It didn`t take me long to watch this film - merely half a year had passed since I borrowed this film from a friend when I finally watched it. What were my prejudices to this film? First, I expected it to be too melodramatic for my taste. Then I`m not really a piano lover, and I was pretty sure that there would be enough of this instrument in this film. It proved that my concerns were true indeed. Ada is a woman that hasn`t spoken to anyone since she was 6 years old, and for no particular reason. She arrives to Australia to meet her new husband whom she hasn`t seen before. She also got a daughter, that does speak. Since the husband doesn`t care for Ada`s piano it`s picked up by a neighbour of his who asks Ada to give him piano lessons. As you can probably guess, it`s not piano what he wants. Obscurely Ada also becomes attracted to him and not to her husband, who becomes a bit violent and chops one of her fingers off. As for melodramatic elements there`s one huge positive aspect in this film - since Ada doesn`t speak she also doesn`t have hysterias. That`s awesome `cos hysteria is just one thing I can`t stand at all. As for the music it was good, probably this film won`t be a long-time favourite of mine, but it was good.

This is a documentary film about a man eating hamburgers. I has nothing to do with the legendary documentary film "Man getting hit by football" where an old man gets hit by a football in the groin (you can watch this film on an episode of the Simpsons). I have to admit that I never eat burgers anyhow so this film couldn`t have a huge impact upon me. But it was interesting to watch it, although I probably wouldn`t want to do it again (as it happens with most documentaries). This surely isn`t art, but it is good.

After having seen Werner Herzog`s film about Kaspar Hauser I knew I`d try to watch something else by this director. And Aguirre is considered to be his best film. Actually I didn`t get the reasons for that. Probably it is interesting for some people to watch an endless journey on a river where people are looking for the legendary Eldorado. Sadly there ain`t particulary anything going on. So, there is Aguirre, a military man who overthrows the leader of the expedition, names a stupid fatso the kig of Eldorado and lets most of his people die in hideous deaths. But even those deaths aren`t very entertaining. And nothing else in this film is. Boring! The ending was good though. I also must admit that the camera work is good, and maybe even the actors aren`t half-bad, but the pace of the film is just too slow for me.

This film spun a massive controversy because its very sexual content. That was probably the thing Bernardo Bertolucci was aiming for, `cos otherwise his new work might have been unnoticed. Mathew is an American student that goes to study to Paris in 1968 and happens to be there at the time of student riots. Yet he doesn`t participate in them for he rather plays sex games with Isabelle and her twin-brother Theo. All of them are fans of good films and music, and they live in a world of peace and boheme. Before watching this film I was informed that there would be quite a lot of sex in it, and it was. Sadly apart from being beautifully done this film hasn`t got very much else to offer. As a matter of fact I`d think that it is a perfect film for a person that thinks of itself as a film expert but actually isn`t one (me for example). There are references to films by Godard, scenes from some old films are shown and once you recognise one of them you think of yourself very highly. If you don`t recognise the scene you think that it only proves the greatness of this film. As for me, I`m not a fan of French new-wave, but "The Dreamers" seemed to me being just a kinkier version of "Zabriskie point". And "Zabriskie point" isn`t my favourite film either.

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.