Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Now there`s one thing I can`t deny even if I want to - it`s that Duerrenmatt is one of my favourite writers of all times. He`s funny and he`s smart, he`s witty and his joke is never a fart. "Der Meteor" is an absurd story about a nobel prize winning writer who rises from the dead. The only problem for him is that he doesn`t believe in that. He only thinks that he`s gonna die very soon and comes back to the place where he once lived when he was young, thinking that it would make a good place to die. Yet he not only doesn`t die but drives many other people into graves - by scaring them for him being alive, by doing what they don`t want him to. He`s a real asshole so to say. "Dichterdammerung" is a really twisted play - it`s basically a play where we see a play being played on a stage in some low quality theatre. It`s a play about a nobel prize winning writer who is visited by a great admirer of his who has found out that in all the authors book he writes about killings he performs himself. This admirer of his doesn`t want no money he just wants to be able to follow the master and look at his work. Yet since the writer is famous only because everyone knows that he does murder people the admirer can`t succeed at his wish. I don`t even want to comment the high rating, for Duerrenmatt it usually goes without saying.

I only read it because Bergengruen was born in Riga. I never thought that this book would be good. But it amazingly is. Some parts of Bergengruens biography aren`t particulary interesting but the way he describes some episodes is just brilliant. For example, his family left Riga for Germany in early 1900s, so when Werner was to go to WW1 his father said to him: "You see how good it is that you are not in there anymore, in that case you`d fight against your own people." So Werner says that he sees no big difference on which side to die, and his relationship with his father is never really good again. Then there was one interesting thing about Knut Hamsun (the Norwegian writer) - when during WW2 he expressed his support for the Nazis it became a good style for the people of his hometown to throw books written by Hamsun into his garden, and even pilgrims from other towns came to do the same thing. I have to admit that the book isn`t really evenly written but the good things in this case make up for the bad ones and I really can`t say that this book is no good.

I don`t mean to be rude but I`m just too lazy to say much about this book. It is a somewhat creepy story about 5 people being put inside a building which hasn`t been used in decades. They have to find the sun or something like that inside. One of the fellows dies very quickly and the job they have to do suddenly turns into a nightmare. Still there`s a problem worse than one of your fellow dying under bizarre circumstances. It`s your book being boring. And that is just the case of Georg Klein. I got so bored with the book that I really read it just to read it till the end, not caring about what was going on. So if you`d ask me what the moral of this story is or what happened to each of the characters I`d tell you - I don`t know. I only know that 3 of them stayed alive, one of the three - partly alive. So did I.

Now that is a surprise even for myself - once again I`ve read a book by a Japanese writer. This one - Mr. Oe - is a Nobel prize winner (in Literature if you really didn`t expect that). If you know me you probably also know that authority isn`t authority to me. So he is a Nobel prize winner. Why would I think that Mr. Oe is better than the beggar I saw two hours ago eating cookies at the local supermarket? Probably because Mr Oe is a good writer. He created the story of Mitsu and Takasi - two brothers living in the Seventies Japan. Mitsu is the person from whose point of view we see the way story develops. He and his wife are dragged by Takasi to the village where the brothers spent their childhood. They come back to relive in some way the lives of their ancestors - Mitsu is the renewed his great-grandfather, a rich landowner, while Takasi is great-grandpas younger brother who lead a revolution in the First year of Mannen (1860). Nowadays Takasi starts training the local football team and makes out of his youth people that run over the local Korean supermarket. Still it ain`t 1860 and you can`t possibly win, and you don`t win at all. I read that this book is similar to the "Karamazov Brothers" by Dostojevski but I haven`t read that (I`m an ignorant punk) therefore it`s all I can say on the subject. The book i good, but not great. I wouldn`t give a Nobel prize for that but I wouldn`t say: "Shut your freakin` face uncle freaker!" either.

Welcome to a brand new genre in my factoid - a theatre play watched not on the stage but on the screen. This was performed in 1987 by the most notorious Latvian theatre at the time - the Latvian Theatre of the Youth. So, this is a play by Gunars Priede, the same fellow who wrote "The blue", but this is surely his most famous work (in Latvia, of course, for outside nobody knows his name). There`s this woman who once was a teacher (before WW2) but because she was leftist she couldn`t go on with her job during the German occupation, neither could she do it after WW2 in the Soviet days (I`m not gonna say "Soviet occupation" just because I`m an asshole, so buzz off!). She met a man named Sergey who was a war prisoner and who was given to her as a servant by the Germans, something similar to love developed between them, but in the midst of the centrifuge WW and Stalinist terror brought there was no real place for love. The play was lovely performed, although a bit too realistically for me, but I know that no cool expensive decorations were available in 1987 in Soviet Latvia, so I won`t mind that, and the choice of the actors was also quite good. At least it shows history the way I want to look at it and not in the way it is seen by silly commies or silly Latvian nazis.

In the gospel according to IMDB this is a great film. Apart from dreadful acting the first half of this film seemed to be good - a guy named Klaatu arrives to Earth from outer space to bring to the nations of the Earth the message that if they will use nuclear power they will be killed by the more advanced races. After being injured he ends up living together with some normal people because he looks just like one of them. After that as in any film of the cold war era and especially in a film from the Communist-hunt days you will find a lot of pathos and patriotic gibberish. Klaatu visits the statue of Abraham Lincoln, he tells to the people that the universe needs a world police that would keep order and that you`re either with us or against us. George W. Bush, what was your favourite film when you was a little boy? I bet I know, you even have the same haircut as Klaatu. Yeah, the ending is about as good as the words "terrificly bad" charactarise it. Screw IMDB, watch "Flying Saucers: the true story" instead. Or find yourself a rainbow.

This film made a lot of fuss in Russia a few months ago. And not without a reason - I doubt you have seen many Russian films with pretty good special effects. And it`s a thing you can`t denie about this film. There`s this fellow Erast Fandorine who fights for the Russian against the Turks in the Russian-Turkish war of 1960s. After being captured by the fiend he manages to flee and it turns out that as an extra to his very solid skill as a soldier he`s also pretty good in solving crime. And the crime is an interesting one - there is a fellow in the Russian army who works for the opponent on a very high level yet Fandorine can`t really find out who this fellow is. One thing about it that you should know is that this film basically is based upon the method "The Usual Suspects" provided, if you want to find the villain. Apart from that the film is interesting to watch, it has nice colours and pretty good acting, but no lasting value at all. You can probably call it a Russian historical action film and a no-brainer. Still some no-brainers aren`t really bad.

This is surely the most controversial album Chumbawamba ever recorded. As a matter of fact it is that controversial that it wasn`t even officially released and ended up as "Sssh" with all samples cut out. The genre of the music can`t be described precisely - the content is punk without a doubt but the form has nothing to do with that. It`s pop and it`s rock, it`s dance music and it`s a bit of hiphop. It`s spoken word and it`s a capella. You name it, it is it. I like everything on this record but I can`t deny that some songs really do shine above the rest. "Look - no Strings" is nice, but the best of all is "Bigmouth Strikes Again" - partly a cover of a The Smiths song but in fact it has very little to do with the original. "Stitch it" is just magnificient.

Probably this wasn`t the concert of my live, but like that guy in "Life of Brian" said about crucifixion: "It could be worse. You could be stabbed." Emir Kusturica ain`t no virtuoso and Dr. Nelle sings about as good as I do, but that doesn`t make such a big difference. Like you know "Truth doesn`t make a noise". The selection of songs was pretty good, but the crowd was pretty bad because the show was marketed as a treat for the "intellectuals" but gypsy music with a rock`n`roll flavour and silly jokes isn`t exactly what you`d consider to be intellectual. The sound was awful as well. But who cares about that (except for my ears, but ears don`t fall into the "who" category). "It`s only rock`n`roll but I like it". That could be the message of the concert. Or it could be "Baba O`Riley" although I don`t know why.

I won`t try to impress anybody with my knowledge of Mr. Steiner`s work. Why? Because I have none. As far as I can understand the music of his is called something like electro jazz, techno jazz or that kind of noise that your recordplayer produces with a Rubin Steiner record inside. Why this has something to do with jazz is a riddle for me. The music is heavily based on samples which tend to go a bit overboard. I`m not gonna say that this is a bad record, but this most certainly is not my kind of music. My ears are simply unprepared for something like it. Listening to this record for the first time it sounds quite fresh and unexpected, but as I listened to it over and over again I thought my brain would explode. By the way I`m still listening to it now. Oh god!