s the whole thing with the idea that Batman can`t just let a villain die simply because Batman is sooo good. At least the whole thing with the part that requires a regular use of your handkerchief doesn`t developed particulary far. Surely this film is watchable and it probably goes smoothly enough to keep you interested, but as it almost always is with films like this it doesn`t stay in your memory for quite a long time. As a big screen adaptation of a comic book (which it partly remains even if the story isn`t written by whoever wrote that comic) it`s pretty solid. As solid cinematography - it`s not bad but surely not more than that.

To some people `Electric Light Orchestra` is a great band that recorded some superb albums back in 1970s. To some people it`s a disastrous group of misfits that recorded some shitty disco music in late seventies and early eighties and didn`t do much better afterwards. To me it`s just a band that performed a cover of Chuck Berry`s "Roll over Beethoven". Yet, they were no one hit wonders, and this album is considered one of their finest works. 8 tracks can be found on this album and each one of them has something to offer. No, I don`t mean to tell that this is something tremendously great or something like that, despite the fact that the music is overblown indeed, with whole lot of violins, classical operatic elements and the title of the album ain`t "Bananas" either. Apart from Chuck Berry those fellows are undoubtedly influenced by the McCartney side of Beatles, having some beautiful melodical ditties on this round plastic thingy. There`s "Telephone line" with that beautiful "Do-do-do-do-wa" part, then there`s "Livin` thing" sung in falsetto but with those nice violins that no Bee Gees could ever come up with. If you`re not that happy right now you can probably listen to "Shangri-La" although the Kinks did have a much better Shangri-La than those fellows. The opening "Tightrope" is a proof that I somehow didn`t notice that those "Traveling Wilburys" had much of Jeff Lynne (the leader of ELO) in them. You can never stop learning, you know.

There aren`t that many people that openly proclaim themselves as geniuses and that probably ain`t lying at all. What undoubtedly is untrue though is the title "diary" given to this book for I`m pretty sure that the diary of Dali has less in common with a real diary than Phil Collins has with underground and alternative music. Not that the diary ain`t interesting, on the contrary Dali does write quite witty and pretty surrealistically as well. Which is no wonder for he really was a genius. There are several things Dali appears to like more than most people do, and those include farts and flies. In this book apart from the "journals" Dali proclaims to have written over the years I got a long essay entitled "The Art of Farting", which Dali claims to be written by some count Trubachevski, but who without a doubt was Dali himself. There`s some strange pseudo-serious text about flies as well. What was the most surprising thing about Dali for me is the fact that he was a romantic person after all - could you imagine a man of his ambition claiming that he loves his wife more than fame, more than art and even more than money? It`s weird isn`t it? Nobody has a doubt that Dali was a much better painter than a writer but at the second thing he was no slouch either. For instance the things he writes about his friends are so full of sarcasm that it`s no wonder the book broke his friendship with Louis Bunuel.