Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I don`t know whether the White Stripes will last as an important act of alternative music or they will fade into background like you name who, but right now it seems to me that they can`t just go wrong. Before watching and listening and enjoying this DVD I thought the Stripes had only a few really good songs under their belt. But now I`m sure that it`s not the case - "Apple Blossom", "You`re Pretty Good Lookin` (for a girl)", "Hotel Yorba" are probably the best performances of the night, but the band is impressive in deed. They even don`t do some of their most popular numbers - there`s no sign of "Fell in love with a girl" or "We`re going to be friends" or "Sugar never tasted so good". But we still get the mad Jack White slashing the guitar like he was some sort of Slash, and we get Meg White playing the drums with bare feet, and sometimes even with one hand. And if you say that a really great concert can`t happen if the band has only two members for they won`t be able to make music intense enough, you`re goddamn wrong. There`s no limits for this band, or at least it`s what it seems. Now I`m sure that one day I`ll see them live, because it would be a sin not to.

I`m not really sure whether I`m into books about homosexual people, but this is one piece of this category. There`s this man who`s lost his lover who died from cancer, and there`s this woman who`s husband die in a traffic accident. Both of them are lonely and have no one to comfort them. The woman does find a lover for herself but she doesn`t really know wheter she wants him just for sex, or she wants him for all but sex. They form a weird couple, but I guess I have already seen a couple like this in some film. The gay men fall into the most popular category of homosexual men - they are fashion designers, and it`s actually what brought the remaining one of them and the woman together - she brought a blue dress from those gay men. Not a particulary interesting book, of course, but not half bad as well, just not my kind of literature.

The concept as such is quite a fresh one, probably not a fresh one, but still something I never read. Its what women of the worlds most important men might have said. For example, how Desdemona could have told Othello that he was an asshole, or what Maria could have told God about herself being a virgin. Then there`s Martin Luther`s wife complaining for crowds of goodfornothings comming to them for dinner. And what I found the best of the sotireswere the words of Hetaere Megara for the women of Athens in order to stop war - she said that it`s not the lack of sex that will bring their man to victory but too much sex which will bring the end of the war without battles. Nobody listens to her, of course. I also found quite interesting what a dying Donna Laura can write to her beloved Petrarca blaming him for not caring about her at all but just loving a vision of his own, thus making her a masterpiece instead of a living woman. Feministic tendencies are quite strongly expressed in this book but why would I consider that to be such a bad thing? I have no reasons to do so.

Oh, dear, it`s the Coen brothers again! And this time they happen not having got George Clooney in the cast, but they somehow managed to sneak Tom Hanks in. What`s weird is Tom`s beard. I never imagined that he could have a thing like that on his face. But - he can! And it looks good. I gotta admit that at the beginning I thought he was the devil himself who went to ask a room from this nice old black lady, but I was proven wrong. He and his comrades from different backgrounds were planning taking a whole lot of money from a riverboat casino. And everything would be good if it weren`t for the black lady. The needed to kill her but not one of them could. Of course, there were circumstances to that, but she still happened to survive. What`s interesting about this film is that despite it being set in modern times of hip-hop most of the characters (except for the one played by Marlon Wayans of the Wayans clan) seem to be living in a world of yesterday. There`s a professor of philosophy (Hanks), there`s a mountaineer, an asian general and a stupid football player on the squad, and Marlon Wayans, of course. This film is somewhat similar to "O brother where art thou" in the fact that no one really gets the money in the end, but while that other film was inspired by "The Odyssey", this film here has a lot to do with Edgar Allan Poe. It`s funny, of course, because Coen brothers don`t do shit, it`s entertaining, probably it doesn`t have too much value, but it`s ok.

Probably you have never heard the name of this writer. Neither had I. But now I know that Erwin Grosche is one fellow with a strange taste for humour. What`s good is that his taste is good. If it weren`t I`d probably never read a book like this. As a matter of fact under any circumstances I wouldn`t be a likely person to read a book like this. "Praise of the province"? You gotta be kidding me, why I never! I don`t find too much interest in local things, I`m a global person that wants blood of the nation on my hands etc. I`m not really sure what the genre for this book could be. It`s not a novel, probably. Or is it? It`s got something similar to a storyline, but no, not really. There is some weird diary that somehow ties the book together, although most of the texts in the diary don`t make very much sense. For example, what do you think about something like this one: "Today I slept so long, that this writing is the only thing I can note."? Then there are stories about some people that are all probably the same person. There`s one guy who likes to dress-up as a cowboy, and there`s one who stands at a bus stop and wins the world championship for people waiting at bus stops. Mostly harmless - that`s what you can say about the people of this book. It`s probably really a praise of the countryside or of the little towns, but I don`t care. To me it`s just a collection of funny episodes.

Am I turning Japanese or is this the second film with Paul Giamati I`ve seen over the last couple of days? I guess the last option could be true. My first experience with this film wasn`t a positive one - upon watching the trailer to this film at a cinema I expected it to be a boring mediocre piece of crap. You know, something like "Road Trip" for middle-aged people. That does seem a bit disturbing, don`t it? There`s those two fellows - one of them is a teacher at school and a wanna-be writer, while the other one is a TV commercials actor, who is going to get married in just one week, and his pal organizes a bachelors party for him. The party isn`t that much of a party - Giamati`s character has planned a week of wine and golf, but it happens that his pal wants some real action, and they hook up with some girls (ok, none of them are boys or girls by my standards - the youngest of chicks is 33 by now, the older one is in her 40s already). But nobody tells the women that one of the party-goers is getting married in just a couple of days. Giamati`s character is quite similar to the one he played in "American Splendor" but the film is much better constructed, and less of a comedy and more of a drama. This ain`t surely a mainstream Hollywood film - it has very few "for your consideration scenes", not too much pretty faces, and a realistic view of life. Probably, there`s a bit too much information about wine for me but this still is the best candidate for Oscar as the film of the year I`ve seen so far (beating out "Neverland" and "Ray").

Together with the film "Ray" it`s certainly neccessary to listen to the last album by Ray Charles. Ok, probably there will be 20 more last albums by Ray Charles - but this one was the last album he was planning as an album and not just some hogwash collection of songs found in a garbage bin. This, if you can trust the people that give out Grammies is an astonishing album which brought Ray Charles 7 or 8 prizes. Why is that? Because, he`s dead for sure! The man had been around in the music business for more than 50 years and it would be a very bad thing to do not giving him a lot of posthumous awards? And the record? It`s ok. All the songs on here are duets, many of them even I do know already. The partners he chooses are quite good - there`s Diana Krall, Norah Jones, BB King, Van Morisson and some more, but this still is just a good album, that is good enough to be called good but not the album of the year as some people want to tell me. "Here We Go Again" with Norah Jones is surely my favourite song on the disc.

Trying to be living up-to-date and not in some imaginary world, I`m on my mission watching some of the films that are after this seasons Oscars. And one of them is this film here - "Ray" is a celebration of life of music genius Ray Charles. He was a blind black young man who went from the very bottom to the very top. Women, drugs, money, fame - he had it all. He almost lost his life to cocaine but was able to return back. He combined different styles of music together creating his own mix of r`n`b, gospel, country and jazz. And he died last year, that is probably the main reason for the success of this film. Ok, Jimmy Foxx is a very good actor, and I really believe him, so do all the other actors also seem very real. But the film has nothing more - it`s actually no different from "The Doors" - we get a drug addict who has lots of women, and still is a genius. Oh, no, we got one thing here - you see, all the problems with drugs came to him because when he wasn`t on drugs he had hallucinations because when Ray Charles was still a kid and was still seeing he saw his little brother die in a bowl of water. And this is it - the problem of childhood was the source of all his problems. And then - while the film about his life was made - he died, and - shebang! - a film that would probably never make no noise becomes a massive hit and goes for lots of Oscars! Isn`t that a bit silly, or is it just me?

Damn, does ones attitude change with time. When I was a kid I though Pink Panther to be the coolest cartoon character ever. Now in this series of 51 minutes of Pink Panther I found only one cartoon I could fully enjoy - and it was the one I had already seen back then when I was a kid. All the rest? Uninteresting, quite similar to Tom and Jerry (which I never liked). So what was the difference between those two cartoons? I don`t remember.

Ok, I am a bit of a fan of Russian (or Eastern European) movies, but I never try to be particulary generous while rating them. This "Mars" film isn`t gonna be big in the West of course, and I`m not really sure whether it was big in the East - although it has Gosha Kutsenko - a famous russian toughguy playing a boxer who`s run away from his sport. He lands in an obscure little town named Marx (which is spelled Marks in Russian) but it`s more like Mars to him than anything else. All people in this town work in a factory that produces stuffed toys and they don`t get money for their work - but fluffy money instead. He meets a girl working in a library and a young man who wants to marry her. Boris (that`s the boxer) doesn`t have to do anything to steal the woman away. But when he leaves she commits suicide. Overall this film isn`t particulary deep and it isn`t particulary interesting. It has its moments though. But at the beginning some of the actors seem to have been prepared for at theatre performance and not a film. But it`s not bad. And I keep contradicting myself. Ok, let`s add the rating and end this discussion for good.