Emir Kusturica is considered to be a great filmmaker, and after this film I have absolutely no doubt that he really is one. "Life is a Miracle" is a film about the Bosnian war in early 1990s but it`s probably the weirdest film about war I`ve ever seen. Like an army man says to the main hero: "This isn`t your war or my war, it`s the war of some idiots." (or something similar to that). Luka is a railroad man, although there are no trains on the railroad, his wife is a half-crazy opera singer and his son wants to play football at Partizan Belgrade. But the war changes their lifes dramatically - Jadranka goes completely crazy and runs off with some Hungarian accordeon player, Milos (the son) is drafted and taken war prisoner, but Luka has a war prisoner of his own - the beautiful Sabaha that`s given to him planning to exchange her for Luka. But it proves that he falls in love with her and doesn`t want no change. The film doesn`t show the good people on one side, the bad - on the other, Luka doesn`t have anything to do in his position with Milosevic or anything like that. The film is apolitical. It doesn`t show any battles. It`s very warm and heartfelt. It made me cry, if you want to know. This certainly wasn`t the first very dramatic comedy I`d seen over the past years, but this certainly ranked among the best films I`ve seen - the images, the sounds, the characters, the dialogues - it all made perfectly good sense.

Once Vladimir Voinovich was a very important writer in this part of the world - he was one of the so-called dissidents, he wrote about the private Chonkin - a legend in terms of underground literature, he was even extradicted from his native country. But nowadays he`s basically an old fart. Ok, that is a tough thing to say about an old man who has suffered quite much in his life, but it`s still true. This book, for example, it`s basically autobiographical and it`s bound to show how much he has gone through in his life. Well, and how much is that? Not that much actually. Ok, he had some hard time when nobody published his works in the USSR, he had no telephone, a small apartment- but he didn`t starve for he had money from books published in the West, he had a loving wife, he wasn`t physically hurt - although he claims that he was poisoned once and even writes about it for something like 150 pages, but I guess there were millions of people in the USSR who had it tougher than he did, only most of them weren`t as talented as he was, therefore their sufferings weren`t worth that much. Ok, he doesn`t claim to be the only one who had his problems with the regime but he surely seems to be quite a brave character who went through snow and rain (I meant to say that instead of fire and ice) in order to achieve something. Overblown, too much elderly sexuality like only a really old pervert could write, and not particulary much to say - that`s all this book can offer, by the way - I have no idea what good this book is already now - it`s been 15 years since the Union collapsed and Soviet bureaucracy doesn`t seem to be a problem to me nowadays.

It`s been a many long year since I read this book (at the moment of the writing that is), because this is one of the pieces that came into the zone of no return when my computer crashed last summer. The date of reading is probably wrong as well, but I don`t really care for that. This is a story of a long time communist named Aglaya Revkina that is a fan of Mr. Stalin and even organized a monument of his in the little village where she lived (or was it a small town? i don`t care that much about it) and when Stalin became unpopular she even held the monument in her own apartmenet. There was also some guy who did some blowing up for local criminals in modern (post-soviet) Russia who lived in the same house with Aglaya, then there were some modern stalinists that started visiting Aglaya, to be honest, that`s the most of what I remember from this book. Also I remember that the first part was somewhat interesting, but as we were heading towards the conclusion the book became less and less appealing to me - and Mr. Voinovich became more and more traditional in the sense that many modern Russian writers do the same gangster-criminal style, although I did get that his main target probably was showing that a criminal is worse than a communist, for a communist at least has some ideals, still most communists are criminals and have no ideals (yeah, there were some scenes with people that at first glorified Stalin, than spat at him and the glorified him once again). Not to mention that the only time in her life when Aglaya had an orgasm was by looking at the father of the Soviet Union in person.

Whoopie! We`we entered the marvelous world of comic books! Ok, this film isn`t really based on a "Batman" or something like that but it does show what the comics world looks like. The actors department is more impressive than you can probably imagine - Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Gambon, Lawrence Olivier (that`s a totally cool thing to use a dead man to play a dead man), Angelina Jolie - that is certainly more than enough for a really good film. Visually it`s also stunning - clearly imitating what future was projected to be in the first part of the 20th century - but with the advantage of technologies year 2004 provided. The film has very little colour and most of everything is done with the CGI - although at some stages this CGI looks a bit flat (especially with Paltrow in NYC). What`s the story about? A mad scientist has some weird plan of destroying the earth and starting a new civilization. In the process of bringing his plan to life he himself has died. But Sky Captain who`s happened to be called Joe thinks that the world can not end this way, and Polly - his former girlfriend - comes along. By the way, it somehow resembles to me "Broken Sword 2" - the computer game, there was also flying and there was a former girlfriend of the hero, whom he at least partly got back. Anyhow, this film is fun to watch but not particulary memorable.

The Coen brothers are truly a legend. They were the masterminds behind "The Big Lebowski" - certainly not a perfect film, but quite a solid one nevertheless. And in this film they decide to remake the "Odyssey" by Homer. With the slight change that Ulysses ain`t the man who fought at Troy but a dude who ran off with two of his pals from Parchment farm in order to return to his wife who wanted to marry another man. Although at the first glance you won`t see very much resemblance to the Odyssey, but actually almost every scene is connected with the legendary epic. There are syrens, there are cyclops, there are prophets - you name it. And there`s hell of a good music - despite the fact that action takes place in 1930s. Ulysses, Delmar and Pete form a band named "Soggy Bottom Boys" and the play nice old-time music. By the way, Ulysses is played by George Clooney - I never expected him to appear in a film like this. The dialogue is witty, the characters are very interesting, the only minor flaw is that the film has too much singing in it - especially in the middle of the film, when it`s not the main heroes who do the singing. Still, there`s one more thing - the IMDB says this film is basically British, although everyone in it is American. I say - I never disagree with IMDB.

Emir Kusturica goes to Hollywood! Just like Frankie did a long time ago. But to my opinion Emir failed in the States. Ok, he got Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway to star in this film, but this film still isn`t the best from Kusturica I`ve ever seen. And why is that? First, there`s very little interest in me for the characters - ok, probably Paul - the wannabe actor is interesting, but even Depp isn`t interesting to watch. What does the story tell? He is an orphan who`s uncle sells cadillacs, he meets Her who`s not so young and has a daughter of his age. He and She fall in love (sort of) and the daughter is jealous. The uncle dies. He is almost ready to switch from the mother to the daughter, but she commits suicide. And there`s also a partly developed story which came to Him in his dream - about some guys in Alaska and a fish. I had heard that this film had an amazing soundtrack - but I didn`t find that to be true also - ok, there was this totally marvelous song by Iggy Pop called "In the Death Car" plus the mexican "Besame Mucho" but that was it, plus quite a lot of Goran Bregovic songs which I don`t find particulary interesting. The audial material to "Life is a Miracle" is certainly better than this. Still, this isn`t really a bad film, it`s just nothing special. Oh, now when I want to add something to my comment: the behaviour of the daughter reminded me of a short film I watched something like a year ago, it was entitled "You killed me first" - and it was about as obscene as this thing, and really similar to Grace`s behaviour. Oh - and I remembered her name!

I`m becoming smart, you know. It`s only the beginning of February, but it`s the fourth exhibition I`ve already been to this year! And it goes either into the first or the second place. Of course, before this exhibition the name of Silvio Vigliaturo wasn`t known to me - as you probably know I`m not a big expert of modern art (or of classical art for that matters). How can I describe what the exhibition had? Well, the basic thing was glass and forms made of it. And these forms were coloured in a somewhat weird manner - with paint, not coloured glass, that`s for sure. Most of the works depicted either lovers, rock`n`roll musicians (not certain musicians but musicians as such) or amazones. As it was written on the wall - Vigliaturo`s inspiration comes mostly from Picasso, Matisse and Marc Shagal. About the first and the third one I guess I could have guessed. It`s a lot of abstraction, of course, but an interesting abstraction for sure. I`m not gonna say that this exhibition made me think or something like that - it was just beautiful, and I don`t ask for nothing more.

I don`t remember when I last watched a real quality detective movie. And this one is one in deed. Gosford Park amazingly got quite a lot of Oscar nominations in 2002 (although it won just a single one), which is weird for a film not having big stars in it and not being particulary groundbreaking. The story is a simple on indeed - a company of guests and servants has gathered in a huge house in the country for hunting but at night the master of the house, Sir William, is murdered. And almost everybody had some reason to want his death. The detective story isn`t the central moment though - it`s more about the relationships between masters and servants (the film is set in the 1930s), masters and masters, and servants and servants. Maggie Smith and Michael Gambon (both of whom play teachers in "Harry Potter"). What are the things that distinguish from a Agatha Christie piece (which it at times ressembles) - first, there`s no marriage in the end, the only possible pair parts never to see each other again (not that they put it like that). Then, the murderer doesn`t go to prison because the cop is less intelligent than Mrs.Christie could have probably written one, and the person that solves the crime is the probable-lover of one of the killers. This film certainly has very well-developed characters, but I have seen better films than this one.

It`s been years since I had last seen this film - at least 8 of them by my reconings. But I somehow was still able to remember almost perfectly what would happen at any moment of this film. Although this ain`t clearly no Shakespeare this film boasts an impressive cast and an all-star director in the person of Robert Zemeckis. The leading roles are taken by Bruce Willis, Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep - is that good enough for ya? So, Ernest Menville is a successful plastic surgeon (yeah, everybody speaks how good he is but to me that`s one REAALY important job for sure) and he`s engaged to Helen (Hawn) but when he sees and hears Madelaine (Streep) perform, he falls in love with her in an instant and marries her instead. After 14 years both Helen and Madelaine take up a potion that keeps you young forever (and makes you immortal at that) but some side-effects this thing does have. It`s then when Ernest decides to leave both these women that don`t do nothing good for him (and as far as I got he didn`t return to re-shaping tits). This is what people call a black comedy, not a particulary funny though, but it`s surely memorable - at least for me, if nothing more.

Ever been Legally Blonde? Some of us may have been, while the others not. The leading star of this film certainly has - for she`s the one who played the lead in the film about the girl with not-so-dark hair. Reese Witherspoon is her name. The story - somewhat similar to Thackeray`s novel but with a few changes, the most important among which is the fact that Becky Sharpe is a romantic person. That`s a thing I don`t like, ok, she`s not over-the-top romantic but still she was this i-know-what-i-want character in the book but here she`s just not that strong. The rest of the heroes is probably similar to what I had imagined, maybe Amelia isn`t as silly as she was in the book but that`s only because nobody would believe nowadays that such a loser person can be possible. Of course, this isn`t much more than just a costume film. You watch it, you probably even enjoy some parts of it, and in two days you don`t remember what the actors looked like and you don`t even remember the ending. Ok, I`m a bit overreacting here, but you probably get what I`m try to say here. It`s average - no more, no less.