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!

I might have been a person that would think - Oh, this film has Jack Nicholson in it, he`s such a brilliant actor, I absolutely must see it! Or I might have been another kind of person that would think - Oh my god, Sean Penn - a brilliant actor - directed this film and he even got Jack Nicholson and Benicio del Torro to starr in his film. But in fact I watched it because its based on a novel by Friedrich Duerrenmatt. Sadly it`s not a comedy but a piece of crime/drama. And that`s not the thing I love Duerrenmatt for. Ok, I didn`t have no bad feelings because of this film being a thriller/crime movie, but it just didn`t work as well as it would be in the case of a comedy. So we have this retired cop (Nicholson) who has given a pledge to find the murderer and rapist of a little girl. The police find the supposed killer - a mad Indian but the old fox can`t believe that it`s the real killer, but after the guy commits suicide he has no way of prooving that the Indian wasn`t the guy he`s looking for. So he starts an investigation of his own and becomes too involved and partly goes crazy himself. The film was interesting to watch and until the very end I couldn`t know who the killer was, but actually it wasn`t more than a crime movie - and crime movies don`t sell like hotcakes in terms of rating points.

It`s been almost ten years since I saw this film on TV. And now after a long waiting (I remembered about it something like a year ago but didn`t know what its title was), I finally saw it again... on TV! Actually on VHS which was recorded from TV but never mind that. The film is based on a short story by Kurt Vonnegut (which I hadn`t read before re-watching the film) and tells about the world of tomorrow where all people are equal both socially, physically and mentally (oh God, there`s three aspects and not two, what am I supposed to do about the word "both"?), and in every other aspect. To achieve that marriages are designed to have average kids and the best mark at school is C. But Harrison Bergeron is a very bad student he never gets lower than A+ and has to stay in the same class for several years. Since he can`t be cured with the help of a little antenna attached to his brain he has to overgo an operation. But if he doesn`t want that he can join the real masters of America and remain as smart as he is. Only by doing that he loses his family and isn`t allowed to have any private life. This film isn`t a big budget one, of course, but I liked it anyhow. Out the actors only one of them made it big later - the guy who played Harrison later became Sam in LoTR trilogy.

God, is it boring! Ok,I know not all music is supposed to make you you get up your lazy ass from the floor and shake as if you were out of your mind but I really can`t imagine anything less amazing than the song on this album that bears the same name as the album itself. It goes on for 13 and a half minutes and it goes nowhere repeating one silly guitar fragment for the entire length of this song. Probably that fragment ain`t that bad but only if you don`t need to listen to it for some 100 times in a row. Luckily as we approach the end of the song the fragment is outshadowed by some other noices but it still is so idiotical that the only thing I can think about is some Brian Eno stuff where he plays the same four notes for half an hour. A perfect description to what this album is like can be got if you just jump some 30 seconds forward in any song you`ll most likely never notice the skipping because there will be no change of sound at all. Even watching your toenails grow can be more intriguing than this record!

I`m a real sucker for everything each of the MPFC members did. And how could I possibly forget to watch occasionally every of the films they did all together? Especially knowing that "Life of Brian" is my favourite film of theirs. Some people say it mocks Jesus, but actually it only mocks people that say that it mocks Jesus. Brian from Nazareth was born in a cowshed some 10 metres away from the real Messiah and at some stages of his life was mistaken for being one. He was just a normal patriotic Jewish fellow, who didn`t want to be no Messiah but who wanted to free Jerusalem from Romans. Every single scene in this film is a classic, starting with the three wise men and ending with crucified men singing "Always look on the bright side". I can`t even describe how great this film is, because otherwise I would need to quote the whole film. The late Graham Chapman is Brian, every other MPFC member plays a whole carriage of different roles, even Terry Gilliam who ain`t particulary talkative as you know. Anyhow if you haven`t seen this film you haven`t lived and you won`t know where your father put the little things that somehow get lost just the night before.

Jim Carrey used to do mainly butt jokes and silly faces. Nowadays he`s a somewhat respected actor in dramas. Not that this film here was respected. Basically it was a real flop for Mr. Carrey. And I got to admit that among his dramatic works - "Eternal Sunshine", "Man on the Moon", "the Truman Show" this one is certainly the least interesting. On the other hand it ain`t that bad either. Peter Appleton is a script writer for B-movies who suddenly is blamed for being a commie (that happens in the beautiful 1950s era of McCarthyism). He loses his job, his girl, gets drunk and has a car accident after which he loses his memory and settles in a quiet little town named Lawson where the former director of the local cinema mistakes Peter for his son Luke who died in WW2. He becomes the local hero and even has Luke`s former girlfriend Adele back, still his mind is a time-bomb and the government is looking for him supposing that he`s a top level communist. This film really is somewhat similar to "Mr Smith goes to Washington" with the exception that Peter isn`t a real hero, but a man from the middle of the road. The whole flick is a bit too melodramatic and the ending is predictable, still despite this film going on for 2.5 hours I liked it, `cos commie hunt is an interesting subject in deed.

It ain`t the classic version of Time Machine from 1960, but this version was directed by a great-great-great-grandson of Herbert Wells. Not that it makes the film better or worse. But there`s certainly one thing about both of those films - filmmakers don`t follow Well`s vision about both Eloi and Morlocks not being particulary good. In this movie, for instance, Eloi allow Morlocks to use themselves as some sort of food only because Morlocks manipulate their minds. Whilst Wells had his vision about the working class living underground and transforming into some wild beings and the upperclass turning into upperclass twats with no brain whatsoever jumping around like bunnies and caring for nothing, those darned makers of film even let Eloi know common English and have the sign of "Tiffany`s". The hero loses his bride who`s killed by a robber and he creates a time machine to go back in time and save her, but she dies anyway and he understands that he can`t change the past but doesn`t understand why. So he goes to the future to have this question answered. Ultimately he ends up 800000 in the future in the world of Morlocks and Eloi (which have separated one from another after the Moon broke). The film has pretty good SFX, but apart from it it`s pretty flat, has quite a lot of plot holes in the size of a manhole, oh, and Morlocks look silly.