Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

To start with - my expectations for this film there pretty low. What else could one await from a film like this? First, it`s a sequel. Second, I never ever bothered to watch the original film. Third, Bridget Jones - isn`t that this for-ladies-only film where you can see the world just like any woman sees it? Sorta "Sex and the City" style? To continue: I don`t know whether this is similar to "Sex and the City". Why? Because I`ve never watched a single episode of the series. To continue even further: the film wasn`t thad bad. Ok, it was a comedy that very rarely made me laugh. But - do I often laugh while watching a comedy? Not so often for sure. And that goes for good comedies as well. Bridget Jones`s relationship with Mark Darcy falls apart because of her thinking that she`s cheating upon her. So she has nothing better to do than to fall back into the hands of Hugh Grant (what`s the name of his character? wasn`t it Hugh Grant?). But Hugh Grant still is an asshole. And Mark Darcy isn`t one. That`s basically it. Of course, this is a romantic comedy. Of course, most of the jokes aren`t particulary good. But, since this was the next film I watched after "Meet the Fockers" I can compare these two films. In terms of actors the F word film was better. In term s of plot - I`m with Bridget.

Going to an art gallery isn`t a very regular thing in my diary. Why is it so? I`m not quite so sure. Apperantely I like art, but I`m just too lazy to go and look at it. This Maija Tabaka is probably the most famous (at least in Latvia) living painter of my country. And her works certainly have their charm. Mostly her paintings look a bit goth - the characters often have a bit greenish/pale faces and you`d probably never call her style very optimistic. The colours are either very bright and a bit agressive or very thick and spaced. I guess her favourite colours are black and white. But you can never know. What did the paintings remind me of? Probably, there`s a very slight similarity to Andy Warhol, with the exception that (as far as I know) the paintings weren`t done by updating photos. Still stylistically there is something similar to that. One thing I`m sure of is that Maija Tabaka doesn`t specialise on painting landscapes - there are people everythere, and quite a huge part of them are Roma people. And the ones that aren`t Roma look like they were a bit mad, posessed or even like zombies. I`m not gonna try to dig deeper, possibly even searching for the meaning but I`m certainly glad that I went to this exhibition and I found the pictures very interesting (man, did the last sentence sound like some right-thinking crap I`d probably use in an essay back at school).

Public opinion isn`t more important than a dead rat. Critical opinion isn`t more important than a dead bug. My opinion isn`t more important than a dead me. Mr. Steinbeck appears to be a Nobel prize winner (in Literature, of course), but at least this book of his has no sign of literary genius whatsoever. According to what the critics say this is a comedical farse, a parody or something like that. Mr. Eristale is an amateur-astronomer living in Paris who suddenly becomes the king of France for because of struggle between the political parties monarchists take over and monarchy is restored in France. He doesn`t want to be king, for he`s a man whom nobody notices, who just wants to look at the stars. But suddenly he`s popular to the sky, although nobody gives him any power, he`s just a puppet. But the king doesn`t want to be a puppet. He wants to stand up for himself but he fails miserably and he is no king any more. The book is probably a very sharp political satyre of the French democracy, but it a) isn`t funny, b) sounds terribly dated, c) isn`t original. If a man who could write this unintersting could receive the most respected literary prize in the world this world just isn`t any good.

Once there was a time when I considered Viktor Pelevin my favourite writer. When I got hold of this book I thought this time to be over, never to return back. Now, a few days after reading this one I`m not sure what am I to expect from Pelevin now. On one hand, the book is thrilling, it has some very interesting strokes of word, but, on the other hand, the basic ideas are not more than recycling from Pelevin`s previous works. He doesn`t come up with very many fresh ideas, although the plot is twisted enough. What is it all about? Actually it`s a bit of a love story - she is a were-fox at the age of more than 2000 but looking like a Lolita. He is a were-wolf who works for the Russian FSB. He wants to become the uber-were-wolf but she already is the uber-were-fox. The language in the book is pretty explicit, although there`s no "explicit content" sign on the cover. I guess this novel is quite good at describing what life in modern Russia is like. Probably Mr. Pelevin is no optimist, his vision is one full of sex and drugs, but he doesn`t become too pesimistic and he certainly doesn`t preach what he wants the world to be like - that`s a very positive thing indeed.

Luis Bunuel was one of the greatest directors that ever came out of Spain. And when I got this film I thought it was one of his works. But I was proven wrong - because I thout it was something like "Bunuel`s mesa del ray Salomon" but "y" in Spanish, as it was proven by "Y tu mama tambien" means "and". So it`s more like "Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail". With the exception that this isn`t a real adventure film and that the grail is replaced with king Solomon`s table which can tell both past and future. On Bunuels journey his two friends are with him - painter Salvadore Dali and poet Luis Garcia Lorca. The film is totally surreal, quite in the same style Bunuel did in the 1930s together with Dali ("The Andalusyan Dog" is surely the best example). It`s not clear when all the things happen - is it some twisted today with them all having jumped out of the thirties, or is it some twisted 1930s with modern Japanese tourists. Anyhow, this film is bizarre. Although at the beginning I thought this to be somewhat similar to "National Treasure" this film reminds me of nothing. And I don`t know whether this means something good or bad. By the way, what was "The Andalusyan Dog" about? I guess the same thing. And that would be? ...Um,... don`t know.

It`s been a few years since the first part of this film "Meet the Parents" came out, and now the makers of that film decided that the right time has come to milk the cat once again. Milk the cat, get it? I`m so good at recycling jokes that I truly believe that one day I`ll have my own recycling company. But until that day I`ll watching stupid romantic comedies just like this one. Mr. Gaylord (aka Gary) Focker and his fiancee that probably also has a name of her own are planning to get married but first their parents must meet. And knowing the fact that Gay`s father is a house-husband while his wife is a sex therapist, but Mr. Byrnes worked his entire life for the CIA some problems may arise. And so they do, as a matter of fact. The good thing about the crap is that Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand play senior Fockers (not that I liked any of them, but they are good, aren`t they?). There`s a baby involved, a baby that`s not even born yet, and a child at the age of 15 is also here. Why do I tell so much about them kids? Hell do I know, I just want to write something more. The film wasn`t utterly disposable, but it was still pretty lame, and a bit too romantic for my perverted mind. Give me blood, guts and pussy (trademark of the Dwarves) you morons!

Only a madman would desire to watch a thing like this. Everybody (or at least a few elitist people on the web) knows that Elvis` best period in terms of music was the 1950s and after that he had a major decline turning from the worlds leading rock`n`roller into a Frank Sinatra with shaking hips and knees who didn`t have Sinatras voice. And 1977 was also the year when the king died (or was abducted by space aliens). By that time he was not particulary old, a bit fat, and he sung stupid songs. In terms of songs this concert isn`t actually as bad as I suspected - it has both "I want to be your teddy bear" and "Jailhouse Rock" - two from his finest numbers, but the actual performance of these songs isn`t very impressive. And neither is it interesting to see and hear him perform some stupid mellow songs that he can`t sing at all and to those he even can`t shake his overweight body. It`s a really pityful experience watching him, knowing that just a month later Elvis would have been gone. But this isn`t a good way to say farewell. At least after watching a performance like this you`d most likely never think that that guy was named the King.

The first dissapointment of the year. For the last few months I have been a fan of Duerenmatt`s work - both his short stories and plays have impressed me quite significantly. But now I found out that he was also capable of rewriting classical stuff (although I have no idea whatsoever what the original Wojcziek was about) and make it sound boring. Not that I said that I find "Faust" by Goethe particulary interesting in its original form for the modern audience. But still I expected this to be more fun. Probably my lack of interest has something to do with the fact that I`m not a great expert of "Faust" and that I`m not an expert at all in everything else classical German literature could offer. I`m pretty sure that in "Urfaust" there are some elements from poems not by Goethe, just as there is something from the older version of the same book. But it`s dull (at least my taste found it to be that way). Wojcziek? I never even got what was the plot here. The lead character seems to be some stupid fool, who has some problems with his wife. And he does a job that doesn`t get paid too well. That`s probably all I can tell. Apart from the fact that from now on I won`t believe that Duerenmatt=very good quality brandname.

Man, is my memory twisted like Elvis`s ankles! How on earth could I forget whilst rebuilding my long suffering factoid about the existence of this jolly good book! Apparently this Dahl fellow used to write stories for children. Not to be monotonous he also wrote some short stories for the bigger audience that doesn`t wet it`s pants quite so often (unless being drunk as shit, if you ask me). So, there`s quite a lot of those stories in this book. They are slightly in o`Henri`s manner - having a twisted, quite unexpected ending to something what you`d call quite regular. Or not regular, as a matter of fact. There`s one about a wife who`s husband had cheated on her - she kills him with a frozen lambs leg and feeds the weapon on death to the arrived policemen who are looking for the exact same thing. Then there`s a guy who has a bet on whether he can guess the exact brand of a wine (which he already knows). I personally liked one about some person that has lost his money in a debt and tries jumping of a ship so to be able to win the bet, but he doesn`t succeed at that, as you could probably guess. And last but not least there`s the "Automatic Writer" (or something like that) about a computer whiz who creates a machine that can write short stories and novels. You`re bound to laugh your behind off upon reading this - unless you`re some freak that has no behind at all. By the way, I read somewhere that Dahl was the writer who wrote about the most interesting ways to die. The only problem is - where have I misplaced this book? I absolutely must find it!

It took me some time to get a hold of this book. You see, it never got published in Latvian and it can not be bought in Russian. As far as I`ve understood it`s banned or something like that. Weird things happen in the world. It`s not that scandalous - just a very good book. Anyhow there are three parallel stories taking place on the pages of this book. Or are there just two of them? Or is it four? I`m not so sure. The central line tells us about Saladin Chamcha and Gibreel Farishta - two Indian actors who survive a air-plane explosion and after that they somehow turn into respectively Satan and arch-angel Gabriel (Shaitan and Gibreel for the muslims). But the angel isn`t that good and satan that bad. Probably what bugged the muslims the most is another part of the story which tells us about Mahound (Mohammed) and his revelations from Gibreel (this story comes to Farishta in his sleep). It`s actually a bit similar with what Bulgakov wrote about Jesus. And the third story line is about Ayesha - a young woman that leads her whole village to Mecca on a pilgrimage. What`s weird is the outcome - you can`t really say, whether the ending was or wasn`t a lucky one for the pilgrims. This was certainly not an easy reading task by any means - Rushdie`s writing style, his choice of words, his structure of sentences aren`t easy to handle for a person like me that`s not too strong in English, but it was most certainly worth it. It was worth the time, the effort, for "Everything will be asked from us and everything will be given."