Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Now we are hooked on classics. And who can be a bigger British classic than Mr. Dickens? Only the metre Shakespear himself, but he`s too goddamn old. David Copperfield once was a sensation, and it does have its strong points even now. In this huge novel we get to follow the life of a boy who has it tough from the beginning. His father doesn`t come back from the war before David is born. His mother marries a villain who driver her into the grave, and leads his stepson into physical work at a very small age. David escapes and runs away to his grandaunt, a very interesting person, who because of some strange reason dislikes donkeys more than anything (how can a person be so rude not to like those adorable creatures)! After that his life improves a little, David goes to a good school, meets the Nora - the girl of his dreams (who`s quite childish and stupid), marries her, has problems because of a guy named Uriah Heep ("July Morning" - you got to know that song), his wife dies, he marries the one woman that had loved him his entire life (Agness, the daughter of an influential lawyer that once offered David a place to live). The ending is certainly banal - the good characters live happily ever after, the bad ones are punished (even the ones that certainly would have escaped from that), but that goes without saying for such a moral work. But it`s still worth reading, especially if you have a good taste in classical literature.

Latvians and comedy? It`s not like fish and chips, it`s more like fish and meat. Or I don`t know what and I don`t know what. Ok, Maris Bishofs went to Israel and spent there a few years but he still comes from Latvia. At this exhibition there were his drawings done over a period of something like fourty years - starting with the work back home for a magazine named "Dadzis" and including work back home again for our biggest daily newspaper "Diena". Basically his work is done as carricatures. The technique is very simple - I guess I would be able to draw like that. But what he has is a massive amount of ideas, of creativity and certainly of wit. The level of details is extremely low - Bishofs doesn`t draw what you can see everywhere around you, and if he does that he does it in a minimalistic manner giving you a perfect impression of what life is like. And what is life like? It`s not particulary great, there are banks and casinos everywhere, people ar reduced to numbers and have about as much individuality as birds flying south. I enjoyed this exhibition like I rarely enjoy something. It`s in the following style - you laugh and think at the same time: damn, is it sad! A wonderful experience for sure.

Some 20 years after his notorious "Dog`s Heart" Bortko has once again taken up the challenge of transferring a work of Mikhail Bulgakov to the big screen. Sadly the screen isn`t that big after all - the film is done in form of 10 episodes as a TV series. Most people probably know that TV series usually don`t have neither the money, nor the quality of a real big screener. But in case of Russia you can never know anything - one thing Russians are known for is their unpredictability. And sure they have once created some of the best TV mini-series ever, including "Mesto vstrechi izmenitj nelzja", "17 mgnovenij vesni", "The adventures of Sherlock Holmes" etc. But it all was in the old days when hobbits still happily lived in the snows of Siberia behind fences with barbed wire and guarded by tall and splendid looking goblins. In the modern days Russians have mainly switched to doing Hollywood-like action films, patriotic bullshit (also Hollywood-like) and TV soap operas. Therefore one can`t expect that Bortko would pull off a "Stalker" with his new film. Instead of stepping forward he has chosen to step back and look at the tradition. This comes once again as no surprise, since in "Sobachye serdse" he also used the black-and-white imagery immitating the aura of the pre-war post-revolution Russia. While watching "Master i Margarita" you`ll probably think that the last 60 years of cinematography simply don`t exist in the mind of Bortko - he rarely uses moving camera, editing is pre-CitizenKane styled, music only comes up when the viewer might otherwise not notice an emotionally dense moment etc. And the cat is done in form of a life-size pupper (or something like that) in a fashion a bit similar to that used in "Teenage Witch Sabrina". I`d certainly prefer a stop-motion animation cat in a fashion similar to that of Jan Svankmajer`s films but ok - that`s Bortko`s choice and not mine. So far the film seems ok - not brilliant, but not half bad either. The only thing that really bothers me is that some actors seem to have come directly from a theatre scene thus incapable of not overacting - intonations of secondary characters are occasionally absolutely unbelievable.

Jāatzīst, ka veids, kā es pavadīju vakaru, kamēr Liene un viņas kolēģi no MT ballējās pa kaut kādu viesu namu, varētu radīt neizpratni. Proti, es skatījos filmu par striptīzu. Tas vēl nebūtu nekas brīnumains - kāpēc gan vīrs nevarētu, kamēr sieva ir prom, noskatīties kādu labu filmu par striptīzu? Tomēr mazliet dīvaini ir tas, ka "The full monty" ir filma par vīriešu striptīzu. Te jau varētu aizdomāties par skatītāja seksuālo orientāciju, vai ne?

Nekad tā īsti nebiju 10CC ieklausījies un īstenībā izņemot viņu lielāko hītu - "I`m not in love" - neko par šo grupu īsti nezināju.

As a fan of Eco it was my duty to read the only one of his novels (except for the latest one) that is not translated into my mother language. First I prepared to take on it in Russian since I already had read "Baudolino" in that language. But when I found out that the English version cost about the same as the Russian I decided to push myself to the limit and read this book in a language that I`m not particulary comfortable with. Only when the book was already in my hands a vague anxiety creeped into my mind whether I would be able to read Eco in English. Mr Eco`s books aren`t usually characterised by an extremely simple language and the intellectual baggage provided in each of his novels couldn`t fit in a nutshell. Therefore one really needs to be quite brave (and stupid as a matter of fact) to try to get through one of his works in a foreign language. Yet I am not a chicken, I`m a donkey and that means that I`m stubborn. So I took a grip of myself and started reading. And you know what? You wouldn`t believe me but it wasn`t that difficult at all. Ok, there are passages in Latin in this book but they still would be in Latin head I read them in Latvian. There is a character who speaks in a mixture of different languages which seems to be something between English and German in this translation but it probably would have been much weirder in Latvian-German.

Autostopotāja eposa trešā daļa pastāsta daudz par dzīvi uz Zemes divu miljonu gadu pagātnē, kura stājas priekšā Artūram Dentam un Fordam Prefektam. Pateicoties kļūdai vietas un laika vienotībā viņiem palaimējos nokļūt zemes mūsdienās - divas dienas pirms Vogonu veiktās pasaules likvidācijas, turklāt Česterfīlda dīvāna sabiedrībā un kriketa laukumā.

"Next" izrādījās fenomenāli labs teorijas apstiprinājums, tas nu ir fakts. Kādas teorijas? Pirms filmas skatīšanās Noras māsīca izteicās, ka viņai trulās un vienveidīgās Holivudas filmas ir piegriezušās un ka viņa to skatīties nevar (savā ziņā interesanti, ka to saka 18-gadīga meitene, kas skatās/skatījās MTV bagātnieku realitātes šovus, bet that`s not the point). Tā kā šī ir zinātniskās fantastikas (more or less) filma, kurā galvenajā lomā ir Nikolass Keidžs - daudzu lielisku filmu dalībnieks, bet filma tapusi pēc kāda Filipa K. Dika (viena no ievērojamākajiem amerikāņu zinātniskās fantastikas rakstniekiem) stāsta, mums bija pārliecība, ka tā varētu kalpot par pretpiemēru.

Paraquoting a review that "Spinal Tap" got to its album "Shark Sandwich" ("Shit Sandwich") this is Legally Shit 2, Blonde Shit 2 - or whatever you want. 17 minutes of this film was more than enough to stop watching it.

The second day with the series didn`t produce a lot of unexpected effects. We see the first glimpse of Margaret, who happens to be pretty enough to be what she is. We also se Master meeting Ivan Bezdomny at the clinic and telling him that the stranger whom he met was the Devil himself. Apart from that the whole "Variete" gang including Rimsky and Varenuha suffer badly, Voland and his company have their performance and that is it. In terms of things bugging me or not bugging me. Most critics in Russia are somehow dissatisfied with the portrayal of Korovjev, although I find the actor nearly perfect. The actor playing Bezdomny reciewes only good words although he seems to much of Shura Balaganov (from "The golden calf") to me. The lack of special effects and the static camera grow more and more on me and I don`t care about them anymore. Probably I wouldn`t notice the camera at all, had I not read how badly it was used. The whole performance of the dark magic was done quite good despite some minor flaws combining two scenes in one. More about "Master and Margaret" will be written when I watch the later parts.