Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

A collection of Monty Python sketches from the first two seasons of the TV series. As it often is with sketches they are quite often hit-and-miss. I guess everyone could make his own collection of best stuff from MPFC about that he`d say that there can be nothing better than it, this collection is just one man`s opinion (ok, there may have been several people involved but figuratively it`s still one man if that one man isn`t me). Highlights in this collection include the "nudge-nudge" sketch, Lumberjack song, The self defence sketch, the english-hungarian dictionary etc., etc. This doesn`t rate quite up to the quality of any of MPFC motion pictures simply because this stuff is just a collection without any backbone but it doesn`t mean that one can`t have a good laugh with something completely different.

Šī grāmata man sagādāja diezgan pamatīgu vilšanos - tur bija solīts kaut kāds savdabīgā stilā rakstīts romiešu laikmeta stāsts, bet faktiski tā bija maksimāli beletristiskā stilā pierakstīta vulgaritāte - kaut kāda sieviete dalījās uz kaut kādām plāksnītēm ar citiem ar saviem seksuālajiem piedzīvojumiem. Ne tur bija saistoša erotika, ne sižets - tikai un vienīgi diezgan truls un garlaicīgi apdziedāts sekss.

The story of a lost American film maker from 1920s who happens to be still alive in the modern days.

Limp Bizkit never was a particular favourite band of mine. I`m not really in all this new-metal shit, but even among performers of this not-so-hip-anymore genre I could name several others that I`d prefer to Fred Durst&Co. After both critical and commercial of their previous record, "Results may vary", which they indeed did, the bizkits have got their guitar player Wes Borland back and are now as powerful as ever before. The riffs are back and so is the anger, the only problem is that the songs aren`t very interesting, there`s not a whole lot of them and the lyrics are as dumb as a pet gorilla. You see, Fred Durst has decided that he`s a wise protagonist and that he must share his vision with millions of his fans all around the world. The only problem is that his vision isn`t particulary interesting - he raves and rapes about media being corrupt, about terrorists blowing up buildings and about pedophile priests. Basically Mr. Durst has probably thought to himself like this: "Those kids don`t love me anymore because I`m not as hip as I used to be. To know what`s in and what`s out I`ll watch some TV and writes songs about what I saw there. And they`ll be buying my hotcakes like rubbers." Probably they will, but I`m not that sure about it. Yeah, and Mr. Durst doesn`t have a good singing voice which can be perfectly felt on "The Surrender" where he tries and he tries but he fails just as Marion Jones does it right now.

I`m not sure whether you know that already but the sum of all fears may be smaller than every seperate fear. Or of all good qualities. In this film for instance we have brilliant authors of the script - Ilya Ilf and Evgeni Petrov who wrote "The 12 Chairs" and "The golden calf". It has Viktor Titov ("Hello, I`m your aunt!") doing the directing. It has a majestic company of actors - Oleg Tabakov, Zinovij Gerdt, Lev Durov, Jevgeni Leonov, Vladimir Basov, etc., etc. And yet it is a piece of crap. This is supposed to be satyre. But it`s both dated and stupid. As they used to say: "You`re no fun anymore!" Commie mumble-jumble about how everything turns to be better, better and even better every day in the world of communism. How problems of today will be a past tomorrow. Most of the jokes fall flatter than a tyre on bike after it got executed with an axe. Ok, there are some moments of light but they are overshadowed by everything around them, and the shade is darker than the light in this case. It`s just pathetic, what a waste of talent this film can be. It was done in 1971 and apart from some nice camera work, a few moments in some of the "sketches" and very good actors there`s nothing, I mean nothing it can offer.

So, so, so. Latvian soviet cinematography? Does that ring a bell in your head? It does in mine. Back in those days Riga could produce something like 5 full-length motion pictures every year. Nowadays the number has reduced to something like 0. Ok, probably if you count films done by TV and not really made for the big screen but played on the big screen because there`s nothing better to offer, there are 0.5 films that are yearly made in Latvia. Anyhow I`m not sure that quantity provides quality. What can I say about this film? First, it`s a comedy and I never found my compatriots to be brilliant when it comes to humour. In this film an old woman has won a car in a lottery and some newly found relatives of her appear hoping to get it after her death. Still it doesn`t happen that easily. The film boosts some sentences that have since that time been used in every day life in Latvia quite often, and it does have some pretty edgy parts in the script. But it has a few flaws as well. 1) the film doesn`t start particulary dynamically - the first 20 minutes last at least for an hour; 2) it`s very, very, very predictable (because it does have its share of propaganda - not only soviet but partiotic latvian "jump around the bush as if you were a freaking pagan" as well and you can always tell the ending if you know the message); 3) the ending. There are some moments when you can laugh but overall it`s just not that good.

One of the stories E.-M.Schmitt wrote in his cycle of religions. As you can probably tell this one goes on the subject of Islam. Moses is a young Jewish boy who has no mother and almost no father (somewhere around the middle of the story his father really stops existing) who happens to form a relationship to a local shop owner Ibrahim who`s a Muslim living in the Jewish quarter and selling stuff all around the clock. As Moses becomes very attached to Ibrahim, so is Ibrahim attached to Moses. Ibrahim becomes Moses`s step dad and they go on a journey south to the place where Ibrahim lived when he was young. By his attachment to Ibrahim Moses slowly transfers from being a Judaist to being a Muslim, he even changes his name and when he meets his mom he refuses to accept her as her son but is ready to accept her as her sons (Moseses) best friend. This story ain`t as brilliant as the Christian one but it`s still very good.

This story is a part in the group of stories by Mr. Schmitt about religion. The story in question focuses on Christianity. Oscar is a boy of about ten who writes letters to God as the Lady in Pink has told him to do. This lady in pink is an old nurse at the hospital where Oscar is bound to spend his last days. He has cancer all over him and the lady in pink helps him to be able with his very close death. Unbelieving at first, very believing at last Oscar writes to God his whole life. The lady in red comes up with a plan - Oscar has to live every remaining day of his life as if it was 10 years. So he manages to live a fruitful and long life within the last ten days he`s given. He starts off with early childhood, goes through teenage years and realising love, until passing out being about 100 years old. In the notes for this book I read that E.E.S. himself couldn`t stop tears when he read the story printed, and I have very little doubt that it`s true. It`s so sad and yet so optimistic, so realistic, so fatalistic, so everything you want it to be that you don`t even need words to describe it.

Despite the fact that this band didn`t last particulary long it`s considered one of the best the 80-90`s Britain ever produced. Probably there are some reasons for that, since at least on this album the songwriting is really good, some of the songs are very close to being brilliant, etc., etc. Yet there is one thing that bugs me about the Stone Roses - they are praised too much, and nobody can live up to the expectations of this level. Probably the Roses were the Beatles of their era, at least on some songs they do sound as a newer version of the fab four, particulary on "Shoot you down", with the 60s feel to their music. Not having listened enough to this record I`m not sure that I can judge it the way it deserves, but who cares. If I`ll give it another spin on my PC, the rating will probably change. Or it won`t. Who knows.

They say that Hot Hot Heat aren`t at their best in this record. I can`t really know for I`ve never listened to any album by this band before. And I`m not so sure that I ever will. Ok, this record ain`t bad so I probably could be thinking like this: "If a not-so-good record by this band is pretty decent, their best could be a freaking masterpiece. I probably should spend some money to learn more about this band." But I won`t do that? And why is that? First, I`m not a big fan of paying for anything. Second, how can I know that I will find a record that some people call to be better than this one to be really that good? As for this album it has 13 songs and after something like 3 or 4 listens only one of them has managed to capture myattention. It`s called "Goodnight, Goodnight" and it sounds somewhat similar to "Dogs die in hot cars", only it`s not very consistent - the verses are good but the refrain isn`t. From the rest of the album there`s "Pickin` it Up" - a college rock song, "Elevator" which probably could have been done by the "Goo Goo Dolls" and "Shame on you" which reminds of "This Love" by Maroon 5. Altogether it`s not bad but it ain`t very good as well.