Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

In the Soviet Union Mr. Vysotsky was a real icon - his songs were symbolising not agreeing with many things, something like that. In 1980 he died from having too much alcohol and morphium - he wasn`t what you call a real pioneer in everyday life, and not even in his songs. But even now - 25 years after his death Vysotsky is still celebrated as an actor, as a poet and even as a singer. This exhibition was to show some info about his songs, and about his life. What I found good was that the exhibition didn`t only provide positive information about the hero but also gave some critique - which is a logical thing if a person was as controversial as Mr. Vysotsky. On my personal opionion of him - some of the songs have good lyrics, musically they are lamer than the ones by Leonard Cohen but he was a great actor, especially I like his most famous work - "Mesto vstrechi izmenit nelzja" - if you were born in the Soviet Union you`re bound to know this one. About the exhibition - it was pretty good, but not groundbreaking of course.

Of course, I had seen this film before. But why can`t I tell what I think about it now? I`m not weird enough to add this to the date when I first saw the film - it was quite a long time ago and I`ve wouldn`t remember it that good, had I written only based on the first watching. So, Amelie is a waitress in a cafe in Paris but her life changes one day when she finds a "treasure box" a boy hid in her suite some fourty years ago. And she decides to find the owner of childrens stuff she has found. And from that day everything goes in another way than it did before. The film is directed by the same Mr. Jeunet that created "The city of lost children" and "Delicatessen". "Amelie" also has a weird world in it but it`s not dark and dreary anymore - it`s just weird, every person has his little funny hobbies which don`t do other people no harm. The message of the film is a positive one, and it`s not sad and funny, it`s just funny without being primitive at all. Probably one of the best films I`ve ever seen. And it gave Audrey Tautou international fame - which she certainly deserved. It was nominated for five Oscars but didn`t receive a single one - and I don`t even wonder why.

Let`s start with a simple question? Have I read "Peter Pan"? Have I watched a film about "Peter Pan"? Do I at least know the story of "Peter Pan"? Well, what do you think? Of course, I haven`t done single one of those things. So, watching this movie I wasn`t thinking all the time - oh my God - Johnny Depp is James Barrie - the creator of Peter Pan! My pants are almost wet already! Ok, let`s cut the crap! The film is a supposedly partly true story about how the idea of "Peter Pan" came to Mr. Barrie`s mind. He meets Sylvia Davies and her four sons, and the meeting is bound to change their lives. What surprised me was that this film had no developed love story - Depp and Winslet didn`t like even kiss a single time! That was cool I must say. No wonder this film is only PG rated! Still what was wrong with the film that it had quite much resemblance to Tim Burton`s "Big Fish", thus the originality wasn`t particulary high. But nevertheless the film is beautifully made and perfectly acted. What more can you ask for?

This is a rare thing when at the beginning of a review I`m not sure whether the rating for the film is gonna be good or bad. You see, Napoleon Dynamite is a weird film. It`s a comedy for teenies and partly about teenies, of course, but it`s not what you`d usually expect from a film like this. For example - there`s like a hundred situations in this film when you`re sure a stupid thing is gonna happen - for example that someone will receive a blow in the face, but then - it doesn`t happen. And another thing - for at least the first half of the movie it`s totally pointless. It just goes nowhere. Probably it`s because everyone in this film is a jerk (dork, freak) of some kind. Napoleon himself is just a weird looking and stupid acting flegmatic dude, his brother Kip (who`s 32 by the way) sits all day long in the chat on the web, Pedro is a weird mexican fellow with close to no emotions, and Deb - the girl, she`s like totally shy and flegmatic as well. It`s not too easy to describe the scene, for pretty much nothing happens most of the time - just like in real life. Well, probably, the film is good at doing what it tries to do. Probably not. I`m not really so sure.

Andrew Largeman returns to the place of his birth for the his mother`s funeral. In the small town everybody thinks that he`s a Hollywood actor, but in fact he`s just a waiter at some Vietnamese restaurant. When visiting a doctor he encounters Sam (Natalie Portman) - a weird and quite funny girl. A romance starts between them that`s bound to change Andrew`s life which has been a bit of problematic ever since he injured his mother when still being little. In some ways the film is similar to "Eternal Sunshine" with the difference that this one doesn`t have erasing memories and cool morphing. It`s somewhat romantic, and it`s somewhat funny, but I still wouldn`t call that a romantic comedy, because it`s more than that. Music in the film is awesome. So are some of the dialogues, and the characters as well. Was there something I didn`t like? Probably on that Ian Holm (Biblo Baggins) didn`t have furry feet and never mentioned the Ring. But that`s not really a complaint.

Last year I watched a film that was done after this book (and done brilliantly by Stanley Kubrick). And now when I had a chance to buy the novel, I didn`t really hesitate. Reading it in Russian was a bit weird though, for the storyteller has a wicked language that has borrowed quite a lot of words from the Russian language which would certainly look more like it if the rest of the text was plain English. Still the story is quite simple - Alex at the age of 15 is one spoiled brat who gets his kicks for living by attacking people in the streets and in their houses together with his gang. But suddenly his comrades turn the back on him and he`s left to the police and charged for murder (which he has commited). Alex goes to prison but after two years he joins a program for "curing" criminals which means that he gets pain every time he sees something bad happening or when he does something wicked himself. In the end he returns back to his old style of being a spoiled brat. Still in the book he grows out of it as well and becomes a normal member of the society. What I like about Alex is that he despite being a violent asshole loves classical music, is pretty intelligent - thus shitting on the whole concept of blaming the modern subculture for youth being out of control.

Why on earth do people write boring books? I really don`t know but probably they get some sort of tingling in their backbone from doing that. This book in question, for example, is a story about a woman that leaves her husband with a total stranger, spends a few months with him, then comes back to her husband, stays a few months at home, and goes away with the same stranger once again. Oh, and on her second leaving she dies in a car crash. For the 300 pages of the book it wouldn`t be too little, if there had been some other things happening. But basically it`s just what I`ve already told. Her thinking isn`t particulary interesting to me, her husband and lover are both quite uninspiring characters and the whole thing drags like a very slow snail that has probably suffered a heart attack just two minutes ago. And what`s the worst thing about it is that this is the most typical kind of German literature you can encounter - too pretentious, too long, too useless.

I never heard who this Grosek character was before I bought this book and I still don`t know too much about him. But there`s one thing I sure about - and it`s that "Restauration of a Dinner" is one of the best books I`ve read in quite a long time. What genre is it? Basically it`s over-the-top comedy, full of things that`s bound to make you laugh even if you`re a snobby and arrogant punk like me. There`s a detective somewhere inside it - about the weird death of Mr. Shkreta in Janka`s bath. Then there`s the mysterious writer Jiri Heller who apparantly doesn`t exist. Or does he? Then there`s Irena. Then there`s the writer himself. There are descriptions of different lands and cultures, lots of episodes that don`t have nothing in common. Until the ending you don`t know how anything relates to anything else, but in the end the picture is quite clear. And the mystery is so comical, that I don`t even know how to write about it. It`s prime genius, man, and you don`t have to be a genius to understand that. If you don`t appreciate this, you`re no friend of mine. If you don`t care - that`s ok with me. But if you`re lonely, if you have a depression - Mr. Grosek has the right cure for you, mate.

I`m a nasty pervert, my dears ones, and I`m not ashamed. Why should I be? Who are you to judge me? I watched this film about prostitution in 1920s and I`m not ashamed at all. And this film even features nudity from a 13-year-old Bruke Shields. And I don`t give a damn about this. What`s the story about? Violet is growing up in a whorehouse and her time to start making money arrives just now. Her mother wants to leave the damned place, but Violet has nothing against it - it`s a living after all. She`s a bit perverted for sure - but what else can you expect if you grow up in a place like this? There`s another important character in the film - it`s Bellocq - a photographer, who`s by the way a historical person - who made a lot of pictures of prostitutes of Storyville (that`s in in New Orleans). He develops some weird passion for Violet, but she`s not ready for him, of course, and not the physical part is the problem - she`s perfectly capable of that but her imagination of what life is about is a bit... so to say... uncharacteristic for a person like me. What`s wrong with this film? It doesn`t actually tell you that prostitution is bad, that child prostitution is bad (I may think that it is but it doesn`t matter) - and that`s ok with me, for the last thing I need is somebody moralising like he was J.C. in a McDonald`s cap.

You know what? I had nothing better to do, since I was in no mood for intellectual masterpieces, so I watched another of those "Bridget Jones" films. The first part it was. So, let`s go into details. Bridget Jones is a woman in her early thirties, a bit overweight, a bit too much drinking and smoking, absolutely stupid (ok, not absolutely but pretty far from intellectual for sure), and single. But that`s bound to change. How strange it might seem (knowing that she never had a real boyfriend of her own) there are whole two seekers of her body and soul. One of them is Colin Firth who happens to go around under the name of Mark Darcy. The other one is Hugh Grant, who also has a name for his character. Mark is a lawyer, and a not very interesting person. Hugh, on the other hand, is a very cool guy although he`s a bit sex obsessed. And only one of them can come out the winner. Although Mark stays with Bridget in the end, I guess Hugh shouldn`t be unhappy about - he had his share of love-making and he doesn`t have to stay with a smoking girlfriend. Although he strangely doesn`t feel happy at all. Comparing this film with the sequel, I found the first part a bit better. Why? I`ve absolutely no idea.