Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

The Beatles play at the "Shea" stadium in the States. Overall their performance seems to have been quite a good one - and they don`t do only the popular numbers anymore, the recording quality certainly could have been much better, but it isn`t so there`s nothing that can be done about it. John goes a bit wild on there - stars playing the piano with his elbows and acting like he was crazy. Then the Beatles meet Elvis (although there`s no footage of that visit). But there`s one thing I didn`t know - that Elvis was actually supporting the idea of banning the Beatles in the States, so they wouldn`t spoil the american youth - and there even was an ugly photo of Elvis shaking Richard Nixon`s hand. "Norvegian Wood" introduces the sitar to popular music - that song isn`t performed live, but it`s still that big of a classic that I simply must mention it. The Beatles stop doing TV performances and start recording promo videos of their singles - as a matter of fact in this way they started the concept of music videos - cool. We reach "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" - thus coming very close to the best (imho) period of their carreer. They go to Japan and it turns out that they don`t sound too good - because the audience isn`t that loud therefore their mistakes can be heard.

We now reach the mid point of this massive documentary. The Beatles do Hollywood Bowl, go to America for the second time, get the MBI (member of the British Empire) from the Queen, John does some silly stuff on the stage (I guess, this may have influenced Monty Python`s Flying Circus, but I`m not really sure about that). After that they do the "Help!" film, which is a complete silliness. But now I know the reasons for that - the Beatles simply asked the scriptwriters to insert scenes in regions they had never been to - so they go to the Bahamas and skiing in the Alps, not caring too much about the plot of the film. And then there was the problem with the drugs - none of them was capable of remembering his part. But the most interesting part is Paul telling how he wrote "Yesterday" which came to him in a dream of his and he later was sure that he had heard the melody somewhere, for such a beautiful can`t come in a dream. And the other Beatles made some fun of this song as Paul`s solo number like introducing the song: "And now for Paul McCartney of Liverpool - opportunity night..." - and so he`s left alone on the stage with his guitar. And then there`s a cool introduction to a song done by Ringo who says: "There he is - all out of key and nervous he`ll sing "Act Naturally" - Ringo!" - a nice way to introduce himself.

The Beatles go to America for the first time, play the Ed Sullivan show, instead of lip-synching we get some pretty low quality live performances (because of the sound quality). The Beatles make their first movie. The best part is probably Ringo telling, why his performance was better than the others - it`s because of him having a hangover most of the time, therefore he didn`t need to act to show himself feeling miserable. Since I find that particular film quite good, the story of making it is also interesting for me. After that the Beatles go to Australia and do some shows back there. The music isn`t still what I want it be - because we don`t come past "A Hard Day`s Night" stuff. But it`s interesting to see and hear what the Beatles were like live, why those little girls got crazy from their performance. Probably I wouldn`t go mad but they still were a pretty good live band, especially concerning that they never could hear themselves during the performance.

Have you ever considered that the world outside your head never existed? That you were the only real person in this world and everybody else was just a part of your imagination? I certainly have. In this book the main hero who doesn`t even have a name accidentally discovers that there once was a philosopher named Gaspar Langenheart, who started a theory that he was the Creator of everything. And this hero starts looking for information on this philosopher, but it turns out that there`s there little to find. Not many people considered him significant, and more than that - there was no real proof that he ever existed and ceased to exist. But what happens is that the main hero partly becomes Gaspar himself, and its a thing like that - every 50 years a man jumps out of nowhere and starts digging up information on Gaspar Langenheart, thus prooving that the man was something like God and that he couldn`t die. Or could he? The book digs deep but manages to stay entertaining. It`s one of the best novels I`ve read this year, without the slightest doubt.

Oh, boy, what made me think this film had only two parts? It turned out that there was eight of them! That`s quite a lot - something like 10 hours of film about the Beatles. The second part actually was less interesting than the first one. Why? First, because I already knew some bits about the first year of Beatlemania. Then - the crappy live performances were substituted for great lipsynching performances. I`m not really sure whether the Beatles really never played live or the audio quality from those recordings is that bad that it didn`t get on tape. Whatever. But there was one really cool thing that stood out. When the Beatles did a performance at the Queen`s ball John before playing "Twist and Shout" said that they would need the help of the audience for that: "For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you just rattle your jewelry." That was pretty good. An appearance of them on a stupid comedy show was also fun. What else? There was a lot of unsuccesful takes in the studio, including a dialogue like this one: "Paul forgot to sing." - "God, I`m sorry. I was just watching George..." or "Don`t slow down for christ sakes... or I`m giving you no more drugs."

I guess very few concerts with close to no spectators at all ever had a guest list as impressive as this one. Could you believe that along with the Stones who organised this even the stage was walked by (in ascending order) Marianne Faithful, Taj Mahal, Jethro Tull, The Who and The Dirty Mac (a supergroup of John Lennon, Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix drummer), Keith Richard and Eric Clapton). Most of the performances are more than awesome. Although there are som major problems as well. First, Jethro Tull don`t play the music - only Andersons singing is done live (although we actually get to see Tony Iommi - the future Black Sabbath guitarist - on their line-up), but whats worse is that "The Dirty Mac" after doing a beautiful version of "Yer Blues" are joined on stage by a violin player and... Yoko Ono. After that conceptual shit begins - Yoko screams, the violinst plays something totally unlistenable, and that is supposed to be called art. Anyhow, the Stones own performance is good - they do "Sympathy for the Devil", "Jumpin` Jack Flash", "Parachute Woman" and one more song. "The Who" on the other hand play a part from their rock-opera "A quick one" and it`s also good, especially I dig Keith Moon bashing those drums like only he can. Overall - a good performance, and wasn`t it for Yoko, it`d be even great.

Buying this book I had my doubts. A book that`s called "A pervert" isn`t always good. But my intuition was correct this time. And I`m very happy about it, for before this book I had no knowledge of Mr. Schmitt whatsoever, but now I`ve become a real fan of his. The figure of Dennis Diderot is known to many people - he was one significant philosopher, even I have read a book entitled "Ramo`s Nephew" of his, although I don`t remember liking it very much. Still in this play we see him as a fighter for freedom and for pleasure. And we see that a philosopher can believe in things that don`t match one another at all. Diderot`s portrait is made by a young female artist named Trebouche but the cheeky thing is that he`s portrayed naked. And he wants to make love to her, but gets interrupted by lots of different people the whole time. Starting with his wife who`s had enough of him cheating on her, then there`s his daughter who wants to have a child from a friend of Diderot`s, and that`s not all. Diderot also tries to write something about morality for his encyclopaedia but he never quite achieves that, for every next thing that happens to him shows to him that morality isn`t what he thought just ten minutes ago. This is most surely a complete comedy, without any signs of drama, and its almost the perfect comedy, where dialogues are sharper than Albert Einstein.

I first read the play and then watched the film. Probably if I had chosen the other way around I`d appreciate the film more. We still get the same situation where Ms. Trebouche makes a portrait of the philosopher Dennis Diderot (naked), but some of the other stuff is a bit different from the play. First, there`s a bishop who comes to find an underground typography where Diderot`s "Encyclopaedia" is printed. And Trebouche is a weapon in his hands. The film is certainly much nastier than the play. There`s the wife of the baron in whos house Diderot lives, she`s a fat perverted food and sex crazy woman that spends much time with her castrated slave from the East who gives her massage and his never resting flag. Then there`s the wife of some gay dude. This wife of his in the beginning gets oral pleasure from Diderot and after that switches to receiving it from her cousine (female, of course). Hell, it`s somewhat similar to a porn movie, although not really. For example, I don`t think that a naked man chasing his wife in the park and talking philosophical nonsense would fit very well in a porn movie. Still it`s a letdown from the book, but you can`t expect a film to go exactly as a book.

I`m not so sure you`ve heard about this, but there once was this rock`n`roll band that beared the name "The Beatles". It was hugely popular in the strange decade of 1960s and some claimed that the band was more popular than Jesus in his prime years (I mean before he switched to Christian Rock). And some 20-25 years after the Beatles ceased to be this film was made. "Anthology" is it`s name, and here comes the first part. It has the early days of the Beatles on it. From the day when John Lennon was born until "Please Please Me" topped the charts and the "Fab Four" became fab. We see and here audio and video footage of very bad quality with the Beatles playing at the cavern, playing in Hamburg, playing some demo sessions. We see how they had this really good looking guy in the band, I guess his name was Martin, who couldn`t play the base, but at least he was cool. From the point of music this film isn`t that great - c`mon, back in 1959, for example, The Beatles weren`t the Beatles millions learned to love. But still this is an interesting historic document, clearly showing the way the band made its way to the top, despite everything that went in its way. I stiil hope that the second part of the documentary will be better than this, for it surely will feature better music on it.

I have always been a fan of Mr. Kundera, and his latest work didn`t dissapoint me even as much as a tiny, tiny little... thing. And it surely doesn`t mean that my expectations were low. Irene is a woman in her fourties that lives in France but now has a chance to return to her homeland of Prague since the iron curtain has fallen. She doesn`t really want to, but other people tell her - she must. There she meets Joseph - another man from the exile whom she once met when they were very young. Still this book isn`t that much about the main characters. It`s about the homecoming and its painfulness and senselesness. Kundera`s hero are somewhat similar to Odysseus who was abroad for 20 years and came back to people that didn`t bother to notice that he had changed. The book is about our memories and how they betray us. How we remember very little, and each our own, and how nobody really knows anyone at all. It`s very sad, it`s a book by an old man who has very much knowledge, a bit of humour but very little hope for this world. Read it if you can. And if you can`t read - don`t read it.